Centre point?
Wherever there is balance, there is a centre point through which it passes, we have a centre of gravity in our bodies around which we can spin with nearly no effort, that ice skaters use to dramatic effect and that everyone enjoys as we are walking. Without balance walking would be impossible, and yet that simple swing is a source of great joy, we feel the ease that our free motion gives us, and if we are forced to work against it, it can make it feel like we are walking through treacle. We are creatures that want to return to centre, we love playing with our balance but eventually we need to return as a pendulum does slowly back to it's static centre, and it is no different for our minds, when it is wildly spinning, it is the peace of the centre that it craves, and a return to it's lowest energy state.
We can try to outrun the mind's energy, tire it out, however motion just begets more motion, you can throw the ball as many times as you like, the mind will keep on fetching, it is stillness that you need, you stop the motion by stopping feeding it, and letting it spin on it own. You stop feeding it with your reactions to it, you can reason away the plainly wrong, initially reasonable negative thoughts are worth undermining, though not repeatedly, just enough to be able to dismiss it as old news, you stop a thought by stopping thinking it or about it, cut it off as boring, you let them come, let them be and let them go. The energy will still flow, you just stop trapping it like a bee in a glass, thoughts make more noise when you hang on to them, let them travel as energy through your body and into your heart, the void from which everything comes and goes.
However if you stay in your mind, you are just going to have to repeat the process forever, that is what the minds are for, to have thoughts (though not to hang on to them) it is where your subconscious minds share information and get their instructions. Whilst it is important to be clear in those instructions, the subconscious does not have grammar, do not say, “do not think about pink elephants”, all your minds will hear is pink elephants, and it will give your a hundred dancing ones, they just hear the noun and nothing else, so everything you say to them should be short and positive. Once you have done what you need to do, stop living there, it is not a happy place, it is for sorting out problems, the place to be is the centre, that is where your balance is, and it the best place to keep your consciousness.
When you are literally trying to keep your balance on a tight rope, or a raised kerb if that is more your height, if you think about it you fall, it is only when you sink into your body, when you view your feet from a point of view below your navel that you find the balance that you need. When you drag your attention down to your feet, that act of dropping your attention down through you, means that your consciousness drops with it, just like focusing a pair of binoculars pulls your vision towards a distant object, there is a feeling of moving towards it. The same is true when you are keeping your balance, you move closer to your feet, even when you are not looking at them, you feel your consciousness drop though this is often ignored as your concentration is on your feet but it has and that is where you want your consciousness all the time, balancing through life.
It is the dropping of your attention that you want to recreate, you want to take a view from your centre, it is the place where you can keep everything in view, you do not stop seeing, or feeling, you just stop being at source of all your thoughts, you stop taking them as being you. You are not your thoughts, they are just the part of your consciousness that you can hear, the vast majority of your consciousness is subconscious and within your body not your mind. It is hard to not imagine the mind as a screen upon which our eyesight projects the world, and that we are in there reacting to it, and outthink it, that we are driving the machine that are us. This is just not true, if you were really in control would we make the same mistakes everyday, would we have the same thoughts, would we not be exploring the world, learning at every opportunities rather than practising old habits that we do not even want, we are clearly not in control, and through our efforts to take control we find out how slow and hard it is to change those habits, it is like a tanker it has it's own momentum and it takes a long time to change direction, it is worth the effort but there is only so much you can do in a single day.
Strangely, despite the movement away from thinking, that moving to our centre of gravity allows for a more objective view of those thoughts that never stop, you get to see them as energy, as trapped energy or tension, you can see it moving as energy around the body, how it changes into thoughts, feelings and back again, we get to see the causes and effects that move us through the day, how little we are in control, and how important events are in our lives. How you feel yesterday morning is probably how you felt this morning which is the best indicator of how we will feel tomorrow, and we will probably act the same, do the same things and get the same results, and somehow we forget this every night when we will hope for something different (again). Before you can change something you have to be aware of it, operating from a centre point of view, gives you that distance and objectivity that allows you to be aware of what is happening in real time, though constructive review is always useful, particularly for our failures but not for dwelling upon or within.
All the answers are really in the present moment, life is all small stuff, one after another, because we see into the past and future, we create a character that is bigger than just what we are doing and feeling right now, but that is all it is, a useful place holder to visualise the actor that we want good things for and to protect us from making the same mistakes. The problem comes when you think it is real, when you swing a firestick in a circle at night, you will see a circle rather than the firestick at different angles, it does not stop being a stick with a single flame, it is just the way the mind sees rapid changes, it moves too fast to be individual frames rather it becomes a construction that comes from the limitations of the mind, the same is true for your image of a continuous being that is you, it is an illusion that makes it easier to plan and learn. However it is just a simplification that hides what makes up reality, it is by living fully in the moment that you become part of it, not by looking at the circle of flame and instead you want to engage in the experience of being the flame, no illusions just burning, emitting light rather than watching it.
First, bring your attention to your centre, below the navel, fix it there and allow you awareness to reach out from that point, use it as your point of view, feel at ease there, with the grace of your legs below you and the joy of your heart above you. Sure your mind is still up there doing it's things, probably freaking out that you are not paying attention to it, a little diva that is going to sing, dancing and even have a sulk, it will be imaginative in trying to grab your awareness, entertain, seduce and frighten you, it wants your energy to feed it, and it is time to put it on a diet. Every time that you feel yourself giving it energy, stop, note it and return to your centre, it is a process to build a habit, but you have twenty thousand thoughts a day, so that is twenty thousand opportunities to practise, just do not engage, let it thrash and sulk. Do not worry that you will stop being able to have original thoughts, by cleaning up the mess, it gives you a clean table upon which to create really interesting thoughts by being able to actually listen to your heart.
Not in a feeling way, but by letting the silence that is the void open up and express itself with deep thinking that comes from the universe, it said that god speaks through that silence, you ask it questions and wait for the deeper slower thoughts to emerge and it has a remarkably different voice from that of the ego messy mind. The silence has a quality that is other than self, it has an element of truth that is difficult and liberating, that is the promise of finding your centre point, to be able to listen to the whole of existence rather just your singular mind that is just filled with fear and individual worries. It is at the centre point that we find peace in the moment, a sense of finally just being and in that silence is the whole world, you just never get to put it into words or thoughts, it just is and that is wonderful.
