Illustration: Mike Dubisch

People speak of their centers. You've got to "get centered." You've got to find your center, or go back to it. But where exactly is "the center"? How would you know? It's an inch above your belly button. Whose belly button? What center are we really talking about? Are we talking about the center of your body? The center of your being? Your personality? What do we mean when we speak of the center?

A person's center is something to be discovered, rather than pinpointed. The only person who can find their center is the person on the search for it. How will they find it? By looking for it or wanting it.
But philosophically speaking, isn't it true that your center would be where your life is coming from, how you're connected to life?

Take the image of a diver going down into the sea. The diver's very well aware of the connection he has to life in that example—without the tube that carries his air supply, he knows he's a goner. Or take the example of an unborn baby who hasn't arrived in the world yet. Where's its center, where's its life? Where the life is coming into it.

Once we're born, we still have a connection to life, but it's not as obvious as it was in the womb. Once we're born, life is something that's entering us all the time, and as long as that connection isn't cut, we remain, so to speak, alive. Once it's snipped, we're no longer alive, because life is not something we can self-generate. It's something we're receiving.

So if we're receiving life, it must come from someplace else—there must be a source, a reservoir of life. As long as we are connected to this source, we stay in the state of living. And wherever that life is entering us might be considered the center of our being. If you knew where that was, you could reside there—your awareness would not only be what you're doing with your hands or your feet or your mouth or what you're touching, the way we usually deal with the external world. Your awareness where you reside would also be deeper.

When you're aware of your "aliveneness" at the instant that life is entering you, life stops being a generalized blur, which is the usual state of things. To reside at that place where the life is entering us would enable us to live life differently. We'd be aware of its entering, we'd be grateful for just another minute, second, millisecond, just to be in this state. And we would recognize how fragile our existence is, how utterly dependent we are on this source that is coming into us and, by its grace and largesse, how it allows us to remain for a while in this state.

So when you consider the exercise that goes by the name of meditation, realize that meditation actually means the act of going to the center. By making an effort to go to the center, we arrive at the center. But perhaps it's more like we allow ourselves or we're willing to be taken to the center—to be willing to be led to it.

This isn't an easy thing. Think of being blind, of the dangers you'd face if you weren't willing to depend, at least to some extent, on another. Think of the fears that you'd have to overcome. Some people would rather die than be dependent on others.

The ancient world offers us an unforgettable myth illustrating the situation I'm describing: Tiresias, in the play "Oedipus Rex," was the blind prophet of Thebes. He's led onstage by a child, even though he's a great seer. The way he became blind is very telling.

While walking through a forest Tiresias sees the goddess Diana bathing, and though he knows he shouldn't look at her, he does anyway. He's blinded for his act of insolence. But he's also given something to balance his loss—the power to see inwardly. So he becomes the seer who knows about the inner world. The seer sees because he's not distracted, as we are, by what's in front of him. He can see beyond the ordinary realm, he can foretell what is to be, he knows at a level no one else knows.

When Oedipus calls him in, he refuses to believe the seer's warning. Oedipus, who is full of pride, accuses Tiresias of conspiring against him. He thinks he sees through Tiresias. The blind seer tries to warn the mighty king of things the king has been blind to—the things that will lead to his downfall. And in a play full of awful ironies, what does Oedipus do when he learns what he's done? He blinds himself.

The ability to see, to know, to be connected inwardly, is to be connected all the way deep into life itself, where there are no secrets. There are only secrets externally. Inwardly, there are no secrets. Because inwardly, everything is known. So to move inwardly as you work outwardly is to bring yourself to another state and another relationship to life itself.

Through meditation, through the act of being willing to be led, you can get there. And in this willingness to be led, one has to give up something—our will, or perhaps more accurately, our willfulness, our devotion to the externals of life. Our dread of the unknown. Our fear of losing control. Take your pick.

So all these things that hold us in place have to be let go of so that we can be led back to the living source of our being. The form these pulls take are familiar to anyone who's done the slightest bit of meditating: the daily scenarios of your life, the needs, the fantasies you've been generating all your life, your various aches and pains, the snarl of ideas. All these things pull you back from the center, keep you shackled in the externals. Those shackles can only be broken by redirecting your willingness to go further.

But who will be the child that leads us? A number of different guides are used in meditation: sounds or pictures. Whichever you choose, the movement inward can't be mechanical. You can be taken by meditation, but it must be with all your wits about you. Meditation isn't a trance; it's not there to put you to sleep. It's there to awaken you. The only way you'll be able to arrive at your center is by being awake, and that's the same way you'll want to be—and want to stay—when you arrive there.