Right now, you might feel pulled in a hundred directions. Your worried mind insists you should respond to every problem you see in the world. This voice—often called the ego or little self—makes you think you must fix everything, or at least worry about it. When you feel rushed to hurry in every direction to fix everything, that’s actually when you most need to bring your attention back to your deep center.
People will often insist that you bring your attention to their concerns. They want you to care about their situation, or to agree with them. And they pull on your energy, asking you to either fix their problem, or feel sorry for them, or give them whatever attention they believe will bring them relief.
Why Centering Isn’t Running Away
So how would bringing your attention back to your center help make a difference? Isn’t that running away or avoiding the problem? No, it’s not. Actually, when you match the chaotic energy of a person, group, or situation, you are not helping. Your nervous activity and worry are like adding gasoline to a fire.
Think of it this way: Imagine you’re standing by a lake on a windy day. The surface is choppy and wild. If you jump in and start splashing around, you just make more waves. But if you wait for the wind to calm, the water naturally settles into a clear mirror. That settled state is your center—it’s already there, waiting for you to notice it.
If you truly wish to help, recognize that the healthy choices and decisions that come when you are in your center are more sensible and wise. Your center is like a compass. It lets you determine whether action is appropriate, and what that action might be if you choose it.
Four Pathways to Your Center
Your center isn’t just one thing—it’s accessible through different doorways. Some people connect most easily through their heart. Others find their center through their physical core, their breath, or their inner sacred space. All of these pathways lead to the same deep, peaceful place within you.
The practices below offer four different ways to access your center. Try each one, and discover which resonates most naturally with you. You might find that different situations call for different pathways.
Pathway 1: Centering in Your Heart
Your heart is more than a pump—it’s a center of wisdom and intuition. When you place your attention in your heart, you tap into a source of knowing that goes beyond thinking.
✨ PRACTICE: Finding Your Center Through Your Heart
- Place one hand on your heart and close your eyes.
- Take three slow, deep breaths. Feel your hand rising and falling.
- Ask yourself: ‘What does peace feel like right here, right now?’
- Notice any sensation—warmth, softness, stillness—without judging it. That feeling is your center calling you home.
Pathway 2: Centering in Your Physical Core
Your physical center—the area around your belly and lower abdomen—is your body’s center of gravity. Many ancient traditions recognize this as a powerful source of grounding and strength.
✨ PRACTICE: Centering in Your Core
- Sit comfortably with your feet flat on the floor.
- Place both hands on your lower belly, just below your navel.
- Breathe slowly and imagine your breath filling this space like a warm, glowing ball of light.
- With each breath, feel yourself becoming more solid, grounded, stable—like a mountain that cannot be moved.
Pathway 3: Centering Through Slow Breathing
Your breath is always with you, always available as an anchor to the present moment. When you slow your breathing, your entire nervous system shifts from stress to calm.
✨ PRACTICE: The Breath That Centers
- Find a quiet moment and close your eyes.
- Breathe in slowly through your nose for a count of four.
- Hold gently for a count of four.
- Breathe out slowly through your mouth for a count of six.
- Repeat for five cycles. Notice how your mind becomes quieter, your body more relaxed. This is your breath leading you to your center.
Pathway 4: Centering in Your Inner Sacred Space
Within you exists a sacred space—a sanctuary untouched by the chaos of the world. Some call it the soul, the divine essence, or the innermost self. This is your deepest center, the place where you connect with something greater than your everyday personality.
✨ PRACTICE: Entering Your Inner Sacred Space
- Sit quietly and imagine yourself walking down a beautiful staircase.
- With each step down, you go deeper inside yourself, leaving the busy world behind.
- At the bottom, you find a door. Open it and step into your inner sacred space—a place of perfect peace, perfect safety.
- What do you see, feel, or sense here? This is your sanctuary. You can return here anytime you need deep centering.
Reaction vs. Response: The Crucial Difference
Notice the difference between a thoughtfully balanced, intentional response from your center—compared to the automatic, ego-driven reaction. A reaction happens fast, like a knee jerking when tapped. A response comes from a deeper place, like a tree bending with the wind but staying rooted.
✨ PRACTICE: The Pause That Changes Everything
- Next time someone says something that bothers you, pause before speaking.
- Choose one of your centering pathways: touch your heart, your core, slow your breath, or drop into your sacred space.
- From that centered place, ask your intuitive mind: ‘What wants to be said here?’ (Not ‘what should I say’ but ‘what wants to emerge’).
- Speak from that space. Notice how different it feels from your usual quick reactions.
The Hidden Power of Action-Less Action
You want to make a difference, and you might think that requires immediate doing. But wait—
There is an even deeper form of action, but it is so quiet on the outside that it may seem like you’re doing nothing at all. This is the action of consciousness—the state of grace. It is the empowering quality that gently comes alive when you access your infinite inner essence, and align your intention with the highest good.
Here’s another way to understand it: Imagine a radio tower. It doesn’t make noise or move around, yet it sends out signals that reach thousands of people. When you align with your center, you become like that tower—broadcasting a frequency of peace, clarity, and wisdom. People feel it even if they can’t explain why.
Your ego might think your centering response is useless, because your center is calm and unworried. And yet, this mysterious quiet action makes a real shift in your world. Working from your center frees you to see a situation differently, so that you can develop a fresh, more effective state of being. And that sets positive energy into motion.
✨ PRACTICE: Tuning Into Your Soul’s Wisdom
- Access your center through whichever pathway feels right in this moment.
- Bring to mind a situation that troubles you.
- Now, imagine dropping that situation into a still, deep pool inside your chest—your soul’s wisdom place.
- Watch what happens. Does an image appear? A feeling? A knowing? Your soul speaks in whispers, images, and gentle nudges—not loud commands. Trust what emerges.
Inner Alignment Plus Outer Action
Working from your center through inner alignment is not a replacement for taking action in the world. Rather, it can work together with balanced action in the world. There is wisdom in your deep center that helps you access subtle intuition about your path, moment by moment.
Think of it like this: A skilled archer doesn’t just aim and shoot rapidly. First, they center themselves, feel the wind, sense the target. Then the arrow flies true. Your centered state is the archer’s stillness before the perfect shot. Both the stillness and the action matter.
You may not know exactly what your path will look like tomorrow. However, tomorrow you will be able to access your center once again, and at that time you will be making a positive difference in the world, just as surely as you are today.
✨ PRACTICE: Your Sacred Space Check-In
- Each morning before checking your phone, sit on the edge of your bed.
- Place both feet flat on the floor. Feel the ground supporting you.
- Connect with your center using your preferred pathway—heart, core, breath, or inner sacred space.
- From that centered place, ask your divine essence within: ‘What does this day want from me?’ Listen for the first thing that comes—it might be a word, image, or feeling. That’s your compass for the day.
Discovering Your Unique Path
The practice of taking action from your deep center helps you discover your own way, so that your truth leads to right connections of all kinds. This brings you confidence in your own unique path.
As you practice this centering alignment in your daily life, you realize that your inner cosmic self is guiding you to work from your place of essential inner knowing. And you recognize that you truly do make a difference for the planet, every time you make centered, conscious choices from your sacred space—the centered sanctuary within you.
✨ PRACTICE: Sensing Your Divine Essence Through Your Body
- Stand up and shake out your whole body for 10 seconds. Really shake!
- Now stop and stand completely still. Notice the tingling, aliveness in your body.
- This aliveness isn’t just your body—it’s your divine essence making itself known through sensation.
- Put your attention on this aliveness. Let it expand throughout your whole body. This is you remembering who you really are underneath all the worry.
When Everything Seems to Fall Apart
So when you think that everything is falling apart, realize that this is your ego mind’s dramatic interpretation of events. And when you find yourself reacting in that automatically frantic way, you now know that you can step back from your reactions. You can quietly settle into your center—through your heart, your core, your breath, or your inner sacred space—and look at the situation from a fresh centered perspective. And that prepares the ground for making a difference.
Remember: You are not the storm. You are the sky that holds the storm. Clouds come and go, thunder rumbles, lightning flashes—but the sky remains vast and unshaken. Your center is like that sky. Problems are like weather patterns. They’re real, but they’re not the whole truth of who you are.
Your balanced response may look quiet, because it is quite different from the busy dramatic response of the ego. And yet, your centered response is your position of true spiritual power, and the place from which you can make the subtle, yet real shifts that help create heaven on earth.
✨ PRACTICE: The One-Minute Center Reset
- When chaos hits, excuse yourself—even if it’s just to the bathroom.
- Quickly connect with any of your four centering pathways: heart, core, breath, or sacred space.
- Take three deep breaths. With each exhale, imagine worry draining out through your feet into the earth.
- Return to the situation. Notice how even this brief reset shifts your energy and perspective.
You Are Already Making a Difference
Thank you for making a difference in this world, from your deep cosmic center. Every time you choose to pause, breathe, and return to your center—whether through your heart, your core, your breath, or your inner sacred space—you send ripples of peace into the world. Every time you respond instead of react, you demonstrate a different way of being. Every time you access your inner divine essence, you remind everyone around you—usually without saying a word—that there is a deeper truth available.
The world doesn’t need you to fix everything. It needs you to be centered, present, and connected to your deepest wisdom. From that place, you will naturally do what is yours to do. And that is enough. More than enough. It is everything.
Joel Bruce Wallach