Back to Center

What matters most right now?
What is most important here in this moment?
What do I need to adjust to prioritize these things?

The world is whirling, and now I know why God led us to Be the Mountain as our theme for the year. It takes great effort to stay steady like the mountain in the midst of all the storms a mountain can face. The mountain is clearly affected or impacted in some way by all the storms it endures, and yet it remains. If we are to Be the Mountain we must have our way to come back to center. These questions are helping me do that lately.

Just yesterday someone said to me, “The pace of change feels overwhelming…like just when we get used to something, it changes.” That is the world we live in now, and we have to adjust our coping skills so we can show up as close to healthy, whole and ready to serve as possible. That is our responsibility. We must take ownership of our thoughts, feelings, actions and reactions.

These days and in the midst of sweeping changes in our world, when I think about those three questions, I often come back to my core values and core beliefs. Who am I being in the world – what are my thoughts, words and actions saying? What conversations am I having (with care and curiosity) about core beliefs? How am I loving and serving the people right in front of me? How am I being the change I want to see in the world (for me that comes back to embodying peace, love and courage)?

When things get stressful and unsettling, it’s easy to reach out and lash out…but what we really need to do is start within. When we can get grounded and centered internally first, then take care of what’s right in front of us, then our power and positive ripple effect starts to make more of an impact on the world.

So many of us are acting and reacting out of our woundedness. Blaming, complaining, playing victim, accusing, becoming defensive, shutting down…these are all signs that we need to pay more attention to our inner world. When we can take full ownership and responsibility for our inner world, to harness the power of our frustration and even anger and transmute it into calm and confident power, the game changes and the effect we have on the change we want to see happens in ways we couldn’t imagine.

In her book Sage Warrior: Wake to Oneness, Practice Pleasure, Choose Courage, Become Victory, Valarie Kaur encourages us to create our sovereign space within to help us come back to center. She says, “This is what it’s like with sovereign space: you are wrenched down into the mundane, but you can always return to the sacred. Until you realize it is all sacred.”

Our sovereign space is that sacred place that we can envision and “visit” that reminds us of the truth, beauty and goodness of life when we are in the midst of storms. It is a reprieve where we can come back to and experience the Divine. It allows us to break through and see beyond the constraints and dualistic thinking of this world to remember something bigger and deeper. This is where we embody our sage warrior power.

Kaur describes the sage warrior this way: “The sage is someone who loves deeply. You cultivate wonder for others and the earth and wake to Oneness. You befriend the body – parts of the world, and parts of yourself. You practice pleasure through music, meditation, movement and more as channels for awakening. You build sovereign space where you can find refuge and rest in wisdom within you. 

The warrior is someone who fights for humanity, including your own. You access your agency and activate power. In the face of injustice, you harness rage and refuse to surrender your humanity. You join others to grieve together and alchemize pain into energy and action. You choose courage in the face of crisis. In doing so, you become victory. You embrace rebirth.“

We need to work to get back to center using our sovereign space so we can embody the sage warrior. Use the questions to help you refocus, create and use your sovereign space to find refuge and bring yourself back to your natural state of love, joy and peace so you can embody the change you want to see in the world in a calm, confident and powerful way. If we can all remember that everyone and everything is sacred, that we are all part of the whole and we are all meant to love and be loved…imagine what the world could be.