Befriend Yourself - The Centering Meditation

Centering is active meditation. Within you is a space that is always calm and at peace and is referred to as your "calm center". Being centered means staying peacefully calm amidst the frenzy of daily life. Centering is not allowing your inner glow to be eclipsed by stressful circumstances or negative thoughts, emotions and events.

A centered individual is in a state of clarity, focus, peace, and balance. When you are not centered, you are uncertain, unfocussed, stressed, and off balance.

A good centering method will necessitate merely nominal attention, allowing you to direct some of your attention on the activity at hand. Here are some very easy, effective centering techniques.

1. Simple Breath Responsiveness
While involved in whatever you are doing, bring some attention to your breathing for just a few moments... it needn't be your full attention... just enough to bring you back to your calm center. Breathe naturally, or perhaps just a little more slowly and deeply.
2. Regain Your Energy
When you are feeling stressed and scattered, take several slow, deep breaths. With each in-breath, imagine you are pulling all of your scattered energy and attention back to your inner self... your calm center.
3. Letting Go
This centering technique combines breath awareness with the phrase or mantra, "Let go." It is especially helpful when you are tense and/or fixating on a stressful situation or a negative thought or emotion.
As you inhale, (silently or aloud) say, "Let"
As you exhale, say "go"... while letting go of all that is stressing you.
4. Central Energy
Imagine a bright sun filling your heart chakra... the calm, subtle energy field that permeates your chest area. Imagine that sun gently emanating peace and joy throughout your entire being.

Now, try it with the meditative statements below:

Breathe in deeply all the possibilities that lie before you, and breathe out softly, any perceived encumbrances, trials or tribulations.

Breathe in completely all the guidance and support that awaits you, and breathe out gently all that no longer serves you in any way.

Breathe in fully all the freshness that sustains and nourishes you, and breathe out calmly all that has become weary and too difficult to hold.

Just let it all go, let it melt away, dissolve, disappear.

You are here now, in this moment, which unfolds before you like a flower.

And like a flower, nothing is asked of you, but that you be real, authentic, true.

And like a flower, nothing is required of you, but that you be fully present, deeply alive and profoundly aware of life all around you.

And like a flower, nothing is demanded of you, but that you be open, willing, daring, conscious.

May your day be blessed with the gifts of insight, understanding, compassion and a deep inner knowing.

May the light shine for you on those places you have hidden from view, your own or others, so that you may see, feel and know, perhaps for the very first time, the deepest truth of who you really are and why you came here.

May the grandest mysteries of life beckon to you, and may you yield to their advances and surrender to their affections.

May you ask of life that it take from you whatever it may, so that your place here has purpose and your journey be not in vain.

May you take the time to cease the inner chatter and feel the stillness in your own soul, and in that stillness may you see with new eyes, the perfection in each person and the gifts they lay before you at your feet. And may you gladly embrace those gifts and take them into your gentle and opening heart.

Your time alone is sacred, as is every moment lived from a conscious place.

May you be accompanied by Angels, precious beings from all places and times holy, and seen and unseen friends, who quietly rejoice along side of you in your awakening, those beings who want only the best for you and see you in your splendor, even when you do not.

And when you are done with this moment, may you enfold it in love and send it out into the world where it will uplift the planet, touching each person in a profound yet almost imperceptible way, like a butterfly alights upon a flower, aware of something forever changed.

For every time you breathe a little lighter, the world is lighter and the healing begins for all of us, not just for one of us, but for all of us.

When you have the courage to awaken, you do it for everyone, because you are everyone.