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A Many Centered Universe
18. A Many Centered Universe
Many of us seek to be less driven by our several competing selves. In many
religious traditions people have learned ways to center, a process of inner
ordering and emergence that happens largely outside our conscious awareness
and control. Even in the dark night of the soul when it is felt we are lost
and nothing is happening, there can be significant changes occurring. Yet,
at the same time, we need to cooperate with this change, as we do, for example,
by using different types of meditation and prayer. The 14th century English
Augustinian monk Walter Hilton taught: "If the spiritual eye is to be opened,
definite work must be done — this eye must not only be opened, it must be
trained, so that it may endure to gaze steadfastly at the Uncreated Light."
I have found it most encouraging to understand that the universe is about
making centers of being; centers that include galaxies, stars, cells, starfish
and people. The recognition that the universe makes centers of being, and,
that the universe organizes itself with an interest in its beings, as cosmologist
Brian Swimme teaches, is heartening since it means the centering energies
and patterns under gird and enable our conscious desire to be centered. We
are invited to enter into the power of centration that is already seeking
expression. It is a power grounded in the creative source of being and its
profound allurement.