You've packed a lot into it and, as always, you manage to keep me involved from beginning to end, as if you were just on the way with your own story on the subject of "centring", although it's now so far finished with the publish button.
HaHa!, I had to smile when I read that the definition sounded like a chat bot and of course you don't like that at all. Way too slick. Also for me.
To be centred, yes, indeed, that is simply a word that can be used to mean anything and everything.
I thought it was a buzzword and don't use it at all myself because of that. Too much inflation.
This new age movement - it's funny, it's been going on since the 70s, has long since arrived in our country and since I'm always against the trend anyway (out of principle, as a friend recently said), I don't use the term. I even find it silly, but never mind. Anyway, your occupation is not and I enjoyed reading your journey with it. Very entertaining, thank you!
From the realm of Buddhist there is something better, I think, and that is the word "Skilful Spontaneity", look up "Wu-Wei" - very very interesting.
To move through the world with skilful spontaneity, that has my admiration and is perhaps also a permanent goal that I have. I fail regularly, but the ideal is orientation, isn't it.
belting out happy tunes.
:))) for sure that centers! LOL
That is perfect. Being fully myself means being spontaneous in actions arising from instantaneous thought, trusting that those thoughts are true. One bit I took out of this essay (thank you for your comment on it, I try to post stuff that doesn't waste anyone's time, and to follow coherent arcs of thought) concerned doubt, that if I have any doubt, I don't act. Centeredness or whatever you call it is certainty, and from certainty comes efficiency and skill. One can dodge each moment skillfully with spontaneity if they are fully present as themselves.
lol something like that. It would take me a few more hours to expound on that, a whole other post.
I often feel like my thoughts have come from other entities; when I think "this plant needs to be pruned," was that my thought, or the plant's? Being fully present includes heightened awareness, connecting to your source of all things.
woo woo! You've gotten me riffing here, and I like it!
HeHe :) Me, too.
I tried to cover up this topic once in this posting.
It is the art of not getting too involved with something and not too little, of doing the task at hand loosely from the hip. When I took the tray full of wobbly coffee cups, full of glasses with drinks across the uneven lawn to the guests at the table, managing to flirt with some, simultaneously noticing raised hands and not spilling a single drop. Such moments are gold. Other days I would look at the tray and try not to spill anything and of course the liquid would flow over.
When I was throwing the bar at a disco, it was similarly instantaneous. I spontaneously handed out free drinks to my guests, handled all kinds of bottles like a virtuoso, danced to the beats, laughed, had fun and was the queen of the bar. I managed to do things that I would otherwise have had to practise. It was the absence of too much concentration on one thing, while at the same time being alert to many things at the same time. Hard to describe.
Oh, one more example. Throwing the ball into the basketball hoop from behind. You mustn't want it too much, then it won't work. You don't care, but not completely. LOL
Yes.
And no. The asian philosophy is really funny, I think. "Fully present" can also mean to be too aware of oneself. Then the opposite happens. As there is also no such thing as "oneself" ("being themselves"). More, like you mentioned it here:
The source is always there, only, it will not let you enter it once you want it too much. HaHa! :D
That's actually a very good advice.
Yes, I have had this experience too, and also as a bartender. Or on a stage. I think we can gather the energies of others, and so heighten our own powers, as long as we don't think about it. When we think, we draw back into ourselves, and lose an important connection that fuels us somehow.
That hits it.
Thought is a good servant but a bad master.