Navel Gazing at the Center of the Universe

My wife is studying in a 9-month advanced yoga class, studying the theory, sutras, and practice of yoga.

As part of her class she picks one type of meditation, of several that are offered. 

She chose “navel gazing.” 

I remember that “navel gazing” was the snarky remark that was present in the 1960’s regarding what meditators do during meditation. 

I often try out new meditations to see what comes up. 

Of course, being the designated heretic, I didn’t get the exact instructions. 

The “navel” has great significance in Eastern practices. 

In my time in karate and aikido we learned to move from the tanden, located 2-fingerbreaths below the navel and centered within the body.  This area has many names, hara, tan t’ien, dantian, dan tian.    

This is the gravitational center of the body.  When you move in karate, aikido, or tai chi, you bend your knees slightly to lower your center of gravity and you move as if a string were attached to this center point, pulling you forward, backward, or sideways. 

In traditional Japanese and Chinese medicine this area is also the center of qi or life force energy. 

When I teach meditation, I often ask the students to bring their consciousness down from their heads into their abdomen, breathing from awareness of the movement of the abdomen. 

So, waking at 2 am, as I am wont to do, I sat on my cushion with awareness of this area of the body. 

What came up was “this area is the center of the universe.”  

Then, every being has this center, and therefore, “every being is the center of the universe.”

To further complicate this meditation, arose “every holon is the center of the universe.” 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holon_(philosophy)

What I first felt was a buzzing sensation of this area of my body. 

This was followed by a spreading of the sensation that all beings are buzzing at this center.  

Next arose the sensation that every cell, molecule, and subatomic particle in this body-mind is vibrating.  

 

Then the sensation of the entire universe vibrating… 

Interesting! 

Later I was contemplating this paradox.  

How can everything be the center of the universe? 

Well, current scientific and mathematical theory says that there is no edge to the universe. 

https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/seuforum/faq.htm

If there is no edge, then there is no known center. 

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/centre.html

If there is no center, then the opposite is also true; everything is at the center of the universe. 

Perhaps this can be taken as “mind-blowing.” 

Perhaps, this can also be taken as the simple Truth. 

Truth is found in Paradox. 

Our minds are too primitive to understand the nature of the universe. 

However, we can grok what is true. 

“Grok /ˈɡrɒk/ is a word coined by Robert A. Heinlein for his 1961 science-fiction novel, Stranger in a Strange Land, where it is defined as follows:

Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthling assumptions) as color means to a blind man.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok

Gotta love Heinlein! 

He got it.  

Everything is connected to everything else. 

We think we are separate beings. 

We are separate, but only on a superficial level. 

We are holons. 

Separate beings on one level. 

Completely connected to the entire universe on the level of Truth. 

Perhaps we can slowly grok this. 

And

act

accordingly… 

Namaste