🙏🏽 CENTERING THE COMMUNITY 🏳️‍🌈 GATHERING OURSELVES 🙌🏽

All too often, our communities can feel like we are spread too thin, and it becomes important to gather our ourselves, center our thoughts to become whole again.

When our communities are scattered in several directions at once and we are no longer conscious of what we are doing or why, it is time to center ourselves. When we center ourselves, we begin by acknowledging that we have become spread too thin and we are no longer unified inside. Our thoughts might be out of sync with our feelings, and our actions may be out of sync with both. The main signs that we need to center ourselves are scattered thoughts and a feeling of disconnection or numbness, as if we are no longer able to take anything in. In addition, we may feel unfocused and not present in our communities. Centering ourselves is a way of coming to terms with all the different energies within us and drawing them back into ourselves.

Centering means that we are working from or being aware of the core of the community. At first it may not make sense, but as you progress you will understand what this feels like. We naturally know how to center ourselves when we take a deep breath, for example, before making a big announcement or doing something big. Another way to center ourselves is to sit down and engage in with each other in real meaningful ways. In conversations, we can take what our each other is saying into the center of our beings and respond from the center. Our whole lives mirror this ebb and flow of energy that begins and ends at the center of ourselves. If we follow this ebb and flow, we are in harmony with the universe, and when we find we are out of harmony, we can always come back into balance by sitting down and observing our real selves.

When we sit down to center ourselves we can imagine that we are gathering our straying thoughts and energies back into ourselves, the way a mother duck gathers her babies around her. We can also visualize ourselves casting a net and pulling all the disparate parts of the community back to the center, creating a sense of fluid integration. From this place of centeredness, we can begin again, directing things outward in a more intentional way.