The Calm Center by Steve Taylor

How religious you are depends on the nature and strength of your beliefs and how deeply you are self-identified with them. How spiritual you are depends on your degree of presence in everyday life, which is to say your state of consciousness.

The essence of all spirituality is presence, a state of consciousness that transcends thinking. There is a space behind and in between your thoughts and emotions. When you become aware of that space, you are present, and you realize that your personal history, which consists of thought, is not your true identity and is not the essence of who you are. What is that space, that inner spaciousness? It is stillness, the calm center. It is pure consciousness, the transcendent I AM that becomes aware of itself. The Buddha called it sunyata, emptiness. It is the “kingdom of heaven” that Jesus pointed to, which is within you, here and now.

As presence increasingly arises within you, it manifests in many different ways: inner peace, empathy, an outflow of goodwill toward your fellow human beings, creativity, a heightened sense of aliveness, ...

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