Picture courtesy of Wikimedia
One of the books I’m reading right now is The Phenomenon of Life (affiliate link) by Christopher Alexander. It’s a book about the art of building, but its really much more than that. It’s about the appreciation of life and how life shows up in the spaces we navigate and create. One of the concepts the authors talk about is how a given space is defined by its center and how there are actually different centers in a given space that all play off of and define each other.
What this discussion of Center has made me aware of is how in touch I am with my awareness of what my center is, physically, spiritually, and mentally. At the same time, I’m aware that even my perception of the center is governed by how that word is defined. Alexander makes the point that any space is made up of multiple centers. There is no one center so much as many centers and they all combine to shape the experience of a space.
When I apply that different perspective to my awareness of center, it changes the experience, because of just focusing on the obvious center of my body, I start looking at the centers of all the parts of my body and how those various centers effect each other and my experience of this body when it moves and when its still. I also recognize how I situate my sense of centerness, not on the actual center of my body, but on the center of my torso, where my diaphragm meets my ribs.
These realizations might not seem overtly magical, but what it really teaches me is how easy it is to take a word such as center, with its definition, and apply it in a way that doesn’t allow for a more nuanced awareness of what that word might mean or how it might be expressed differently. If we consider magic as a method of change, one of the things we might also consider is how that method can be used even and especially for what we take for granted.
Changing my awareness of center and suddenly seeing centers in everything opens my awareness to the world in a different way. I’ve started looking at my definition and experience of life differently as well, because of how the author explores the situation of life in relationship to centers. When I’m in a given space, I find myself looking for what makes that space come alive and in that feeling of life I find centers that tie together the space and create connection between myself and that space.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the spaces I live in and explore. Human arrogance thinks that we define the spaces we’re in, and while there is some truth to that, there’s also truth to the fact that a given space defines us as well. We live in symbiosis with the spaces we are part of. Those spaces speak to and through us. This was brought home to me when I visited the Columbia Valley Gorge, which is near where I live. I stopped at a certain place and looked in the water of the Columbia river and felt the presence of the spirit of that river reach out and touch my soul. She let me know that I belonged to her, that I was as much part of the land as anything else and that I couldn’t just casually leave that connection behind.
Shortly after I first started practicing magic, one of the workings I did involved giving my blood to the land. This happened in Pennsylvania, but each place I moved to I would do a similar working where I connected to the land. It was only in Oregon that I felt a response to what I did that went beyond a muted feeling of connection. When I came to Oregon I felt a connection to the place that went deep into my soul and spoke me. That space lives in me and around and I live around and in it.
I watched the waves of the Columbia beat against the shore and I could see all the centers, and my place in that awareness of center. I felt the Columbia touch my consciousness and remind me again that I am part of this lived space, this lived moment that expresses itself in the myriad of ways we take so easily for granted, yet nonetheless speak to and through us if we are just willing to open to them.
