The journey from the unconscious self to the conscious self we are today is the story of the human race. It is also the story of each of us who moved from fusion and total immersion — total oneness with our mother — to separateness and conscious mind as an adult. It is a movement from an unconscious experience of Center to a more conscious experience of Center.

Archaic man could not experience himself as separate from nature, from the life force within himself. He lived in an unconscious state and claimed no personal power. What happened to him happened because of the trickery of the gods or his own inclusion of them through ritual.

We experience ourselves as separate from nature, separate from life. We have a conscious mind separate from the experience of our body and we make choices and life decisions based on this experience. Archaic man could not move to Center and consciously act from that, on his own accord, with his own energy. We can, and must, if we are going to act out of our wholeness.

It is difficult to articulate how this happens, but one knows when it happens. No one person can define Center for another. We can only talk about it and around it. I can share when this happens for me. As an introvert, I experience wholeness internally. Others may experience it differently, externally, with others.

For me, I know this happens in me when I allow energy far, far greater than my own to enter my body, to pour itself through me in a way I am taken up by it and momentarily held, carried, comforted and transformed by it. One of the ways I experience this is in nature, when I allow the energy of the earth and of the heavens to pour themselves through me so that I am momentarily immersed, merged in them, then separated out, more whole, more healed than moments before.

I move to Center and consciously call on the wholeness I experience in that moment to intersect, to join with, to merge with my own energy – my present pain, my problem, my inability to get past something draining my energy – so wholeness can enter my person and do what I cannot do by myself. I can then act on this new energy in me from a conscious place, a knowing place.

The wholeness in nature allows me to remember the wholeness at my center that has resided there from my beginning, since my essence took form in my mother’s womb, from some time before, perhaps, when I was part of some energy larger than my own.

I know at that moment I am part of that larger whole and that what paralyzes me now, frightens me now, is also part of that larger whole. I know I will be all right, that I have within myself the power and the grace and the energy to face, do, decide whatever I cannot do alone. It speaks for me, through me, in me. It acts in me, with me, from a source beyond myself.

I walk in early morning, before dawn and movement parade other energies. It is dark, the moon hangs low in the heavens, a continuum from rich orange to pale lemon, shifting shapes from sliver to whole. The darkness holds me, quiets me with its stillness. As I walk, I call on the energy of the quiet earth to ease any troubled thoughts, any unresolved concerns that distract me from her holy presence.

Whatever it is that seems insurmountable or draining at the time feels massaged, soothed, danced out of me as I walk. By the time I reach home, the sun is coming up as the moon bids goodbye for the day, streaks of sunlight pour out across the sky; birds begin their morning song. I am calm, filled with an energy that can take on whatever I couldn’t just an hour before.

Whatever it was that seemed insurmountable slowly takes on perspective, becomes more approachable, manageable. I know it will not destroy me, overpower me, diminish me in any way, for I am part of a larger whole and that wholeness braces me up, moves through me, is larger than what I face or fear. I have returned home centered, reclaimed, knowing. The knowing is conscious, rooted, grounded and anchored in something of substance, trustworthy.

I am walking under the moon, I am in the moon, the moon is in me, I am the moon, the moon is myself. I am enveloped into the oneness of the moment. I merge with it. There is nothing, for that moment, but the moon. I slowly step back into myself, separate out from the moon, the earth. The moon is now above me and I am walking under the moon, conscious of this, emerging from an unconscious oneness, refreshed, whole.

Archaic man could not see himself separate from the moon. I can. I am conscious. I can consciously call on the energy of the moon to hold me, to whole me, to heal that place in me that needs new energy, new direction, needs grounding. I move into Center, I merge with Center, then move away from Center, back into myself, into my own center. I act from the Center that moved through me. I allow it to move through me and to give me its energy, then to move past me. I carry that energy now; I am part of that energy, that energy is myself.

I choose to merge because I know I can merge, separate out, then move on as I am, in my own center. Archaic man had no conscious mind separate from his experience of being in a body. He could not escape the fusion. It all felt magical to him.

I experience this wholeness at other moments as well — walking the beach with my young grandson, allowing the pounding surf of the ocean and the wet warmth of the sand to move through me, to minister to me, to wash away any fragmentation in me. We stroll, mindless, picking up shells, with no destination, on no timetable, not aware at times that the other is present. I become part of the universal movement of life, out of my body and yet wonderfully in it, empowered by energies greater than my own and yet connected with my own, wholed.

Moving in and out of Center is, for me, a spiritual moment, a moment that calls together transcendent and imminent energies in a conscious way. Divine energy and human energy dance together, if only a moment, on the pinhead of my existence, yet releases in me conscious energy that changes me at my core.