Steve Taylor - The Calm Center: Reflections and Meditations for Spiritual Awakening

Praise for The Meaning by Steve Taylor Insightful and delightful, Steve Taylors poems are like a beautiful mist of champagne bubbles on a background of infinite space and silence. CATHERINE INGRAM, author of Passionate Presence Praise for The Fall by Steve Taylor One of the most notable books of the first years of this century, and I am convinced it will be one of the most important books of the whole of this century. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRANSPERSONAL STUDIES An important and fascinating book about the origin, history and impending demise of the ego humanitys collective dysfunction. The Fall is highly readable and enlightening, as the authors acute mind is at all times imbued with the higher faculty of spiritual awareness. ECKHART TOLLE, author of The Power of Now Praise for Waking from Sleep by Steve Taylor The most enlightening book about enlightenment I have ever read. ERVIN LASZLO, author of Science and the Akashic Field Praise for Out of the Darkness by Steve Taylor A fascinating and illuminating journey through the landscape of spiritual transformation.

SHARON SALZBERG, author of Loving-KindnessOut of the Darkness is filled with amazing stories of enlightenment brought about by lifes most difficult circumstances.... A truly inspiring book! SUSAN JEFFERS, PHD, author of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway Steve Taylor reminds readers of the resilience of our human spirit and our capacity to find light in the darkness as we pass through that dark night of the soul to find a brighter dawn. DAN MILLMAN, author of Way of the Peaceful Warrior and The Four Purposes of Life A wonderfully clear and inspiring book about the way great suffering and ordeal can lead to sudden awakening. Its importance for our menacing times and for the transformation being birthed by them cannot be exaggerated. ANDREW HARVEY, author of The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism Praise for Back to Sanity by Steve Taylor A book with a massive scope which opens our eyes to a new way of understanding the world, and is also a pleasure to read. CHRISTOPHER RYAN, author of the New York Times bestseller Sex at Dawn Insightful, confronting and liberating....I recommend Steve Taylors brilliant new book to everyone.

It is destined to be a modern classic. ROBERT HOLDEN, PHD, author of Shift Happens! Also by Steve Taylor Out of TimeThe FallMaking TimeOut of the DarknessWaking from SleepBack to SanityThe Meaning

An Eckhart Tolle Edition www.eckharttolle.com

New World Library 14 Pamaron Way Novato, California 94949

Copyright 2015 by Steve Taylor All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Text design by Megan Colman Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Taylor, Steve, date. The calm center : reflections and meditations for spiritual awakening / Steve Taylor ; selected and introduction by Eckhart Tolle. (An Eckhart Tolle edition) ISBN 978-1-60868-330-7 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-60868-331-4 (ebook) 1. (An Eckhart Tolle edition) ISBN 978-1-60868-330-7 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-60868-331-4 (ebook) 1.

Spiritual life. 2. Meditation. I. Tolle, Eckhart, date. Title. Title.

BL624.T394 2015 04'.32dc23 2014046887 First printing, May 2015 ISBN 978-1-60868-330-7 Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper

New World Library is proud to be a Gold Certified Environmentally Responsible Publisher. Publisher certification awarded by Green Press Initiative. www.greenpressinitiative.org

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!... Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul, I would be a good fountain, a good well-head, Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression. D.H. Lawrence, Song of a Man Who Has Come Through Contents 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, freedom from dysfunctional and compulsive thinking, a deep appreciation of the present moment. All these shifts and many other changes greatly enhance the quality of your life. Presence can also empower and inspire the spoken and written word. All true spiritual teachings use words as pointers toward that transcendent dimension of consciousness that is presence.

In some mysterious way, the words that arise out of presence are imbued with a certain power that goes beyond their informational value and is reflective of presence. That power can awaken or deepen the presence in those people who listen to or read those words. All true spiritual books have that power. You can, and indeed will want to, return to and reread them many times, because a certain shift in consciousness happens within you as you read. You enter the state of presence. The Calm Center is one of those rare books.

It belongs to the genre of poetry, which has been recognized since ancient times as a highly appropriate medium for the expression and transmission of spiritual truth. Many ancient scriptures can be considered either as poetry or as existing on the borderline between poetry and prose. The Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Dhammapada, and the Tao Te Ching are all poetic in nature. In these texts, meaning, images, sound, and rhythm interact to create a harmonious whole whose transformative power is activated in the consciousness of the reader or listener. Then there are the great mystical poets of Sufism, such as Hafiz, Rumi, Kabir, and Attar; and the Buddhist poets Basho and Milarepa. In the Christian tradition also there are great mystical poets, such as St.

John of the Cross, Angelus Silesius, and of course Meister Eckhart, whose writings, with their masterful use of images and metaphors, could be described as poetic prose. In more recent times, the spiritual dimension is present in the works of numerous poets, such as Wordsworth, Whitman, Rilke, and many others. Steve Taylors

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