Wrestling With Staying Centered When Life Demands: “Don’t Just Sit There! Do Something!”
A ponder on Right Action
I’ve gotten pretty good at watching what happens inside me.
Watching thoughts come and go. Watching emotions rise and fall. Noticing the point when I remember again after I get lost in a story or swept away in a feeling. And returning to watching.
This part I understand.
Thoughts and emotions have a kind of transparency to them. They move like weather. We can learn to let them be here without trying to fix them. We can notice fear without becoming fear. We can feel sadness without drowning in it. We can return, again and again, to the spaciousness that is aware of it all.
And then there are the actions.
This is where I keep getting stuck.
Because action feels more solid. More consequential. More real. You cannot simply watch a child having a meltdown in the middle of a parking lot and let it pass like a cloud. You cannot witness injustice unfolding in front of you and say, “Ah yes, interesting,” and do nothing. Life asks for response.
So how does presence live here?
For a long time I thought centeredness meant stillness. That if I were truly grounded, I would feel calm and clear before I moved. But real life doesn’t wait for that kind of perfection. Children cry. Systems harm. Moments arrive hot and loud and demanding.
What I am learning is that centeredness is not the absence of movement. It is an inner reference point that stays available while movement is happening.
Thoughts and emotions can be allowed. Action must be chosen.
When a child is having a fit, we can notice what is happening inside us. The tightening in my chest. The urge to control. The fear that I am failing. We do not have to get rid of any of it. We let it be here. We feel it. We breathe.
And then we choose.
We might lower our voice. We might stay close. We might say, “I’m here,” instead of trying to fix or silence or overpower.
The action doesn’t come from reactivity. It comes from inclusion. Everything inside us is allowed to inform the response, but it doesn’t get to drive the car.
The same is true in larger, more charged moments. When fear is in the air. When harm is happening. When injustice snarls and the world burns with urgency. We can feel the heat inside and still act from clarity, compassion, courage. When something in us knows that standing by is not aligned.
Presence does not mean passivity.
It means we can feel fear and still move. We can feel anger and still act with care. We can feel urgency without losing our center. We pause just long enough to remember where we are responding from.
Not from panic. Not from habit. But from alignment.
Action from presence feels different. It may still be firm. It may still be loud. It may still be courageous. But it has space in it. Breath in it. Choice in it.
There is an idea sometimes called right action. Not as the action that guarantees comfort or preferred outcomes, and not as the move that keeps upsetting thoughts or emotions away. Right action isn’t a single correct move, and it isn’t limited to one possible response. There can be many right actions. What makes them right is the place they arise from.
Right action happens when we align. When we get centered. When we are aware of the spaciousness that holds the moment, even as something needs to be done. From that centered place, action moves more freely. It is awareness expressing itself through form, allowing the vastness to witness itself in motion.
This, I am realizing, is the deeper practice.
Not just watching life unfold, but participating in it without abandoning ourselves.
Life demands action. Presence decides how we meet it.
Wishing you the steadiness to move,
and the presence to know where you’re moving from.
💚✨
Dancing on the Edge of Enlightened
Edge Dancer · Connie
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Thank you for sharing this engaging personal inquiry Connie. You found a way to ask yourself some excellent questions about self awareness that I've experienced the rub around, but hadn't explored this precisely or usefully. It's almost as though our habits default to the reverse of what is most useful, identifying with thoughts, moods and feelings while keeping our distance from action, when stepping back and holding those inner passing states lightly, yet being willing to be more engaged in our own lives is what is called for.
Thoughtful and timely. My daughter is struggling with the news of the day. I told her it gets easier as you get older...but I think your thoughts are better. I'll forward it to her.