Center
From New Age Village
By Shepherd Hoodwin
| ORDINAL | NEUTRAL | CARDINAL | |
| INSPIRATION | EMOTIONAL +Sensibility -Sentimentality |
HIGHER EMOTIONAL +Empathy -Intuition |
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| EXPRESSION | INTELLECTUAL +Thought -Reason |
HIGHER INTELLECTUAL |
|
| ACTION | PHYSICAL +Amoral -Erotic |
MOVING +Enduring -Energetic |
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| ASSIMILATION | INSTINCTIVE +Atomic -Anatomic |
Our centers are the seven aspects of self that experience our lives. Four of them are routinely accessible: the intellectual, emotional, physical (on the ordinal action axis), and moving (cardinal action) centers. One of the four is primary for us, depending on whether we process incoming stimuli and respond to it mainly from our intellect, emotions, or body (either by physical excitation or by larger-scale movement).
A person can be quite intellectual without being in the intellectual center; for example, most scholars and many sages have well-developed intellects regardless of centering. Decisions are most effectively made from the intellectual center, using reason (while taking emotions and “gut” or physical feelings into account). A person who is emotionally centered may react emotionally but still make decisions (which are not necessarily reactions) logically and rationally. Learning to use our centers appropriately is like learning to use the right tools for specific jobs.
Similarly, a person can be quite emotional yet not be emotionally centered; all the fluid roles tend to be at least somewhat emotional. And someone can be quite physical—being athletic or a dancer, for instance—without being in one of the body centers. Warriors and kings, for example, tend to be physically oriented. However, a person in one of the body centers tends to be more physical than he otherwise would be, just as someone in the emotional center tends to be more emotional and a person in the intellectual center, more intellectual.
We might view our center as our control station or center of gravity. For example, if we are intellectually centered, our intellect is where we coordinate our internal activities. When we receive stimuli, we process them intellectually. Then we funnel them into one of the other centers for further processing, most often through our “part” of center. For instance, if we are in the emotional part of the intellectual center, our intellect would most often funnel a stimulus to our emotional center through the emotional part of our intellectual center.
Each center has seven parts. Six of them are like doorways connecting it to every other center. For example, the intellectual center has the intellectual, emotional, physical, instinctive, higher intellectual, higher emotional, and moving parts. The intellectual part of the intellectual center is the place of “pure” intellect. Again, four of the parts of any center are routinely accessible: the intellectual, emotional, physical, and moving.
The part of our center indicates how we tend to express or articulate our response, or from where our next response tends to come. Although one part of our center usually predominates, we can use all the parts of our primary center to reach all the other centers. So being in the emotional part of the moving center, for instance, doesn’t prevent someone from also frequently reacting from the intellectual part of his moving center as well. In fact, the more balanced a person is, the more all his parts of center are available to him. However, since our centering springs from either the intellect, emotions, or body, and our part of center usually uses another of these three aspects of self, we are generally left with one of the three that we don’t use as much. That can be the “weak link” in our chain, and we need to be especially conscious about using it in order to be better balanced.
For example, if we are in the emotional part of the intellectual center, our weak link may be our physical and/or moving centers—i.e. taking action, since these are the action-axis centers. With this centering, we tend to feel things about our thoughts. From there, we can go into our emotional center itself (probably through its intellectual part) and have direct emotional experience. After feeling and processing our emotions fully, the right action should be clear. If we are “trapped” in the emotional part of our intellectual center, we go around in circles; the appropriate response is “short-circuited.” We do not actually get into our emotional center, and we do not think effectively either. Instead, incomplete feelings about our thoughts stimulate additional incomplete thoughts, without leading to productive resolution and action. This can manifest as patterns such as worry, depression, and even obsession. Focusing on our weak link—i.e., deciding what action to take—can help us get out of the trap. To do this, we first need to allow our thinking to be clear, objective, and complete. It may be useful to quiet the emotional part of our intellectual center with something such as gentle music, or spending time in nature. We will probably also want to explore our emotions to see and fully experience what we are really feeling, since the patterns of the trap are often ways of avoiding our true feelings.
To stay out of whatever our particular trap is, we need to make certain that our emotional, intellectual, and action centers are each adequately developed and available.
- All the centers are present in all people, but usually not fully available and operative. All the centers are “appropriate,” but certain ones are more appropriate for certain circumstances.
- Someone intellectually centered is likely to get to his moving center through the moving part of his intellectual center, whether or not that is his main part of center. He would think through what he wants to do, and then act on it. However, pretty soon, the moving center itself would take over. To give an example, suppose that you decided to exercise. You would think through what you wanted to do, set it up, and start exercising. Your mind might be active at first, continuing to guide your movements, but after a while, your body itself would take over, hopefully, and its own wisdom of how to exercise itself would come forth. You would then be in the moving center.
- There is no real limitation in having a specific primary center, whether it is the intellectual, emotional, physical, or moving center, because through it, you can access all the other centers. As you mature, you learn to use all the parts of your center as means of accessing the other centers.
Ideally, all of a person’s centers would be well developed, and some people use centers other than their primary one quite a bit. A scholar who is not intellectually centered, for instance, is still likely to have a strong intellect and use it a lot, due to having spent many lifetimes working with it. He just doesn’t react to stimuli intellectually; in other words, his intellect does not become immediately excited and engaged in response to stimuli, although he may generally be quite analytical. Likewise, sages and priests who are not emotionally centered are still likely to have a lot of emotional activity. However, a person’s center is usually the most prominent part of him, at least to other people, since it is our reactions that other people most often see. A person with no emotional centering (who is not in the emotional center, and not in the emotional part of another center) may look unemotional to others, even if he feels his emotions keenly. A person with no intellectual centering may appear impulsive—he doesn’t tend to react analytically or articulate his reactions intellectually. A person with no physical or moving centering may appear inert—his body may be quite vital or sensual, but that might not be obvious to others.
There has been some disagreement as to whether people can be in the emotional part of the emotional center, the intellectual part of the intellectual center, and so forth. I have channeled that some people have such centerings. One person whom I channeled as being in the moving part of the moving center was described by his wife as never sitting still. Obviously, he thinks and feels, like everyone, but his responses are almost all with his body. In Messages from Michael, Michael spoke of most people combining two different centers by being in a part of a center, implying, of course, that not all people do that.
Often, emotionally centered people have a watery or soft quality in their eyes. Intellectually centered people tend to have sharper eyes, and the slowest reactions—we might even be able to observe the “gears clicking” as they take time to analyze. Physically centered people might seem particularly sexual or physical, and those in the moving center might be known as people of action. However, the action-axis centers can seem more transparent than the others—it’s harder to see a body reacting in excitation, or to tell if a person’s movement is his first reaction or is “bouncing off” a thought or emotion—so a person who looks like he might be intellectually (or emotionally) centered might actually be in the intellectual (or emotional) part of the physical or moving center. If I’m uncertain when trying to perceive what someone’s centering is (and I am not channeling), I generally figure that it’s one of the action-axis centers. Someone in the intellectual part of the moving center, for example, who has been strongly intellectually acculturated, may look similar to someone who is intellectually centered. On closer examination, however, the intellect feels one step removed, since its reactions first come through the body. It is rather like a scholar with strong artisan essence twin influence: he may look like a “watered-down” artisan, because the artisan energy is filtered through his neutral scholar energy.
ACTION-AXIS CENTERS
I attended a concert of African music with a friend who is in the emotional part of the physical center. The concert included a lot of drumming and dancing. My friend found that it made her high, whereas I, who am in the emotional part of the intellectual center, just mildly enjoyed it. I could sense that her body was surging with an energy that felt like electricity—it was as if every cell in her body was excited. My body, on the other hand, was fairly calm. I kept wishing that I could understand what the words to the songs meant, and how the dances and music were used in the lives of the people.
That seems characteristic of our respective centers. For me, it was understand first, feel second, and maybe vibrate later. For her, it was vibrate first, feel second, and maybe understand later.
I did, incidentally, start to vibrate after a while, partly with her help. She has a saturnian body type, which is positive and active. Mine is lunar, which is negative and passive. These are polar opposites, and therefore magnetically attract, so it was easy for our bodies to exchange energies. I put my arm around her, and the electricity in her body started moving into mine a bit. I felt that my body was grounding hers. However, my body never vibrated to the extent that hers did.
We tend to gravitate toward entertainment that most stimulates our primary center. I go to far more theater than to concerts or opera. Theater is often a dominantly intellectually centered experience, being so verbal. My friend also enjoys theater, and opera as well, which is dominantly an emotionally centered experience. Nonetheless, physically centered experiences like that African music concert are her favorite. I imagine that those who most enjoy watching sporting events tend to be in one of the action centers, although people can become both emotionally and intellectually stimulated by them as well.
Another friend in the physical center told me that when she’s upset, she may feel nauseous before she realizes intellectually or emotionally that she’s upset. Also, others can tell what she’s feeling by looking at her facial expressions before she has registered intellectually or emotionally that she feels that way—people see her automatic physical reaction.
- Although you use your moving center whenever you move, if you do not primarily live from your moving center and respond by movement, you cannot be said to be moving centered. If you are moving centered, you are likely to move more often than if you are not moving centered. Those who move only if they have to are usually not moving or physically centered.
Other action-axis overleaves, such as aggression or impatience, can encourage greater use of the body (action-axis) centers.
As mentioned, the Yarbro books referred to the ordinal action center as the “sexual center.” In my practice, I use the term physical for it because people can easily misunderstand the term sexual in this context. Michael used it to mean any form of physical excitation, which is also experienced in most athletics and can even be experienced when doing an activity such as cooking.
In Yarbro, the positive and negative poles of the sexual center are amoral and erotic. The dictionary defines amoral as “outside the sphere to which moral judgments apply” and gives the example, “infants are amoral.” That suggests innocence or purity. Negative poles limit the scope of a particular vibration. Although, of course, eroticism is not “bad,” it is a more limited or narrow expression of this energy. If we are in the negative pole while hiking, skiing, or cooking, for example, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we are sexually aroused. It may mean that we are stuck in a limited aspect of the energy: we are perhaps using the excitation merely to stimulate ourselves rather than to participate expansively in what we are doing. It is like being concerned only about our own pleasure during sex, rather than enjoying participating in the full experience with our partner.
In Yarbro, the positive and negative poles of the moving center are enduring and energetic. Again, there is nothing wrong with being energetic, but it is a more limited experience than tapping into endurance. In endurance, a rhythm is established, bringing ease and a “high” (this being a cardinal, or higher, center). Moving-center highs are sometimes experienced by people such as dancers, orchestral conductors, accomplished meditators, and athletes, and by anyone during sex. In such highs, the body can seem to be moving almost by itself; the body’s higher knowledge takes over. It can even seem as if one is in slow motion, or as if time is standing still.
- The excitation of the body sexually is, of itself, of the ordinal center, but when it opens the body to higher energies, toward the greater fulfillment of the sexual act, there is a shift to the cardinal center.
When sex is more than physical excitation, it can also be a gateway into the higher emotional and higher intellectual centers.
A sense of timelessness and effortless intensity can also be experienced in the other higher centers. This might have to do with the fact that the higher centers resonate with the higher planes of creation, in which physical time doesn’t apply. In Yarbro, Michael spoke of the appearance of time slowing down relating to the “enhanced concentration of the higher intellectual center.” Elsewhere, Michael said that “some actors, particularly those actors who are sages, experience the higher intellectual center when acting, in that the role seems to do itself.” The higher intellectual center and the role of sage are both on the cardinal expression axis.
The moving center is the only higher center that is relatively easy to access. That is partly because false personality is more threatened by higher emotional and intellectual accomplishment than by one that is purely energetic, and therefore, in a sense, less specific or defined—it is “just a sensation.” The transcendent experiences associated with the higher centers, such as a moving-center high, occur when we are in them intensely and in the positive poles. One may experience a mild moving-center high in an aerobics class, for instance, and an intense, blissful high during a dance performance.
Higher centers expand or “exalt,” as Michael puts it, what occurs in the ordinal centers. All the ordinal centers involve some sort of excitation: intellectual, emotional, or physical. Excitation is response on a small scale. The excitation in sex is a good illustration of the physical center. When one slides to the moving center in sex, there is a larger response; it can take the form of moving the body as a whole, which is a larger response than the excitation or vibration of its parts. In addition, it can take the form of bringing the body into a transcendent experience of energy, which can also occur in meditation and other experiences. Like rhythmic movement during sex, this is an expansion of scope in the body’s energy. The moving center isn’t “better” than the physical center; in fact, we couldn’t have one without the other, and there is much reciprocity between them. Experiencing the positive pole of any center is pleasurable. The amount of pleasure, again, depends on the intensity. The difference between the cardinal and ordinal centers is similar to the difference between any other cardinal and ordinal overleaf—the cardinal is simply expanded. However, with the higher emotional and intellectual centers, we would not generally want to be that expanded in everyday life.
Some of those who use the moving center more than the physical center are channeled through me as being in the moving part of the physical center because they get to the moving center through the moving part of the physical center. Their first reaction is physical excitation, which warms up their body, so to speak, quickly leading to larger, more encompassing movement.
An essence may not choose a centering if he thinks that it won’t be reinforced and developed in a particular culture. In More Messages from Michael, Michael said that sexual centering is rare because our society does not acculturate for it. Perhaps many of the people who quickly go into the moving center from the physical do so because it isn’t considered okay, by and large, to be in bodily excitation, whereas reacting by taking action is considered more acceptable. In the database of charts I’ve channeled (which, again, isn’t necessarily representative), about 41% are intellectually centered, 21% are emotionally centered, and 38% are bodily centered. I didn’t start asking Michael to specify ordinal or cardinal for the body centers until 1992; since then, about a third have been physically centered (a rate of about 13% of all charts) and two-thirds moving centered (25%).
ENGAGING WITH EMOTIONS
- When you experience pure emotion, you are in the emotional part of your emotional center. If you are intellectually centered, you would normally get there through the emotional part of your intellectual center. You might, for instance, observe the form and understand the beauty of something, have feelings about that understanding, and then go into the emotional center itself, feeling inspired by that beauty.
- Someone in the intellectual part of the emotional center, on the other hand, would tend to feel inspired by the beauty first. He might feel communion with it, or it might evoke memories. He might then verbally articulate his feelings.
Everyone has emotions, just as everyone has thoughts and everyone has physical reactions and movements. However, when we are not emotionally centered, we don’t respond from our emotions; our emotions are not directly excited by stimuli because they are not “forward.” When we are in the emotional part of a center, we at least have easier access to them. Those who are neither emotionally centered nor in the emotional part of another center can seem cool and unemotional. The emotions are the “weak link in the chain,” as I put it earlier. This seems especially true of those who are in the physical or moving center, and for the solid roles (kings, warriors, and scholars). Priests, for instance, access certain emotions through their positive pole, compassion. Nonetheless, they still seem less emotional when they are not in the emotional center or the emotional part of another center.
We all react to stimuli to some degree, mainly from our center. Some people react more strongly than others, depending on imprinting, body type, overleaves, and so forth. Of course, it also depends on the situation, including how much charge, positive or negative, a person has about it, and his general level of stress. Someone who easily loses his temper, for instance, may be volatile because he carries a lot of negative charge and doesn’t have a lot of inhibitions about expressing it. He is not necessarily emotionally centered. He might, for instance, be physically centered: a bodily sensation of being threatened may stimulate the emotion of anger through the emotional part of his physical center. If he is trapped there, he cannot reach the emotional center itself and therefore deal constructively with his anger. Instead, he directs his anger back into his body, becoming more and more agitated. Similarly, in someone intellectually centered, the belief that he is threatened could stimulate anger through the emotional part of that center. If he is trapped there, he would direct his anger back into his mind, becoming obsessive. Someone who tends to react irrationally or unreasonably is not necessarily emotionally centered either; a person can be intellectually centered but be irrational—just because the reaction comes from the mind doesn’t mean that the thinking is objective or clear, and an emotional reaction can also be reasonable. Also, people who cry a lot may just be under a lot of stress and are not necessarily emotionally centered, although they often are (especially men, who are generally imprinted not to cry; their centering may make it difficult for them to fully succumb to that imprinting). However, emotionally centered people live and react predominantly from their emotions—they feel first; their emotions, whether large or subdued, are continually “out front” in their interface with the world.
Sensations of pleasure or sexual arousal derive, of course, from the body, although they are sometimes interpreted as being the emotion of love. If someone gives us pleasure, that can foster the growth of loving feelings, but those feelings are distinct from the pleasurable sensations. Similarly, when we’re physically tired, we’re more susceptible to feeling emotionally “cranky,” but again, these are distinct experiences—we don’t always feel cranky when we’re tired. Also, emotions and intellect can manifest in the body, as when our body feels light or tingly when we feel happy, or when our stomach churns when we think about a problem over and over. The latter is especially common with those trapped in the physical part of the intellectual center.
When someone in the physical center is angry, upset, or elated, he is likely to experience it first in his body as some kind of excitation. He may feel burning in his gut, or light-headedness. If he is in the intellectual part of the physical center, he may verbalize his reaction, shouting an epithet or talking about why he’s so happy. Only then might he actually feel his anger or joy in the emotional center, and only if he is not in his trap. The trap, again, is a “broken record” experience. With this centering, it could lead to endless thinking or talking about his reaction, stimulating more reaction, rather than experiencing the emotional quality of it.
- Someone in the intellectual part of the physical center might consider himself to be quite emotional, but especially if he is in his trap, most people probably won’t know about it very often, because his responses to stimulation do not emanate from his emotional center.
- However, he can become well-balanced by developing free access to his emotions through the emotional part of his physical center. In other words, he can learn to express his emotions in a way appropriate for him. If he does, the designation “intellectual part of the physical center,” although still accurate, may become a little limiting. That still may be his most customary centering, but it could also be said that he is secondarily in the emotional part.
It is especially easy for someone in the physical center to go into the moving part of the physical center, even if that isn’t his customary part of center, since the physical and moving centers are on the same axis and are so closely related, For example, a person who becomes physically excited may then hit, or jump for joy. The reverse is also true: a moving centered person can go especially easily into the physical part of the moving center, becoming excited by movement.
CORRELATING CHAKRAS AND CENTERS
As with the roles and chakras, there are differing ideas about how the centers and chakras correlate, and again, one can make a case for each, depending upon the basis used for correlating them. However, I have come to the conclusion that correlations such as these are like analogies that eventually break down. Although a center may have a particularly strong influence on a chakra, the centers are not really located in one particular part of the physical or energy body. For example, we associate the intellect with the brain, and both the sixth and seventh chakras are seated in the region of the brain; however, emotion and movement are also directed from the brain. Since we communicate verbally through the throat, the throat chakra could be said to be the seat of the intellectual center, but we can just as easily express emotional sounds through it, and the intellectual center may also need to use the heart chakra at times.
It might be more correct to view each chakra as a “modular slot” or “window” capable of accommodating input from any of the centers, in addition to its own native “work station” function in the body. More than one center can work through a chakra, and a center can work with more than one chakra. Which center is dominant in a chakra varies from person to person, depending on his life task, gender, male/female energy ratio, and so forth. It can also change during a person’s life, depending on his needs.
For example, Michael told me that my higher emotional center correlates especially with my throat chakra, helping make singing an emotional, inspirational experience for me. One way in which energy flows in the body is up and down through the chakras, so having neighboring chakras correlate with certain centers can be useful in particular circumstances. My higher intellectual center has a particular correlation with my third eye, which is useful in channeling, since Michael’s energy first comes into my body through the adjacent crown chakra, which in me especially correlates with my moving (cardinal action-axis) center.
Perhaps when the various chakra-center correlations were channeled, they were each based on the “calibrations” of a particular individual present at the time, or of the most common pattern in that specific group—Michael read what they saw and maybe assumed it to be universal. If that particular Michael fragment had never been asked about it before and had not given it any thought or discussed it with other members of the Michael entity, that would have been an easy mistake for them to make.
Incidentally, the third eye, which relates to the pituitary gland, is commonly numbered as the sixth chakra, and the crown chakra, which relates to the pineal gland, is commonly numbered as the seventh. However, Michael through me once numbered the crown chakra as the sixth. The crown, of course, is on the top of the head, and the crown chakra is accessed from there. However, the crown chakra’s emanations are centered near the pineal, and they explained that the pineal itself is actually a bit lower than the pituitary. I later discovered that some chakra charts also number the crown chakra as the sixth and the third eye as the seventh, and Michael through “Jessica Lansing” once did the same thing. Nevertheless, I now stick with the more common numbering.
HIGHER EMOTIONAL AND INTELLECTUAL CENTERS
Intensely accessing the higher emotional and higher intellectual centers brings those revelatory, life-changing experiences that usually only occur when we are under a great deal of stress—our backs are against the wall, so to speak, and life circumstances force us either to open to something higher or to be engulfed by the stresses. However, opening widely a higher center when it has been closed is like exercising intensely when we’re out of shape and without warming up first—it’s a shock to the system. It is preferable to open and access our higher centers deliberately, a little bit at a time.
- Opening your higher centers is a major goal of the spiritual path, and a key to happiness. You open them by opening to love, truth, and higher energies. This allows you to contribute to humanity in the most significant way possible.
- Generally, people do not often reach the positive poles of the higher intellectual and emotional centers (integration and empathy) in any profound way. Understanding some aspects of truth, for instance, is not the same as integration, which ultimately brings an all-encompassing, profound awareness of truth. That requires a foundation of stability. Otherwise, the experience can be startling, at best, and shattering, at worst.
We gain the stability of which Michael speaks through ongoing spiritual growth, particularly through balancing our other centers. That means having all of them open and available, and reacting from the center that is most appropriate for the situation: reacting intellectually when a reasoned response is required, responding emotionally when that is called for, and taking action when that would be the most beneficial course. (Again, we can reach all our centers through the various parts of our primary center, whatever it is.) Reacting from an inappropriate center is like using a screwdriver when a hammer is needed—it wastes energy and creates problems. An example is responding to someone’s pain by intellectualizing, when expressing a loving emotion might help heal the pain; an intellectual response is probably inappropriate, even for those who are intellectually centered. Balance gives us a foundation for higher center experiences, so that when intense love, truth, or pure energy starts pouring through us, we don’t lose our bearings.
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