When you are in your own center, are tapping its creative and guiding powers, there is a sense of inner certainty about your knowing and doing, and a sense of meaning and fulfillment that is unmistakable. It is as if you are standing on the most solid, timeless ground within yourself.
When you are ‘in your center’ there are some important psychological benefits. You are in fact more resilient and more able to withstand the winds of change, the up and down cycles of life, holding to your center and letting things take their course as you accept what is and what you cannot change with a measure of equanimity, no matter how turbulent or painful the situation. This is a quality associated in psychology as ego-strength [dynamic psychology] or with having a cohesive self [Kohut], and it depends on being firmly rooted in your center of stillness.
But being in your center does not mean mere passivity. At times it calls for spontaneous, decisive, and immediate action, as when suddenly letting your self be drawn to the scenic route the moment you hit the fork in the road. But other situations can call for patiently waiting, sometimes laying low, while gathering intelligence or building up resources and strength until the time for skillful action is right. This requires another quality of centeredness, which is presence.
The accompanying quality of presence, is a fruit of being in and staying with your center of being. It is a capacity to be present to the various and often conflicting contents and energies that arise within our lives, and there is a sense of not being any of that, of not being any content, and thus of being free and able to enter into a fruitful relationship to them.