The Center of the Universe

Don't you just hate being around a person that is stuck on themselves? We each know people like this. Almost every other word out of their mouths is the word "I". They've never seen a mirror they didn't like. They expect everything in their lives to go according to their plans and, when things don't go that way, they pitch a fit that would put any two year old to shame!

I'm talking about the kind of individuals who never think to see something from any other point of view except their own. They often step on other people's toes because they didn't even look to see if another person was present. Every aspect of their lives is all about them, them, them.

What kind of people are this egotistical? Sadly, the answer is most of us. While it's certainly true that some folks take it to the ultimate extreme, almost all of us exhibit these sorts of traits from time to time.

Why is this? As Alan Watts writes in Taoism: Way Beyond Seeking it's because we each experience the world as at the center of our own universe.

Wherever you are and whoever you are and whatever you are, you are in the middle. When you stand on the deck of a ship and you see the horizon all around you at exactly the same distance, you are in the center of a circle, and your senses extend a certain range in all directions and give you the impression of being in the middle. Everything in the world feels just like that!

This may not be simply a human foible. I suspect, as does Watts, that all entities view life in this way. Wherever consciousness exists, it begins from its own frame of reference -- what we call I.

While Christians will tell you that the center of life is God (for Muslims, Allah; for Jews, Yahweh; for Taoists, Tao), such a belief only is held in the abstract. In reality, our intellect and perceptions radiate outward from ourselves. We are the center of all we know.