Walking past the entrance to the Centering Center on St Patrick's Day, I was forced to check my stride by a distinctly off-centered patron charging through the doors like a snake being expelled from the land with extreme prejudice. So lightning fast and violent was this departure that I was almost sent tumbling into the gutter. Clearly, the Centering Center's numerous meditation classes had failed to ground this particular client in any kind of spiritual connectivity or just plain old peace of mind. In fact, I was reminded of William ButlerYeats' famous lines "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."
Yeats, of course, is a popular poet with New Age groups on account of his interest in esoteric mumbo jumbo; the kind where Egyptology and Celtic fairy lore rub shoulders with Pre-Raphaelite fancy dress; Horus traipsing around an English country garden in the rain while Tinkerbell flies face first into a Chinoise birdbath. Imagine the Masons letting their hair down and sneaking a puff from a hookah pipe when the other brothers are not looking.
Despite being the sort of person who refuses to sit on the floor in any circumstances, I have always felt naturally quite centered. I certainly don't need to take Centered Center classes to learn how not to lose my temper. For example, It didn't even occur to me to hurl abuse at the inner child of the multicolored mass of neuroses that nearly knocked me down. I merely suggested in a moderate tone that it demand its money back. Yeats, on the other hand, would probably have cracked the yahoo's oblivious skull with a shillelagh carved with magic symbols. So whatever misfortune befell them inside the Centering Center, the person concerned should consider themselves fortunate they encountered me outside and not the Irish bard when exiting the building at such velocity without due care and attention.
