"These stirring meditations and poetic reflections comfort, inspire, and gently bring readers out of the harried, hectic day-to-day and back to the bedrock of peace, and even joy, of our true, essential, and authentic selves. The Calm Center is a guide to spiritual awakening, touching into some of the deepest and highest areas of human experience, and showing us the obstacles and landmarks which appear on the journey. All together, these pieces constitute a profound modern spiritual text that has the power to transmit awakening to the reader. As Taylor writes at the book's beginning: When the future is full of dread and the past full of regret, where can you take refuge except the present? When maelstroms of tormenting thoughts push back the barricades of your sanity, the present is the calm center where you can rest. And slowly, as you rest there the niggling thoughts and fears dissolve like shadows shrinking under the midday sun until you don't need refuge any more. The present is the only place where there is no thought-created pain. The present is the only place."--