Many languages of the world have the same expression to define a person centered only on the self: “navel-gazing.”

Why? First, I looked up a definition, where navels are described in a very limited manner: a scar resulting from the natural dropping of the umbilical cord. Generally, in humans it has a round and deep shape.

Good that I did not stop there and soon began to realize that this “round and deep scar” has some deep historical references. Ancient cultures used the word to name places they considered sacred.

At the temple of Greece where the future was prophesied — the oracle of Delphi, dedicated to the god Apollo — there was a marble rock, called the navel. Reports from that time tell that the center of the planet was there.

In Petra, Jordan, there is another “conic navel,” symbolizing not only the center of the planet, but the entire universe. Both locations, the one in Delphi and the one in Petra, try to show the axle through which the world’s energy transits, marking something that only manifests itself in the, let say, “invisible” plan, in a visible way.

Jerusalem is also called the world’s navel, just as is Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean. It is most curious that these civilizations theoretically never communicated among themselves.

The first explanation, the most logical one, was discarded right away: we are nourished through the navel. It is the center of life. A psychologist told me right away that this theory did not make any sense — a central idea of humanity is to “cut” the umbilical cord. From then on, brains or hearts become symbols of greater importance.

In Hindu mythology, the navel is one of the symbols of rebirth. From the navel of Vishnu, a Hindu divinity responsible for the systematic creation and destruction of the universe, emerges Brahma, a lord that will rule everything at each cycle. Yogis consider the navel to be one of the chakras, a sacred spot in the human body. The most primitive tribes once built monuments on locations they thought to be the planet’s navel.

In texts compiled by anthropologists about the beliefs of Mexican tribes, we can read the following:

“When the wizard begins to understand his new universe, he enters a kind of trance and ‘sees’ that everything around us is a huge network of luminous filaments. Sometimes these filaments are like an egg of light and that means that they have become a human being. The entrance spot of this energy in the body of the person corresponds to the place where the navel is located.”

Finally, if you talk to professional artists specializing in belly dance, they will tell you that the most classical movements consider the navel to be the center.

From this perspective, contemplating one’s navel transcends the usual association with narcissism. In fact, our belly buttons signify our connection to each other and the cosmos.

(Translation by James Mulholland.)