Post by A.H. on May 15, 2006 2:20:23 GMT -5
www.listening-in.com/grndintr.html
Grounding
(The following unpublished material comes from a group of “inner teachers”, channeled by Ellen Meredith, author of Listening In: Dialogues with the Wiser Self.Calling themselves “the Council”, these teachers invite us to consider and define our spiritual practice in very personal terms. They are non-denominational in their affinities, and generally work to promote a grounded, balanced approach to spirituality through everyday activity and creative expression. For a definition of the “three selves” - Wiser Self, Talking Self, Earth Elemental Self - click here .)
“The other evening a young woman physicist asked us: "Is there something weird going on in the world right now?" She had just spent a summer finishing up a scientific dissertation, while in her spare time exploring, with great fear and exhilaration, questions of spirituality, mysticism, and feminism. What had shocked her was that she kept experiencing amazing coincidences, kept meeting other scientists who confessed to such "secret" interests, and she felt that something was stirring that she couldn't quite name.
“Something is stirring. It is a quickening of consciousness, not only in our physicist’s personal life, but on a planetary level. It is causing seismic activity in the mental, spiritual, emotional, political and even physical realms. It is a wave of awakening, like the contractions of a womb giving birth.
“This moving, shifting context is one which you will be inhabiting for quite some time to come.
“How do you find grounding in such a world? Our physicist friend will not be able to find all her truth and grounding in her science. It is changing too rapidly, and she is impelled to question assumptions which others take as fact. And she won't be able to ground her whole being in a church or religion either. Churches may offer great solace and support at times, but they too are shifting and struggling to respond to the energetic changes radiating through your world.
“She, like you, needs to learn to ground herself in her elemental self. In the earth, in the energy of the sun, in the resonance of spirit which forms her. This, while shaking with the times, is the ground-note of her being and will keep her steady as she tries to create a meaningful life.
Grounding in the elemental self
“Your body is a transformer of energy. You bring in magnetic energy from the earth, and you bring in electrical energy from the cosmos, and your body mixes and uses these two energies, generally within the areas of the solar plexus and heart. The lower part of the body is the entryway for a lot of the magnetic energy. That is what you might consider to be "earth grounding" energy. And the top of your head and back of the neck is the usual doorway for the electrical or "sky grounding" energy.
“In you earth and sky meet and mingle. It is your nature to blend these two as fuel for your life here on the planet.
“You are undoubtedly familiar with electrical grounding energy and its properties, through your experience with sunshine. It is a warming, expansive kind of energy, which can make you feel open, contented, and encompassed or held. On the other hand, too much electrical energy coming in can make you feel lightheaded, disoriented, burned out ("fried"), or jumpy and irritable. Too much (or not enough) sky energy may make you crave sugar.
“Earth energy is also something we are sure you know well. It is heavy and solid. It is slow, stately and reassuring. If you lie on the ground for a while, feeling the solidity of earth, the support of the ground beneath you, the heaviness of being a physical creature, that is magnetic energy. Too much of it can make you feel confused, lazy, logy, or sleepy. Too much (or not enough) earth energy may announce itself through cravings for salt.
Balancing earth and sky energy
“The art of grounding is the art of learning to balance earth and sky energy within your body.
“When you find yourself feeling great turmoil, confusion, disconnection, stop what you are doing and take stock of what is happening to your energy.
“If you have been doing a lot of mental work, for example, and are feeling unsettled, then it makes sense to re-ground yourself in the earth. Go for a walk, or hold a rock over your solar plexus (or wherever you feel a need for it). Play with your cat or dog, allowing her elemental energy to bring you back to solid ground.
“If on the other hand, you have been busy with physical work, or sick and overly focussed in your body, then bringing in some sky energy can help. Listen to music, sit in the sunshine, let your thoughts take off and soar into the realms of imagination for a time.
“Each time you wish to undertake some spiritual exploration, it is important to ground yourself -- by which we mean make sure your electrical and magnetic energies are well balanced and mixed within you. Otherwise, you may find yourself mentally or physically knocked off balance. Meditators who do not take time to activate the flow of magnetic energy in their bodies will find their bodies signaling this fact with aches, pains, and over time, injury. Physical laborers, dancers, or healers who do not take time to cleanse and unify their sky energy, will find themselves unable to concentrate and more vulnerable to accidents.
What needs attention?
“The basic rule of thumb in grounding is to recognize how you are ungrounded. If you have been doing a lot of mental work (which is the most common cause of ungroundedness in your culture), then to do a grounding where you imagine the sun coming down, or where you open your chakras from the top does not make a lot of sense, because you are just bringing in more of the energy that is already unbalancing you. It is better in this case to do a grounding where you imagine that you are a plant sending roots down into the earth, or where you sit with something really earthy and let it ground you for a while.
“When you have just spent hours playing with children, taking care of household tasks, doing "earthy" things, that is the time to sit and call in cosmic energy for a time, allowing yourself to be bathed in sunlight, letting yourself feel the pull of the moon, imagining that there are tendrils reaching out from you in all directions, connecting you with the stars and songs of the universe.
“And if you have both earth and sky energy jangling around in you, but not mixing well, then get yourself into water, because water is a great conductor of energy and will help you to create a better mix. You can even put stones in your bath tub if you would like, either crystals or earth stones, to help accentuate the energy you feel you need. When your body is tensed from unexpressed emotions, and your mind is flying all over the map trying to find resolution, a water grounding is especially helpful: take a bath, cry, slowly drink a large glass of water, run until you work up a sweat, shower, water your garden, imagine yourself being dipped in a well and washed clean of your troubles.
“It is important to pay attention to what you are aiming for when you work with energy!
“If you have been zinging from too much electrical energy, don't get into a bathtub full of quartz crystals, because they are going to zing you out further. Put earth stones in your bathtub to help ground you. So many of you, and we mean this especially about those of you in the New Age culture who are trying to open up to new/old spiritual practices, pick up all kinds of techniques from various traditions, without really understanding thoroughly what they are good for, and what context best supports them. And so we see a lot of people trying to do groundings that don't really ground them.
Invent your own methods
“We encourage you to invent your own methods of grounding. There are some among you who just love to iron: what a lovely grounding that can be! The weight and metal of the iron bring in magnetic energy, the electrical current and heat bring in sky. And the symbolic effects of clearing out wrinkles help your mind to unfurl as well. But if you do not like to iron, then find other simple household tasks that mix energies. Sweeping is a good activity to bring in earth energy and move your air energy (spinning mind) into a more consoling rhythm. Scrubbing pots and pans is good grounding to release too much mental energy, the metal and water combining to bring in more earth.
“You can work with the four elements (fire, air, earth, water) to ground yourself and find balance. If you are too hot and feeling logy, bringing in air (turn on a fan) and water (drink some) will help to balance you. This is just common sense. If you are at your desk and feeling low energy, lighting a candle and gazing at it for a while can re-vitalize your energy. Do you see why many spiritual rituals begin with a bath or cleansing (water), the sweeping of the floor and arrangement of furniture (earth), the lighting of candles (fire) and music or the lighting of incense (air)?
“Integrate grounding rituals into your life, asking yourself if you need more sky or earth, and taking a few minutes to provide it. This is especially important for those of you who work at desks or computers all day. Take frequent breaks to bring in more earth -- stretch your muscles, walk, admire a potted plant, discuss practical details or sports with someone, bring your attention to your lower body, firmly planted on the chair, and let its weight and solidity filter into your awareness more fully, pulling you down out of your head.
“We encourage you to be creative and intuitive in your groundings and in your balancing. Even if you have a job where you must practice decorum, you can have toys on your desk. You can have little steel balls that you roll around like worry beads, you can keep some decorative blocks that you move around and stack, you can get yourself a Rubrik cube puzzle -- there are many things you can find that will offer you a temporary outlet for your energy and will ground you.
Some other ideas for grounding:
“Start keeping a list of activities you do that can ground and balance you. If you feel your life is out of balance, you can get yourself one of those balance scales and play with it for a time. Go back to being a three year old. They play and explore in a way that regularly balances their earth and sky energies.
“If you are interested in art, you can gather elements from nature, perhaps stone and plant matter and other objects that appeal to you, and create mosaics, sculptures, mobiles. In the process of arranging the elements you are aligning your intuitive forces in a way that very effectively grounds you.
“Stack poker chips into a high tower, then knock them over. Hit a tennis ball for ten minutes. Shake out dusty rugs and beat them. Rearrange your cupboards. Engage in a physical way with your environment, and let this activity bring you back into balance energetically, emotionally, symbolically.
“It can save you a lot of money in therapy bills to address your energy needs repeatedly throughout your day! Many of your problems are a result of energy that has built up in you and is seeking release in unhealthy ways. The more you bring play into your life, the more you bring in activities which allow you to recognize your energy and work with it, both literally and symbolically, the more securely you will feel grounded in this life, no matter what turmoil is happening "out there" in the world.”
Listening In: Dialogues with the Wiser Self, by Ellen Meredith, can be ordered through bookstores, by calling 1 (800) 442-6304(Beyond Words Bookstore), or through
Grounding
(The following unpublished material comes from a group of “inner teachers”, channeled by Ellen Meredith, author of Listening In: Dialogues with the Wiser Self.Calling themselves “the Council”, these teachers invite us to consider and define our spiritual practice in very personal terms. They are non-denominational in their affinities, and generally work to promote a grounded, balanced approach to spirituality through everyday activity and creative expression. For a definition of the “three selves” - Wiser Self, Talking Self, Earth Elemental Self - click here .)
“The other evening a young woman physicist asked us: "Is there something weird going on in the world right now?" She had just spent a summer finishing up a scientific dissertation, while in her spare time exploring, with great fear and exhilaration, questions of spirituality, mysticism, and feminism. What had shocked her was that she kept experiencing amazing coincidences, kept meeting other scientists who confessed to such "secret" interests, and she felt that something was stirring that she couldn't quite name.
“Something is stirring. It is a quickening of consciousness, not only in our physicist’s personal life, but on a planetary level. It is causing seismic activity in the mental, spiritual, emotional, political and even physical realms. It is a wave of awakening, like the contractions of a womb giving birth.
“This moving, shifting context is one which you will be inhabiting for quite some time to come.
“How do you find grounding in such a world? Our physicist friend will not be able to find all her truth and grounding in her science. It is changing too rapidly, and she is impelled to question assumptions which others take as fact. And she won't be able to ground her whole being in a church or religion either. Churches may offer great solace and support at times, but they too are shifting and struggling to respond to the energetic changes radiating through your world.
“She, like you, needs to learn to ground herself in her elemental self. In the earth, in the energy of the sun, in the resonance of spirit which forms her. This, while shaking with the times, is the ground-note of her being and will keep her steady as she tries to create a meaningful life.
Grounding in the elemental self
“Your body is a transformer of energy. You bring in magnetic energy from the earth, and you bring in electrical energy from the cosmos, and your body mixes and uses these two energies, generally within the areas of the solar plexus and heart. The lower part of the body is the entryway for a lot of the magnetic energy. That is what you might consider to be "earth grounding" energy. And the top of your head and back of the neck is the usual doorway for the electrical or "sky grounding" energy.
“In you earth and sky meet and mingle. It is your nature to blend these two as fuel for your life here on the planet.
“You are undoubtedly familiar with electrical grounding energy and its properties, through your experience with sunshine. It is a warming, expansive kind of energy, which can make you feel open, contented, and encompassed or held. On the other hand, too much electrical energy coming in can make you feel lightheaded, disoriented, burned out ("fried"), or jumpy and irritable. Too much (or not enough) sky energy may make you crave sugar.
“Earth energy is also something we are sure you know well. It is heavy and solid. It is slow, stately and reassuring. If you lie on the ground for a while, feeling the solidity of earth, the support of the ground beneath you, the heaviness of being a physical creature, that is magnetic energy. Too much of it can make you feel confused, lazy, logy, or sleepy. Too much (or not enough) earth energy may announce itself through cravings for salt.
Balancing earth and sky energy
“The art of grounding is the art of learning to balance earth and sky energy within your body.
“When you find yourself feeling great turmoil, confusion, disconnection, stop what you are doing and take stock of what is happening to your energy.
“If you have been doing a lot of mental work, for example, and are feeling unsettled, then it makes sense to re-ground yourself in the earth. Go for a walk, or hold a rock over your solar plexus (or wherever you feel a need for it). Play with your cat or dog, allowing her elemental energy to bring you back to solid ground.
“If on the other hand, you have been busy with physical work, or sick and overly focussed in your body, then bringing in some sky energy can help. Listen to music, sit in the sunshine, let your thoughts take off and soar into the realms of imagination for a time.
“Each time you wish to undertake some spiritual exploration, it is important to ground yourself -- by which we mean make sure your electrical and magnetic energies are well balanced and mixed within you. Otherwise, you may find yourself mentally or physically knocked off balance. Meditators who do not take time to activate the flow of magnetic energy in their bodies will find their bodies signaling this fact with aches, pains, and over time, injury. Physical laborers, dancers, or healers who do not take time to cleanse and unify their sky energy, will find themselves unable to concentrate and more vulnerable to accidents.
What needs attention?
“The basic rule of thumb in grounding is to recognize how you are ungrounded. If you have been doing a lot of mental work (which is the most common cause of ungroundedness in your culture), then to do a grounding where you imagine the sun coming down, or where you open your chakras from the top does not make a lot of sense, because you are just bringing in more of the energy that is already unbalancing you. It is better in this case to do a grounding where you imagine that you are a plant sending roots down into the earth, or where you sit with something really earthy and let it ground you for a while.
“When you have just spent hours playing with children, taking care of household tasks, doing "earthy" things, that is the time to sit and call in cosmic energy for a time, allowing yourself to be bathed in sunlight, letting yourself feel the pull of the moon, imagining that there are tendrils reaching out from you in all directions, connecting you with the stars and songs of the universe.
“And if you have both earth and sky energy jangling around in you, but not mixing well, then get yourself into water, because water is a great conductor of energy and will help you to create a better mix. You can even put stones in your bath tub if you would like, either crystals or earth stones, to help accentuate the energy you feel you need. When your body is tensed from unexpressed emotions, and your mind is flying all over the map trying to find resolution, a water grounding is especially helpful: take a bath, cry, slowly drink a large glass of water, run until you work up a sweat, shower, water your garden, imagine yourself being dipped in a well and washed clean of your troubles.
“It is important to pay attention to what you are aiming for when you work with energy!
“If you have been zinging from too much electrical energy, don't get into a bathtub full of quartz crystals, because they are going to zing you out further. Put earth stones in your bathtub to help ground you. So many of you, and we mean this especially about those of you in the New Age culture who are trying to open up to new/old spiritual practices, pick up all kinds of techniques from various traditions, without really understanding thoroughly what they are good for, and what context best supports them. And so we see a lot of people trying to do groundings that don't really ground them.
Invent your own methods
“We encourage you to invent your own methods of grounding. There are some among you who just love to iron: what a lovely grounding that can be! The weight and metal of the iron bring in magnetic energy, the electrical current and heat bring in sky. And the symbolic effects of clearing out wrinkles help your mind to unfurl as well. But if you do not like to iron, then find other simple household tasks that mix energies. Sweeping is a good activity to bring in earth energy and move your air energy (spinning mind) into a more consoling rhythm. Scrubbing pots and pans is good grounding to release too much mental energy, the metal and water combining to bring in more earth.
“You can work with the four elements (fire, air, earth, water) to ground yourself and find balance. If you are too hot and feeling logy, bringing in air (turn on a fan) and water (drink some) will help to balance you. This is just common sense. If you are at your desk and feeling low energy, lighting a candle and gazing at it for a while can re-vitalize your energy. Do you see why many spiritual rituals begin with a bath or cleansing (water), the sweeping of the floor and arrangement of furniture (earth), the lighting of candles (fire) and music or the lighting of incense (air)?
“Integrate grounding rituals into your life, asking yourself if you need more sky or earth, and taking a few minutes to provide it. This is especially important for those of you who work at desks or computers all day. Take frequent breaks to bring in more earth -- stretch your muscles, walk, admire a potted plant, discuss practical details or sports with someone, bring your attention to your lower body, firmly planted on the chair, and let its weight and solidity filter into your awareness more fully, pulling you down out of your head.
“We encourage you to be creative and intuitive in your groundings and in your balancing. Even if you have a job where you must practice decorum, you can have toys on your desk. You can have little steel balls that you roll around like worry beads, you can keep some decorative blocks that you move around and stack, you can get yourself a Rubrik cube puzzle -- there are many things you can find that will offer you a temporary outlet for your energy and will ground you.
Some other ideas for grounding:
“Start keeping a list of activities you do that can ground and balance you. If you feel your life is out of balance, you can get yourself one of those balance scales and play with it for a time. Go back to being a three year old. They play and explore in a way that regularly balances their earth and sky energies.
“If you are interested in art, you can gather elements from nature, perhaps stone and plant matter and other objects that appeal to you, and create mosaics, sculptures, mobiles. In the process of arranging the elements you are aligning your intuitive forces in a way that very effectively grounds you.
“Stack poker chips into a high tower, then knock them over. Hit a tennis ball for ten minutes. Shake out dusty rugs and beat them. Rearrange your cupboards. Engage in a physical way with your environment, and let this activity bring you back into balance energetically, emotionally, symbolically.
“It can save you a lot of money in therapy bills to address your energy needs repeatedly throughout your day! Many of your problems are a result of energy that has built up in you and is seeking release in unhealthy ways. The more you bring play into your life, the more you bring in activities which allow you to recognize your energy and work with it, both literally and symbolically, the more securely you will feel grounded in this life, no matter what turmoil is happening "out there" in the world.”
Listening In: Dialogues with the Wiser Self, by Ellen Meredith, can be ordered through bookstores, by calling 1 (800) 442-6304(Beyond Words Bookstore), or through