Grounding

One of the most important steps we can master on our individual paths is to find our unique way of connecting into Life – our ground – so that enjoying optimal health and vitality is effortless.  Although the word suggests a connection into the earth, there is more than one way to ground and as many ways of interpreting what it means to ground. For some this connection is second nature, but others have trouble finding a way of grounding that feels comfortable and ‘safe’.  If this is you, be aware that what works for the majority might not be right for you.  Your discomfort may just be because you haven’t yet connected with a way that really works for you, or it may involve feelings of separation, safety or belonging.

In times gone by it was understood that where you were born, and your connection to that place, was vitally important in the process of belonging to your family, your tribe, and to a place on earth.  The vibration of the place where you were born, and your own internal rhythms matched to give you your identity and your power.   However, so many of us alive now were not received in a way that allowed us to anchor securely into our family or surroundings.   Many of us were born in huge hospitals, in large cities, some distance away from our family homes. Our births were often traumatic, and as part of the business of birth, we were received in gloved hands and then quickly taken from our mothers and placed in cribs near, but not with her, thus already weakening the natural process of bonding.  As a result, through no fault of our parents, many of us carry primary issues around bonding and safety that have affected how we relate as we have grown up.

Your initial welcome into the world has an effect on your ability to ground.  You may carry such strong issues around how safe it is to be present and in your body that to bring your energy down and through in a powerful linear way may trigger feelings relating to your own survival.  It may still feel incredibly unsafe.  You can find that safety without terror as you become aware of your primary issues and defenses, and have the courage to explore them and your environment.  It may be helpful for you to play with a variety of ways of grounding as you face your fears, so that you can become present in a new solid way that suits you.  You can find a way of grounding that allows you stability and safety, and that will sustain and enhance your life allowing a sense of vitality that was missing before, while maintaining the richness of all aspects of your being.

We talk about someone as being ‘well grounded’ or alternatively as being ‘out of their body’, meaning that they are either present and feel stable in their lives, or they are really pretty airy-fairy, possibly accident prone, and may be experiencing trouble in how they relate to their lives.  The truth is that both may have issues around connecting, and though one may be grounded through their body they may not have a strong connection to the upper frequencies of Source, and visa-a-versa.  Each one of us has a uniquely individual way of finding our expression in Source.  ‘As above, so below’ – ideally there needs to be a balance between earth and the heavens so that all creation frequencies can course through us and enliven us.  To be powerfully grounded we need to remember our natural alignment in Source energies – energies that are connected with all aspects of creation including life force and life intention from the first and second dimensions.

As each of us turns to face our healing journeys and comes to realize that the connection to the earth is a gift and an important aspect of how we are able to be in relationship with ourselves, others, and with our surroundings, the importance of a life embodied as part of a rich spiritual path is illuminated and it becomes increasingly clear that, to embrace life, we need to be able to engage every plain of existence. By anchoring our life force, we can access our innate power and experience the joy that is naturally available to us all.

In this posting I am outlining a few, but by no means all, of the ways of grounding and some, but by no means all, of the structures that support them, including –

• Grounding through the core of the Earth
• Grounding through Space
• Grounding through the Land of You into the Earth
• Grounding Universally
• Grounding with Consciousness

However you ground, it happens through the core structures of being that connect all aspects of our consciousness through all dimensions.  The primary structures that we use for this purpose are in our central core where our orientation to life occurs in a similar way to how a funfair horse is connected by a vertical pole to the carousel on which it turns.  Perhaps the most important connection here is the central axis.  It connects you through the spiritual dimensions of your being down into the physical.  In effect, it tells you that you are a human being alive on earth, and that this is your home.  Alongside the central axis are other core structures that help you define who you are in relationship to your surroundings.  They make your existence real, and they tell you about your relationship with the land on which you stand, and how you like to relate to life, whether through joy, beauty, harmony or some other archetypal way.  They connect with all dimensions of your being, as well as with the magnetic grids that intersect these and hold you in Life.  A large proportion of your life force is regulated by these etheric structures helping you to connect with your surroundings, and to energies that are just right for you.  An effective way of finding your true ground is to become aware of some of the other structures that make up your being.

As you become increasingly flexible in how you relate to life, you will also become more adept at aligning so that you can connect with the structures in life that support you.  This includes being able to find your ideal way of relating.  By using your intention you can ask that your central axis aligns in a way and to a place that is just right for you, and even though you may not immediately feel it, trust that the wisdom of your being adjusts you in just the right way so that you strengthen your grounding in whatever way is naturally yours.

Today, westerners are most familiar with the ancient Asian models of healing that describe how energy flows through our bodies via pathways and portals, including the meridians and the chakras.  Many of these methods outline a linear system of grounding, with the connection occurring from the highest chakras down to the first chakra, and into the earth.  The First Chakra in its purest energies emanates Life Force.  In distortion or if we cannot open to life force through it, it highlights our survival issues.  As our survival alarm is triggered the root chakra often closes and when that happens support for the physical is greatly reduced as the flow of life enhancing chi is cut off.  Through ascension lineages, such as Buddhism and Hinduism, we learn that each person on their conscious path of evolution will typically first open to the true nature of their being through the upper levels of consciousness – clearly connecting to their divinity from the 4^thchakra upwards, but it is only when we fully open from our heart down through our lower chakras that deeper levels of illumination can occur.  Once the heart – the gateway to the heavens – is transformed it encourages all dimensions to open, right down through the first, and only then can all of life’s energies be accepted and lived.  Until that point the sense of separation from our essential divinity, from Source, is mirrored by the closed nature of the lower three chakras. When healthily open these chakras reflect how we are vital and connected into Life, allowing life force to flow freely.

Grounding, when seen as a linear practice, is often accompanied by body language that suggests that we draw our energies down, and into the earth. We are encouraged to soften and bend our knees so that the energy from earth’s core can travel in a straight line up through the perineum to the crown of the head and beyond to charge us from head to toe.  The Barbara Brennan School of Healing devotes considerable time in their four year healer training to making sure that all students learn how to bring their energy into the structures that will connect them to the earth and allow them to deliver energy to their clients in an impactful and effective way.  The Brennan Healing Science® Practitioner helps their client to come into a clear and unbroken alignment with their hara line – an element of our core structures and of the universally held magnetic grids – which runs through each one of us from the highest levels of our being, through the core of us, into the core of the earth.  It is a straight line of magnetic frequency that helps to orient us with our intentions to create, and in doing so, with Life.  We can energize our bodies and ground by consciously drawing the frequencies of the universe through the hara to create a strong connection with the core of the earth, and with creation.

In a non-linear variation of grounding, cosmic chi can be drawn in through Heaven’s Gate, a point close to the 6^th Chakra, circulated down into the tan tien, a point of power on the hara line just below the navel, that when charged grows and glows and then expresses energy out wherever it is directed.  The tan tien has been identified as a major center of magnetic connection within our bodies for many centuries.  The Taoists take that super-charged energy and circulate it from the tan tien around the major organs of the endocrine system.  By doing so they are both enhancing life force and raising the vibration of the body so that the practitioner can achieve increasingly heightened states of illumination. Finally when the whole body is vibrating powerfully, the energy is grounded into the land – thus strengthening the connection to earth – and taken up through the pineal gland into the cosmos, thereby reinforcing the connection with Source through every atomic and sub-atomic particle.

The human energy consciousness system is a really fascinating thing, and it can be looked at from different angles and from different models of healing, each one revealing another dimension of its complexity.  One of my mentors has been introducing a body of work that helps to throw light on the business of feeling that we belong to the earth, and recognizing that right now this is our true ground.  Dr. Patricia Fields, is a psychologist, intuitive healer, and master of psycho-dynamics whose current practice includes studies in brain science (EEG Biofeedback), and conscious evolution of both the individual and the planet.  One of the things that she teaches is that a primary way of connecting to a sense of belonging and safety, to the earth and to each other, ie. Grounding, is through a domain of existence within the energy field, which is an interface between the land we live on and the core structures of our being.  This domain is called the Land of Us.  The Land of Us makes up as much as a third of our entire consciousness system, and is highly under-used by the majority of us.  Masters of it, generally tribal peoples with strong connections to the earth, are able to create a harmony of spirit, humanity and life through resonating the Land of Us within us, with the land that we want to align and ground with or that we live on.  This practice is characteristic of those who live in harmony with the land – indigenous people who have maintained their connections and belief structures like the native American, African, and Andean tribes that have not been corrupted or subjected to cultural genocide.

The aboriginal peoples of Australia practice another way of belonging and grounding. They appear to have their primary anchoring in the land but, in fact, their strongest relationship is galactic, to stars within the constellations of the Milky Way.  In order to make their life here real, they ground as beings on earth by walking the star connections that they hold within them into real time and space, and into the earth connections in the land that they live on.  The ways that they do this include storytelling, ancient ceremony, ritual, and dance.   They create a sense of belonging for themselves and the land they energize. This is easiest for others to see in their Dreamtime ‘stories’ where they walk the land into life (see ‘Robert Lawlor, ‘Voices of the First Day; Awakening in Aboriginal Dreamtime’). Their method of grounding is not linear, nor as vertically simple as the model that is generally held by the traditions of the Eastern religions. It also includes a way of grounding that, in addition to earth, involves space.  As such the ‘grounding’, which like other tribal peoples happens when there is no separation between body, land, or spirit, can happen in space, occurring between the core structures rather than primarily through them into the physical.  The power of these land/stellar connections that are part of many ancient people’s make-up requires a sure sense of belonging both universally, and at the same time to the earth onto which they were born.  Both connections are vital if existence here is to feel real.

In my own connection with South American Elders, and my experiences of Andean energies I have gained a more detailed understanding of some of the structures that they use to create their universal, as well as planetary connections.  Prime among these is the Pachamama.  In common jargon today this is widely taken to refer solely to the earth, Gaia, but in fact it seems that it is much bigger than this.  The ancient culture of the Tiahuanacan period in Bolivia pre-dated and is the bedrock on which the Incan beliefs were formed. They understood MamaPacha to refer to the earth, but PachaMama to include its cosmic nature too. Understood as such it refers to an interface between the earth and the heavens, connected to both, inclusive of all universal structures, and thus a hub that easily enables us to find a true balanced grounding and greater freedom.  It enables grounding from the earth, through an interface structure – Pachamama – galactically, to other dimensions, and other universes.  By its nature it is also a non-linear method of grounding.  You can call on and connect to the PachaMama whatever your own natural way of grounding looks like and it will find a way for you to make a strong and stable connection to the earth.  This is particularly useful if your own preferred way of grounding is not from an Earth-based tradition.

Finally, much as the ascension lineages teach that true unity only happens when we open to every dimension of our being, the truest place of grounding to my mind is not a place, or a method, it is the understanding that you yourself are ever and always ‘home’, grounded in the knowledge of your being as a spark of the unified force that expresses each one of us.  By its very nature there is no sense of separation in this place.  It just is.  For your part, by staying present in each moment you allow the wisdom of your consciousness to support you and align you fully in life.  This is the ultimate expression of belonging:  Grounded in your essence in the entire force of creation.

‘When you see life, and all that life brings you, as a precious gift, you will be able to say yes to everything’                      ~ Sri Mata Amritanandamayi

©2009 Sarah Lidsey. All rights reserved. www.sarahlidsey.com

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