Grounding into Love 

Finding presence

Grounding is a term that is used by many people in spiritual growth communities.  Often the idea is to feel one’s feet or to have the sense of more fully being in one’s body.  Due to the fact that most people spend a great deal of time in their heads being absorbed in their thoughts this idea of grounding is useful as a strategy to be more present or embodied.  

All of this begs the question as to what exactly is it that we are grounding into when we ground?  Most people will tend to create the sensation/felt experience of grounding into the earth or into their physical body.  They may go sit by a tree, lay on the grass or go for a hike to support the creation of this experience for themselves.  This time-out of sorts can help us decrease our focus on our thoughts and bring us more in touch with our sensorially body experience.  This frequently creates a temporary sense of ease, calmness and steadiness that we associate as being grounded.  When we give ourselves the space and environment to permission ourselves to unwind from our thoughts we naturally become more present.  Presence is what people are ultimately striving to achieve through this practice of grounding themselves.  Most all of us hunger to feel alive in the moment and not bogged down by thoughts about the past or the future.  To be presence is to be responsive, attuned and in the magical, effortless flow of life.  Thought or the process of thinking is the primary distractor of presence.  

Although presence is the true goal of grounding, sometimes people confuse grounding as the need to become more physical. Grounding truly has nothing to do with becoming more physical, or becoming “more your body”, or even having your awareness be located only inside your body.  To attempt to become more physical is to merge yourself further with the appearance of your body.  This may lead to a different sensorial-feeling experience, but does not necessarily lead to greater presence.  

You are the awareness having an experience of grounding rather than being the one that becomes more grounded.  Said another way, you are the one that knows grounded-ness or presence rather than the one that becomes grounded or present.  Grounding at its best is used for this purpose of turning your focus back onto yourself or onto awareness having the experience of having a body rather than focusing on trying to feel more of your body from the perspective of being inside of the body.    

Creator & Creation

Resting into Awareness

Awareness is all pervasive and non-local, meaning it is everywhere and inside of every“thing”.  For that all pervasive, non-local awareness to be aware of all aspects of creation, inclusive of your body, would be the definition of a fully conscious or enlightened creation, meaning a creation that knew itself as not independent or separate from the creator (which is awareness).  To be rested in and eventually as the creator is the ultimate ground, what some call the ground of being.

This brings us back to that initial question of what is it that we are grounding into when we ground ourselves?  Clearly it is not our body or the earth or really any thing whatsoever as that would be grounding into a changing, unstable appearance which would not feel very restful once that thing decides to change.  If we are attempting to ground into an appearance (our body, a tree, the earth) we will never feel or know true stability and we will find ourselves continually needing to “ground” because our ground keeps changing.  I would call this the illusion of grounding rather than true grounding.  Understand that many attempt to do grounding in this way.

What we are actually grounding into when we truly ground is our own very nature as awareness/creator rather than some aspect of creation.  Sometimes when the word creator is used we think of a person.  Our minds create this idea of a separate person that is creating, but the ultimate creator is not an individual person.  It is just intelligent, infinite awareness.  Intelligent, infinite awareness creates all of creation, which includes universes, dimensions, densities, suns, galaxies and every single being and form.  Some people call this intelligent, infinite awareness by the name God, Source or Love.   

As we ground by turning our focus towards awareness rather than into or on appearances all appearances simultaneously get illuminated as awareness.  The duality between form and formless, creator and creation dissolves.  One is not more or less important then the other because there is just one.  You can not get any more intimate then creator and creation as they are the same.  The creator expressing and making itself visible as creation.  You’ve always been looking right at the creator, right at infinite intelligence and yet you have only seen your labels and definitions of forms. 

For many this awareness of awareness or awareness of infinite intelligence is veiled and thus appearances are what seem to be the only true reality.  Whenever this is the case we will always think that we have to ground more into the physical aspects of reality in order to be more present and impactful.  The recognition that the physical and nonphysical are one in the same and that formlessness (the creator) comes alive through form (creation) is to be in direct realization of what makes all come alive.  It is here that we find ourselves rested in and as the ground of love.  It is here that we are most present to ourselves and can have the most impact, symbiosis and harmony with all forms of creation.  

Dr. Amanda Hessel, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado