Being Grounded in an Ungrounded World

Sponsored Content from Nine Gates Mystery School.

“Get grounded!” That’s my Kahuna talking to me in the middle of a life-altering initiation. “Are you kidding me?” My thoughts running wild. “I’m way too busy being spiritual to be concerned about getting grounded.” In those early days of my training, I believed spiritual work required an upward orientation toward lightness of being, and that the weight of the body was just that—heavy, cumbersome and too dense to touch the Divine.

I wasn’t raised in a culture where the Earth was considered as sacred and holy as the heavens; where God resides in a plant, in the birds, in the oceans, in me as me. I didn’t understand that being grounded is an essential connection to ancient wisdom entrusted to earthly existence, and that my grounded attention put me in touch with the wholeness of myself and the Universe.

“Get grounded!” my Druid teacher said while teaching me to talk with the trees and the stars. The message got clearer. With my feet willingly connected to the rhythms and cycles of the planet we call home, I began to feel home in brand new ways. My journey back into the body, into grounded presence, took time to stabilize and know as familiar. But today … I am here!

The physical body carries its own innate knowing. It exists in a symbiotic relationship with Mother Earth, sharing a vibrational resonance. Our energy field is in relationship with the entire cosmos. Receiving, transforming and transmitting frequencies coded with information that our thinking minds are too slow to access. Yet too often we speed read this information, interpreting it from an out of body view rather than an integrated partnership.

Our fast-paced, data-filled, decision-laden way of life can feel exhilarating, as adrenalin courses through our bodies. Yet beneath those “highs,” our unacknowledged basic needs wait. In our rushing, we leave ourselves. We forget the importance of returning to the present moment. I can relax into my feet right where they stand. I can plant my awareness into the Earth, take a conscious breath, and invite embodied awareness to wake up as grounded sensation.

If someone asked you right now to “find your feet,” how long would it take you to still your mind, to call yourself forward from the past or back from leaning into the future and simply place your attention on your rising, falling breath? As you exhale, can you invite your awareness to simply drop all the way down to the balls of your feet? Can you allow the balls of your feet to open to the sensation of the energy of the Earth flowing up and into them? Can you stop chasing the next moment just long enough to feel your own energy relax and engage your feet in a tantric conversation with the Earth? Try it.

What resistance must you overcome to simply get grounded?

When you give yourself a reprieve from your perpetual distractions and train to still your thoughts, a sense of coming home to now arises. But be prepared. You might find something wild and mysterious waiting there. As author Stephen Buhner says,

You begin to enter an older, wilder, less-domesticated world—the place barbarians inhabit—where the hair begins to grow long, where wild lights begin to gleam in the eye. You begin to enter the wilderness that still lies underneath the concrete of the civilized world. This most assuredly extends awareness further than society wants us to go.

We can return to our grounded self. In fact, we must. When we touch the hem of our barbarian roots, we experience the world differently. We recognize ourselves as not separate from nature and thus not separate from each other. With new awareness we see how our old views of “you out there” and “me in here” contribute to narrowly lived, divisive lives. In essence, we see how we perpetuate duality. But when the walls come down, I become available to others … and to the wholeness of myself. I wake up right here. (Click here for a recorded Grounding Practice.)

Perhaps our aversion to getting grounded comes from trauma that happened as a child. Maybe our religious upbringing told us that being human was being “less than.” Or you hear old voices recorded in your psyche saying, “you’re not good enough.” There are hundreds of mind-generated reasons telling you that you’re not safe in your feet. When in fact it’s the safest place to be. Without being grounded in your body, attempts to experience a broader view of reality fall short. When your heart opens, if you’re not grounded it will flutter like a frightened bird in your chest and slam shut again. “Can I feel safe with love,” you ask.

At Mystery School, we train extensively so our spiritual awakening is facilitated by our ability to ground deep into the Earth. Training our bodies to access higher and more subtle levels of energy requires us to become like a grounding wire capable of modulating energy surges or overloads. Little wonder my Kahuna insisted, “Get grounded.” In my body I am connected to the vibration of the infinite, as a unique expression of Awareness embodied in the present moment. In my body I am capable of accessing the multiplicity of vibrational bandwidths encoded with information across time and space.

Being connected to life. Returning home to yourself. Serving others. You were made for this awakening. Get grounded!