The Practice of Depth
Grounding lays the foundation for a strong meditation practice. It’s a core part of all of our courses. Even though it’s a fairly simple concept, it has an incredible amount of depth that unfolds in every course you take with us.
All concepts we teach are designed to allow you to discover your depth; as you find your depth, you can begin to see that there’s more. We all have an amazing amount of untapped depth that’s just laying in wait for us to discover who we are and what we’re capable of.
Grounding Gives Us Presence
Grounding is absolutely one of the four pillars of meditation. So, what makes grounding so important?
It’s presence. We hear and talk about this thing called being present, but what does it do for us? How will we know if we achieve it? What will we feel or see or hear? These are all great questions. Let’s explore them.
Often we get sidetracked or pulled off our center by simple things that aren’t a big deal unless we dwell on them. You might be biking or driving to work and someone cuts you off. Maybe you just had an angry or difficult conversation with a loved one. Even something as simple as a coffee shop running out of your favorite pastry can set you into a tailspin if you don’t pay attention.
We don’t have to get stuck here. In fact, when another person tells us about these experiences, we might think to ourselves, oh, just get over it, it’s no big deal. We’ve all been there. These are the things that keep us from being grounded. We allow ourselves to stay attached to small inconveniences. Have you ever been kind of excited to tell someone about the super irritating thing that just happened to you? It’s kind of an oxymoron, isn’t it: to be excited to talk about something negative? Sometimes the things we gain from the negative (getting sympathy, for example) are the ways we trick ourselves out of staying grounded.
So What Can We Do?
The reason we dwell is because we’ve left some of our energy behind in those events. The longer we leave it there, the more we dwell on it, and the more we talk about it. Maybe we continue to tell this story for a couple hours, all day, or all week. Or maybe we’re still telling a story that hurt or surprised us early in our lives.
The more we hold onto these things, the more life moves past us. Presence is the ability to be available in the present moment, to be able to witness the beauty of life as it unfolds in front of us. Instead of getting upset that the coffee shop ran out of our favorite pastry, we could just try something else. It might be pretty good; there’s a whole tasty world out there! If you have a difficult conversation with someone, instead of getting upset, you could focus your energy on making the conversation easier. What’s stopping you from doing so?
Create Your Discipline
These simple examples are exactly why grounding is so important in life. When we ground, we pull lost energies back to our body so that we’re not fragmented any longer. We’re no longer attached to things that we can’t do anything about. The more we learn to ground ourselves, the more capacity we have to move through small annoyances in life. That way, we don’t have to carry them with us our whole lives.
Grounding teaches that all problems can be dealt with in every moment, leaving us in a unique position to be present. If you choose to accept this concept of grounding into your life and practice it, you will discover that you no longer need to rant about small, insignificant annoyances. You’ll begin to view the beautiful unfolding of you.
Monday Medi Moments
Have you been keeping up with Monday Medi Moments? Every Monday at 9:30AM PST, we lead a live meditation on Facebook and Instagram. Join us next week! This month is all about grounding. If you didn’t already know about Monday Medi Moments, or you’ve missed a week or two, check out the archives by clicking here.
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