Personal Growth Partial Truths: Grounding 🪨

Honoring what’s true in such a spiritual emergency makes the transformation more sustainable and healthy. Then there’s “grounding”—being in contact with simple truths. Being unambiguously present. Walking barefoot in the woods, taking a long bath with epsom salts, and massage are all great examples of ways to ground because they put awareness in touch with the present moment stuff of experience. But I think sometimes people mistake these classic examples of a grounding activity for the whole category of grounding. Going hunting, lifting weights, and mowing the lawn could do this too... it seems to me that the possibilities are endless.

For most people, physical reality is the most available door to simple, here-and-now truth. Emotional and mental activity tend to focus awareness away from present-moment-contact (although for some people, something like a math proof could be very grounding). Awareness of awareness, or the simple feeling of being, are very grounding if they’re truly accessible as a felt-sense, rather than a concept with a bunch of pointers.

I think this is a helpful construct for “grounding” because it means I never need anything special to be at peace. If at any moment I feel my energy is too high, or I'm discombobulated, or my nervous system too ramped up, I remember presence is always here. If I don't have that, things like the color of the paint on the wall or the interplay of sound and silence are here. As an open-eyed meditation of naming what’s here, relatefulness offers us the chance to see this 'grounding' available in any relationship, even the most challenging.

With love, Jordan