Grounding
"Strengthen your roots before climbing upwards"
Introduction
Defining Being Grounded
To ground ourselves simply means to Still the Mind so that one can be grounded in the Present Moment.
The goal of grounding the mind is to still the thinking mind. Once the mind is stilled, one's focus and awareness will naturally become sharpened, allowing one to become aware of the things that are happening in the world outside and inside with clarity.
In this article, we will explore the ways to develop this state of mind so that one can have more control and power over their mind.
Being Grounded In Depth
The practice of grounding oneself is the practice of stilling the mind. Such practice is important for those who wish to develop Self-Knowing because with Stillness will come greater Inner Awareness.
When all is silent, even the tiniest raindrop will be heard!
The practice of grounding is especially important for those who have quite active minds, for instance, artists, thinkers, philosophers, healers, creatives, and so forth. When the mind is constantly stimulated or used for creativity, it can become ungrounded and take a life of its own. When this happens, one's focus can be constantly pulled into one's wandering thoughts, making one unaware of what's happening in the present moment.
When the Mind has more control over you, then you have become ungrounded.
To ground the mind thus is to learn to take back control. By learning to ground the mind, one will naturally feel stronger and more firmly grounded in life.
Most of us would've experienced moments of an ungrounded mind. For instance, listening to someone talk but their words just seem so distant, experiencing unstoppable thoughts after a heated argument with someone, experiencing a slow reaction time to things around us throughout the day, and so forth.
Do you often find yourself spacing out throughout the day or forgetful of what you've done?
Causes for an Ungrounded Mind
To learn how to ground the mind, one can begin by exploring the cause for an ungrounded mind. By discovering the cause, then the solution becomes simple—i.e. remove the cause!
Let us explore some causes.
The mind can be ungrounded when one constantly feeds one's mind with stimulating activities such as filling one's days to the brim with things to do, i.e. watching stimulating action-packed films, constantly blasting the mind with energizing music and so forth. One can also stimulate the mind with energy drinks, coffee and other mental stimulants.
Now, this is not saying that engaging in such activities is bad, but rather it is about becoming aware that when one engages in such activities excessively, the mind can become ungrounded.
What defines excess?
One can realize whether one is doing these activities excessively or not by stepping away from such activities for a period of time; if one experiences pain and discomfort, then these subtle signs of addiction will indicate that excess stimulation has occurred.
Thus, by simply doing less throughout the day and living more "boringly" can help to bring more Stillness to the mind.
It will take time and effort to ground an ungrounded mind. It's much faster if one can simply remove oneself from stimulating activities and incorporate meditation into one's life.
Practising meditation daily will help one to transform their habits of always reacting to life experiences, which actually is the deeper cause for an ungrounded mine. Once these reactive patterns are addressed, one will be able to engage in any activity in life without the mind becoming ungrounded.
So, the deeper cause for an ungrounded is not so much the activities themselves but rather the way that one is reacting to such activities.
And deeper still, the cause for one to over-react in such activities will always be about one's suffering states of mind, i.e. one's aversions and attachments, which we will talk about shortly.
Path Of Creator
Being Grounded In Relation To The Path Of Creator
The journey of grounding the mind is a journey of learning to still the mind by learning to do less stimulating activities throughout the day.
Sometimes, just by giving oneself pauses throughout the day to become aware of one's breath and one's foot on the ground can help greatly ground the mind.
The deeper journey is to address the mind at the reaction level, to discover the cause as to why we are always generating excessive reactions to our life experiences. It's only when this level is addressed that the mind can naturally remain grounded in all moments.
One can also go on a deeper journey to discover why one has a need for such experiences that can bring out these reactions one desire. Realize that when one desires for an experience, they are actually desiring for the reactions that can be brought out from the experience.
And again, this will take one to face their suffering states of the mind—their desires and fears. And the seed cause for these will always come back to one's beliefs.
So, let us explore a negative belief that can drive one to have an ungrounded mind.
At The Idea Level
A Possible Negative Idea
"It is not ok to waste time"
→I reject myself and others when I am/they waste time
→There will be fear when I waste time because it is not ok.
When one is attached to such an idea, whenever one encounters situations that can waste one's time, one will experience Negative reactions. In such a situation, the mind can start generating thoughts, wandering into different ways of solving the situation at hand so one is not wasting time.
For instance, when one is faced with a challenging problem, the negative ideas can create feelings of discomfort and pain, driving one to think of various ways to solve it ASAP as to get rid of the inner suffering.
To transform this belief is to learn to accept these kinds of situations more rather than trying to rush through them so that one can get rid of them, i.e. learning to enjoy the problem solving process rather than hating it.
With time, one will realize that by not rushing through life and instead trying to enjoy all the moments, even the problematic ones, one will make fewer mistakes, thus saving more time, and experience greater happiness.
Thus, learning to take things easy in life can bring transformative life experiences to the mind.
The key to transforming the mind is to develop Self-Acceptance—to accept everything as they are at the level of the mind.
Thus it is about transforming the Negative Idea "It is not ok to waste time" -> "It is ok to waste time"
The journey is balanced through moving also towards the opposite declaration—"It is ok to not waste time"
Learn to Reach Down before Climbing Up
When we have the desire to improve ourselves or our lives, we can forget the importance of grounding ourselves before reaching up.
Learn from a tree and one will understand the importance of grounding oneself. Notice that the higher the tree is, the thicker it's roots are. The tree knows to ground itself before growing taller! It knows that if it doesn't ground itself, it will topple easily at the slightest touch of the wind.
So, whether you are pursuing your dreams, perfecting your craft, improving yourself, don't forget to ground yourself.
And how do we ground ourselves?
By learning to still the mind!
It may seem like you're doing and achieving nothing, but Stillness is the counterbalance to a growing mind!
Know and Transform The Self!
Reading articles helps with understanding, but to transform the mind, one realizes the truth from experience.
For such an enlightening journey, the Self-Transformation Course has everything you will ever need!
