Feeling Ground and Rising Up

Being in the body means giving ourselves up to gravity and touching earth. Sitting in meditation, we root ourselves through our sit bones. Our feet, legs, and bottom meeting the ground give us great stability, out of which our spine and consciousness can rise naturally. A sprout reaching for the sun.

Grounding allows us to first be here, then rise up, reach out, and connect with others. Without grounding we can be floaty and a little too untethered, not productive.

In one of my recent Collage Circles*, one participant had abundant fiery energy wanting more focus. I encouraged her to pay attention to the ground of the paper she would work on and the edges that would contain her process. Being aware of containment offers safety and can actually create more space for what wants to happen.

She made a two-sided collage, with lots of movement and images transcending the board. One corner was a pop-up section with a plant stalk or snaky thing coming out and up from the flat surface, then connecting back down to the board.

A revelation: energy can go up and out AND can also feed back into the source. This was very moving to her, that her process could be inherently regenerating, rather than scattering and exhausting. All that energy could move, but she could stay here in ground.

Sculptor Martin Puryear often uses the form of some heavy solid thing with an upraised arm. The ground and anchor allows extension, suspension, lift and creates a great dynamic tension, a wonderful feeling of aliveness and presence.
http://mckeegallery.com/nggallery/page-219/page/163/

If you'd like to explore this more, contact me for embodied practices to connect to ground and movement in your life.

*Next Collage Circle 4/25: www.wildimagination.org/calendar.htm

Being Love

LATE FRAGMENT

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

- Raymond Carver

Magic happens when we are busy being love. I don't mean being 'in' love, as if it were a substance we swim in. But being love, the walking talking ocean itself. Touching everyone and everything with our gentle wave, bringing love to everything we do.

A friend described her life of late: providing great service to people at work, realizing some visionary projects and handing some off to others, paying off debt and saving for the next big thing, tending the relationship in a new way with her life partner. She is happy, excited about life, and at peace.

Part of me is pure envy listening to all this wonderfulness. And still I am awake enough to recognize that she is Being Love. She's crossed into new territory. And she is making a difference. I am Present enough to be happy for her.

I try to remember moments of being love. Setting out for a hike, anticipating adventure. Making my husband laugh. That still, crackling point when a counseling session opens up and my client and I are deeply moved by discovery. Making art when I let it make me. Allowing myself to be all broken in front of other people. Letting their compassion mosaic me back together. Noticing that my cat has hypnotized me once again into giving him a belly rub.

How do I get back to this being love when it feels so far away? The envious part of me desperately needs to know. Does the self-care routine come first? My friend has fine-tuned her nutrition, rest, and yogic spiritual practice. She actively loves herself with the basics every day.

Or is it an internal action? A surrender to love, a YES to life, a declaration of I am here. It probably doesn't matter where it starts, as acts of self-love or reaffirming belief in love and the goodness of life. Just that it starts. In deep winter, with our much needed rains seeping into thirsty earth, seeds of being love are being fed.

B is for Being With What Is

The core of many spiritual practices is learning to BE WITH WHAT IS. Some call it acceptance or surrender or letting go of our attachment to how we want things to be. When life's big challenges loom large, it takes courage to show up and stay present with whatever vexes us.

As a big fan of Focusing, I am learning to sit with It. Stepping into Presence allows me to be with anything that comes up and wants my attention. By maintaining the compassionate, open, and curious stance of my most loving and wise Self, I can really hear Its concerns and extend empathy. Often just being heard allows this something to relax or shift.


The story goes that Tibetan saint Milarepa invited the demons of anger, greed, fear to come into his meditation cave and have tea. The point is to make space for what's here anyway, to invite it to be here in a more compassionate space. By being with what is, we get to stop fighting ourselves. And that is one way to see and bring beauty into the world.


For more info, see www.FocusingResources.com

Welcome!

I'm writing out of a desire to connect with other people who root themselves and their creative lives in the natural world. I'll be sharing how contact with nature in the city and beyond sparks my art and writing and my daily life as a work of art. I invite you to share how nature supports your creative life.

- Gratitude and Blessings, Carol