12 December 2014 7 Comments

Managing Your Energy, Part 29: Grounding Your Energy or Meditation Practice

Grounding your spiritual practice or energy practice means allowing it to impact your body and making it a part of your life; giving it impact and influence. NOTICING changes that occur helps to stabilize them.

Building from our current context of grounding: Grounding your practice relies primarily on SENSING, following light suggestions of mental intention, without mental pressure or force of will.IMG_0117

SENSING and FEELING create the internal receptivity that ALLOWS changes to occur—and assist us to notice these changes. Trying to MAKE something happen with the Mental Center creates resistance.

FEELING enhances experience. To enhance feeling you might bring in appreciation, love, gratitude, longing, desire for connection, or a sense of wonder. Emulation of anything or anyone divine is another excellent way to enhance feeling.

Here is the gist of grounding any energy practice:

Instead of trying to DO something TO yourself, using the practice as a tool, allow the practice to do its magic. Call in its vibration and be receptive to it, allowing it to shift your energy.

Ask yourself to allow your energy to be imprinted by your practice, so the effects are allowed to linger or recur, changing you.

INVITING yourself to spiritual practice or energy practice, so you get to receive the benefits, works better than trying to MAKE yourself do it because you “should.” The former is a yin or receptive approach. It works much better than any type of force.

Effort often originates from old opinions of ourselves, or ideas about how we THINK we “should be.” That type of effort is a very subtle type of violence. It conveys that something is ‘wrong’ and must be corrected. “Come sit on the meditation pillow so I criticize you and tell you you’re doing it wrong’ isn’t motivating.

Practicing Sensing your body and exploring Feeling is experiential and engaging. It’s easier to be open and enter a process with wonder when it’s about having an experience instead of “doing it right.”

One of the primary obstacles to sinking in to experience is fear of encountering ugliness, pain, or darkness.

Starting a meditation several days ago I was in a crappy mood. Fortunately I had gained enough regularity and courage to sit anyhow.

When meditation is contingent on feeling good or being in the mood we don’t get the great benefits of stabilization, which accrue through consistency.

My energy felt like muddy water. I was releasing an old emotional construct, heading into a life change I’ve been building toward for many months. In the past I might have said, “I can’t meditate with this dirty energy feeling bad and distracting me.” This time I said, “This is what it is right now, and I’m just going to sit with it.”

After fully grounding myself, I began to SENSE my energy as it was, without recoiling from it or judging it, and bringing in clear, sweet energy. It felt like a clear stream flowing into a muddy river. I opened to allow myself to fully feel this gradual purification, with patience and acceptance. I did not try to make the muddy energy go away or get into internal conflict about it. Soon my awareness gravitated to the practice I do regularly. I had one of the most pleasant meditations ever.

BEING WITH WHAT IS is essential to meditation. We can ACCESS and empower more profound states by intentionally using the yin skills of receptivity, feeling, sensing, and allowing.

The yang skills of doing, acting, structuring, thinking, intending and visualizing are used to establish a container for practice, and for setting up the direction and intention. Within that container, holding your focus lightly, directly experiencing energy and sensation allow real magic to occur.

Do you under-use yin or over-use yang energy when you practice with energy or meditate?

What skills, behaviors, intentions or techniques help you (or do you think might help you) to deepen your connection with energy or meditation practice?

7 Responses to “Managing Your Energy, Part 29: Grounding Your Energy or Meditation Practice”

  1. Grounding Your Practice ~ Yin and Yang Skills to Enhance Energy Awareness – Positive Energy Guide

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