First Gate

Most of us weren’t raised in a culture where the Earth was recognized equally holy and sacred as the heavens. Where God was experienced alive in a plant, in the birds, in the oceans, in me… as me. Believing stories that human life was a separation from the Divine [a fall from Grace], our reluctance to fully occupy bodies seemed an acceptable attitude. We didn’t learn how to ground as an essential connection to the ancient wisdom entrusted to earthly existence. Skills for cultivating embodied awareness remained dormant ~ skills capable of putting me in touch with the wholeness of myself and the Cosmos.

Our bodies exist in a symbiotic relationship with Mother Earth, sharing a vibrational resonance. Our energy field is in communication with the entire Universe ~ receiving, transforming, and transmitting frequencies coded with information that our thinking minds are too slow to access. Too often we speed-read this information, interpreting it from an out of body view, rather than an integrated partnership.

Today, as adrenalin courses through our bodies, our fast-paced, data-filled, decision-laden way of life can feel exhilarating. Yet beneath those “highs”, our unacknowledged innate wisdom and basic needs wait. In all our rushing, we leave ourselves… and ignore the importance of returning to the present moment. We forget that we can relax into our feet right where they stand. I can plant my awareness into the Earth, take a conscious breath, and invite embodied awareness to wake up as grounded sensation.

Perhaps our aversions to getting grounded comes from trauma that happened as a child. Maybe your religious upbringing told you that being human was being “less than”. Or you hear old voices recorded in your psyche saying, “you’re not good enough.” There are hundreds of mind-generated reasons telling you that you’re not safe in your feet. When in fact it’s the safest place to be. Without being grounded in your body, attempts to experience a broader view of reality fall short. Or when your heart opens, if you’re not grounded it will flutter like a frightened bird in your chest and slam shut again asking, “Can I feel safe with love”?

At Mystery School we begin an experiential exploration of ancient wisdom traditions and their significance in the reawakening of embodied Consciousness. Their sophisticated cosmologies about the Divine, the energy fields of matter and the invisible realms, and their curiosity about the untapped potential of the human body were expressed in the way these wisdom keepers walked in the world, spoke to each other, tended the land and their communities. We are part of their legacy… and inheritance.

At Gate One, we learn to reconnect with the earth. By attuning to her rhythms, cycles, and heartbeat, we can free ourselves from the fear and reluctance that validate our disembodied ways of living. When we tune into these unexplored secrets within ourselves, we tap into a reservoir of empowerment allowing us to remain present in every circumstance ~ accessing clarity, grounded presence, courage, and abilities that often surprise others. We become useful!

If I am essential to accessing and ushering in a more awake, more aware, more kind world, I must become an anchor [through my embodied presence] that integrates ephemeral discoveries back into body and life. Until “I am here” dissolving my ideas of in here and out there, listening to my body’s sensitive dialogue with the natural world and the earth beneath my feet, my attempts to lesson the degradation of our planet and to influence humanity’s trajectory will remain shallow and inconsistent. I recognize that waking up is not a disembodied experience.

If someone asked you right now to, “Find your feet.” How long would it take you to still your mind and simply place your attention on your rising, falling breath? As you exhale, can you invite your awareness to drop all the way down to the balls of your feet? Can you allow the balls of your feet to open to the sensation of the energy of the Earth flowing up and into them? Can you stop chasing the next moment just long enough to feel your own energy relax, and engage your feet in a tantric conversation with the Earth? Try it now and notice…

What resistance must you overcome
to simply get grounded?

When you give yourself a reprieve from your perpetual distractions and train to still your thoughts, a sense of coming home to now arises. But be prepared. You might find something wild and mysterious waiting there. As author Stephen Buhner says, You begin to enter an older, wilder, less-domesticated world — the place barbarians inhabit — where the hair begins to grow long, where wild lights begin to gleam in the eye.

You begin to enter the wilderness that still lies underneath the concrete of the civilized world. This most assuredly extends awareness further than society wants us to go.

We can return to our grounded self. In fact, we must. When we touch the hem of our barbarian roots, we experience the world differently. We recognize ourselves as not separate from nature and thus not separate from each other. With new awareness we see how our old views of “you out there” and “me in here” contribute to narrowly lived, divisive lives. In essence, we see how we perpetuate duality. But when the walls come down, I become available to others… and to the wholeness of myself. I wake up right here.

At Mystery School, we train extensively so our spiritual awakening is facilitated by our ability to ground deep into the Earth. Training our bodies to access higher and more subtle levels of energy requires us to become like a grounding wire capable of modulating energy surges or overloads. In my body I am connected to the vibration of the infinite, as a unique expression of Awareness embodied in the present moment. In my body I am capable of accessing the multiplicity of vibrational bandwidths encoded with information across time and space.