The following is from a piece I wrote recently for my other blog
Alternative Knitting, where the full article can be read, including the bloggish chat which I've cut here.
I have some theories regarding clear and used space, rooted in observations I have made over the last couple or three or four and a bit decades
Space tells one masses about the people who inhabit it. Here are some things I have noticed:
Firstly, there is the 'feeling' of space, when one moves into it. This ranges from current feeling to ancient, historical feeling. I perceive this as something like a vibrational field left in a building or in a particular piece of landscape from the people or animals who have inhabited it, imprinting it with their characteristics and the signature of their activities. The feeling is not necessarily kinaesthetic, but is sensed with glimpses and shivers and tingles in the ears.
Secondly, the way people arrange their space day by day is interesting. I can discern significant details about my own state of being by the way I arange my own space, and by what I require from it. My children, my husband, gf, very close friends all deliberately intervene in the way they maintain their space when they want to change something in their outlook, mood, or the way their life is going. They don't necessarily do this consciously or deliberately, they just find themselves needing to clear out / tidy up / get this place look lived in / nest / dedicate a space for a new activity / 'own' their space. We tend to regard 'environment' as the least fundamental focus of our attention (this from NLP), but I disagree. I think it reflects the state of one of our deepest needs, underlying all our activity on this earth, namely our connection with the earth.
It's all about grounding. I'll explain what I mean. Grounding is the activity we undertake to connect with the earth, the planet, the ground we live on, our home. There is nothing airy fairy about this. We need to be grounded as a counter balance to the kind of energy that takes us up and away, 'spacy', into the clouds. I love it there too, but not if I am not grounded at the same time.
When we are grounded, we can devlop and nurture both roots and wings (what is parenting about - right?) and we can know ourselves. Being grounded is what people sometimes refer to as being 'centred', having a point of stability and connection with this rock, on which our physical lives are played out, and around which we can build visions that will manifest in reality. The better I know my points of reference on this earth, the further I can fly with my dreams and visions, the more I can accomplish which is truly transformational for myself and those I touch.
Back to space. Our choice of immediate environment has a lot to do with our groundedness. If we are grounded, we are in touch with the space we live in, we have a sense of what works for us and what doesn't, and we are drawn to places which have pleasing vibrational energy - and have been sites where people or animals have connected with the earth before us. Some people’s homes are like that, whether they are new or old, in an ‘upmarket’ area or on a council estate. The people there know themselves and connect with each other and the ground they live on. Some spiritual sites are like that too, sometimes also sites of ancient woodland, sometimes churches or other sites of worship.
But have you ever been to someone's house, someone who could have chosen to live just about anywhere, and wonder why on earth they lived there? I recently spent some time in a house in quite a pretty place but with lines of enormous electricity pylons marching past within a few hundred yards. The house itself was quite large, but totally lacking in character. Totally. It seemed at first as if it could be quite nice, but there was nothing there. It was 'vacant'. The site was vacant. It was as if it was made of plastic, artificial space; even wandering out into the garden it was difficult to connect with the earth there. I don’t know whether that had anything to do with the pylons or whether they were just coincidental.
Then, there are the strangest places, maybe little shops or offices in otherwise ugly areas, crowded or run-down, which teem with energy and life. And the people who live and work there have vision and buzz, character and love for others, for their work, are usually passionate about something, from the inside out. And one wonders why these places are attractive, even if they smell.
I maintain it is because the character and passion of the people (ingredient number one) has melded with the ground and the walls and the landscape they inhabit (ingredient number two) and the two energies have mixed to become an unstoppable force.
Now to my point - yes, I do have one! I think there have to be both ingredients present and active for a people's (or just one person's) passion to develop and for vision to manifest. Being in a sacred place does nothing if I don't know who I am, at least to some extent, at the core of my being. I could do nothing with the place's energy, except hope for a miracle (which is not a bad place for starting to know myself). And knowing myself is impossible without being grounded. Grounding is the activity which connects us with the energy of a landscape, a dwelling, a place of work, and activates it in our lives.
At the same time grounding makes me aware of my own energy, my core, my beingness. I connect with the earth and the earth's purpose, and maybe with the purpose of all those who have gone before me in that place. There is nothing better.
Some people ground naturally. My DH, being a landscape artist, is unconsciously (usually) totally grounded, in touch with the landscape he is resting on, by virtue of the fact that he focuses on it, sensing the energy, reflecting it in oils and watercolours.
I had some 'odd' experiences when I was much younger, where I was naturally grounded, then later on I had to deconstruct what had happened to teach myself how to 'do' it again, after various life passages had squeezed the natural inclination, or 'homing instinct' out of me.
A grounding exerciseOne of my favourites: imagine a point a couple of inches below your navel, from which you have beams of energy shining out. Any colour, any consistency, visible, invisible, does not matter. Imagine some of these rays reaching down into the earth, far, far into the earth, straight down, towards the very centre. On they go, further and further. soon they approach the centre of the earth, which is very hot, but the rays don't mind, because they are energy, too. The rays now come to the very epicentre of the earth, and finding the hottest spot in the centre, they wrap themselves around this spot. Several times. Now try pulling a little on the rays, to tighten the wrap. Wrap a bit more, and pull a little. When the rays coming from the point two inches below your navel and reaching all the way to the middle of the earth are wrapped securely around the very centre of the earth, begin to become aware of your breathing. Breathing in, breathing out. As you breathe out, imagine drawing up energy from the very centre of the earth, up through the lines of energy connecting the centre with the point two inches below your navel, as if they were conduits for earth energy. As the energy comes into your body, as it will, it can stay there, if you need it, or like the idea, or it can flow through your body and out again, through the pores, out as you next breathe out (drawing in and breathing out at the same time). Voilà.
Sometimes I just place a bare foot or two on the floor, breathe in light, energy, whatever you want to call it, through the top of my head (there's a chakra up there, somewhere, but let's not get too technical), and when I breathe out, draw in earth energy up through my feet into my body. If the light energy comes down far enough and the earth energy comes up far enough, somewhere in the middle, those two energies meet and mingle.
