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In an interview I did with Liz Worth, we ended up discussing the need to find balance in your life and not go overboard with your spiritual work. It got me thinking about what it really means to be grounded, especially in relationship to my recent article on recovering from spiritual burnout. I know from my own experiences and what it’s like to go overboard, because I’ve done it with magic and with being a workaholic sometimes. I’ve had to learn the necessity of achieving a better sense of groundedness in what I do through having experiences where I overdid it.
I’ve been reflecting on my own sense of balance quite a bit over the last few years, because I’ve had to make some changes in how I approach my spiritual work, my writing, and other facets of my life. I’ve realized that being grounded isn’t simply making sure you eat a bit of food after a ritual or a do a banishing. Being grounded is connecting to your life in a meaningful way that doesn’t always involve a sense of having to do something, fix something, manifest something, or otherwise deal with whatever seems to be driving you.
One of my rituals of grounding now is found in taking part of an evening and reading. I give myself a chance to just be with books I’m enjoying or learning from and reflect on what I’m reading. It isn’t a very elaborate ritual at all. I’m simply reading, but it is something that create a sense of pace and steadiness.
Another form of grounding is setting my alarm in the morning so I’m up by a certain time, instead of sleeping in too long and missing out on the more productive times of my day when I can be writing or engaged in some type of spiritual work. By setting my alarm and making sure I get up, I am also making sure I do the activities in the morning that bring me the necessary spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical nourishment I need so I can show up for the rest of my day and take advantage of those productive parts of the day.
Grounding boils down to taking care of yourself. I know I’m not going to be grounded if I skip my meditation practice, because doing meditation does end up being a form of grounding for me. Likewise I know that if I don’t clean the dirty dishes at the sink each day I’ll end up with a dirty kitchen that stresses me out. If I clean those dishes I ground myself in cleaning them and I also ground the energy of my home, because I’m doing something essential that keeps the home running and harmonious.
My sense of being grounded extends beyond just the personal activities I can be doing to take care of myself. When I talk with my wife about a book we’re reading together or when we make a decision about something that effects us both, I am grounding myself in that relationship.
Being grounded is finding a sense of balance and also recognizing when you might be going overboard with a given activity, spiritual or otherwise. I’ve learned to build in more time for grounding myself because the burnout that inevitably occurs when you do too much of something will take away more time than if you’d just made sure that you were taking care of yourself and the people around you.
