Grounding Ourselves in What is Real

Don't be fooled by falseness masquerading as Truth.

What is real, and what is a lie? How do you tell the difference?

I began this line of questioning when I was a young teenager. I remember pondering what real success is….and coming up with an answer for myself that did not square with the type of success that knew I was being groomed for. My young heart equated success with simply feeling connected and happy (what I longed for most!). I questioned, because I felt a tension in me growing - the gnawing tension of not truly resonating with the readily accepted, mainstream success narrative, and not knowing what to do about that discord, as a young person. The conflict within me grew, because I was hanging on for dear life to my awareness of the deep primal place in me that sensed a kind of pretense and falseness all around me.

Teenage years are such a self-conscious time, fraught with a mounting pressure to grow up and start making our way in the world, outside of home. I began to question in earnest. Much of my time and energy was bound up by required textbook school studies, most of it seemingly arbitrarily chosen and overly intellectual, and rarely involving the kind direct life experience and practical guidance I needed most. When I had children of my own later, I unschooled them for this reason…to allow their learning to be ignited mostly by real, direct experience of the life right in front of them, while spending more time in the most loving environment where they could learn the essential fundamentals of self-care and self-respect.

Looking mostly to books and external authorities for our ‘knowledge,’ living and traveling in climate-controlled boxes, wearing shoes that block the earth’s energy, hiding our eyes and skin from the sun, eating fake processed and cooked food out of boxes and cans, staring at screens, being trained to suppress our feelings and spiritual yearnings, being seduced by wildly manipulated and propagandized, politicized news-entertainment…..is it any wonder we have collectively become ungrounded, and largely disconnected from the real source of life and meaning? It gets worse - so many lies have been presented as truth for so long, that many or even most people have almost entirely lost touch with much of what is real.

I’ve started a list of areas for which I think it is worth considering whether we have lost touch, and what might be the consequences. I am sure you can come up with many more!

What is:

real food
real health
real immunity
real instinct
real intuition
real thoughts?
real creativity
real emotion
real Self
real connection
real relationship
real listening
real community
real spirituality
real beauty
real love
real intimacy
real happiness
real grounding
real wealth
real money
real property
real stewardship
real education
real knowledge
real wisdom
real parenting
real laws
real possession
real responsibility
real discipline
real purpose

I think a radically honest personal examination of each one of these would make valuable journal entries. What is your personal relationship with each item on this list? Do you truly feel at ease, honest and grounded in all of these areas of life? Do you suppress your instincts or intuition in any of these areas, in order to fit in, gain approval, stay out of trouble or keep the peace?

How might we change our relationship with any of these things, if we were living in greater alignment and attunement with the deepest essence of our aliveness and authenticity, with what is most real and true to our original nature?

When did we begin to lose confidence in our own internal wisdom and authority, rendering us so dependent upon frequently unreliable or irrelevant external authority?How can we each recover and reclaim our individual sovereignty? Why have we allowed this to slip away?

I have bumped into the argument more than once, that says that individual sovereignty is dangerous and harmful to the well-being of the collective society. Could it really be more dangerous than a group of people who have lost touch with their innermost sacred wisdom? Who have forgotten the knowledge of their capacity for self-healing, self-regulating, self-maintaining, and their inborn abundance, generosity, and belonging?

I believe strongly that sovereign individuals who are securely grounded in what is truly real and essential to life, are much better equipped to contribute meaningfully to the collective. We see glaring examples today and over the past few years, of the catastrophic disconnection that happens when group-think consumes people’s minds and even their hearts, and leads to angry righteousness, false hatred, and a devastating perception of division.

When we are ungrounded, we may feel insecure, doubting, fearful, co-dependent, scattered or restless. We may feel frustrated, angry, or sad, and consumed with longing and grasping. We may be in a contracted, weakened state, and we will likely be readily triggered by anything that threatens our fragile sense of self.

By contrast, when we are truly grounded, we feel confident and capable, wise, generous and forgiving of self and others. We are consciously aligned and tuned in, open and spacious, curious, trusting, and purposeful. We are comfortable in our own skin, at ease with stillness, silence and solitude, and tapped-in to our intuitive guidance. We are more at ease, and not easily triggered by what we realize is not real or not ours. We know what IS real, and what is projection, manipulation, or false attachments.

True presence is real. Our peaceful essence is real, along with the love, compassion and kindness that naturally radiates from this essence. Nature’s glory and provisions are real. Self-healing is real, and our inseparable connection to all that lives and dies is real. Our essential wholeness is real. Alignment and attunement with these truths is a felt experience, more than an intellectual understanding.

I understand that we all face the challenge of living together in what we humorously (or sarcastically?) call, “The Real World.” But just look at all the artificial and unnecessary problems we create or exacerbate for ourselves by believing more in surface appearances, temporary thoughts, or endlessly shifting dramas than in timeless steady truths and true reality! I have a colleague who likes to say, “Nature’s laws can’t be broken, only proven.” Think about that for a moment.

My heartfelt wish, for all who are suffering with frustration, confusion and grief at a perceived dire state of the world today, is for a direct experience of true grounding and attunement with the deeper, permanent natural laws. This is the experience which gradually brings about the kind of conscious spiritual awakening that heals our interactions with ourselves first, and then with the outer world we inhabit.

If you are feeling restless, irritated, frustrated, angry, sad, confused, separate, pressurized, or frightened….I hope you might find deep, healing solace in communing directly with mother nature, and the miracle of life and breathtaking beauty all around us. This is not an exercise to remember to do 3x/week. This is the very foundation for everything else that follows in life. Daily PRESENCE with nature’s beauty, bounty, and infinite intelligence is the essential underpinning of a healthy engagement with all that life brings.