“Grounding” is a matter of relating to reality. It is when our perception is sensible. It is a practical understanding of to what degree our views are likely to be true.
A while ago, I took up a practice of increasing my dream recall and studying my dreams. For some dreams, it seemed that they were just random and superficial, deserving perhaps to be ignored entirely. Other dreams seemed to provide very valuable insight into myself or my environment.
Then there were dreams that fell somewhere in the middle. I would remember a dream and feel very uncomfortable not knowing if it had any validity. I would generally make a decision that it either contained a lot of meaning or none, sometimes immediately, other times perhaps through a conversation with a friend later that day. In doing that, I was not grounded. I would sometimes lose connection with what I actually know about the reality of something, and begin to believe in something unproven and impractical.
Because I was not grounded, the way in which I was turning chaos into order was artificial rather than actual. It was mostly problematic between the zone between clearly knowing something was true or clearly knowing it was false. Rather than clearly admitting that I don’t know, I unclearly chose it to be true or false in a way that seemed to be based on my natural temperment rather than any evidence.
One morning, I awoke from one such dream in which the dream had some qualities of having value, and some qualities of being worthless, along with new elements that I could not categorize at all. I became very uncomfortable with not knowing what to take away from the dream, if anything at all. Then my attention shifted from the dream to my present experience. I noticed a feeling of anxiety, a discomfort towards being in the realm of not knowing. I felt a strong pull to make my mind up about the dream, even though I didn’t have enough real evidence to do so.
Upon seeing this, I realized that I knew that I didn’t know the validity of this dream. This honesty I had with myself gave me a foundation of order that I could really stand on. The chaos of not knowing what the dream meant was somewhere exterior to my inner connection of admitting what I actually know. The discomfort of needing to believe or disbelieve the dream completely went away. I felt stable in my intellectual honesty. I became grounded.
Regarding how I am placing dreams in a hierarchy of value, perhaps I will write another article on that, but explaining that is not the purpose of this article.
The ques I generally receive that can show me I am not grounded is through emotional pattern recognition or through inquiery. Emotionally, certain desires or fears can sometimes be noticed influencing my belief structure. I can then detatch from my emotions and find grounding, through reorientating myself into an unbaised and honest assement of reality. Emotions can be an unconscious influencer to lose my grounding. Once I can acknowledge them for what they are, I can regain my grounding.
Inquiery is another way in which I can realized I am not grounded. This is when I am questioned about what I believe by myself or by others and my claims are not backed up fully by good enough evidence. If I am not conscious enough, it is natural to rationalize some form of an excuse. It can be lazy or egoic thinking. But if I am paying attention, I can rethink the situation and accept only what can be concluded based on what I can actually know, resulting in the grounding of my ideas.
Gaining a greater mastery over language and learning to construct linear arguements can significiantly improve grounding. When you increase your vocabulary and make effort to become better at saying what you really mean, this can help to organize your mind. Better articulation can put your ideas out in the open where it becomes more clear if they are grounded. Sometimes I’ve intentionally taken a one sentence idea and dissect it enough to write several pages. Doing this gets me to go deeper on saying what I really mean and helps to expose if the idea is valid. For example, “what is grounding” could be a one sentence definition, instead it has unfolded into this entire article.
A mental conclusion on something is an end result of information processing. There ought to be a road that starts from something grounded, something really known, and is connected all the way to the end result. First there was A, which led to B, which led to C, finally providing the conclusion of D. When there is a feeling to skip steps, because they are unnessary or seem so obvious that they are not worth explaining, this can be a sign that there isn’t grounding.
Grounding may be a function of our left hemisphere, which is the logicial side of our brain. The quick intuition of our right hemisphere can often feel easier and smoother to just go along with than to use the right hemisphere. The right hemisphere can require work, a form of mental effort, inorder to slowly analyize and categorize thought. Sometimes it is mental laziness that can cause us to be ungrounded. It seems that the right hemisphere is better equipped to receive information from the unknown, while our left hemisphere creates order. Grounding is the honest ordering of what is truly known.
