Being Grounded in the Groundlessness

Like all explorers, we are drawn to discover what’s waiting out there without knowing yet if we have the courage to face it.
—Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of humankind as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or it is nothing at all. —Helen Keller

And Voltaire said: Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position; but certainty is an absurd one.

All of them are are talking about something that Pema Chodron named “Groundlessness”. This is a great essay from Alvin Soon about Pema Chödrön and her philosophy of Groundlessness: http://startingmind.com/2016/pema-chodron-groundlessness/

Soon says: “Life is ceaselessly changing, going up and down, without anything unchanging to hold on to – and we don’t like this one bit.”

Everything – every tree, every blade of grass, all the animals, insects, human beings, buildings, the animate and the inanimate – is always changing, moment to moment. We don’t have to be mystics or physicists to know this. Yet at the level of personal experience, we resist this basic fact. It means that life isn’t always going to go our way. It means there’s loss as well as gain. And we don’t like that. —Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You

Essentially, Pema says nothing is certain in this earthly life, as everything on earth is temporary. Our human experience here on earth is one of shifting sands…..

But there’s nothing wrong with impermanence, suffering, and egolessness; they can be celebrated. Our fundamental situation is joyful.
—Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart

How then do we ground ourselves, if everything is subject to liquefaction, such as what happens when the very ground (that is actually fill) is subject to moving like water in an earthquake? We anchor between the cosmos and the earth, between yang and yin….which means connecting to our Higher Self, which is the perfect balance of yin and yang. That is how we ground in the uncertainty that is human life. Now we are securely connected to that which is true and unchanging, the Love that we are in our Higher Self, our individualized bit of the Divine, which we merge into our human experience.

So where is our security? Richard Rohr writes:

There is a Divine Reality underneath and inherent in the world of things.
There is in the human soul a natural capacity, similarity, and longing for this Divine Reality.
The final goal of all existence is union with Divine Reality.

We can experience this joy, this Oneness, right here in our human life, through our willingness and trust to experience and allow the Light we are. Say Yes!