B is Boundaries and Balancing (and Baths) – Pagan Blog Project 2013

So last year, I did “B is for Balance” within the context of winter and summer and the seasonal rhythm of the earth (or at least the part of it where I’m living).
 
This year, I’m doing “balance” again, but I’m looking at it as part of my work with Trance-portation.
 
In Chapter Two, the author talks about different ways to ground, center, balance, and otherwise orient and anchor yourself (physically and energetically) in your space. She also talks about shielding – thense boundaries – while you work and developing a permiable shield that lets relevant information in but keeps out the white noise and the people who basically just want to play Silly Buggers with you. In theory.
 
I like Paxson’s description of balancing – the idea of orienting yourself according to the directions you recognize, but I have trouble doing shielding. I spend a morning doing figure modeling and, during the long poses, I practiced raising and lowering a “shield” (bubble) around myself.
It was weird.
I can’t actually tell if I was succeeding at shielding. The book says that when the visuals get fuzzy but you can still hear what’s going on, you’ve got a shield up. At least that’s how I understood it. But I can’t tell if I was just letting my eyes unfocus or what. :-\
 
I wrote, recently, about my first attempt at trancework since starting this wee course of study.
The relevant point from that, here, is that I tend to ground into water better than I ground into, well, ground. Maybe that’s because I’m a scorpio with a (full-moon-in) pices for my moon sign; or maybe it’s because my “spirit animal” is a barracuda. Or maybe it’s just because I’m a watery creature in general.
Or maybe it’s something else.
But I ground out into water – both in terms of visualization (when I’m trying to un-spin myself or, especially, someone else, the visual that goes into it is basically me plunging into deep, cool water, and bringing them with me[1]) and in terms of literally getting myself centred, back in my body, and unspun/calmed-down. Baths are my favourite thing, and I love swimming in live water (lakes and rivers[2]).
 
If I were to hazzard a guess, I would say that doing trance-work in water (or at least in tame water, like a bath tub), is pretty safe. Partly because (I think) the little water people in my tub are friendly towards me. (Possibly because I’m so clearly friendly towards them?) But also because it’s a safe place (for me[3]) that comes with (a) a lock on the door, and (b) its own private moat. 🙂 Add my tendency to ground in that medium, and I’ve got a pretty good spot to work from.
 
Granted, working exclusively with water (or in water) may mean that I end up shooting myself in the foot a little bit, in terms of being able to (eventually) get things done without having to head for the bath. But it seems like a good place to start. 🙂
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.
 
 
[1] Apparently this feels like having energy poured-into/dontated-to you, when you’re on the receiving end…? So I’ve been told. That and “best hugs in the city”.
 
[2] My wife, who’s much more aware of this stuff (by an order of magnitude) than I am, says that water is ancient and in-the-moment. Because it’s always changing. So… The water in the river, the rain, everything… that’s been here since it first cooled the planet down. It’s ancient beyond anything – beyond the shield rock across the river from me, even. It has accumulated memory of all that time. But it doesn’t have the same kind of Awake that a mountain or an old growth tree has because it’s always in flux, always changing. Ancient and new at the same time. I find this utterly, utterly fascinating, but all I know about it is second-hand. 🙂
 
[3] The bath was where I’d go to get away from my crappy husband, back in my first marriage. Lock the door and soak for as long as I could get away with, and just let the water take all the anger and rage and despair away with it at the end.