Centering

[LC]

I have been practicing grounding and centering. I have grounding down but I am having trouble with centering. What I have read says to slowly expand yourself from body to earth to universe. I get to expanding to the earth but not sure how to expand to the sky and then expand to the universe. I have a hard time visualizing it. Any suggestions? Thank you!

[planewalker]

If you want visualisations of the universe check You tube science and they have LOTS of documentaries with computer generated copy that in my opinion shows some of their creative people are centering too or it's just what it really looks like. You can also see if starting upward draws you into the multiverse. Picture the ceiling of your room going through the structure you live in into the sky. It would help if you ever sky dived/ dove whatever, but I think that would be good for anybody anyway. Up through the sky from a bird from a plane your Super.. watch for copyright , you get the idea.
I really love your owl. It is hands down the cutest bird I have ever seen. Who ever heard of a night raptor you wanted to give a cuddle to, A- fricken - mazing.

[Corbin]

Starhawk Grounding Meditation

[Shekinah]

Try what the Rosicrucian AMORC do: Following a "cool down" period envision yourself in a cylinder of light with nothing beyond the light. Slowly shrink the light to envelope only you then envision yourself evaporating upward into the light and vanishing. Only the empty light remains.

[SpiritTalker]

If visualizing isnt flowing, & you really like using the galaxy images then use those Hubble space telescope photos & your gaze. We can gaze at photos and center through our eyesight. Focusing the physical gaze is akin to focusing the mental gaze. There are lots of different ways to center. The galaxy images may suggest out of body spirit travel rather than pulling your power into yourself. Centering is partly detaching our awareness from our body & a bit like gazing thru the wrong end of a telescope.

[LC]

planewalker: Thank you so much! It took me a bit to find a cute small owl. I looked at a few and kept going back to him. There was one where there was a baby owl wrapped in a blanket being held and all you see is the owl's head looking up at you.

Corbin: Thank you! I have heard of Starhawk but didn't realize Starhawk had youtube videos. I am really bad at trying to weed through videos when I am searching.

Shekinah: I don't think I have heard of Rosicrucian AMORC, but I will check it out!

SpiritTalker: Can centering be repeating some words over and over? Or is it only through seeing and visualizing?

Thanks everyone!

[planewalker]

Hope Spirit doesn't mind my two cents here first, She usually forgives me - I got that "On the BOUNCE Trooper thing going on", you could try a medicine drum. A rhythmic beat can be used, with practice, to effect change in patterns of being. Maybe you work better with audio then visual. With experimentation you can change your conscious, and to a degree, even sub-concious state.

[SpiritTalker]

SpiritTalker: Can centering be repeating some words over and over? Or is it only through seeing and visualizing?

Yea, i agree with PW. Rhythmic sound, repetitive chant or motion like rocking chairs and swings, can all serve as centering aids. Centering is a controlled, light trance-level, where we pull our "alertness" into ourselves. I tend to think of seeing on the mind's screen as a side effect of the detachment that comes with centering, & probably because that's how I experience it. Someone else may have different "receptors" and so naturally respond differently to ways of pulling their power into themselves.

Witches use visualization for a lot of the work we do, because it's controllable, portable & free, but we can always find a way around something that temporarily stumps us.

The feelings I get with ritual-level centering are of calmness, balance, clarity and what I can only call integrity. I'm not adrift and unfocused, but I'm not particularly aware of my body either. I'm sort of hovering consciously within a very safe place, a half-step back from my usual awareness of my self.

Touching the tip of my thumb and middle finger together is a hand gesture I use, and I actually feel a tiny tingling flow down my spine to tug in my solar plexus when I connect. By using the gesture, it aids the center connection and reinforces the mind's associations with the body's center as our energy body tethers in. With centering, we essentially become aware of our energy body's connection to the physical body.

We do this naturally when something suddenly startles us, and thunk! We drop in to the gut, like dropping in an elevator. Bingo, we're centered with every sense on alert to identify what startled us. That's the physical body's natural survival instinct, pulling in the energy body, aka pulling our power into ourselves. When we are consciously centering, we slow down that awareness process and manage it without having to be startled.

A more casual level of centering sensation is still the energy body's anchoring-in, and is the feeling we get when we sniff a nice flower fragrance and have that "ahhh" moment. All the pleasure senses are focused and the defenses relax, yet we didn't visualize a thing. The sense of smell is like that, and very primitive. Eh, I'm rambling.

[planewalker]

No, you teaching in your gracious. flowing style. I'm seriously studying your style because my teaching style could use large infusions of the way you do it. So please don't stop. If you'd like as an invitation please go over and ramble a bunch on centering it would make a nice adjunct to medicine circles and I could dig out a draft of a letter when I taught medicine drumming. Thank you LC for the space for this commercial for a topic I'm working and please drop comments over there about how it's going from your outlook. That could be an important addition to help anyone else with probs with some part of centering. Leave any suggestions for what you'd like to see there,too. I'd like to make it interesting for everybody.

[SpiritTalker]

Well, I don't know what else I could say on it. Hmm. ... Just keep repeating myself.

Meditation breathing, focusing on the rhythmic breath, rhythmic & repetitive sound or motion, and visualization are about all I can think of. Centering is associated with the solar plexus, around the belly button area, so visualizations that depict descent seem consistent. Once we're centered we can ascend to the higher self and realms above, commune within the middle world, or descend to the underworld realms because the Center is everywhere & there's no limits.

Or like Shekinah mentioned, just dissolve the ties and be the light of consciousness itself if we're comfortable with that. It sure sounds like a short cut for out-of-body-experience... and broomstick flying is synonymous with OOBE.

Eh, see? Rambling off topic again. I'd better stop while I can.

[planewalker]

I was wondering if you'd like to reramble in palefaces or pick up a copy and paste it over there. I try cut and paste and I can't even get {figurative} mangled paper dolls.

[SpiritTalker]

i dont think we really need another copy and a separate discussion board within EUTM when the main menu is already sorted with topic headings and areas. There's just no need. If someone is looking for info on centering, they'd look for that topic OR use the search function, dont'ch'ya think?

[planewalker]

Yeah, good thing your logical.

[SpiritTalker]

Pain-in-the-patoote Virgo.

[LC]

Never stop talking! I love hearing what others do to see if it works. There is so much information out there that I can get overwhelmed. I love having a place to talk, and seeing the information categorized.

On meditation: I see a physical therapist 3 times a week from constant neck/shoulder/back pain I have had for over a year. I forgot what we were working on but she was having me deep breath. We do this several times. She sat down and said my rib muscles do not move and therefore my ribs don't move. This keeps me from being able to do deep breathing. The next first a saw a different therapist because my main one was not working. She gave me an exercise to do deep breathing but was confused because I wasn't sure if I was. I thought I had been deep breathing for years as it was part of cognitive therapy. I didn't do it a lot since it felt awkward.

I do have trouble with meditation. I can ground myself but I can't do it for long time. My brain never stops thinking if I am not busy. I have to sleep with the tv on at night or I can't sleep from all the thoughts. At least with tv, their words can bury mine. I have tried meditation music but it doesn't help.

When I was in the hospital several years ago, me and others went to a mindfulness class where we could sit or lay on mats. Everyone would sleep for the 30-45 minutes.