Receiver, Transmitter, Ground

[sabrinamari]

I spent the last year working hard to unravel a bunch of tangled threads, and in the process, I picked up a lot of unexpected insights. This morning's workout helped me to assemble some of them into a potentially useful pattern.

For a long time I've thought of human beings as wave forms: patterns of preferentially systematic color and sound.

Fairly often, I also think of us as antennas. I understand that this is both a description of what we do and a metaphor, and I don't expect it to map to the world exactly. The map is not the territory, but a good map---in this case, a good metaphor---can offer profound insights into how things and people work.

When I think about it closely, I've been using the antenna metaphor to mix up three very different kinds of functions: transmitting, receiving and grounding.

By transmitting, I mean the ability to broadcast a signal: an emotion/set of emotions, a thought/set of thoughts, a group of vibrations or a kind of feeling.

By receiving, I mean the ability to pick up these signals easily.

By grounding, I mean the ability to maintain a signal's form, to sustain it and keep it from varying too widely across a period of time: the ability to contain or structure a signal and thereby enhance its clarity and power. This has to do with keeping the signal steady and keeping it going.

The people I work with in FoV and Blue Star are mostly strong antennas. I've realized that in my private parlance, the code word for this is "priest". But they don't all transmit, receive and ground with the same skill, and neither do I.

I am an excellent transmitter. It's my biggest skill, both energetically and professionally. I transmit strong and proud, and I can be very loud, both energetically and verbally.

I'm somewhat better than average at receiving. This is probably connected with my background in anthropology and ethnography, and my inclination towards listening.

I am a terrible ground. Not an average ground, not a mediocre ground, not even a bad ground.

I am a terrible ground.

But wait, says my monkey mind, don't you get a lot of things done? Don't you sustain effort over time? Don't you hold yourself and other people accountable? Don't you love everything earthy, steady and material? That's ground, too.

Yes, I do, but I have lots of tools to help me do these things, and I love them precisely because I have to work so hard at them. To me, they are precious.

I compensate for the "gap" in my ability in a huge variety of ways: I schedule, I make checklists, I write everything down, I demand clarity in communication with lots of examples, I plug myself into an iPhone and pipe in carefully selected songs to ground and steady myself, and I meditate.

Also...I use other people to ground myself whenever I can. Usually, just reaching out and touching another human being for a few moments is enough, but different people provide very different levels of grounding.

Over time, I will gravitate towards those people who are clearly excellent grounds.

Excellent grounds are good. They are not particularly common, but when I find them, they are really good.

Excellent grounds who can also either transmit or receive are great---energetically, they "taste" amazing. They are even fewer in number.

Excellent grounds who are also strong transmitters and strong receivers are pure bliss. They are very, very rare.

For me, this explains a lot. This helps me understand why I respond in some ways to some people and not to others---and it helps me see more clearly what's going on, and what motivates some of my inclinations and actions.

I have to think more about it.

Comments

[showingup.livejournal.com]

Have you considered that by forming networks of supportive grounding types and creating systems that help you to ground, you are being a grounding person?

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

I wonder if it is enough. I wonder if I can learn to ground myself. Not sure exactly how to go about it.

[citabria]

How many types of grounding have you tried? I.e., how many elements have you tried using to ground?

[citabria]

Also (this is what I get for posting too quickly), maybe I'm unique in this, but I find that I'm much more able to help ground others than I necessarily am to ground myself. Helping people somehow changes my brain/my energy so that I'm able to shift, somehow. I'm not sure I ever noticed whether you do that, but now I'm wondering.

[klytus.livejournal.com]

If you have the time, energy, and/or inclination... please come find me at Beltane, and I will do what I can to help you with this.

[tracyandrook.livejournal.com]

You have just now already listed several methods you are using, and you discuss them freely in other entries, which says to me that you are using your other skills to compensate for a self-perceived lack of grounding. If you can talk and teach enough about grounding skills to improve the grounding confidence of others in your orbit, you are surrounding yourself with a network of others who will reinforce your effort. To me, this is somewhat more valuable than a person who has this naturally, like math skills, and can't teach and can't help, because it's so intrinsic to their nature that they never had to work at it, and they don't know how to put it into words.

[wgseligman.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm not a good receiver today: I have difficulty understanding what you mean by "ground" in this context. Do you mean being able to keep "an emotion/set of emotions, a thought/set of thoughts, a group of vibrations or a kind of feeling" within consistent limits?

If that's what you mean, I'm not sure that's a virtue. The same things that keep us from experiencing the lows can also keep us from experiencing the highs, or so I've found in my life.

If I may stretch your electrical-engineering metaphor even further, I might suggest that what's can be useful is negative feedback (strictly in the engineering sense, not the sense of criticism): When a low approaches, start preparing to push things higher.

[shades-of-nyx.livejournal.com]

Now I want to discuss closed vs. open loop control theory with you! Geeky grins.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, let me try with a different metaphor. In my trad, people run rituals in pairs. Traditionally, the priestess stands in the west, and she functions mostly as the transmitter, although she also receives both from people and from other forces; she uses this "feedback" to customize/nuance her transmissions as they are created.

The priest stands in the east, and functions as the ground. He transmits and receives to and from the priestess, but energetically, he also performs this kind of "steadying and structuring" function that's hard to describe.

Sometimes, it's described this way: in a strong working pair, the priestess is the kite and the priest nails down and steadies the kite string. The stronger he is, the further and higher she can fly. Of course, this is a big simplification: he flies too, and she has to do some steadying as well. But to grossly generalize, each one specializes in that which they do best---ideally.

In the version I learned, these abilities are each associated with a sex/gender. Of course, I discarded this almost immediately: a good Blue Star priest can be either male or female, as can a good Blue Star priestess.

Best---absolute best---are people who can switch very effectively from one role to another. I know some people who can do this, and they absolutely rock.

I cannot. I am a beautiful kite and a less-than-beautiful kite holder. :)

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, it's described this way: in a strong working pair, the priestess is the kite and the priest nails down and steadies the kite string. The stronger he is, the further and higher she can fly. Of course, this is a big simplification: he flies too, and she has to do some steadying as well. But to grossly generalize, each one specializes in that which they do best---ideally.

And, let me throw in something I was taught (as well as I can remember it) - the summoner acts as a central peg for the priest to tie the string into ... I've always been taught to not lean as far forward, while summoning, as everyone else does during the quarter calls, in fact, almost to lean onto my back foot as an anchor point to help the priest find the center while he's helping the priestess get out to where she is calling from.

But, I'm just an egg, so far, and not practicing much, as I'm pretty much all alone here, near the Hindu Kush.

[tracyandrook.livejournal.com]

When I hear "Ground" I think "stay focused on task; use time and energy according to priorities and goals" and the key word you used is Consistency, but it has to be productive or meaningful consistency.

[shades-of-nyx.livejournal.com]

Would you map me into your model so that I can understand it?

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

This is a very reasonable question, but I need to work with you again in ritual to understand how you fit. I can translate what I experience into words, but the experience has to be a little bit recent and fresh. I need bodymind memory of it.

[ingridsummers.livejournal.com]

I like this metaphor. Of course, now it's gotten me thinking - where is my strength? Where is my weakness? And, what's missing from the metaphor? Would there be a Battery? Someone who provides excellent "juice"; someone who simply inspires others? Or, do we simply create that energy when the circut between one another is connected.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

I was wondering if some people function as amplifiers. Not sure.

[diekonigin.livejournal.com]

I have a strong sense that there is a correlation between this in BDSM practice as well.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, don't know much about this.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Although twice I've watched Casta work, once while she narrated exactly what she was doing, and I realized very quickly that she was putting her subject through a kind of compressed RoP (rite of passage) using different tools than I use, but achieving very similar results.

I should ask her to do some translation work for me.

[eoma-p.livejournal.com]

My head just exploded and there are bits of brain matter splattered around. This is harder than the calling quarters thing. It probably doesn't help that I'm married to a man with a PhD in physics who works on computer programs to model radiation from antennaes.

I struggled with the hints of these ideas that were in your Blue Star class on the four participants. I'm totally not getting it. I'd like to be a guinea pig too at some point. *squeak*

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

OK, the way I usually do this is in a one-on-one setting, breaking it down one piece at a time while resonating *really hard* during each piece and simply doing it until the other person can *feel* it.

Don't panic---this is not as hard as it sounds. With verbal, auditory and visual cues it is easier than it sounds. I'll do it once, you'll do it once, and we'll do it again together. I can stand right next to you, real close, and let you *feel* it again.

And/or we can try this new technique.

Look, I promise it isn't anywhere as hard as drumming a rhythm and keeping it going for omg hours...

So you can totally, totally do it. We'll work on it together, and we'll repeat it again and again until it feels natural and easy and even comfortable. No worries, honey.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Love, it *is* the calling the quarters thing. And the censing and asperging thing. And the casting thing. And the calling of the gods thing.

Grounding antenna

[kittenpants.livejournal.com]

Mmmmmm. Yes.

In my training, we talked about a piece of this as Holding the Sacred. There's sometimes that point in a ritual where there's a little bit of discomfort, or "spookiness", or the power is getting overwhelming, and the temptation to giggle, make a joke, or change the subject becomes very strong... but instead you choose to stay with the power, the weird, the uncomfortable, to try to know it and learn from it. It's about not running from the Mystery. Because sometimes even a whisper will shatter the sacredness.

The ancient Greeks spoke of the importance of being able to keep holy silence during the climax of the rite. I think this might have been part of that. I make my students do at least one ritual entirely in silence from beginning to end, working only in gesture, expression, and energy, to experience how different it is. It's powerful and more grounded than all the others they do, and it's always interesting to see, afterward, who wants to hold onto that silence for as long as possible... and who wants to break it.

Erhhh... Have some more thoughts rolling around about The Sacred Witness, absorbing vs. reflecting, and stuff, but those aren't in an articulate form yet. =P

Re: Grounding antenna

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Hey girl, you are a fantastic ground, a great transmitter *and* an excellent receiver, one of just a very few I know. The next time we talk it would be fun to throw around some ideas and see what else emerges from this line of thought. Maybe it can yield some extra juicy insights.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I am honored by your response.