My teacher gave me an assignment: consider the elements you work with, and which one you have the weakest relationship with. Then go out and do something to strengthen your connection to that particular element.
I knew right away which element I needed to work: Earth. It’s the first element many traditions expect a practitioner to master, but I never really have. I’m not a very earthy person. I don’t sit still very well. Money flows through my fingers like, well, water. My emotions change with the wind. Astrologically, the only personal planet I have in Earth is Mars (which is a Goddess-send, honestly, because otherwise I’d never have the discipline to get anything done.) But perhaps because of that Mars placement, I also tend to see Earth as practical and… well, boring.
Luckily, my family and I were headed up to Siren, Wisconsin to visit our friends’ cabin on Crooked Lake. I knew I’d be spending time with a lot of those more “glamourous” elements: water, sun/fire, wind… but could I find a way to connect with Earth?
Sitting under a canopy of pine trees, I pondered. I brought along my favorite guided grounding meditation (from Meditation Oasis) and sat in a beach chair on the shore with my feet buried deep in the sand. I watched ants and made shapes with my hands in the loamy dirt. I walked through the woods watching for a sign. Restless by nature, I’d leave each attempt feeling like a failure. I kept asking myself: “Where was the ‘wow’ moment?”
I forgot that sometimes the Goddess speaks in whispers or not at all. I would tell myself to be silent, but I’d never “shut up, shutting it up.” Sometime at the end of the weekend, it hit me that I’d been looking too hard. In many ways, I already am Earth. It is my own gravity, girth, goodess-shaped goodness. Listening to the trees, for me, meant getting out of my head and into my body. Stop seeking, and just BE.