“Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos… this is the spiritual path.” Pema Chödrön

I’ve been exploring the theme of groundlessness for many years, though I didn’t always call it that. My understanding of it has shifted over time, both conceptually and in the way it lives in my body and emotions. But even as the language evolved, the essence was always there.

When the Ground Starts to Shake

It usually surfaces during periods of change, sometimes the changes I fear, sometimes the ones I secretly hope for.
Either way, it shows up as a familiar cocktail of restlessness and fear.

Fear of what’s coming.
Restlessness in the not-knowing.

This limbo state often spirals into something harsher: self-doubt. And honestly, the self-doubt feels worse than whatever the unknown future might hold. It’s paralyzing. It isolates. It convinces me I’m alone.

And that isolation makes everything feel distorted.
It pulls me away from the truth of our interdependence.

Soon the sensation becomes almost mythic, like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, suspended in the liminal dark. The story in my mind becomes the only reality I can see. I feel myself drifting without anything solid to hold onto, grasping for any illusion of stability.

The Fertile Soil Beneath the Fear

And yet… as uncomfortable as it is, groundlessness has also become one of the most fertile landscapes for self-discovery.

Our instinct is to avoid it at all costs, numbing, distracting, escaping, or to sink deeper into it, collapsing into despair.

But the greatest gift, I’ve learned, is simply the act of staying.

What does it mean to “stay”?

• Noticing where it shows up in my body.
• Noticing the thoughts that orbit around it.
• Watching how it shifts my interactions with myself and with others.
• Letting myself witness how everything is always changing, always moving, always slipping beyond my control.

“Everything changes. Everything comes and goes.”

The more I try to force things to stay exactly as I want them, the more I’m resisting life itself. So the practice becomes simple, not easy, but simple:

Notice it.
Be with it.
Relax into it.
Explore it.
Smile at it.

Why Something So Simple Is So Hard

If it’s so straightforward, why does it feel impossible some days?

Maybe because:

• It goes against our animal instincts to seek safety and certainty.
• And because even though the practice is simple, it’s often uncomfortable and sometimes painful.

Whenever I consciously turn toward groundlessness, it tends to magnify.
Looking directly at it brings what’s unresolved to the surface. It’s humbling.
It demands honesty I sometimes don’t want to give.

But with practice, tiny, gentle, imperfect practice, it softens.

And in the rare, luminous moments when I truly relax into it, the free-fall no longer feels like Alice tumbling into the void.
It feels more like spaciousness.
Like openness.
Like the vastness I belong to and that belongs to me.

Letting Things Come Together and Fall Apart

“Things don’t really get solved.

They come together and fall apart.

Then they come together again and fall apart again.

The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this.”

Pema Chödrön

Groundlessness isn’t something to overcome.
It’s something to meet.
To learn from.
To soften into.

And maybe, when we stop fighting the falling, we realize it’s not a bottomless descent after all, just another way of arriving.

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