We all probably know the saying – ‘Can’t see the forest for the trees’.

So often this is the truth when it comes to being human. We have ground level views down here in our bodies of flesh and blood. Stuck inside our heads, we can often not see very far at all. It’s too easy to get engrossed in our feelings, and when we do, we can forget that there’s a world of truth and experience out there beyond what we’re seeing and feeling.

Here’s an exercise I used to do regularly in an effort to change that viewpoint, to remind myself that I belong in a much bigger existence. This exercise requires us to use our imaginations. This might be in the form of visualisation, or however else works naturally for you.

I’ve said it before, as you’ll know if you’ve read practically any of my books, but the imagination is key in developing our abilities in a great many areas. It’s the easiest way to open the door to wider, psychic, spiritual experience, and it’s perfect for using symbolic experiences to open up our understanding in ways that just thinking can’t do. 

When the rope tightens, the balloon stills, and we are way up there in the sky, standing safely in the basket.

Such a view! Let’s look all around, take in the view, relax into it. We’ll breathe slowly, deeply, relaxing further with each exhale, relaxing into the landscape, and our perch way above it.

There’s where we live! Can you see it? The roof of your house, your car parked in the driveway. How small it looks from here! Look farther, and we can see the hills and trees below us, the lights of the towns.

Look over there at the horizon! The land continues on past what we can see. Let’s spread out with that vast view, completely relaxed. Let’s feel everything that lies beyond the horizon. If we try just a little, we can see it, feel it inside us. 

Here we are, above everything, looking down on everything, but part of it all still. We are standing here in the gently creaking basket, with the breeze ruffling our hair, the air soft and sweet way up this high, and we can see all around us.

If we wanted to, we could stretch out our consciousness and see what is over the hill on the horizon. We could stretch far enough to see the whole earth if we wanted to. It’s all there – can’t you feel it?

It’s all there, and we’re connected to every speck of it.

Have you had your fill? Have you seen enough of this big beautiful world to last you for a little while? Let’s lower the balloon then and come back down to the ground.

And don’t we, for some lovely, strange reason, feel better now?

It’s so much easier to deal with details when we can remind ourselves of the bigger picture.

Katherine Genet is the author of the Wilde Grove fiction series. She has been walking a pagan path for 30 years and is a shamanic Druid, spirit worker, and priestess of  Elen of the Ways.