A hot air balloon is a vehicle used to transport cargo through the air. Hot air is lighter than cold air. When the balloon is filled with hot air, it floats in the surrounding colder air. The drawing below demonstrates a simple hot air balloon.
The brown sphere is the sack the holds the hot air. The yellow object at the bottom is the cargo basket where the people or cargo ride. The red lines are the ropes that hold the cargo basket to the to the balloon.
A hot air balloon resembles both the jelly fish and the octopus from the previous chapters.
In the picture above, the top of the jelly fish, the hot air balloon, and the octopus are generally spherically shaped objects. The top of the jelly fish, the hot air balloon, and the octopus all have fibers hanging down below them.
Previous chapters described why a jelly fish and an octopus are similar to the human body. The previous comparison picture demonstrated that a hot air balloon is like a jelly fish or an octopus. Therefore, it is valid to describe a hot air balloon as being similar to the human body.
The top of the hot air balloon corresponds to the head. The anchor ropes correspond to the fibers that emanate from the head to create and control the body.
The Hot Air Balloon View of the body provides a familiar way to describe the concept of grounding. A person who is grounded is emotionally and mentally calm.
The anchor ropes on a hot air balloon hold the balloon so that it cannot float away. When the balloon is anchored to the ground, the word “grounded” would factually describe the state of the balloon. If the anchor ropes are released so that the balloon begins to float, the hot air balloon is no longer on the ground. It is “not grounded”.
Because it has been stated that a hot air balloon is equivalent to the human body, the human body can replace the hot air balloon in the previous picture.
Something about this picture is not right. Human beings do not float in the air. If a human being is not grounded, something other than floating in the air must be happening to the person.
The ropes anchoring the hot air balloon to the ground are equivalent to the fibers that emanate from the head to create the body. Therefore, the fibers emanating from the head and traveling to the feet can be said to anchor the head to the ground.
In order for the balloon to leave the ground, the ropes anchoring the balloon must be released from the ground. Therefore, a human being who is not grounded can be defined, using this theoretical model, as a human being in
which the fibers emanating from the head no longer touch the ground.
The head was previously described as behaving like a roll up reel for the fibers. When a person loses their ground, the process can be described as the fibers composing the body and being wound back up on to the reels in the head. The amount of the length of the fibers that were reeled back into the head would correspond to the severity of the person’s loss of ground.
This visual image can be used to describe why not being grounded is associated with mental and emotional problems. As the fibers in the body are rolled back up into the head, the mass of fibers on the reels would get larger and larger. The head would become cramped and crowded from the extra mass of fibers.
Using this theoretical model, the mental and emotional problems of a person who is not grounded would be due to the large mass of excess fibers inside of the head putting unhealthy pressure on the brain.