Is Gravity acting upwards or downwards?

[IATIA]

---

This may be totally wrong and just confuse things further, but I'm throwing it out there anyway. Someone smarter than me can correct me if I'm wrong.

An object's gravitational field is less a function of matter and more a function of space-time. Objects with mass warp space-time just by being in it.

This "slants" ALL of space-time toward the object in such a way that other objects will be inclined to "roll" toward it. If all objects in the Universe suddenly lost their motion and momentum, they would immediately start rolling toward each other until everything kind of crashed in on itself somewhere in the middle.

There's an experiment on YouTube I saw a science class doing where they stretch out a piece of lycra and place various round objects on it to see the patterns they make as they roll. With the right combination of weights and objects, they could create complex orbit patterns where two marbles (for instance) would orbit each other closely while simultaneously orbiting a much larger object. It's a pretty cool demonstration of the principle I'm describing. Basically, gravity isn't exactly pushing or pulling one way or another. It's more like we're resting on a table where EVERY object on the table tilts the whole table in toward itself. Only we're not resting, we're hurtling outward at high speeds.

I have to stress that this is my limited, layman's understanding of how this happens. It probably makes no sense to anyone but me.

---

I always found the rubber sheet thing very confusing. Basically, the 'warping' of space-time by matter cannot really be displayed as such. I thought that maybe it could be shown better with a three-dimensional Euclidian grid then just pick a point and pull everything to it. I have tried on a couple of occasions to do that in a 3-D modeling program, but I am not very good at 3-D modeling. All I have is Bryce 3D.

Back to gravity. In reality, if something is in freefall, it is stationary with respect to space-time and that is the natural state of anything. All other forces disrupt this natural state. In effect, we are hurtling outward from the earth at 32ft/s/s with respect to space-time.

And to the OP, IMHO, we are being pushed toward the earth rather than pulled toward the earth. Just like a vacuum, you do not get sucked into space, you get pushed.