#5 A Tad more about Belonging

The importance of the ache to belong can never be underestimated, and is essential to the One Living System.

Riffing off the post about Belonging, it’s funny it stays within me. The words we write become the conversations within, maybe even the dreams as we sleep.

But with belonging, it also becomes every awake moment. We are - when we seek to belong - dreaming with our eyes wide open. We are visioning, sensing, feeling, opening… when we are seeking to belong.

Curiously - belonging is one of those spaces within - that truly holds an ache. This shouldn’t surprise us as its reckoning - like love - belongs to the heart and all things heart related - hold an ache.

So, let’s take a wander down the other path. It is a displaced path, an ‘I don’t belong path’. Or - as with this very moment we are all in - a separated path.

We know when we don’t belong, the ache resides in our stomach. It is an uneasy squirmish feeling that is saying this isn’t right for me. It is no different from when we eat something (that is hard to digest, by taste or flavour or being fouled) that doesn’t sit right and our stomach has this lurching feeling of wanting to release everything that isn’t right. That’s the very same feeling when we don’t belong. The ache in the stomach as this isn’t sitting right - or we simply can’t digest our surroundings - and so we lurch forward to release ourselves of here to find there.

BUT - the key importance of why I write again is - where do we belong?

Finding where we belong is such a personal mission. There is much we can talk about how we find so many arriving here feeling this displacement. An answer as simple as - being a part of the current humancentric model we live in, racing our hamster wheels, success and achievement calling us from every angle of promotions or more money or the desire for a new toy of some description - all means we spend a lot of time doing, and buying, and little time truly making place.

This displacement for many can begin from leaving ‘home’ lured to travel far and wide to see the world and know how successful you are in doing so - means we leave many of the true strands of our BEing behind. There must be curiosity aroubnd - why was I born ‘there’, what did it mean. It is more than coincidence or simply that’s where my parents were, there’s reason, why there? That town that place those people, the stories, the energy the vibration of that place… means something. And it means something in the framing of belonging. And it’s a very worthy path to walk down and ask and observe deeply to sense into all the threads that reveal you - quirky pieces, different views, crazy resemblances - all matter.

And so here we are separated in so many ways. Separated from that which created us, separated from our source, from all that is sacred. Separated from the very ties that bind us hold us and support us. (Separation is the next piece of writing to share)

Yes - in a collective, oneness perspective we are separated from Life and Nature and All That Is, on an internal level separated from our home, our place, our heart connections. And this tender moment of aching means we need to find that space in order to beheld enough for all we are to BE.

WE CANNOT change our way forward without belonging. It sounds strange perhaps, but it is the tether that holds us so that we can learn, understand, accept, become all that we are to BE. Our rooting down, which happens as we settle into belonging, nourishes us as it does the trees, the plants, the soil. We become one with and therefore a part of … and so …. loved and nurtured from all that surrounds us.

SO where do you belong?

The big question - which I know I led with questions in our last post - things for you to ponder. But here are things for you to feel….

• Where do your eyes soften when out walking… is it along a waters edge, in the canopy of a forest, under the stars?

• Where does your heart hold ease? - notice who is around or where you are

• Where are you when you can talk with a slow steady pace and a soft tone?

• What space do you dream in, do you see and feel alive in?

• What place holds memory that binds you, supports you.

• What place holds connection to trees or rivers, to rocks and stones, to rubble. Where have you seen the rain fall and flow, where do you know the way the land shapes and forms?

• Where do the people accept you and allow you to BE you? Where feels to be true family of essence, that perhaps is not same in blood.

These feelings are a good way to begin the call to belong. For they will be the truth that guides you. Belonging is never about fear or withholding, trauma or banishment, rather everything that is free and fluid and goodness within.

Taking time to know our belonging begins our capacity to align with Life and the journey of creating all that is yet to be written in building a new Earth.

And so - as with all things important - do the work. Step in and take the time to know where you belong. Is it where you are? Do you know it is where you stand this moment? Or is it a place you are yet to meet? Maybe it comes disguised as a place from your past, that you had left, thinking nothing more of it - and yet when you wander into your heart there it is.

In whatever way you step in to begin the journey to belong, do so with an aliveness that itches the sole of your feet and soul of your being. An itch that hides the strands within you longing to dive deep and root into the place you know you belong.