#5 We move into Belonging
As we recognise the learning phase .. and understand that it is each of our unavoidable pathways … we realise that it leads us…
from the book :
The learning phase of our life is Life’s way of building us, raising us to our greatest self and meeting our capacity. It is the space in which we have the opportunity to grow and in this, change. Our change impacts Life’s capacity to exist. Our continual transcendence is an integral piece of Life's evolution, as is every animal or plant that we observe over time that adapts and changes who it is in order to continue to live into its greatest expression. In this, we must take now our greatest leap of becoming, for finally we realise it is not a curiosity we approach with the possibility of ever saying no, it is curiosity that we are born into. Our failure to step into this with vigour has meant we have held onto our old ways beyond their use by date and held life to a limiting existence. Life craves itself as Life and becoming.
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Life’s evolving is through our BEing all that we are as we discover that truth. All of Life’s evolutions comes from its own creative forces opening to their truth and BEing every expression through experience, and in this learning to BE we offer back to Life greater inspiration and greater pathways of evolution.
The time and space in which we learn all that we are, is highlighted by our capacity to learn. The environment that we learn in, is as essential to the learning as it is BEing. The home, the people, the place all matter. How it feels matters.
And so the environment and the capacity and ability and the willingness to learn all depend on what holds us - the relational element - what steadies us for our ability to learn, which is impacted by the very founding element of the One Living System.
And that is Belonging.
from the book:
The ache to belong is real and it lays deep within all things. It is not merely an ache to live or exist, but to be a part of more than ourselves, a recognition that within all things we express fully as all that we are. In expressing fully, we express our truth, we find our capacity to relate and this is where we come together. Within the ache to belong is the asking to relate, for in relationship with each other and all things, we are one. Belonging is essential to our steadying, it is a grounding essence that holds us whilst all else around us begins to build relationship. As a swirl of energy that encapsulates all else, relating is kin to belonging. They are both essential elements to the creation and continuation of life.
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As we move into the knowing of the One Living System, and come to know its deep relational desires and bonds, we observe that for us to thrive in this relational capacity - we ache to belong.
Belonging is a curious feeling. It is within us all to belong, yet, very unique as to how we belong, why we belong and where we belong.
The only approach to belonging then, is not with guiding principles, but with deeply meandering curious questions.
from the book:
Belonging is not a mind space question. Rather it belongs to the heart for it is felt. As an intangible experience, belonging most often makes no sense. It holds connection to non-judgement, and it requires acceptance, both which belong to the heart. In making no sense we find - as does all of nature - that some of us are pink and some green, some forests and some beaches, some male some female and some both. In physical terms it is non binary as much as it is always ‘more than’. As a concept ‘more than’ being not simply more than its parts, but more than its possibilities, more than our minds can believe to be true.
Belonging is that which seemingly makes no sense to the eye, but is clearly obvious to the heart.
It is through the bonds of belonging that we are stirred to awaken our feelings, our senses, our inner self that runs alongside intuition giving it voice and recognition. Belonging comes to us as a feeling, a tingle, a dream, a deja vu… a moment that enlivens us.
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{belonging}… is not a ‘thing’ to be answered for anyone other than our own heart and asks that every other heart finds acceptance with that. It is not for the mind to question, doubt or enquire, but to step aside and allow truth as who we are, to be offered in relation to life.
Explored through the book of the Living System (in which there is deeper explanation) lay the questions for each of us to swirl within our own hearts:
What is it to belong?
- is belonging about radical acceptance?
- or is it about finding like minded souls?
- is it more akin to fitting in?
- or is it about culture, blood and place?
How do we belong?
- do we find ourselves within and amongst?
- or do we radically accept how things are?
- do we hold no judgement?
- is it about accepting our own becoming?
from the book:
‘To belong’, is an important rumination for our progress forward. In finding our way, (which we all must do, amongst all else) we will each have to ask ourselves what it is to belong and choose not only where we belong, but how we do so. Whilst it may be described as an easy feeling - a fluid feeling - in the end, to begin it is not without work on our own part to be the belonging. This means, if we are ‘fitting in’, then we work to do so; if we are ‘being our truth’, then we work to maintain that. As we step in, up, or out to belong, we will of course be met with an uncomfortable lurch forward, but the resonance of belonging overrides and asks us to wade through the uncomfortable, to step into the space of belonging. This is easy to recognise in its opposite. We recognise ‘the difficult’, ‘the hard’, the loss of regard for each and all, and how this can leave the remains of a deeply aching ……. I don’t belong….…
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When we draw all of life into one - nature and humans together again - we can expand our curiosity to go deeper and ask, is belonging about consciousness? Is ‘to belong’ an act not only of radical acceptance but radical oneness? That as we belong to people or place, our own radical acceptance, the kind of acceptance that comes with greater consciousness brings us deeper into relation and belonging. In the nuance of belonging, we feel a thread of inner connectedness, unexplainable in any language, irrelevant of time, irrelevant of lineage or having any form of connection but consciousness.
How does the question of consciousness play a part in belonging?
Nature, unaware of thoughts of consciousness, is consciousness, and therefore knows if it belongs. As it seeks to belong amongst its environment in order to become - simultaneously - it allows all things to be as they are at once. Nature is at all times the union of internal and external connection and belongs or perishes. In its ability to pass, it continues the pathway for belonging. As we rise in consciousness we open ourselves again to the path of the lemniscate in order to spiral our way through consciousness in which we realise self awareness questions a deep place for belonging.
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Knowing self first. Knowing who we are at this time, knowing truths, knowing capacity, knowing our families beginnings through kin, blood, heritage. Knowing wounds, trauma and the gold that heals it, knowing our emotions, being connected to feelings and being able to recognise and respond to inner guidance.
Some of my favourite deliberations are around what we would receive in order to feel we belong as well as what we would give or do in order to belong. The ache to belong at some point leads us to nature, for it is there where we are truly called to belong. An internal sigh of relief and an external jubilation all at once captures the very moment we step into nature. This feeling highlights the unity we hold with nature in our coming home, as much as nature's capacity to hold and heal us.
All things seek to be a part of all things, in context the latest findings of loneliness and isolation, cements to us that we belong as a part of all things. That we are not islands but a part of the main. Loneliness is what it is to not belong, it is a tear to the soul. The dangers of loneliness are well documented supported by a meta-analysis in which almost 150 studies were collated showing the significant health impacts of social isolation. These impacts include about a 30 per cent increase in the risk of premature death.
from the book:
There is so much to ponder about belonging and it's asking for us to relate into who we are and where we live. Arguably it is our capacity to belong that can be described as the act of weaving. Not the thread, which is who we are as our sacredness that exists as all things at once, but the act of stitching that thread, weaving it into every other element around us. Devoting time to belonging, where and how we belong, how we relate in that space of belonging and the relationships we have is an enormous part of the learning and the living amongst the Living System. It is that we learn who we are and how to bring that into space within us, as much as it is how we live that aspect of belonging amongst all things, that forges the true path of realisation into actualisation.
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To sit, and belong. To know one’s belonging. To feel belonging is to dig the roots of self into people and place and a readiness to learn grows through them. A willingness to learn how to be a part of the space that holds the belonging. A desire to strengthen those roots to avoid being torn from belonging.
Belonging steadies us. It holds us SO THAT WE CAN learn and grow with ease and acceptance. Belonging gives each of us the capacity to feel free to BE, the capacity to feel heard and seen. To belong, gives us the willingness to know for we are held at the same time driven to make greater this space we belong to.
In nature, that which doesn’t belong… dies. In so many ways that which doesn’t belong in a habitat, an environment, a terrain struggles to thrive, finds little nourishment and succumbs to separation.
That we belong, is an essential element to consider, as we step into the space we are willing to BE, revealing all that we are.
That we belong as one piece of the fabric of Life, to a place in this Life, to people, to surroundings, means we tie ourselves into it and begin our Being of caretaker and custodian for we seek to nurture and love and nourish where we belong.
That we sense ourselves to belong to a collective of many Life forms on this Earth and above calls us to another layer of our value in Life.
That we belong allows us to grow, to become to BE everything that we are.
Finding belonging is an essential element to our steps within the One Living System, that align us and calls us home, at the same time as creates greater than this moment reveals.
