Do you ever struggle with belonging?
Feeling as though you don't?
Believing internal narratives that suggest that you're not a part of?
Maybe specifically that you don't deserve to be?
When we're identified with the conditioned mind,
These stories,
These narratives,
Feel real and true.
And we often find ourselves scrambling for acceptance or acknowledgment,
Approval.
This scrambling can leave us feeling depleted,
Exhausted,
Alone.
And this isn't to say that on the relative plane of our experience,
There aren't moments in which someone or a group is actually saying,
No,
You can't enter.
So I want to be careful not to suggest that when we feel like we don't belong,
It's all just our narrative,
Our story.
What I want to point to here is what's below the surface of all of that activity.
Whether that activity is based on identification with our own conditioned process,
Or we find ourselves in relationship with someone else's conditioned process,
Someone who's slamming a door shut,
Let's say.
Where is the belonging that has nothing to do with the content of our lives?
First,
It's important to see clearly this story that we don't belong.
In a world in which we are all made of the same thing,
Consciousness,
We're all known by consciousness.
We're all arising in consciousness.
It's not actually possible to be shunned,
To be left out,
To be not a part of.
Take a moment now to sit upright in your inherent belonging.
The belonging that has nothing to do with someone else's approval of you,
Has nothing to do with external acknowledgement or acceptance.
This belonging is your birthright.
You and every other thing that is inherently belongs.
It can be no other way.
Allow this meditation to be about gathering all the different parts of you that forget this truth.
In reality,
All these different parts of you belong to the same oneness,
The same consciousness,
The same love.
But these parts of us forget.
And then get caught striving for acceptance,
Acknowledgement,
Approval,
Fill in the blank for you.
This meditation is about allowing everyone to come home.
There is no such thing as a part of you that is not deserving of love.
Only the activity of the conditioned mind would create a narrative that would suggest so.
That there's some part of you that's outside,
Perhaps according to the narrative,
For good reason.
This inherent belonging.
In truth,
It's not possible to be outside love.
It's only possible to forget love.
Love,
Just one way to describe the nest of inherent belonging.
The refuge of our being,
Where nothing's excluded.
On the deepest level,
In the absolute,
Where would something go that's outside this?
Where might a part of you be exiled to?
These parts of us,
These parts deemed as unacceptable according to the conditioned mind,
Can only be banished to the shadows within the conditioned mind.
So this banishment is a play.
It's a creation.
And everything that's created can be dismantled.
Though in the absolute,
There's actually no need,
Even for the dismantling.
It's simply the case that there is no outside.
There is also no inside,
For inside could only exist in reference to outside.
So this inherent belonging isn't in relationship with a lack of belonging.
It's not the other side of it.
Inherent belonging simply is.
And it's our birthright.
You don't have to work to belong.
You don't have to strive or effort or prove anything to belong.
You belong because you are.
Take a moment to see if any parts of you feel outside belonging in this moment.
Be a lighthouse that sends a signal.
Not a signal warning of imminent crash or danger,
More like a light calling these parts of you home.
Lighting the way.
Inviting everyone into the refuge of your being.
Again,
The notion of deserving or not deserving is just a story of the conditioned mind.
The refuge of inherent belonging has no need to get rid of stories,
But it isn't confused by stories.
Allow all of you to come home to what's not confused.
Allow all of you to come home to clarity,
To love,
And to belonging.
I invite you to rest here now as long as you wish,
Recognizing,
Remembering yourself as the lighthouse calling everyone home.
