Revisit Belonging

Tuning in to a positive memory as a way to nurture your current self. Creating some breathing room around the busyness that can arise. Allowing, rather than forcing. When have you felt a sense of belonging?

Transcript

Find a way to be comfortable,

Maybe in a seated position.

You can lie down if you'd like.

If you'd like to close your eyes,

Go ahead,

But meditating with your eyes open is always fine.

Just finding a way for your body to be in a kind of dignified position.

Maybe the spine is straight,

Maybe the shoulders are back and down.

Open up the chest,

Relax the shoulders,

Elongate the spine.

Those are some of the cues.

I intend to do a little meditation now,

So the body posture helps with that,

But there's no real must-do posture.

Be comfortable however you've chosen to have your body seated,

Lying down,

Even standing.

And once you've figured out how your posture is going to be,

Just kind of noticing how the body feels.

There might be places in your body where there's tension,

There might be places where there's relaxation.

If you're seated,

You might feel the chair under you.

If you're lying down,

You might feel the pressure of the rug or the bed underneath your body.

Just kind of tuning in to how your body is feeling right now.

And as you're sitting here or lying here,

The body has been naturally breathing on its own.

It's fine to allow the mind to just tune in to the natural rhythm of the breath.

It's fine to even intentionally deepen the breath for a couple of breaths.

And just feel how that affects the ribcage or any other part of you.

And as you allow yourself to just be here,

Present with your body,

Present with the natural breath as it happens,

If you choose to,

You might want to think of the word belonging.

Hmm,

Belonging.

Huh.

And the mind can easily go off on a whole tangent about the origin of the word or,

You know,

Whatever.

Within the context of a meditation,

We try to approach topics in a different way,

Instead of thinking about it,

Instead of defining it,

Seeing if there's a way to feel it.

Belonging.

And a technique I came up with,

I was thinking about,

Oh,

It's New Year's Eve,

We're ending the year 2020.

We're moving on to 2021,

Tomorrow.

And I want to post a meditation.

As I was thinking,

Nothing worked.

Nothing came to me.

And so I sat down in a meditation stance,

Tried to send the signal to the different levels of myself through my posture,

Elongating my spine,

That I'm ready to set an intention for meditation.

And at this time,

I just wanted to know what would be a meditation that would work in this context.

And a memory came to me.

It was a memory of belonging.

And so that's my invitation to you as you're listening to this recording of the meditation.

See if in a meditation posture,

You're just like,

Hmm,

I'm here,

I'm going to try to be a little receptive,

I'm not going to try to chase after any ideas or ideals or definitions of belonging.

Is it possible to just sit receiving the breath,

Receiving the sensations in the body,

And receiving a memory or an image that brings up the feeling,

The feeling tone,

Maybe,

Of belonging?

It doesn't have to be a visual image.

It can be anything that occurs for you in the reality of your experience.

So that's interesting,

Because it's difficult for me sometimes to describe this.

Words fail.

It can be an imagination.

Okay,

There's a questioning curiosity.

Is it possible to awaken within your own experience,

The feeling of belonging?

And if not,

That's part of reality.

Sometimes I will be using the word belonging.

But if there's something else that is easier for you to access,

Go ahead.

It could be a sense of love.

It could be a peaceful moment.

Right?

If the word belonging or the feeling of belonging isn't accessible for you right now,

Seeing what is something that feels kind of positive,

Something that feels kind of grounding.

For me today,

It was belonging that arose.

And the instructions,

If you choose to follow them,

Is to allow your awareness to lightly float,

Touching this feeling and seeing if there's a way to awaken it,

Enhance it,

Allow it to bloom.

So as I'm working with my concept of belonging,

There's even like a kind of yellowish color that comes to me.

There's a sense of relaxation in my shoulders.

There's a little zing zing kind of feeling in my throat.

None of these manifestations are right or wrong.

It's just a part of the moment and a part of tuning in.

So that's the intention I'm trying to get across here.

Tuning into a quality,

Maybe it's belonging,

That allows you to just be relaxed in this moment.

The way in which I'm awakening belonging includes a memory from a long time ago.

When I was a teenager,

I started going to a coffee shop.

And for a number of weeks,

I walked into this coffee shop.

It was winter.

I was on my way to school,

High school.

And I have a memory of sitting at the counter.

It was a very old school counter.

And there were that flat,

Circular stool that you sit on that's really uncomfortable.

The waitress came over,

Put down a coffee mug,

Filled it with coffee,

And turned to do the rest of her duties.

It was a moment that was almost nothing.

It was a rainy,

Slushy,

Snowy Bostonian day.

My feet were cold.

The counter stool was awkward.

The cup was put down on the table.

The coffee filled into the mug.

There were a bunch of other people all at that same counter.

And everybody had some variation of a mug with coffee in it and a donut.

We were all at the counter.

I was just one more customer.

I came in to get my cup of coffee.

It was understood at the end I was going to put a couple of dollars down on the table.

I had in some way slipped into belonging to that scene.

I was just one more customer.

There was the smell of the coffee,

The smell of the fryer,

And the donuts in the air.

And I belonged there.

I had entered the adult world.

And this meditation is a moment for me to just feel that.

I race through my day sometimes,

And there's a lot that doesn't get noticed as I focus on fixing things that are wrong.

So taking a few moments to sit on a cushion,

Elongate my spine,

Tune into the breath,

And awaken a moment of belonging,

Or whatever emotion really,

That helps me to feel grounded and more whole.

It can be quite a gift to give to myself.

So as you're sitting or lying down in the place you are,

Perhaps bringing to mind your own memory of belonging.

And maybe it is an image or a memory,

As that happened for me,

Or maybe it's just some other felt sense happening.

If,

For example,

A warmth is coming into your chest,

Just feeling the warmth in the way that works for you,

Tuning into a grounding,

Sustaining,

Nurturing emotion.

Allowing yourself the gift of just feeling it.

Knowing that just for a few minutes of this meditation,

You don't have to do anything else.

Just being here with this.

So just being here with this.

And then wherever your mind is,

Allowing it to come back to the natural rhythm of your breathing,

Or maybe some other aspect of what you're feeling in your body.

Perhaps deepening your breath for a couple of breaths.

And when you feel like it,

Opening your eyes again if they had been closed.

Maybe doing a stretch or a yawn.

And ending this meditation for now,

Knowing that anytime you want,

You can come back and hit the play button.

Thanks for taking this time.