Find Your Belonging

Belonging is maybe the most desperate need of our time. We often end up in a place that fits into our work or family life. But we don't feel a deep connection to it, because the families we come from didn't have one either. We discuss what can we learn from ancient humanity about connecting to a place, and healing aspects of feeling like we don't belong.

Transcript

Our topic today is belonging.

Belonging is something that has been on my mind for quite a while now.

I'm originally from Germany and I live in the United States now.

And I've moved around quite a bit in my adult years.

Not really knowing that I was looking for belonging.

But I think I know now that that was behind all of this.

And belonging is something that is really fraught with a lot of energy in this day and age.

Because belonging may be one of the most difficult thing to materialize in this day and age.

We don't often feel a true belonging because we just kind of end up in a place where we go to because of work or because of our families.

Because we love a particular home.

But we don't look at the big picture the way indigenous cultures do.

Meaning do we really feel a connection to the land.

A connection to the land is what really is in our DNA as human beings.

It is something that we always took great care of before we entered this current civilization.

And we had relationships to the trees and the forests and the animals and the rocks there and of course to our tribes as well.

So there was a very deep profound rooting to a place beyond feeling connected and feeling belonging to a specific tribe of people.

So in a way our culture is orphaned from this sense of belonging.

And I've been reading this book of the title Belonging by Tokopa Turner.

And she will see,

She has discovered that we are orphaned not only from that relationship to the land but often also from our families and our parents.

Our families are so overstretched in the nuclear family that we are organized so that they often don't see us fully.

They have so much to do and so much to deal with that they don't have much time to really see us as people or as children the way we are.

So we are somewhat orphaned from our families of origin.

We are orphaned from our ancestral lands and its culture because we often don't really take care of nurturing the traditions and the songs and the practices that belong to certain areas of where we live.

I am originally from Bavaria and we still have lederhosen and funny hats and oomphah music.

But it is almost a caricature of what this tradition was at one time and we're not fully connected to what it really has to offer.

Angelique is saying that until 12 years ago her roots were in the mountains of Virginia and she has felt somewhat disconnected from the land.

Yes so you do have a sense of that because most people don't even really notice that there is a disconnection to the land and that there is a disconnection to the cultures that originally were practiced in the earlier days.

What may be the saddest thing of what's happening when it comes to feeling orphaned or feeling a lack of belonging is that often we are orphaned from our own unwanted parts.

They have grown out of rejection of certain parts because of our environment.

Very often in this culture we feel that we cannot really be in touch with our anger or our frustration because we're not supposed to show these kinds of feelings or we hide parts of ourselves we don't particularly like about ourselves like feeling jealous or feeling needy wanting help or support and then that is being deemed as neediness.

So those parts of us we kind of try to not embrace or we try to do away with.

Oh no no I'm not that way because the culture at large doesn't necessarily accept it so we don't accept it.

So we kind of become outcasts in our own definition that we feel like we don't belong to a certain place or a certain culture because we don't feel a belonging within ourselves we don't feel at home within ourselves.

And that is really tragic that we often feel like we have to put up a face or a show because that means if we don't fully show ourselves to the outside world our people can't find us.

I find that very profound if we don't show ourselves fully our people can't find us.

The poet John O'Donohue was writing about the trap of false belonging that often we have to make ourselves small or turn ourselves into somebody else because we want to be accepted or loved by certain people who don't necessarily share our values.

So we do away with certain aspects ourselves sometimes with really important aspects like our sexuality our gender identity things that are really against who we feel we are but we feel that we can't really show it to the outside world.

Hi Regina hi Carly.

Sorry I'm a little late here to admitting you have too many windows open.

And Angelique is saying we are no longer a people of ritual and ceremony.

That is very true we don't have the ceremonies the kind of rituals that indigenous people have so naturally and that we aren't nurturing anymore.

So I started to talk a little bit about the concept that John O'Donohue has written about the concept of false belonging that we feel we have to make ourselves small or different than who we really are in order to fit in in order to feel a sense of acceptance or love and then we have to do away with aspects of ourselves that are not accepted by this larger context things like our sexuality our identity our personality traits things like feeling angry or frustrated at times and not being able to show that.

So we show a diminished or a divided version of ourselves to the outside world and then our people cannot find us because we don't really show ourselves to them.

So we end up giving up vital aspects ourselves in order to belong and often we feel bound to a lineage or tradition with a very fixed framework of what we are supposed to show to the world and that excludes certain aspects of the self especially certain feminine aspects for men that is often an issue that they cannot show their femininity because it is judged and condemned by the outside world.

So we conform we learn that we have to conform to certain standards we learn that we have to remain a follower that we have to stay in line of certain expectations and we learn to stop speaking up for the sake of fitting in and this inner exile or inner conformity is in direct contrast with our wild side with our authenticity and that's what wild really means it doesn't mean that we are you know out of control or crazy but wild really refers to our original being to our original authenticity that is often split off for the sake of fitting in.

So once a person starts to rebel against these confines and starts to walk away from conformity these are signs of growth because we stop shrinking into a certain falseness that we may have come accustomed to and it can be a very painful process to move out of this conformity that often can feel safe and cozy and it can feel very risky and almost dangerous to move out of that and explore who we really are and where we really belong.

So I invite you to put any comments or questions you may have in the chat and we're going to get to our meditation.

I invite you to close your eyes and get into a comfortable position and begin to breathe deeply.

Notice your feet on the floor.

Notice your body being supported by the chair.

And your breath a little more.

And I invite you to check in with yourself.

If there is a part of you that was disowned or diminished in the service of fitting in.

It could be a very old part,

Part that needs help or wants attention,

Part that feels angry or disagreeable.

And give that part an image,

A color,

An energy.

Now check in with your body.

Where in your body do you notice tension or discomfort when you think about that part?

And now ask yourself,

What do you want that part?

That part was diminished or disowned,

What do you want it to look like?

What does it need in order to feel safe to be expressed fully and without fear?

And feed that part with love and acceptance.

Imagining that with every inhale,

You're inhaling light coming from above.

And breathe in this energy of unconditional love and acceptance.

Inhale any feelings of anxiety or burdensome energy.

Exhaling love and exhaling discomfort.

Inhale the energy offaceous.

And now begin to inhale.

And now begin to feel the energy coming from below.

Moving through your body and into your heart space.

Heart refers to the French word,

Coeur,

Which means heart.

Inhale,

Encourage.

And now begin to feel intention.

And now take a couple of long,

Deep breaths.

And come back to that image that you saw in the beginning of the part of you that was disowned or diminished in the service of fitting in.

And see if that part has changed in any way.

And when you're ready,

Open your eyes.

Reviews

Lovely and deep. Maybe the information will be helpful in the beginning that there is a talk and later a meditation.

That was a really wonderful, insightful and strong meditation. Thank you 🙏🏻