Unshakable - Belonging

To belong is an ancient human experience. We have all but forgotten how it feels to be safe, connected, to belong. Remember here...To be Unshakable in Uncertainty is a natural state you can experience by leaning into the strength, peace and expanse you carry inside yourself. Hopefully, this 15-20 minute meditative visualization, along with some wisdom and poetry sharing, will offer you an uplift when needed, and a small space of peaceful reflection to your day.

Peace in your day,
Leezá

Transcript

Okay then,

Well I invite you to turn within.

If you have something in your hands you could put that down,

Glasses on,

Take them off.

Perhaps close your eyes or cast them downward and just settle.

Give yourself permission to be here and now and with yourself and in this space and time as there is no other than right here and right now.

Whatever's brought you here just let that go.

Let that float away or roll off and come to this next breath with awareness and intention not of doing something but of simply being with it.

And the next breath and just notice how your body moves with the expansion and contraction of the lungs,

The ribcage,

The exchange of oxygen in your blood and how you are both breathing and you are being breathed.

How's there this that fine dance between being and being the observer?

And allow your awareness then to spread outward to the rest of your physical being and notice where it goes first.

If there's a part of your body that is seeking ease or attention,

Perhaps a little love,

Extra,

And spend a moment there and just appreciate yourself.

Appreciate the vehicle that you get to move through this world with.

And recognize the weight and volume of your body and just let it go.

Just release that to this earth and let it be carried.

That you need not do anything right now.

Simply be with this next breath,

This next moment,

This one right here.

And in your mind's eye and your heart space think or feel of a time,

A place where you have felt safe and belonged,

Like you are part of something,

A group,

A place where you know here I belong,

Here I'm wanted and I'm safe.

And notice the details of that experience.

Just take a moment to settle into that and make your mind's eye and your heart space feel into the details of what you see,

Perhaps what you hear,

Voices,

Sounds,

Perhaps what you can touch or what you are touched by.

And what movement is taking place,

What activities are going on in this space,

In this place,

This internal world that you are revisiting.

And recognize the place in the space that you chose to be with and how your spirit feels here.

Notice the sense of acceptance and well-being and the softness that you can have in your front of your being.

That there's no need for protection,

There's an invitation to share and to receive.

And who is involved in this experience for you?

Or what place would being,

Objects or nature is around you?

That you can feel this softness,

This openness.

And notice also in this experience the sense of strength that you are permitted to have.

That you can have a strong back and stand tall.

You don't need to shrink or hide your beauty and your light,

Not here.

You can be your full beautiful self wanted precisely the way you are.

All of you.

No exception.

And just again notice how that feels in your spirit,

That sense of freedom and liberation to just be all of you.

No holding back,

No reservation,

No exceptions.

And feel into your heart what emotions are there,

How wild and free your heart can beat,

Create and love.

And what is it about this playground of your experience or the choices that you make here that allow that experience of a wild heart in this place?

Unhindered,

Totally liberated,

Totally free.

And perhaps you can feel the love,

The understanding,

The joy,

The delight,

The depth,

And the appreciation of all of the human experience with all of its pain and chaos and confusion at the very same moment of the joy and the love and the clarity.

And that your heart and your being has the capacity to hold and celebrate all of that and beyond.

And again notice in this place,

In this space with these beings in this location of yours that this is all accepted here and you can come here anytime or carry it with you.

This is not an exception.

This is your truth.

This is the ground of your being right here.

And with that sense of self with a soft front and a strong back and a wild heart,

Bring your awareness again back to your breath and bring with you any experience,

Any being,

Person,

Place,

Movement that you wish to bring with you back into this next breath.

And allow it to settle deeply in your bones and in your tissues and soften and strengthen you as you take this next breath.

And as the next breath breathes you.

And when you are ready and you so wish,

I invite you to open your eyes and welcome back.

I had the wonderful opportunity this weekend of participating in a sweat lodge and there's a lot that I could share about that.

Yet there was a very simple experience that really was quite profound for me and that was sitting in the lodge and when the opening was thrown open from the blankets after having spent the morning at the fire where the rocks were heating in this blazing seed or fire and all I could see through this small opening across the center of rocks were the legs of a man who was tending the fire,

The fire keeper.

Very,

Very thin man and he was selecting the rocks from the center of the fire and the poor would decide how many rocks she wanted in the in the lodge and he would go with a pitchfork into the fire and select the rocks and then he would dust them off with his cloth to make sure there were no embers or dust on them anymore and then he would reach that pitchfork into the lodge and just hold it there without entering and he would wait until the poor would take the pitchfork and then put the rocks onto the fire and then he would take it back again to go get more rocks and it was such a simple action and I thought about it and this this man could have been doing anything on that day,

Anything in the world and he chose to be there and to do that for these women who were in the sweat and I thought about the concept of service and if it's even that and I think it's so much beyond that it was such a sense of belonging or being with and as one another that this man just showed up to give of his time so that these women could have our experience and that was how he did it by building the fire and tending to it and serving the rocks for the sweat and so that sense of belonging and community I believe is something that we each one of us as humans craves and it's part of who we are it's it's part of our ancestral and soul memory and that we carry with us every day and so I I opened the conversation to whatever's present for you either from the meditation or for any experiences that that you know in your world or have known where there's that absolute given that you are a part of and not apart from.

As my dear friend Chief White Standing Buffalo often reminds me.

Well I'd like to share with you a bit from an interview that Krista Tippett did with Brene Brown and Brene Brown has as you know done amazing work on courage of vulnerability and has coined the phrases soft front strong back wild heart that is a triad of sentiments that I really appreciate so I'd like to read this to you as I said just a snippet from that interview.

Brene Brown says that our belonging to each other can't be lost but it can be forgotten.

Now she's turning her attention to how we walked into the crisis of our life together and how we can move beyond it with strong backs soft fronts and wild hearts.

So this is now Brene Brown speaking.

I don't think when we're our best selves with each other I don't think that's what's possible between people I believe that's what's true between people and I don't think we have to work to make it true between people I think we just have to get the stuff out of the way that's stopping it from happening.

I never thought about the concept of not belonging even though I lived it I never thought about the concept of not belonging at home as being such a universal experience of pain until I was in a middle school and I was doing focus groups with middle schoolers and I was asking these middle schoolers what they thought the difference was between fitting in and belonging and they just had these incredibly simple and profound answers.

Fitting in is when you want to be a part of something belonging is when others want you.

They just rattled off one after the other and I was so taken aback and then a young girl raised her hand and said you know miss it's really hard not to fit in or belong at school but not belonging at home is the worst and when she said that probably half the kids either burst into tears or just put their heads down unable to speak.

Other kids gave examples my parents were really athletic and popular I'm not athletic I'm not popular I don't fit in with my family I don't belong there and just this thing washed over me of for middle schooler and you know that age for middle schooler to say not belonging here is tough but there's nothing worse than not belonging at home you understood I felt the magnitude of it in my bones.

Yeah we're desperate for it I think if you look at it if you look from the lens of neurobiology or even evolutionary biology as a social species to not be wanted and to not belong to the tribe or the clan or the group meant death.

We are wired for this.

John Chachioppo of the University of Chicago who does this incredible work on loneliness says that the only real biological advantage we have over most other species is our connection our belonging our ability to collaborate plan be in relationship within special ways and so that desperate need to belong it's not a neurosis or it's not an ego driven thing that need to belong and be part of something greater than us is who we are we are in our DNA.

Well I started really wanting to understand the bones of belonging and what it what does it mean and I think the first thing that was surprising to me is that at the very heart of belonging is spirituality not religion not dogma but spirituality and a very important specific tenet of spirituality which I believe cuts across faith and denomination and belief systems by spirituality I mean the deeply held belief that we're in extricably connected to each other by something greater than us and that thing that is greater than us is rooted in love and compassion that there's something bigger than us and that we are connected to each other in a way that cannot be severed.

So that is my sharing with you all today that we are connected in a way that cannot be severed I hope you take that with you and it blesses your day.

Be well my friends.

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