Why Do We Feel We Don't Belong?

What happened in humans to cause us to feel separate from nature, other humans, animals, and the universe? For thousands of years, humans understood the interconnectedness of everything, including us. We had a sense of sacredness and reverence for nature and the universe. And then we lost it. In this talk, we explore what happened and how to get that sense of connection back.

Transcript

So last week we talked about the greatest treasure that humans have,

This human experience,

Our lives,

Right?

The life of Libby,

The life of Kimberly,

The life of Susan.

This is this great treasure that we have,

This experience that we're having here on this earth.

And the problem though is that we keep living in our heads.

We keep thinking problems,

Imagining problems that aren't there,

Always thinking that our happiness is somewhere other than where we are.

And because we spend so much time lost in our thoughts,

We're not here for our lives so much of the time.

We're missing this great treasure that we have,

These lives.

So I wanted today to give a little bit of a different take.

In fact,

It is a bit of a different take and history on why this happened,

How this happened to us,

Why we live in our heads instead of living in reality.

And this,

What I'll present is largely based on the work of Dr.

Stephen Taylor and his book,

The Fall.

And it's a little bit,

It's a theory.

It's a little bit,

Presents things a little bit different than we traditionally have looked at things in history of humans.

Because on his research,

And it's a very heavily cited book,

Very heavily referenced book.

His theory is that for tens of thousands of years,

Humans actually had a pretty good life.

It's often,

We often have it depicted as these prehistoric times were so scary and scarce and so treacherous.

I've given talks on that in the past.

And yet what he looks at is says,

No,

The research actually,

The evidence shows that in fact,

Humans had pretty good lives,

That there wasn't a lot of aggression,

That there wasn't really hardly any evidence of warfare.

This is all about pre,

Up until about 7,

000 years ago.

And while there were pockets of aggressive tribes,

Pockets of them,

For the most part,

Very,

Very peaceful,

Not a lot of stress,

Not a lot of anxiety in their lives.

They,

Of course,

They had acute periods of stress.

They would run across a lion,

A snake,

Right?

It's a little scary.

They just wouldn't spend the whole afternoon thinking about it,

Why the lion was out to get them and the snake,

That darn snake,

He's always there waiting for me,

Right?

They're just not going on about it.

So acute periods of stress,

But their lives really were fairly relaxed.

They'd work three to four hours a day,

Foraging food,

Getting food,

Preparing the food.

And then the rest of the time they would spend,

Spend pretty leisurely,

Playing games,

Singing,

Dancing,

Making the food,

Maybe making some baskets,

Making some things,

Mending some things.

But so they had a lot of,

They had a lot of free time as well.

And that mostly the tribes,

In the tribe setting or even in small communities,

They were very egalitarian.

So there wasn't a lot of oppression,

Not a lot of pushing down on people or other people trying to climb up to the top.

Not a lot of disease.

I mean,

Definitely still some disease,

Parasites,

Infections,

But they had plant medicine that they would deal with it.

If you broke your leg,

Like they had to deal with it.

Didn't have a ER they could run to,

But overall they were actually a lot healthier than how we live today.

And that there was this,

This core value or this core worldview that they were a part of nature,

That they were a part of the universe.

There was this very much this sense of reverence and sacredness for nature,

For not taking too much,

For understanding the balance of nature,

For animals being our brothers and sisters,

And not taking too much,

For even things like rivers and rocks and the wind and the sun,

Like very much a reverence for all of this,

That this is all kind of a balance,

That we're all a part of this ecosystem.

So they had this really,

This great sense of belonging,

The sense of like,

We're okay.

We know where we are in the world.

We know our part in the world.

And if we look at indigenous tribes today that haven't been tainted by Western civilization,

Or very little,

We can see this is pretty much how they live.

Pretty nice lives.

Pretty balanced,

Pretty peaceful.

Not a lot of aggression,

Not a lot of fears,

Not a lot of worries.

And this sense that they are a part of nature,

Living much,

Very much in peace and harmony with nature.

And then something changed.

And according to Dr.

Taylor's research,

It's for a long time.

So it didn't change for all humans,

Because obviously we still have tribes living around the world.

But there was a particular group of humans that were living in the Sahara before the Sahara was a desert.

And before it was a desert,

It was a very fertile,

Lush,

Lots of grass,

Lots of trees,

Lots of rivers,

Animals grazing,

Living there,

Humans living there.

There was a lot there.

It was a really prosperous area.

And then as the Sahara,

Around 7,

000 years ago,

Started to become a desert,

That's when things got scarce.

And as resources became scarce,

Humans started thinking more about my survival,

Because there's not as much anymore.

And now it's about my little plot of land over here.

And how's my family going to survive?

And how can I keep you out of here?

And how can I get more out of this land?

And how can I store this food more?

So a lot of strategizing,

A lot of planning,

A lot of thinking,

And very much from the perspective of me versus us.

And this is what Dr.

Taylor calls the ego explosion.

When we went from thinking about us as a tribe,

Part of nature,

Living in balance,

To me,

It's all about me.

And in this,

All about me,

Is where the separation began.

We became separate from nature.

Nature,

Land,

Resources became something to possess,

Something for us to utilize to our heart's delight,

Imagining there are no consequences.

That animals,

We separated ourselves from animals,

Believing that they became,

They were our possessions,

And that they didn't have any feelings,

And we could do whatever we want,

Whether it was for food,

Or for our amusement later,

That we were so separate from animals.

Humans,

Other humans,

We started possessing,

Started seeing other humans as,

Oh,

They're less than me.

They don't feel or think the way I do,

So I can treat them this way.

I can make them a slave.

Women started becoming property,

Because in a lot of the tribal situations,

In a lot of the even just smaller communities,

The more kind of horticultural societies,

They were in the egalitarian,

They were very much egalitarian,

But very much matriarchal society.

He reports a lot of evidence of,

It was very matriarchal.

A lot of aggression seemed to go together.

And then,

So now we're starting to get a hierarchy that's becoming a very patriarchal society.

A lot more aggression,

A lot more possession,

A lot more wanting to get more and more and more.

So out of this new psyche,

This ego,

We unleash this insatiable desire for wanting more,

More and more and more,

Way beyond what we needed for survival,

Way beyond.

I mean,

We've seen that where royalty or people in power had so much,

And it still wasn't enough.

They'd go to war to get more,

Because it was this insatiable desire to get more and more and more that always coming from this sense of scarcity,

Of lack,

Of separateness.

And we see it today.

When we've survived,

We see it with billionaires.

They couldn't possibly spend all their money if they had a thousand lives,

Or a hundred lives at least.

And then,

And even where all of us here,

We've survived.

We're okay.

We've all got a warm bed.

We've got food in the fridge.

We've got shelter.

We've got internet.

We've got a computer.

Like we've survived.

We're okay.

And yet we still feel this sense of lack inside of us because of this ego.

And we see this all around us,

This insatiable desire for more praise,

More validation,

More success,

More awards,

More recognition,

More money,

More things,

More houses,

More cars,

Just this constant,

Constant wanting things,

Constant thinking about wanting things,

Trying to fill this hole inside of us,

This aching hole inside of us,

That is actually the result of the sense of separation.

But I think the core problem here is that we feel this sense of separation from the universe,

From other people,

From ourselves,

That we feel this sense of separation.

So,

Story time.

There's an investment banker who's on holiday in Mexico.

And every day he sees the fishermen going out,

Going out like around 6 a.

M.

And coming back after just a few hours,

Maybe 9 a.

M.

And he sees them go to a couple of the restaurants.

They sell some of the fish that they've got and see them giving some of the fish to their family.

And then going off to the restaurants or the bars,

Having a few beers with their mates,

A few laughs for a while,

A little siesta in the afternoon,

And maybe playing with the kids,

Playing with the family,

Having dinner with the family,

Maybe a party that night.

He sees this day after day and he thinks,

They are not maximizing at all what they could be doing out there.

So,

As this bright investment banker,

He goes out one morning as the fishermen are coming in and he pulls one of the fishermen to the side.

And he says,

I am an investment banker from New York.

I have an MBA from Yale.

I have thousands of people that work for me and I'm a very,

Very smart man.

And you,

Young man,

I am going to give some life-changing advice to.

The fisherman's thinking,

Wow,

This big-time guy from New York's going to give me this advice.

Great,

What do you suggest?

He says,

Well,

Every day I see you and your friends going out in your different boats around 6 a.

M.

And you all return about the same time around 9 a.

M.

Now,

If you were to stay out three or four hours,

Have the whole day to yourself to get more fish,

You could double how much fish,

At least more than double probably how much fish you take in each day.

And then instead of going to the bar and hanging out with your buddies and you went to some other restaurants a little bit further away to sell more of the fish,

You could make more money.

And if you save that money up and you work really hard and after a year or two you probably have enough money you can buy another boat and then you hire people to work on that boat and they do the same thing.

And maybe your family's getting involved and they're starting to smoke the fish and dry the fish,

Thinking of other ways that they can sell the fish.

And then you get enough money again,

You buy another boat until eventually you have this whole fleet of boats.

And of course by this time you need to set up a corporation because you need to be very concerned about liability.

You need accountants,

You need lawyers,

There's lots to do.

And it's like,

Oh okay,

Taking it all in.

And then your company becomes so profitable,

You sell it and you're a millionaire.

And the fisherman says,

Well,

And then what do I do?

The investment banker thinks about it for a minute and he goes,

Well,

You seem to like to go out fishing every morning.

Maybe you go out fishing for a few hours and go spend some time with your mates in the bar,

Have a few cervezas,

And then spend a little time with your kids and your family,

Have a nice meal together,

Maybe a party.

Of course the fisherman's thinking,

I do this now.

Why do I need to go through all this to do this now?

But this is the lunacy that we see.

Like we can't even see when someone has balance in their life.

We're like,

No,

No,

No.

It's not enough for me to want more.

You need to want more as well.

And we don't see it.

I mean,

We really don't see it in our own lives.

We don't see this constant aching need for more,

For just trying to fill this aching hole inside of us.

All this chasing in our minds,

Trying to get somewhere,

Trying to get somewhere other than where we are because thinking that if I can just get over there,

My happiness is over there.

If I could just this one thing,

Just this one thing,

If I could just have a little more money in the bank,

Then I'd be okay.

Just a little more.

Then we get there.

Well,

No,

I meant just a little more than that.

Then you get there and I meant just a little more than that.

It's never enough.

It's never enough.

But what we're trying to fill this hole,

The anxiety and the stress that we feel is the result of this sense of separation.

This is the problem.

We have good conditions.

We've survived.

We're okay.

The angst that we feel is this feeling of not belonging,

Of not feeling like we're enough,

Of not feeling worthy.

And it's an existential crisis.

Everyone feels like this.

No matter how famous you are,

No matter how much you have,

Everyone feels this sense of separation because every time we get lost in our thoughts of wanting something,

So convinced that that's what's going to bring me my happiness.

And not realizing that,

Oh,

It's the thought of,

I feel this sense of separation as soon as the thought,

Like you can feel it happening as soon as the thought arises.

You can feel this sense of separation.

And so convinced though that it's out there and it's like,

No,

It's the thinking.

That's the problem.

It's the thinking that there's something outside of me that's going to bring me happiness.

So we do need to be very,

Very clear of what the problem is.

The problem is the sense of separation that we feel,

That we don't feel a part of the universe,

A part of nature,

A part of humanity.

We've lost our place here.

And this is where spirituality comes in.

It's why spirituality came in.

We would not have needed the Buddha,

Taoism,

Hinduism,

Any of these.

We would not have needed these if we had remained in these tribes,

If maybe the Sahara had never been,

If that theory holds true.

But if we look just at tribes,

We wouldn't have needed this.

They feel the sense of wholeness.

They feel like they belong.

We don't.

And it's why we have these spiritual traditions that have come out of a need really for survival.

Whether it's we make the planet,

You know,

We extract so much that the planet becomes uninhabitable for humans.

We're not going to destroy the planet.

It'll be fine.

It's just humans or very few humans will be able to live on it.

But also just this addiction that is so rampant in our society.

Addiction to alcohol,

To drugs,

To food,

To shopping,

To social media,

To gaming,

To porn,

To news,

To just the phones in general,

The internet.

Like this addiction that we have because again,

All of this is a result of this aching feeling that we do not belong.

We will look for anything.

We will destroy our lives because even if for a few minutes I feel that sense of separateness gone in the drug,

In the alcohol,

Getting pulled into something.

For those first,

Just for the first few minutes,

By the way,

It doesn't last that long.

It still comes back,

But we keep doing more and more thinking,

I can get back there.

I can get back there.

It worked for a little bit.

So I think spirituality has very much,

You know,

Come in based on survival.

Like we need,

We need spirituality.

We need to get to the core of the problem.

The core of the problem is that we feel like we don't belong.

We feel separate.

But we have also taken this mindset,

This ego mindset into spirituality.

And I see this in Buddhism where we kind of cherry pick some of the practices.

It's like,

I'll take some of the meditation.

I'll take some of the mindfulness.

I'll take some of the wisdom teachings.

I mean,

Don't give me that teaching on rebirth.

I don't want that.

Don't give me too much of the heart stuff.

I don't want to feel the compassion.

Don't know,

Not too much.

Oh,

I don't want any of the rituals or the ceremonies.

Nope,

Nope,

Nope.

Throw that out.

Don't want any of the ethical stuff,

The moral conduct,

Because my God,

How could we go and teach mindfulness into the military?

If we start bringing in the moral component,

Which is a massive component in Buddhism.

We talked about that last year on the Eightfold Path.

A huge part of having a healthy life.

You know,

We treat it like,

Like make mindfulness.

Someone came up with that term.

And I think it's great.

Like,

We go,

I want to be more focused.

I want to be less stressed.

I want to be more productive.

I want to meditate,

Be mindful,

So I can produce more.

Right?

I want to meditate.

You see advertisements,

I see them on YouTube,

Where,

Because of course,

I think based on my feed,

They think I would be interested in these ads for this one.

I can't stand this ad,

Where he starts up.

You want to know what the best meditation in the morning is to manifest money?

I think,

My God,

This is like,

Who's buying this stuff?

And he's got ads on all the time,

Someone must be buying it.

So we've even lost the point in,

In our spiritual practices,

Like we do,

We cherry pick it,

We take what we can that we think is going to make us more productive.

That we do think is going to make us happier as well be happy,

Probably because we're producing more.

So we missed the point.

And I think we want to be really crystal clear about why it is that we meditate,

Why it is that we're doing mindfulness,

Why we are on the spiritual path,

What it is that it's teaching us,

And it's teaching us how to feel whole again,

How to feel connected again,

How to connect to nature,

How to connect to other human beings,

How to connect,

Just feel that general sense of connection,

To stop the disconnection that's happening every time we go up into our heads.

And so,

You know,

Many of you were here for this series we did this summer on,

On kindness practices,

I do a lot of heart-centered practices,

I'm always kind of bringing in the heart as much as I can,

Because I think the heart is such a part of it.

And,

And I think when we bring kindness into our mindfulness practice,

Because kindness being the expression of our shared connection,

Whether we're being kind to other people or kind to ourselves,

Like when we're struggling with something,

When we're having a tough day,

And maybe we got some bad news,

Something's going on,

We embarrassed ourselves,

Something happened,

And when we bring the kindness practice of self-compassion,

And we just,

You know,

All sweetheart,

That this is tough,

Isn't it?

It's like,

Yeah,

This is tough,

This is tough.

It,

The kindness brings us into that sense of feeling whole again,

So that we can then be with the experience.

I'm like,

Yeah,

This sucks,

It sucks,

That was embarrassing,

It sucks.

I'm human,

I make mistakes,

Right?

We all do.

But it allows us to,

With the kindness,

To fill up that gap,

That hole,

Again,

To remember,

It's okay,

We're a part of something.

And that's why I think kindness is such an important practice in mindfulness.

And I thought what we could emphasize a little bit more of,

As well as more gratitude in our mindfulness practice,

More gratefulness.

And we do tend to think of gratitude as,

As grateful for things,

Grateful for people.

And of course,

I think those are all good things,

Because we're focusing on what's,

What's here.

But I think that we could focus even more,

Or take it,

Take our practice to an even more profound level,

By focusing on gratitude,

Like just when we're walking through nature.

When you're walking on,

On a path somewhere,

And you're seeing the beautiful trees,

And you're seeing the flowers,

And you're seeing a slight breeze,

A warm breeze on your face,

The sun,

Hear the sounds of the birds,

And just all the colors,

The desert right now is just lit up with colors,

And it's because we got a lot of rain recently.

It is so beautiful.

And you're walking through,

And it's just like,

Thank you,

Thank you,

Thank you.

Because the experience that we are having when we are in nature,

The sounds that we're hearing the birds,

The sights that we're seeing,

It is that,

That is our experience,

We are connected to nature.

And every time we do that,

Thank you,

A little breeze of the wind,

Thank you,

Thank you,

The sun,

The warm sun,

Thank you,

Thank you.

Like,

It's reminding us again of our connection to nature.

Or anytime that we're,

We're,

And I've talked about this before,

So anytime something good is happening,

Yay,

Thank you,

Thank you,

Thank you,

You got something worked out well,

Yay,

Thank you,

Thank you,

Right?

Or something,

You back up the car,

And you nearly hit someone,

But you didn't,

Yay,

Thank you,

Thank you.

Like,

Always just really trying to bring in this,

Just thank you,

Thank you,

Thank you,

Right?

Really feeling that sense of connection around us,

Right?

You see a beautiful sunrise or a beautiful sunset,

And thank you,

Because that is our experience in that moment.

We are sharing that experience in the moment.

You know,

The joy that we feel,

The sense of awe,

The sense of wonder is coming from what it is that the eyes are falling upon,

Right?

And thank you,

Thank you.

The more that we say this,

The more that we feel this sense of shared connection and start to remember we are a part of nature,

Right?

When you're with your puppy dogs or with your children or just having a special moment with your partner or something,

Or just a special moment somewhere,

Like just thinking to yourself,

Thank you,

This is pretty nice,

Thank you.

Like,

Really just acknowledging those moments.

And as the poet Rumi says,

If you only say one prayer a day,

Make it thank you.

Like,

Really saying these words,

Put it,

And I do put my hands together,

Thank you,

Thank you,

Thank you,

Thank you.

So,

Really bringing more gratitude into our practice for these little things that we just,

We take for granted,

We just take for granted.

Oh,

The pretty flowers,

Yes,

Me separate.

Me separate.

Instead of,

Thank you,

Thank you.

You know,

The bee flies by and didn't sting you,

Thank you,

Thank you,

Right?

So,

All just,

All these little ways,

Little moments where we can be saying thank you,

Thank you.

And I think another place that we can be bringing more,

More reverence,

More sacredness into our practice is with rituals.

And so,

With our meditation practice.

And for some of you,

You might have an altar or a special place where,

Where you meditate.

That's my altar back there.

Half office,

Half altar.

So,

This is where I spend a lot of the time.

So,

Before you meditate,

Or before I meditate,

I light a candle,

Right?

And especially in the morning,

It's pitch dark,

It's super,

It's super early.

And you just,

That the light coming on is like the light of wisdom,

Right?

And there's something very sacred about that.

Just lighting a candle and feeling in the flame.

Something very spiritual about candles.

And,

And then taking three bows before I sit on the meditation cushion.

Kneeling on the ground,

Putting my hands to my,

My forehead and then pressing down my forehead on the floor.

This is how we do it in the Buddhist tradition.

You know,

Three bows of like reverence for this practice.

Because think how different it is when you get on your mat,

And you just come to sit on your,

Or your cushion,

And you don't do any of the rituals starting out,

Right?

It doesn't feel very sacred.

But you do these things,

You light a candle,

Maybe you light some incense.

And,

And then you do some bows,

And then you go to sit.

And it's very much a very different frame of mind.

Even the bowing like feels very much to me like,

Like this is an ancient practice.

That thousands,

Millions of people have done and been doing it for thousands of years,

And it just feels so connected.

You just feel so much more grounded,

So much more here.

So in our meditation practice,

And I've mentioned this before,

I always start with a couple of prayers,

Do prayer of St.

Francis,

The Buddhist forgiveness prayer,

Which I've shared here.

Because again,

They're,

They're beautiful words that just bring the mind into this place like,

Ah,

These beautiful words that these,

These ancient beings said,

Well,

St.

Francis,

A few hundred years old,

I think.

So these beautiful,

Beautiful words.

And,

And as you say them again,

Just feeling that sense of connection,

That sense of,

Ah,

Yes,

I'm here.

So when you go into your meditation practice,

You feel more balanced,

You feel more at ease.

And at the end of our practice,

And I've shared this as well,

Dedicating the merit of our practice,

Thinking about someone who you could dedicate your merit to,

Sharing your merit with someone again.

So really feeling like what you're doing here on the,

On the cushion is not just here.

It's effect,

It has an effect,

It's all interconnected.

So thinking about someone who could I dedicate the merit of my practice to.

And then thinking about,

I've shared also,

Well,

I think I've shared it here.

I've shared a lot on Mindful Mondays,

Libby,

So you've probably heard this a few times,

Where I'll just think for a few moments of,

Of one or two people that are going through something.

And I actually do this as a tonglen practice,

Just one breath in,

Breathing in their suffering,

One breath out,

Sending them healing light.

So just going on those,

A couple people that I have a strained relationship with,

I have them there because I never want to think badly of them.

I never want them to leave,

Leave my heart,

Just because we don't have,

It's not healthy to have that relationship with them anymore if it's someone I had to set a boundary with.

And I keep them in my heart.

And,

And so it's a little ritual that I do,

And it's just a little thing that again,

Just ends with that sense of connection that even,

So again,

Thinking of people that are going through something,

But also some people that I have a little bit of strain with,

But it's like,

I want to still keep you in my heart.

Like,

I still love you.

I still love you.

But it's just not healthy for us to be friends or to be around each other right now.

So thinking about how we come to our meditation practice,

The things that we do in the beginning,

The things that we do in the end,

And,

And thinking really just in so many areas of our lives,

Where we can be doing rituals to help us deal with transition,

To help us deal with change.

I used this example earlier,

Libby,

You heard where I talk about when,

When my mom and Maria leave,

They've been here the last few winters,

And they're coming again in a few months,

Or sorry,

Next month,

In a few weeks.

But when they leave,

It's sad,

Right?

They're here for a while,

And this winter,

They're going to be here for three months.

But when they leave,

It's sad when they leave.

And it should feel sad,

Like you should feel sad when your mom goes,

And she's been here for a while.

And I think one of the nice practices that I do is just,

Again,

Light a candle,

Or sometimes I'll go out in the front and just light a little fire,

Because I can do that just kind of in a little sand out there.

And just remembering that all,

All things are impermanent,

All feelings are impermanent,

Right?

You can be with it in this moment,

Because it's real,

And you can feel it.

And I think the more that we do bring things,

Bring ritual into change and into transition,

If we're,

You're leaving a job,

Or you're,

You're going through a divorce,

Right?

Maybe writing down on a piece of paper the things that you want to leave behind in the divorce,

And you don't want to keep going over and rehashing,

And the hurt,

And maybe then putting all those things into a little fire,

And just watching them float up.

Rituals can be a really helpful way for us to process life's changes,

And particularly in things like death,

Where we don't really know how to be with death.

We don't know how to grieve.

I mean,

We have the funerals,

But that's it.

We kind of have that one,

Two or three-hour period,

And most people are kind of lost,

Not sure how to grieve.

And we can make that a ritual practice of whoever it is that's past,

Thinking of their,

Get their favorite drink,

Whatever it is,

Take a little time,

Go somewhere,

Go down to the beach,

Go for a walk in the desert,

Find a little spot,

Light a candle,

And have a little drink yourself,

Do a little toast or something,

Not alcohol for you,

You know,

Have a little toast,

Because you want to be sober for this,

And just let them know what you feel,

And that you miss them,

And you wish they were here.

I think it's just a beautiful way for us to be able to experience grief,

Like to set the space and the time for it.

Like,

This is the time.

I'm going to talk to them.

If the tears flow,

Tears flow.

Great.

Experience it.

Be with it.

But again,

Doing it in kind of a ritual setting,

Helping us to bear being with it as well.

And I think there's a lot of,

A lot of symbology that we,

That we miss as well.

If you have wind chimes,

I have wind chimes in the back.

And whenever you hear the wind chimes,

I mean,

That is the wind playing an instrument,

Playing you a tune.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Like,

Thinking of it that way,

That connection of what we think of this inanimate object,

The wind chime,

But it's the wind is playing it right now,

And you're hearing that beautiful music.

Or when we see the Tibetan prayer flags,

The symbology behind that is that on each prayer flag,

There's a mantra and a prayer.

You probably know what I'm talking about.

You've seen long strands of them,

All different colors,

And when they're blowing in the wind,

What it's meant to symbolize is that all those blessings,

Whatever that mantra is,

Are going out to you.

And there's a,

In Dharamsala in India,

Where the Dalai Lama's temple is,

There's a kind of an area,

A little walkway,

And there are just thousands of these prayer flags.

And it's kind of windy up there.

And you can just feel like all these blessings coming to you.

It's just beautiful.

And again,

Kind of feeling that sense of connection,

The wind sending off what someone wrote on these prayer flags,

And really feeling that sense of awe,

That sense of connection,

That reverence,

That sacredness.

This is what we're trying to feel.

It's a ritual and symbolism and thank you.

And I think the more that we keep doing this,

The more sacred,

The more aspects of our lives we find to be more sacred.

And that the breath,

So sacred,

We couldn't live without it.

And we take it for granted.

But the more we start living in this sense of sacredness,

Of connection,

Even each breath,

Just,

It's a beautiful experience taking a conscious breath.

You feel that sense,

It's exchange,

You're exchanging with the air around you,

That the molecules,

Maybe Kimberly had breathed it in five years ago,

And then it made its way down from San Francisco down to Mexico,

And it's being breathed in here.

I think they say this,

Like,

We've all breathed in every molecule that Marcus Aurelius ever breathed in,

Or maybe the Buddha or something like that.

I don't know how they come up with those numbers.

But it is,

Of course,

It's just this exchange.

And we're all living off of this oxygen,

And thank goodness for the trees that convert the CO2 into oxygen for us,

Right?

Again,

This connection.

So it becomes very sacred.

Everything,

This is what we're trying to do,

Is make our lives more sacred,

Bring more reverence into our daily lives,

So that we feel more connected,

So that we feel a sense of wholeness.

Because this the problem.

This is the existential problem.

And even if Stephen Taylor is completely wrong about the Sahara thing,

I think he is more,

I did a lot more research in following up on his citations,

And you can just look at modern day,

Again,

The tribes,

You're like,

Why are we always picturing this prehistoric time as this scary and scarce time?

It's really when humans started living,

Like,

You think of the Middle Ages,

You think of,

Really,

It started 7,

000 years ago,

All the wars started happening,

The scarcity,

It's like everyone at the top getting a lot of it.

I feel like we got that a little bit backwards.

But it is the existential problem.

The ego is separation.

We're never going to feel that sense of wholeness lost in our thoughts.

Never going to find it.

It's only coming out of the thoughts,

And learning to trust more the present moment,

To have more reverence,

More sacredness in our daily experience.

And to remember that all we are trying to do is to come back to our true nature.

This is not something monumental.

We're not trying to become gods,

Right?

This isn't something superhuman.

We're just trying to come back to our own true nature of feeling connected.

And this is what spirituality allows us to do,

Because we do,

Most of us would not survive very well in tribes these days,

Or starting our own little tribe with our little book,

Tribes for Dummies.

Okay,

What are we going to do next?

It's going to be hard for us to go back to that.

So we take the world that we're in,

And we really bring the reverence and the sacredness.

And we remember,

What we are trying to do here is just to come back to our true nature,

To come out of the delusion of separateness,

To know that we belong,

To know that we are a part of the universe,

That we cannot not be a part of the universe.

Reviews

Great talk. Thank you 🙏🏻

Absolutely wonderfully incredible and inspirational talk. Thank you! 🙏 🤲

Keeping in the spirit of this talk, I’ll simply say thank you 🙏✨🙏✨🙏✨🙏✨🙏✨🙏

I always appreciate your talks. They leave me with a sense of peace in my heart. Thank you so much, Meredith!💗💗💗

Thank you, thank you, thank you for your truly wonderful talks 😁🌟

Delightful talk, thank you. Coming back to our true nature of inter-connectedness. I especially like your sharing about the sacredness through rituals when I meditate, pray, express gratitude or go for a nature walk. Thank you for belonging!