How do we live in the world rather than on it?

For me that’s a question of ‘belonging.’

What comes up in your body when you read or hear the word

Belonging

?

Many of us have few places where we truly experience unconditional belonging.

The kind that says, “all of you is welcome here.”

The kind that is trusting of our own wholeness and its ability to be loved, accepted, enough.

Many of us experienced a wound (or many) that told us some part of us was too much, too wild, unsafe, or made us a threat (or target).

In those moments, we never stopped trying to belong - we need other people, community, family, networks of support - to survive and thrive. It’s just that suddenly our belonging became manipulative - we got good at figuring out who we needed to be to be accepted and squeezing ourselves into those postures, clothes, speech patterns, habits… ignoring when and how it hurt.

To do that, we had to become numb. We had to put others before ourselves. We had to be constantly on alert and on guard. We had to become an observer before we could be an experiencer.

And so we began to live on the world, rather than in it.

Living in the world is sensual, embodied, wild. It’s being so whole that we can meet others as they are. It’s knowing we belong to the Earth and everything on it - a trust that comes from the inside as equally as it comes from the outside.

It happens internally, and it gets reinforced and strengthened in healthy community.