What deepens my sense of “belonging”?

Self awareness has deepened my sense of belonging. I share a meditation I wrote in 2009 that helped me move from longing to belonging. I hope during this holiday season it is helpful to those struggling with their emotions. The holidays can make it seem hard to get from longing to belonging for many.of us.

From Longing to Belonging

Question: What is life?
Answer: Life is “What Is.”
Question: What aren’t we here for?
Answer: We aren’t here for “What Ifs”
Question: What is that suppose to mean?
Answer: You tell me. It’s your life.
Question: Well, then what should I do?
Answer: Forsake the “shackles of should.”
Question: How?
Answer: By Being instead of longing.

We all live as the Israelites lived, between promise and fulfillment. We all live in process, in relationship with each other and all of creation. We all feel hunger for a sign, for a feeling, for an explanation of what we are here for. The best scientific answer I have found for that is that we are hear to evolve but we have chosen to make life a burden by believing we are separate from or superior to the rest of creation—not related to it at all. We fight life. We flee from life or we freeze—become ambivalent. How sad for our time here is limited.

I read an entry in one of my earlier journals this morning. I had written: “I bought the flowers at Wal Mart—daisies, carnations, tiger lilies and fern. They smiled at me each day when I returned home from work tired. Then one by one they bowed their heads and died. Nothing can live indefinitely without roots.

”Roots are different from vines that cling. I don’t like to admit that I was a clinger but since most of the major decisions I made early in life were motivated by fear, I must own the fact that I am prone to growing vines not roots. After my divorce, I was faced with the loss of my concept of WE. I had married two weeks before my 19th birthday. I went directly from Mama’s house to hubby’s house and now, 35 years later, I was no longer a WE. My identity was gone. I felt like I was being pulled up by the roots and discarded but in reality, it wasn’t my roots that were being destroyed. That experience has taught me that they cannot be destroyed. They are part of my birthright. No, it was my longing, my clinging vines. It was a wake-up call.

I had a dear friend at the time who was very helpful but each hurdle I faced, she would say, “We’ve had to deal with that before,” and she would make light of my overwhelms. I knew she meant well but internally I was screaming, “There is no WE in my life.” In retrospect her words were helpful. They made me look at my limited definition of WE.They gave me the courage to reach out for the help I needed. They helped me realize how much of myself I had given away to stay in that marriage.

It has taken many years for me to look at life as a gift not a burden. I have personally had to pull up and discard a lot of my clinging vines but each time I find the courage to do that I discover I have deeper roots and I picture them interconnected with all of creation, to the one big universal root.
I Am not an event.
I Am life expressing itself in and through Carol.
I Am not a product.
I Am a participant in this adventure called creation.
I BE-long. WE all belong. Our roots are our birthright.

Blessings, Carol