Consider for a moment your drive to belong…
Do you think of it as a simple, biological imperative to “fit in” in order to survive? Is it more than a craving for the cozy sense of similarity? Can you imagine it as your soul’s urge to expand?
What might change if you viewed your drive to belong as a cosmic desire to evolve beyond your sense of separation and develop a more inclusive level of consciousness?
Viewing my own drive for rootedness, security, and significance as a cosmic catalyst for expansion produces emancipating effects. Doing so is changing my understanding of myself and others, and enriching my relationship with everything. However, in my experience, this vital shift in awareness is not a once-and-for-all-time event. Our legacy of alienation runs deep and developing new ways of seeing and relating takes practice. It’s something we must do for ourselves, yet it’s not something we can do alone. Belonging is relational.
My fascination with human kinship and alienation began more than a decade ago, when my early experiences with Systemic Constellations made visible the powerful function of belonging in families. Those perceptions indirectly led me to uncover other essential truths about belonging hidden within the personalty archetypes of the Enneagram. Understanding and articulating those insights has felt like a soul-assignment that’s been guiding me ever since.
When the recent pandemic made our biological interconnectedness unmistakable and our social isolation acute, my “assignment” seemed more relevant than ever. For the last two years I’ve been sharing a framework to help us better see and navigate the intricate landscape of human belonging—via research ensembles, workshops, and one-to-one experiences. Every time I do, the terrain appears increasingly vidid and nuanced…because everyone has wisdom to contribute!
In a world roiling with divisive tumult, it might seem egocentric or extravagant to focus on oneself. But change is, first and foremost, an “inside job.” By cultivating greater equanimity, stability, and compassion inside ourselves, we increase our capacity to contribute and elicit those qualities outside ourselves.
As polarization and chaos escalate, some of us will fortify alienation. That is a firmly established and long-practiced response to trouble. However, many of us are ready to heed our soul-urge and use turbulence to propel us into new realms of consciousness. We are practicing joyful and liberating ways of being with ourselves and every other living being in this world we co-create.
If you’d like to explore and expand your own experience of belonging, you might be supported by the work I offer at Creative Catalyst or The Gladstone Creative Community Lab, a community-supported project to artfully co-create a New Earth culture. You might also enjoy our meditative experiments in vibrational activism: Together We Rise.