just be it It’s about the work involved in establishing a dedicated practice to feelings of a bigger belonging through practices aimed at increasing feelings of compassion, gratitude and forgiveness

Cultivating a Deeper Sense of Belonging

Published on 30/07/12
by randy

Everybody belongs.  You can’t ‘not belong’.  Yet, this is what we do to each other, ‘thinking’ we’re somehow better or worse.  Yet, in the end, when we humble ourselves to see the divine belonging in all, we’re filled.  When we push a sense of superiority on others from our pride, we’re left restless, our sense of belonging ultimately tarnished.  And then we suffer.

Those who usually cause the most harm are those who were somehow damaged in youth by someone telling them they ‘don’t belong’, or they ‘are not good enough’.  They then often perpetuate this cruelty in their later years, pushing for damaging powers over others.

Ultimately, we’re here to wake up to our real belonging.  The illusion of our separateness has cost us dearly as we’ve harmed so many.   Yet, when we wake to a bigger belonging we feel real peace and an abiding which gives us courage to meet the surprise of the next moment.  When we truly recognize how we can’t be separated, we can’t ‘not belong’, our anxiety diminishes.  Our competitive urge to ‘win’ at another’s expense relaxes as we move to simply ‘being’ the best creative expression of ourselves.

This ‘feeling’ of deep belonging is beyond words.  It’s our antidote to the poisons of greed, fear and ignorance.  It’s where we touch the Ground of our Being, what some have called the Holy Spirit.  It’s what others have called Big Hope.

So next time you notice anxiety building, noticing the mind starting to freak you out, find a quiet place and surrender to the loving arms of deep abiding peace found in surrender to a deeper sense of belonging.  Surrender the notion that belonging is in anyway dependent upon the approval of others.  Just cultivate awareness to stillness, breathing in and breathing out, in awareness to a deeper support that goes well beyond our reasoning minds, well beyond our concepts of time and space.  Katagiri Roshi has written:

“To be completely absorbed you have to devote yourself totally, with sincerity, and then you can be absorbed—you can see the unity of your body, your mind, and your object.

In this unity, you give energy to the activity as object, and simultaneously you accept lots of information from your object.  That is called total functioning—cause and effect are one simultaneous action of input and output.

This is communion of heart with heart, going constantly, in and out.  At that time your activity becomes Buddha’s  activity:  time becomes supreme time, beyond any concept of past, present, or future; place becomes supreme place, beyond any dualistic concept; and person becomes supreme person, who is melted in the universe.

That situation is unknowable with our consciousness.  It’s impossible for me to express it in words.  But maybe you can feel that this is true, that Buddha’s activity is something that could appear in your life in the future.  If so, that feeling becomes a kind of prediction, foreknowledge, or hope.  That is called big hope.”   p. 145 from “Each Moment is the Universe”

This is real ‘waking up’.  This is direct contact with the Holy Spirit, in service to the well being of All.  This is the peace found in deeply knowing we can’t be separate, no matter how hard others try to feed that experience.  We’re always supported, beyond notions of birth and death.  With each arising breath, I’m fill with gratitude for this support.  This is the place of wisdom, where we move from self interest to the bigger question of refined action in awareness to ‘help vs. harm’.

That's it. What Next?

Please leave your comment so we know what you think about this article. Trackback URL: Cultivating a Deeper Sense of Belonging.