Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Hunger To Belong

Belonging is an expression of life.

Human beings can’t help it: we need to belong. One of the most powerful of our survival mechanisms is to be part of a tribe, to contribute to (and take from) a group of like-minded people. We are drawn to leaders and to their ideas, and we can’t resist the rush of belonging and the thrill of the new.

In my years of working with dreams, I have found this longing to belong at the heart of so many people’s inquiries. It is the longing to be recognized for one’s gifts, to be welcomed in love and kinship, to feel a sense of purpose and necessity to our community. But it is also the longing to open to the sacred dimension of our lives, to feel in ser

Somewhere in the Celtic mind was a grounding perception that humans are the inheritors of this deeper world.

Though it governs so much, belonging is rarely spoken about in the open. Like grief, death, and inadequacy, we are led to believe that to feel unbelonging is shameful and should be hidden from view.