You Belong: A Call for Connection

Vigilance is exhausting. And it is rooted in fear.

All this comparison (conscious or unconscious, minor or significant) leads us into separation and domination—into competitive feelings of doubt, deficiency, and despair. This is because when we compare ourselves to others (or are being compared), we are engaged in near-constant self-judgements and critiques.

Many think meditation centers on the mind. Actually, meditation integrates the body.

We continually deepen our exploration, integrate our understanding, and evolve our capacities while also resting in the freedom and ease of accepting exactly how things are for us right now.

We learn not to love the things others spurn.

Fear can appear in relatively harmless moments (like in front of an audience of nerds). We often experience fear in the form of ongoing worry or unease. Or it can come as a powerful wave of almost overwhelming emotion in response to challenging situations.

If we don’t feel belonging, it turns out we can learn to feel it because it’s wired into us.

My friend Nidhi describes not belonging like going to the mall gift shop every week and spinning the display with the personalized key rings, searching for your name even though you know you’ll never find it. We search externally for belonging (hint: it’s not out there). It took me time and practice to unlearn this outside searching, to understand

How do you acknowledge differences and inequities yet also hold a firm conviction that fundamentally we are all irrevocably interconnected and belong to each other?

Our aspiration is rooted in acceptance. Aspiration and acceptance may seem contradictory (those damn paradoxes again): we aspire to belong, and we accept that this is already so. We discover this through the body.