Belonging

My Darling,
how is it that you search for belonging like
a poor beggar on hands and knees frantically
scrounging the dirt floor for food?
My Dear Heart, if you wish, I can continue
to beg and scrounge alongside you, and
we can keep bruising our hands and knees,
never really filling our bellies on the scraps
this world happens to toss our way.

But wouldn’t it be easier
and a lot less on hands and knees and hearts
to take the hand of the Beloved that
has always been holding such sweet
nourishing delights to
your parched lips?

Come, let’s rest for a while.
Let’s go outside and
lay under the vast moon-lit night.

Lisa A. McCrohan, MA, LCSW-C, SEP

It always amazes me how I can go searching for something only to discover it’s always been here all along…only to discover that the Divine has been here all along, offering to me the very thing I’ve been longing for.

I honestly see the Divine as a friend who accompanies us, saying, “Ok, we can keep playing this game, but really what you are seeking you already have.”

Lately there has been a deep ache within me for “belonging.” It doesn’t make “sense” – I have a really loving family, I’m a part of some beautiful communities.  But it doesn’t matter really why or where this ache came from.  What matters is how I relate to it. What matters is that I open to it rather than dismiss it, be embarrassed by it, or make it out to be “wrong.”  What matters is that I open to the all the ways I long to feel a deep sense of belonging, sensing the layers of the ache.

That’s what I’ve been doing lately – giving this ache air to breathe and be seen. And in such spaciousness, I have found that beneath the many layers of the ache, this isn’t about belonging to anyone or any group. Fundamentally, this is about me belonging to me.

Me belonging to me.

When I realized this, I started to ask myself, “When have I abandoned myself?”

I saw the ways that I “abandon” myself – when I play small so others won’t think that I think I’m so smart; when I question my inner Voice and get anxious about how the world says I “should” do things – like write and blog, work and market my offerings; and when I play it safe and don’t speak up when something has hurt me in order to “keep the peace” and maintain a sense of “belonging.”

I made a vow to myself.  I made a vow that whenever I am about to abandon myself, when I am about to keep the peace so others feel comfortable, when I am about to play small or shy away from shining, when I am about to keep quiet so that I maintain some feeble sense of “belonging” to someone else —

~  I will remember my innate sense of belonging that cannot be taken away and is not conditional. 

~  I will say to myself, “Don’t abandon yourself, Lisa.”

~  I will say to myself, “Sweet Love, you can never ‘not’ belong. You already belong. You belong to you. You belong to the Divine.”

And what have I noticed? I’ve noticed that as I hold to that vow, as I SEE my innate “already-belongingness”, as I LOVE myself and don’t abandon myself.  I embody a sense of true Power within me.  And that, my friends, is the power of freedom.

I feel free because I am empowered to be true to myself – my heart, the God within me.

I feel free because, really, what I find, is that this is all that matters in this life: that I am true to the God within me.  And as I am true to this God within me — as I take the Beloved’s hand — the Divine takes care of everything.  And I see that where there was struggle, now there is delight and true freedom.

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Dear Readers, there is an ache in all of us. Sometimes it’s hard to name it and it’s definitely hard to claim it as your own.  I’ve seen this enough in my own life and in my work alongside others in psychotherapy and coaching:  anything that has you hooked – anything that you so desperately want from someone else or from this life – instead of scrounging for scraps of love from others, turn inward. 

Open to the possibility that the love you seek – the sense of belonging, the sense that you matter – is really about YOU loving, belonging to, and mattering to YOU.

It’s about you returning to your own inner landscape and seeing that really, that what you seek, you already have. And all you have to “do” is claim it, feel it, embody it, and keep returning to it.

And that’s when you can make a vow to yourself that every time you go looking for something “out there,” you’ll turn inward and remember it’s already here within you. Every time you want something from your partner, from your work, from this life – you’ll turn inward and see how really this is a longing for YOU to reclaim YOU.

“Dear Love (yes, use a term of endearment with your own self), I vow to not abandon you. What you seek ‘out there’ is already inside YOU. Believe it. Be it. Embody it like it is already here, already yours. Because it is.”

Make such a vow to yourself, that you will not abandon yourself – your dearest dreams, your inner Shine, your inner nobility, the Divine within you. Keep making that vow – a hundred times in a day, if you have to.  And that inner Power and Freedom will sweetly kiss you, soothe your worries, and course through every cell in your body.