Practices to Remember Your Belonging
Last week, Chris spoke to you about the core of so many of our teachings and practices. The thing we come back to, again and again and again: belonging.
Our survival and thriving depend on our belonging. Most of us live within western industrial culture, which equates belonging with 'fitting in.' This culture says our belonging is supposed to fit within our human relations, and is entirely conditional – only available if we follow the rules and meet certain expectations
This is not belonging.
We’ve forgotten, you see, that we belong to something much wider and deeper than anything humans have created: Life itself.
We can see this in our very DNA. We share vast amounts of genetic material with other great apes (about 98% with both Chimpanzees and Bonobos), cats (90%), fruit flies (61%), and even mushrooms (about 30%). The elements and minerals found in our bodies came from the stars, the center of the earth, and the decomposition of other beings. The air you breathe was once in the lungs of other creatures that walked the earth hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Our belonging is unquestionable and inexorable. As much as we might try to separate ourselves from the other-than-human worlds, an intrinsic part of the Earth's ecosystem.
And yet, most of us were taught a very different story, before we ever had the opportunity to wonder for ourselves.
If you are angry about this, good. If you feel grief and heartbreak, I’m not surprised. Rage and wail and curse the systems that brought this about. But don’t stay there forever.
Find ways to begin to remember this inexorable belonging. To anchor it in the marrow of your bones. To celebrate, explore, and revel in this belonging that cannot be taken away because it was never given to you: it simply is.
Here at the Verdant Collective, one of our primary ways of remembering this belonging is through self-pleasure practices. We’ve pulled together a series of practices that we want to share with you and you can find them here. We hope that they inspire connection with yourself and your body that helps you to find the pathways to your belonging to Life.
