What is this longing, I ask myself, well aware of the fact that longing is nested quietly in the word belonging. It chirps quietly in the downy kingdom of belonging, barely making itself known.
What do you long for?, I asked a group of business people recently. The response was varied, separated thinly by those who seem to have been attentive to that small bird in their nest and those who’ve cast it out and replaced with a mechanical version of desire. Desire seems to born out of culture, a momentary comfort appointed wanting…or an egoic flip of attention.
Ah but longing…Rumi reminds us that the longing does all the work. So what if we allowed the longing to belong to grow its wings…to put on elegant feathers and gain strength in its conviction to fly?
WHAT do we want to belong to?
Did we once know in our bones the feeling of belonging?
Our modern day mind may think of belonging as if to a group of people or a tribe….but what if…what if we were really longing to belong to something else? Something perhaps un-namable?…or to a natural system? Or to wild nature….our own?
When I encountered my soul for the first time I was startled by the recognition. Over years of approaching this Holy entity that was hidden deep inside of me, I have come to know it as friend, as home, as inspiration, and yes, as a belonging found no where else. I suspect that as nature-based people we lived in such knowledge of, comfort in, and alignment with nature, that we knew we belonged to it. Now in the estrangement that most modern day people experience from nature, we feel abandoned…or have abandoned our own option for belonging. To live in devotion to soul we fill our niche in the ecosystem of the world…this automatically has us fit in…gives us a place…and well, gives us belonging. Without that we float aimlessly wondering where we are to stand and who we belong to and really, what IS the point anyway of our existence on the planet.
Living inside my soul niche seems to finally counteract the slim ego desires that want to be notable and important and loved and famous, and finally offer breathing room and even air under my wings to just give my gift. I find a place that just wants to fill that space…to soar with those wings as if just the flight is enough. Do I want to have impact and be seen there? Of course, yes…all the better if my contribution moves others, but really it is the contentedness of occupying my niche of belonging to something far greater, that lifts and settles me simultaneously.
The strength of any ecosystem lies in diversity. Fill your niche. Belong.