The Medicine of Belonging
I Am the Gate by Peter Koenig
I was at a spiritual retreat last weekend when I realized that the medicine I had come for was not the medicine I was receiving.
I had gone to this retreat for the medicine of a few particular spiritual practices based on prayer and song. I was defintely getting these but on the third day I realized there was something else going on.
In between scheduled workshops we would hang with our teachers around the pool, or after meals at the picnic tables, and just talk.
Over three days I watched almost every person sit with our teachers at least once and share something about their lives.
Maybe it was a funny experience, or an update with their kids, or questions they thought our teachers could answer. Some people shared about illnesses, big life transitions, and deaths and divorce.
I’ll be honest, some of the people at this retreat drove me crazy. They seemed too loud, or were doing some kind of elaborate spiritual bypass that annoyed me. Some folks struck me as a little too new age , and others too old school for the times.
In other words, my discernment had slid right on down into judgement.
The result of my ‘discerning’ eye was that I started unconciously creating categories of Belongs and Doesn’t Belong.
You know which group I thought I was in, of course. But no matter what I thought was the right designation for each person, my teachers sat and listened to them all.
And not only that but they seemed to actually enjoy each person; laughing, smiling, asking questions, and generally appreciating the shit out of folks I thought were 100% unappreaciateable.
When it was my unofficial turn to go before my teachers at the picnic bench I of course brought my most impressive stories and questions.
Just like with everyone else, they laughed and smiled and spent as much time with me as I wanted to spend with them as if they had nowhere else to be.
I suddenly remember the first time I had come to one of their retreats. I was an official HOT MESS. I ended up sitting outside crying in fear and running from the helpers because I believed I was beyond help. It was, in other words, a big fat pity party.
I spent hours sitting alone in the dark outside the workshop where all the good singing was going on, refusing to come back in. And yet, even in that state causing that kind of disturbance to the workshop my teacher came out and sat with me.
He didn’t berate, he didn’t suggest I do anything different, he didn’t even ask what was going on.
He just sat with me for a bit and gave me a smoke. Then eventually went back inside and 15 minutes later I followed.
That was over 3 years ago and it took me until this last weekend to realize the power of the medicine he and his wife were offering me: belonging.
As I watched all these ‘unworthy’ people come before them last weekend and be so fully and generously and delightfully received by these teachers I realized that they (of course!) had been doing that for me - all of me - all along.
I suddenly understood why I loved their workshops and being in their presence so much.
Every part of me, every part of every person who came, was invited into belonging. In a flash I saw that belonging itself was the foundation of all their other offerings; the songs, the teachings, the practices.
Without belonging these were nothing. With belonging, any practice/song/teaching could heal the soul completely.
In a world screaming at you that you don’t belong in 18 different ways every second, belonging is the most powerful medicine of all.
On my flight home I sat without listening to any music or podcast or audiobook and just thought about belonging. Well really, I allowed myself to feel the belonging I had been given this past weekend.
Of course you won’t be surprised to learn that the very folks I had judged as not belonging were the ones who also offered me that same medicine of belonging all weekend and I now consider them all friends. Story of my life; the people I judge most always hold the greatest growth and teachings .
I also realized that belonging is the same medicine I’m pursuing in my healing sessions.
My absolute favorite thing to do in a Clairvoyant Counseling session is find that part of you making your life so utterly and totally impossible and discover its true purpose.
The number of times I’ve had a good laugh with someone when we see what that programming, or young part, or sideways energy is really doing in your space is just too fun. And when we’re able to laugh, to enjoy, to ask questions of this energy and see that it’s true nature is almost always love and hope, we discover just how much it belongs.
In psychic terms I call this “havingness” for yourself.
It’s the supreme quality of the heart that comes out of worthiness, self-esteem, and self-love. When we can “have” all of ourselves, we belong.
And in belonging we discover just how powerful, how beautiful, and how utterly worthy we truly are.
May it be so for you now and always.
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