the great belonging.
No matter where you live, nature is inviting you to take part in the great belonging.
The great belonging is that feeling of expansion, reflection, connection and awe when you feel connected to something bigger than yourself and all at once feel the beauty, wonder, and grandiosity of the planet.
The great belonging is the intersection of connection, nature, and spirituality.
Connecting to nature and spirituality is key in the city. There’s an intelligence that lies in nature that our constructed systems and structures have yet to tap into and replicate to any great degree in the city. However, those who live in the city can actively curate experiences and an attitude of awareness that fosters connection. By creating places and situations that evoke the intelligence, charm, and delight in nature, we feed ourselves.
In the city, we may need this type of reflectiveness that nature gives us even more than we do living side-by-side with nature every day that happens when you live in a rural or suburban home. Cities seem to force people inward more, as they strive to contend with the noise around them. The forcing inward creates narrower and narrower pathways and perspectives of the human mind. Traveling these for too long decreases your imagination, happiness, and sense of connection.
Nature, while evoking reflection in us connects us to life on a larger scale- it enlarges us.
We need nature- because we need to constant enlarge our souls, in order to keep up with the pace of urban life around us. We need to tap into our expansiveness to bring hope and humanity to the world.
There’s an allowing that most need to have in order to connect with this expansiveness. For some, who are unaccustomed to allowing the expansion in, the little delights of nature, a new leaf, a lone bird on the water, a grassy patch waving in the wind, these thing go unnoticed.
Nature may be a lover, who the more that they are courted, noticed, and appreciated- the more they show up and give back in return.
I’ve spent so much of my life tuned in and tapped on, that its easy for me to engage quickly with a naturescape. It isn’t always immediate or without effort, but given time, the ways in which nature starts giving back and playing can become more regular.
Nature is happy to play and engage. Its not always gentle, and not without its dangers (what love is?), but nature doesn’t harm simply to harm. Any entity that you engage with has its risks and uniqueness. Those idiosyncracies are sometimes dangerous, but we would not want to remove the world of them, anymore than we would want to remove all fire to avoid the burn.
We need measured responsibility, and lots of openness, willingness, and self-awareness. We must accept ourselves as the humans we are and allow play. Children become the role models in this respect- we begin to learn more from them than we ever teach them, when out in nature.
Nature and child both jump, roll, burrow, and burst forth. They swing, they sing, and they spring.
They disrupt pattern after pattern for adults.
Stanford University did a research study where they found that 90% of your thoughts today are the same, completely identical as your thoughts yesterday. This will continue on and on and on until you have a pattern interrupt.
Reading an article like this, taking a walk in a new place, and engaging with a new species can be that window into the pattern interrupt which will open your mind to new thoughts and open your life to a new trajectory.
The pin oak tree, the mayfly, the red squirrel.
Do they need a pattern interrupt? Is there timeline something that they are even aware of?
The plants have an understanding of time which follows a different pace than humans. In my book Talk to the Trees:Wake up to Wisdom, Wonder, and Calm, the chapters are words channeled from the trees. The trees talk about their timeline which spans years or decades, and at the most fine points- seasons, rather than looking at things on an hour-by-hour, or minute-by-minute basis.
Times flies.
Did you know that plants can fly? They do. Through seeds, floating on the wind, thistle drifting, maple seed twirling. Through petals cascading and releasing.
The sunflower and cherry tree are rooted to the ground and yet they fly with their blooms. People, if they remain rooted to the earth, can also fly.
It seems like a paradox, but it isn’t. With your energetic umbilical cord attached to the earth, you are able to float up in your sleep or your imagination and drift anywhere you please on the planet.
You can sail to the Milky Way, crest over the Cascadian mountains, or soar over the Mediterranean Sea.
But without a deep attachment to the earth, your being doesn’t want to fly. Your imagination isn’t able to expand to the heights.
Being tapped into your connection to the earth and bonded to the land through love, through the force of gravity, through your attention and appreciation for the insects and animals, you open the doorway from within that swirls in the dance of the expansive infinite.
Until you are in awe of everything living and earthy- the scent of pine, the pink gladiolas unfurling throat, the flick of a blue jay’s tail- you will not swim or swirl with the infinite.
Until you let a violet be a wake-up call.
Until you notice the anklet of moss and necklace of vines around the tree, which cracks open your eyes to see.
Until you see ways in which everything around you is a person- not a person as in human, but a person as in entity and being who lives.
Until then, you will not realize how deeply you belong to life. How deeply you belong to the forest, to the field, to the force of elements.
You are surrounded by silent friends, by non-human family. The land pulses with life, even in the depths of the city.
Notice what elements of nature crack open the door of trust & connection for you.
Is it purple petals? Is it animal eye contact?
A sweeping vista or the long vines of a cowpea, cultivated and trailing up a garden fence?
Nature has been missing the acts of connection, communication, and cooperation as much as any person has been missing this core need too.
The dandelion has become such a symbol and hero to our time. A dandelion seed is a traveler on a wide path.
A winding path that clearly leads to soil, however slight of an amount. Rain will nourish the dandelion seed. Or some type of moisture.
I’ve seen a dandelion growing in a second floor basement beside a washing machine. I wouldn’t have lived there as my last and only resort, but the dandelion did.
The brave dandelion showed up for life, trusting that its place and purpose was part of the great belonging.
In time, the seed will sprout and create another flower- a page in the book of life with glowing edges.
The dandelion has never given up hope or trust.
They have always kept blooming and trying. They maintained their connection to the thread of life that sustains them.
If there could be one message, one convoy from plants to people, to show how fear has no place in the being who is rooted and belongs to life, the dandelion is that convoy.
Nevertheless, I know that fear stays alive within us all, coiled up, ready to strike on a frequent basis. The natural wiring of our nervous system steams and simmers day in and day out.
Left unchecked, the simmering and stress can degrade oneself and turn the milk and honey of life sour.
Fearlessness is not any more natural or achievable than fear.
The snake of fear within cannot be cast out forever, but it can be placated. The snake can be invited to sit on the warm rock and sun itself, relaxing and gathering energy in rest and communion with the energy pouring down onto the planet.
By connecting to, caring for, and paying attention to all the parts of you- the seed of trust, the reptilian snake brain, the mammalian body, the natural environment where you have a home, the community of living creatures that surround you- you create your balance, your expansion, and your belonging.
You immerse yourself in the wonder and beauty of life-not as a holiday item encounter occasionally, but a daily breathing with the essence of life itself.
This is what your body and soul calls for. This is what you desire. This is where you belong.
……..
Selections of this text- or variations of it, will appear in my upcoming book, House of the Living Souls. Subscribe so you hear first thing when the pre-sales go in effect. If you love feeling good and connecting with your soul-self, you also should get yourself a copy of Talk to the Trees. You’ll connect to tree wisdom and feel your self-awareness and self-love expanding by seeing yourself through the eyes of trees. Click here and get two copies, one to keep and one to gift.
Lots of love,
Rachel Strivelli
P.S. Soon I’ll be announcing my February live experience, Foundation of Belief. It’s an incredible live-taught course on awareness, belief, expanding your consciousness and manifesting. Early registration will start this month. Details coming soon.
Note: my links to my book are my referral links.