The Trap of False Belonging

Surrounded by some of my favourite things, books, I reached over and picked up one I had bought while at the airport in Cork, Ireland, waiting for my return flight to Toronto last April.  A last minute purchase (already an overweight suitcase filled with other “must have” books I had bought while in Ireland), it has become one of my treasures.  It is called Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World by John O’Donohue.

Opening the book I began to read the chapter called The Trap of False Belonging. This book is written much the same as my own current book in progress; short chapters of a couple pages on various themes.  This chapter is a treasure, and I wanted to share it with you.  I hope you enjoy the read.  It is something to indeed be treasured in those moments when things to which you think you belong, might not be working out as you planned, as you hoped.  The golden theme….well, you’ll hear it.

This reimaging of the workplace would help fulfil one of the crucial needs that every individual has:  the need to belong.  Everyone loves to belong.  We want to belong to a group, a famil and particularly to the place in which we work.  Here is the point at which an immense creativity could be released in the workplace.  Imagine how lovely it would be if you could be yourself at work and express your true nature, giftedness and imagination!  There need be no separation between your home, your private life and your actual world of work.  One could flow into the other in a creative and mutually enriching way.  Instead, too many people belong to the system because they are forced to and controlled.

People are often exceptionally careless in their style of belonging.  Too many people belong too naively to the systems in which they are involved.  When they are suddenly laid off, or the system collapses, or someone else is promoted, they feel broken, wounded and demeaned.  In nearly every corporation or workplace you will find many disappointed individuals.  Initially, they brought the energy and innocence of their belonging to their work, but they were let down, disappointed, and treated as functionaries.  Their energy was claimed and used, but their souls were never engaged.  [Yes, I've bolded those words because I am living through this very thing...I think my Lord, my Spirit is wonderful for allowing me to read these words; to know that I am not alone in how I feel; that others have and will continue to have these self-same feelings!]

The heart of the matter is, you should never belong fully to something that is outside yourself. [What a lesson as I journey into self, learning about self, uncovering self; to belong to self and no one or nothing out there, outside of self!]  It is very important to find a balance in your belonging.  You should never belong totally to any cause or system.  Frequently, people need to belong to an external system because they are afraid to belong to their own lives.  If your soul is awakened then you realize that this is the house of your real belonging.  Your longing is safe there.  Belonging is related  to longing.  If you hyphenate belonging, it yields a lovely axiom for spiritual growth:  be-your-longing. [How awesome is that!]  Longing is a precious instinct in the soul.  Where you belong should always be worthy of your dignity.  You should belong first in your own interiority.  If you belong there, and if you are in rhythm with yourself and connected to that deep, unique source within, then you will never be vulnerable when your outside belonging is qualified, relativized or taken away.

You will still be able to stand on your own ground, the ground of your soul where you are not a tenant, where you are at home.  Your interiority is the ground from which nobody can distance, exclude or exile you.  This is your treasure.  As the New Testament says, “Where your treasure is, there is your heart also.”