Hello friends,
You belong.
Close your eyes for a moment, maybe place your hands over your heart, take a deep breath in and exhale. Pause for a moment. Listen with a deep quality.
You dear friend, you belong. You are whole.
When I think about wholeness and the return to it, I think about belonging. How deeply we struggle to feel like the world has a place for us. For distinct periods of my life I’ve felt like something was incomplete, something was missing. I often thought, if I just achieved more then maybe I’d fill the void. I’d feel complete.
I remember during a meditation teacher training my teacher, Roger Gabriel, said, “You’re already whole. You’ve just forgotten.” That was the first time I’d ever considered the idea. Do you mean I’m not broken? My mistakes haven’t tainted me? I’ve simply just forgotten? He continued by saying, “We’re born with a deep sense of wholeness. Life has a way of chipping away from that knowledge.”
Renewing our wholeness is remembering, not learning.
What the great wisdom traditions remind us is that we are both an individual self and a Universal Self. “The Buddha taught that suffering arises out of feeling separate…Feeling separate is an existential trance in which we have forgotten the wholeness of our being.” - Tara Brach
It seems the more we imprint our being into the individual self and further separate from our natural state of wholeness (Universal Self), the more we struggle. As I sit here and write this letter to you, I’m reminded of how easy it is to slip back into the belief that I’m incomplete. That I lack something. Today’s world feels relentless. I often wonder how to protect my daughter from seeing the weight of the world-worn on her mother.
And then, I get still for a moment each day, and am reminded of my wholeness. I have to enter the awareness to return to it. Make the shift. It is always the sweetest return. Like coming home. A belonging.
My late Grandmother used to always write and tell me every chance she could that, “God loves you.” (The tears are welling as I’m writing this.) In the last few weeks, after each meditation practice, this is what has come to mind. I didn’t realize until just now, that this was a divine renewal of my wholeness. It’s not something I attain, it’s been there all along. A message I so needed. I’m so deeply grateful to receive the whisper from my sweet Granny.
May this week’s Calm Point give you the space and stillness to remember your wholeness. “To awaken from the feelings of separateness and find that we are in love with all of life.” -Tara Brach
With love always,
Take a powerful pause. Join a 5 minute guided meditation on remembering your wholeness.
Meditation Tip: You can always begin again. If you fall out of your meditation practice or would like to start now, this is the perfect beginning.
Take a moment to reflect on remembering your wholeness with a short story.
“In Thailand where for years people worshipped what they thought was a clay statue of the Buddha. One day, by mere chance, one of the workers who was cleaning the statue discovered that beneath inches of tightly packed clay, the statue was actually solid gold. Centuries before, to protect it from looters and invaders, the Buddhists had covered the Golden Buddha with clay. None of those who knew its true form survived the invasion and onslaught. Hence, all worshippers thereafter assumed the image was one of clay, until the day, hundreds of years later, the pure gold core was discovered. Our spiritual journey is not about learning anything new. It’s just a matter of cleaning and polishing what’s already there—to rediscover our true essential nature without the distortion of the mind. We are gold, not clay.”- Chopra site (Full article)
Each week we end by cultivating well-being with three points. This is a fun way of sharing bits and pieces of my life with you. I invite you to practice this too. Feel free to share your three points in the comments below or via DM.
Inspiration: A little light-hearted inspiration that I received from a dear friend. A Spiritual AF card deck.
Insight: Still pondering this question after tuning into the Sounds True podcast with James Hollis. Listen here.
Interest: Slowly discovering so much through the Heroine’s Journey workbook by Maureen Murdock.
Let me know what you think. Connect on social @laurenlee.love and @calmpoint_
See you next Wed. as we dig into the big “P”. Presence.
Remembering our wholeness