The Four Roots of Wild Belonging
We all want to belong. To have a soft place to land that holds us and protects us. A place that supports us, offers understanding, acceptance, and encourages us to thrive. A place in which we can be our truest, most authentic self, and experience unconditional love.
But in today’s world, true belonging is continuously and progressively elusive.
Our relentless desire to belong results in filling our days with distractions and information overload. We focus our attention on endless to-do lists, pressure our relationships to meet all of our needs, feel increasingly disconnected from our body and soul, spend our lives trying to prove our worth, and desperately try to “fit in.” All of this only leaves us feeling more isolated, misunderstood, fragile, excluded, and anxious.
Instead of creating authentic, rooted belonging, we pour our energy into things that ultimately move us further away from this. Either we bury who we truly are, hide parts of ourselves, or abandon ourselves altogether. And once we are distanced and disconnected from our core self, our chance of finding true belonging decreases immeasurably.
In essence, much of my work is about helping clients remember, return to, reclaim, and rebirth a true Wild Belonging life. This soul-process is an essential ingredient in creating sexual well-being and intimacy.
What is Wild Belonging?
The “wild” in “Wild Belonging” is not referring to being “out of control”, but rather being deeply aligned with one’s most instinctual and natural self. The self that follows one’s passion, one’s intuition, one’s soul’s voice. The self that is erotically liberated.
It is a self that does not let external forces determine who we are, what we do, and how we live. It is a self that follows the rhythm of nature’s cycles and accepts the life/death/life cycle. It is a self that is deeply connected to the earth and the cosmic wisdom. It is a self that has reverence for the interdependence of all living things.
We thrive when we live from a place of Wild Belonging.
From this place, we can accept the multiple unknowns of life and face our questions, fear, anxiety, grief, and sadness from a strong core self. We can embrace the unknown with curiosity and ask for support in our collective cosmic home.
When we seek a true Wild Belonging life, we begin to forge a path that brings us deeper into authentic connection and heals our wounded places. We are less likely to look outside of ourselves for belonging through others’ approval, degrees or money earned, the accumulation of possessions, and controlling others.
How Do We Get to Wild Belonging?
I see such a life as an ancient tree: strong, wise, confident in its beauty, and armed in its value within the larger ecosystem. And like a tree, a Wild Belonging life is supported by the roots which nurture, nourish, and allow it to grow.
While each root has its own power, the roots together form an interdependent system that is an even more powerful energetic life force.
The four roots of this ancient tree of Wild Belonging are:
Belonging to Oneself
The first step in our journey in creating a Wild Belonging life is learning how to deeply connect and belong to our own body, which includes our sexuality and eroticism. It is also essential to learn how to deeply connect to our heart and soul. This includes respecting and responding with love to our voice, our moods, our emotions, our strengths, our dreams, our limitations, and challenges, as well as our light and shadows.
As we cultivate a true belonging to our body, sexuality, and eroticism, we begin to accept our body with love and understand the ebb and flow of the cycles of our desire. We protect our bodies from harm, from unhealthy practices, and we create strong, clear boundaries. We allow ourselves pleasure and are curious about what we truly desire and delight in.
In addition to belonging to our physical self, we can cultivate belonging with our emotional heart space and our soul’s voice. These aspects of the self are deeply complex and require us to commit to a life-long practice of exploration, honor, and reverence.
Belonging to Others
To create a life of Wild Belonging, we must learn how to deeply connect with others, without losing our sense of self. We must learn what true intimacy means and how it is expressed within our relationships.
Belonging to others does not imply that we are “owned” by others or that we “own” others. It does not imply that we give up who we are and melt into another’s identity. It means we learn how to create a relationship that is a sanctuary of reciprocal trust, connection, freedom, support, and understanding.
If we first learn how to belong to ourselves as described in the first root of Belonging to Oneself, then we are more likely to be better able to belong to another in the healthiest, grounded, and clear partnership. And in doing so, we strengthen the root of belonging to another as we strengthen our Wild Belonging life.
Belonging to Our Ancestors and Our Lineage
Cultivating Wild Belonging requires us to remember the ancient wisdom of our ancestors, whose lives were deeply connected to Mother Earth. To the seasons. To the cosmic energy found in the moon and its cycles, the sun and all the stars, the planets. And to the source of all of life, Eros.
It is only when we begin to connect to our roots that go back generations and generations, as well as to the earth and the cosmos, that we can create a vibrant, authentic, and abiding intimacy within ourselves and with others.
As we connect to our ancestral roots, we enter a sacred space that reinforces our history, our identity, and enables us to find our place in the generations of our people. The more we connect to our ancestors and lineage, the more we can draw from powerful innate gifts, stories, and identities and live a much more authentic Wild Belonging life.
Belonging to the Earth and Our Cosmic Home
The earth and the cosmos nurture and support us. We are made from the same material that makes up the stars. So literally, the cosmos live within us.
Much of our life these days, is on auto-pilot and is removed from the earth’s natural cycles: the seasons, the pull of the tides, the phases of the moon, the alignment of the stars. We ignore the life/death/rebirth cycle embedded in our days, weeks, months, seasons, and years. We are disconnected from how nature can inform us, inspire us, teach us, and guide us.
When we cultivate practices that help us to be in communion with the flow of nature and the cosmic energy, we reinforce this truth: we are part of an interdependent universal community. This awareness allows us to cultivate a receptivity to the sacred mystery. We become more conscious of how our actions and decisions impact this earth.
Claiming Your Wild Belonging
Creating Wild Belonging is not a linear process – it is a cyclical process. At times we are focused on creating true belonging to our sexuality, or our voice, or our relationships, or our work, or our soul’s expression.
At other times we are focused on connecting to those who have come before us, the people in our lineage, and learning from their trials, triumphs, and resiliency. At other times, we are immersed in ways of belonging to the earth and our cosmic home and absorbing this wisdom into our daily life.
This process of cultivating Wild Belonging is a life-long one. I believe that it has become harder and more challenging to accomplish this in our current times. As we overcome these current obstacles, we will meet more along the way. But we will also find our true selves over and over. Our natural selves. Who we are at our soul’s core.
It is hard work. And not to be taken lightly, in isolation, or with the expectation that it will happen in a linear fashion. It is best to ask for support to do this work. It is wise to accept that it is a lifelong practice that cycles through us in different ways, at different times, and with different intensities throughout our life.
If you are ready to embark on this life-long practice or want support for a practice you have already begun, I encourage you to reach out to me. You have a few options in how you can seek my support through this journey.
If you enter your email in the form below, you can check out my ebook “The Four Roots of Wild Belonging” complete with exercises on how to strengthen these roots within you. You will also learn more about my Wild Belonging online course”.
It’s time. Your Wild Belonging life is waiting.
As always, Peace in the Journey,
Jane
Jane Ryan
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