Tribes

If you were crossing the Arabian Peninsula in the 6th century your survival depended on your tribe, as you were unlikely to survive the harsh desert conditions on your own. Although belonging to a tribe is no longer a matter of life and death, the holidays can trigger our most basic need to belong to a family and/or a friend tribe. Regardless of whether you feel alienated from, or well ensconced in your tribes, the holidays are a good time to acknowledge that you belong to God’s tribe.

God’s tribe includes every photon of light, every one of the 7 billion people on the planet, every living animal, every particle, everything. Your safety and security is taken care of by being unified with God and accepting that you belong to that bigger tribe. Until people realize that we are all a part of the human tribe, no one will be safe from hurt. Our hearts have to expand to include everyone.

Don’t think someone else is growing in a better garden. Don’t be damaged by someone else’s notions of right and wrong or the wrong way to be in the world. Trust that God will guide you. And therein lies the first courageous step on God’s path. To actually follow and listen to God is step two. It takes courage because you won’t have a pack of people behind you. You won’t have an institution. Follow your heart. Let in miracles.  Let in the synchronicities that follow when you’re on this path. No one can stop (arrest) you on this path. Only you can do that by either pulling back or being unwilling to move forward. 

Here is where the ego work is so important because you can’t move forward with the ego intact. This is where expulsion from the tribe can be seen as a gift. Through the tribe’s seeming non-acceptance, the thin skin of ego gets un-zipped from you and it’s allowed to peel away. Welcome anything that helps you to shed another layer of ego skin—it’s a beautiful, gentle unzipping. Keep accepting the gentle lessons and the harsher ones will not have to come to bear. Thank everyone who has ever rejected you because they have turned you back into yourself for strength and reflection.

You have never been lost or abandoned. God has always known where you were. It is always our choice to be found. Look within and you’ll find God.  And there nestled in his Love is where you will find yourself. Your past does not make you an outcast—it makes you strong. Go with strength and the acknowledgement that God loves you.  No one in God’s tribe is left wandering the desert alone.

Photo by Manyu Varma on Unsplash