You Belong
A Call for Connection
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4.4 • 12 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
"A POWERFUL WORK OF SPIRITUALITY AND ANTI-RACISM"—Publishers Weekly
"IF YOU READ ONE BOOK IN 2020, MAKE IT THIS ONE."—Tricycle
From much-admired meditation expert Sebene Selassie, You Belong is a call to action, exploring our tangled relationship with belonging, connection, and each other
You are not separate. You never were. You never will be.
We are not separate from each other. But we don’t always believe it, and we certainly don’t always practice it. In fact, we often practice the opposite—disconnection and domination. From unconscious bias to “cancel culture,” denial of our inherent interconnection limits our own freedom.
In You Belong, much-admired meditation expert Sebene Selassie reveals that accepting our belonging is the key to facing the many challenges currently impacting our world. Using ancient philosophy, multidisciplinary research, exquisite storytelling, and razor-sharp wit, Selassie leads us in an exploration of all the ways we separate (and thus suffer) and offers a map back to belonging.
To belong is to experience joy in any moment: to feel pleasure, dance in public, accept death, forgive what seems unforgivable, and extend kindness to yourself and others. To belong is also to acknowledge injustice, reckon with history, and face our own shadows. Full of practical advice and profound revelations, You Belong makes a winning case for resisting the forces that demand separation and reclaiming the connection—and belonging—that have been ours all along.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
For Buddhist meditation teacher Sebene Selassie, the secret to finding deep happiness is simple: We all want to feel like we belong. But achieving that sense of connectedness can be complicated, which is why we’re so grateful Selassie wrote this fantastic guide. Walking us through traditional Buddhist techniques for focusing the mind, Selassie explores how the empathetic philosophies behind the practices can help foster that elusive feeling of belonging. We love the way Selassie frames her ideas in vividly personal terms, explaining how her spiritual practice has supported her as a Black woman coping with a racist society, as a survivor of multiple cancer scares, and as a human being dealing with the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. She also provides easy-to-follow summaries of her most important lessons to help you stay on track. Best of all, Selassie’s tone is loving and encouraging from page one, making you feel welcome and safe—wherever you are on your mindfulness journey.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Meditation teacher Selassie makes a case for how readers can find a sense of belonging amid turbulent times in her dynamic debut. "Contemporary life makes it easy to forget belonging," she writes before reminding readers they "belong in every moment, to everything, and then, like it or not, to every(damn)one." She identifies the delusion of separation and the pain of domination as the root causes of all "feelings of not belonging" before delving into strategies for grounding, knowing, and loving oneself in order to connect with others more fully. She instructs readers to feel gratitude for one's body through meditation and to consider one's "shadows" by confronting past events one has disowned. With grace, intelligence, and palpable compassion, Selassie weaves discussions of implicit bias, intergenerational trauma, and white supremacy throughout her coverage of more traditional spiritual topics, such as ego and conscious awareness. She offers thoughtful reflections on the Covid-19 pandemic ("centuries of separation and domination encoded into systems... has shown us how interconnected we are, and also how unequal") and the impacts of the widespread shelter-in-place orders, as well as meditation practices and journal prompts. This is a powerful work of spirituality and anti-racism.
Customer Reviews
Inspired, Humbling, Relatable, and Uplifting
I LOVED this book and so did my mom and 11 year old daughter with whom I read it each night before bed. I did skip some sections and replaced some words for age appropriateness, but this was only occasionally necessary. We really gained appreciation for how our ancestral past has shaped us and the world we live in today. We also found hope in how society CAN be by learning of the Camphill community example. My 6 year old son has Down Syndrome so this part of the book was one of several tear jerkers for me. All good though. Even the painful awareness this book showed me at times left me with a sense of gratitude for the knowledge bestowed so that I may live with more conscious awareness. Thank you for writing this book. We absolutely loved your writing style and sense of humor!