UNICULT attracts a lot of outcasts. I identify as one myself. And a huge number of people in our community have left other religious groups, people who were programmed to follow a rigid set of expectations and then, in deprogramming themselves, found both the freedom of nuance and the pain of being cut off from the group.
So when someone in our Discord asked me to give a sermon on outcasts, I knew it mattered. And what I want to tell you might sound strange coming from me, since I’ve felt like an outcast my whole life: there’s no such thing as an outcast.
The black and white spiral
To understand this, we have to start with duality. Most of us were preconditioned to see reality in black and white. There’s good and bad, us and them, gay and straight, men and women, success and failure. A good person does this. A bad person does that. Most people operate under these programs without ever questioning them, and their whole identity is built on them.
These programs come from a collective idea of what it means to belong to the tribe. And our tribe in America is a psychopathic tribe. The expectations that come with belonging are so disconnected from what’s truly good and healthy for the individual that programmed people march along a road leading to their own destruction: voting against their own interests, eating food that hurts them, demonizing people they actually agree with, becoming mean and spiteful, all to cling to what they think will keep them safe.
So if you’re a deep thinker, an observer, or you’ve been through something that showed you these systems can’t be trusted, you pull back and say: hang on, this is insane. I would rather be free. I would rather not belong. That goes against our biological need to be part of the tribe, so a society has to be very sick for large numbers of people to choose being outcast over participating.
And that’s how subcultures are born. New religious movements, alternative humor, trends, hermits and isolated sages, communities of like-minded outcasts. I think it’s healthy for every society to have them.
The outcast still needs the herd
Here’s the twist. The us-versus-them mindset is the easiest way to build a group. Every political organization, every religious movement, every collective knows it: we’re like this, these are our rules, we’re good, and everyone else is them. It’s very effective at controlling the masses.
But the outcast identity runs on the exact same program. The outcast identity depends on the majority’s projection. If you feel like an outcast, you’re still living under the herd mentality. You’re still playing us versus them. You’ve just decided you’re them.
And guess what, y’all? We’re all one. When you step back and look at society the way you’d look at your own psyche, you see that there’s no such thing as being outside of it. Being outcast is part of how society works. The rebels, the deviants, the disruptors, the alternative thinkers are all part of the whole, and they’re the ones who move culture forward.
This works on the inside too. When you cast out a person or a group, you’re also casting out a part of yourself. It doesn’t go away. It just gets shoved into a corner of your psyche, where it gets angrier. (That’s a whole sermon of its own.)
What true belonging means
In black and white thinking, belonging has only two options: either everyone does what I say, or I have to do what they say. If I don’t want to do what they say, and no one will do what I say, then I must be an outcast.
True belonging is something else. It means having yourself fully and having others too. There are people in your life who love you, and you don’t have to split yourself, compromise yourself, or cast out parts of yourself to keep them.
That doesn’t mean you have no boundaries. I have boundaries with people who take more than they give and don’t understand energy dynamics. But a boundary is not a rejection. I still understand them and love them. And I actually like it when people set boundaries with me, like when I’m info-dumping and they’re tired. Boundaries are good.
So when someone rejects you, it doesn’t mean you don’t belong. It usually means they’re rejecting a part of themselves.
You belong everywhere you go
You can’t not belong. If you were born, you belong. You’re part of humanity, and an essential part of it. Not belonging is a story you’re telling yourself.
If this is something you want to work on, try these affirmations: I belong everywhere I go. You belong. Everyone belongs. Say them for yourself, and say them for other people. You’ll start to carry an aura of belonging that makes room for everyone around you.
That’s what we’ve done in UNICULT. All are welcome. You belong here. Your best friends are waiting for you here. And because we don’t require anyone to demonize anyone else in order to fit in, we’ve built a wildly diverse group of people who actually understand each other. We don’t believe in us versus them. We believe in all one.
That’s the rainbow reality on the other side of the black and white spiral. There is no such thing as not belonging.
Thank you for raising the vibration of earth. If this speaks to you, join UNICULT.
