Nothing ever goes away until it has taught
us what we need to know.
― Pema Chödrön
As the years have passed and I have continued to do the hard and liberating work of shedding layer after layer of my own ignorance, indoctrination, and illusions, I have gradually come to recognize more clearly what is happening all around us and within us.
Again
and again, I am witness to this universal struggle that I have personally experienced and that our species is immersed in. It is my belief that
humankind is trying to evolve beyond our adolescence and into our greater potential for consciousness and truth, caring and generosity, connection and compassion, wisdom and love.
The enormity of these changes that are upon us cannot be overstated. And, tragically, this growing awakening, this loving revolution, this great turning that is unfolding in our human history is repeatedly met with the tremendous forces of fear, ignorance, greed, and a clinging to the familiar and what we believe we know to be true about ourselves, others, and our world.
The intensity of the backlash against teaching Critical Race Theory is but one more symptom of the resistance of allowing the old to die away in order that something new can be born. There has been this framing that CRT will make our [white] children uncomfortable, will be disturbing, will divide everyone up into victim or perpetrator, will spread hatred and even Communist ideologies.
The sad irony is how often it is that we humans react to long needed systemic changes within ourselves and our world with fear. And fear ― rather than love ― is what takes root in our minds, hearts, and souls to the degree that we don't question how it is that we may be ignorant and need to grow. And, yet, we humans all fall somewhere on the continuum with ignorance on the one end and consciousness on the other. Ignorance is not just confined to that other person over there. To be human, to be alive means that there exist ongoing opportunities to grow, to evolve, to become more humane and more who we truly are.
And especially to grow in our capacity to embody love.
Whether our hearts are growing and expanding, or constricting and walled up, depends on our willingness to not turn away from curiosity and inquiry, from humility and openness, from a courageous passion for truth, and from looking more deeply into how it is that we humans can trade in places of ignorance and fear for increasing kindness, consciousness, and love. There are so many lessons to learn along the way.
And certainly this includes about racism. As Pema Chödrön wisely states, "Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know."
* * * * *
Racism Is a Pandemic
It is hard to let go of the status quo, of what we've absorbed as normal and necessary and inevitable, of belief systems that have never actually been rooted in our highest good. It is hard to truly recognize our own complicity within systems of harm. At least this has certainly been my experience. And it is extremely humbling. And scary to allow the world as we have known it to fall out from under us.
It is a courageous thing for those of us who are born into some level of privilege ― and especially those of us who are white and who have been taught to believe in American exceptionalism and a false narrative of our nation's history ― to allow ourselves to see through the hearts, minds, and souls of others whose experiences have been very different from ours. It is a courageous journey to set about recognizing and dismantling the belief systems that we've absorbed that have long been rooted in patriarchal domination culture and systems of oppression, dehumanization, inequity, cruelty, and violence.
For
those of us who have been uninformed and disconnected from an empathic awareness of the
experiences of our black and brown and indigenous sisters and brothers, and of all people of color, it can also be both deeply painful and incredibly life changing to recognize with increasingly depth how it is that racism remains epidemic in our nation and beyond.
Lifting the veils of our ignorance one by one brings us face to face with the shadow side of ourselves and our society. As we are challenged to gradually recognize our blind spots and places of unknowing and complicity, the discomfort of this budding consciousness can push us back into denial or it can catapult us into a profoundly changed perspective which ultimately frees us to align with ever growing authenticity with our professed values.
It is not easy to truly walk our talk. And this is the work of a lifetime ― to grow in our capacity for courage, consciousness, connection, truth, compassion, and love.
First, however, we have to want to know what we do not know. We have to actually set out to seek the deeper truths that have may have long remained beyond our conscious awareness. We need to want to see over that hill that is beyond our comfort zone of familiarity.
Viewed through this lens, discomfort is not negative, but rather necessary to our personal and collective growth. Allowing the old to die away and birthing the new again and again and again is a difficult and also courageous and amazing journey. And it is not meant to just be easy and without discomfort. Indeed, deep enduring and transformative change demands of us an openness to embracing discomfort.
Tragically, too often we turn away. And we remain strangers to one another. Martin Luther King, Jr. wisely and sadly stated, "Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated."
Racism not would remain epidemic in our nation and beyond to this very day if this were not true. Which is why peeling back the fog that we've unknowingly been living in is so incredibly important. And that takes humility, courage, intention, perseverance, and support. And Grace.
* * * * *
"We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness. Human beings are not separate from each other or Nature. We are totally interrelated and our actions have consequences to all. What we do to others we do to ourselves."
― Thích Nhất Hạnh
I grew up in an exclusively white wealthy suburb of Detroit, Michigan. But you don't have to be from Grosse Pointe to be immersed in overt and subtle forms of racism. It is my belief that no one is untouched in our country by beliefs of separateness, dehumanization, fear and judgments of the Other.
It has taken me many years on my path of seeking truth, healing, and love to uncover how racism and fear has permeated my being. Today I do not believe that any of us are unaffected.
My personal experience has also been that as I have grown in accountability and in my ability to recognize and dismantle the obstacles that I've absorbed and built against love, my circle of caring has grown exponentially. Increasingly I experience connection with rather than separation from the suffering and the joy of others. And this growing connection with my sisters and brothers everywhere inspires me to act in evolving and growing ways which express my deep compassion and caring for their suffering.
Before I was able to see and understand the suffering of other beings, I did not act. Taking into my heart the joys and the suffering of others has changed all that. Deeply.
There are more resources than I can name here which have supported me in my growing understanding and awareness of the many forms, subtle and overt, that racism can take on within myself, our nation, and beyond. These are but a few:
- Martin Luther King, Jr., James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Langston Hughes, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Cornel West, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, Angela Davis, bell hooks, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Michelle Alexander, Ibram X. Kendi, Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Jelani Cobb, Bryan Stevenson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz, Angeles Arrien, the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers, Joy Harjo, Arundhati Roy, Maria Ressa, Vandana Shiva, Thích Nhất Hạnh.
For anyone who already hasn't seen 13th, this documentary is also one that I recommend highly for us all:
Racism is but one significant face of disconnection from the experience of how it is that we are all interrelated.
There
are truly so many wise and courageous human beings whose work, wisdom, voices,
hearts invite us again and again and again to understand systemic racism and to grow in wisdom, integrity, truth, compassion and
understanding, and love.
Who has inspired you to grow and evolve and embody greater and greater truth and love?
* * * * *
 |
| Art by Mary Southard |
― Dalai Lama
There are many prayers that I hold in my heart and how it is that I live my life day by day. Their roots are grounded in the intentions to do no harm, to alleviate the suffering in our world, and to grow in authenticity, truth, compassion, and love.
I am also humbly aware that I can only live with a compassionate heart to the degree that I am grounded deeply in a rigorous spiritual path that asks of me every day to grow, to shed that which causes harms, and to care so very deeply about all of life ― humans, other beings, the Earth herself.
I can only live in alignment with my values to the extent that I uncover and learn how to dismantle the ways that I have unknowingly deluded myself into mistaking falsehoods for truth. The pursuit of truth must be a priority. It's the only way that I've found to emerge from the fog of fear and separation that I believe we are all, to one degree or another, are indoctrinated into.
Critical Race Theory is one essential part of what can set us all free ― free to know, own, heal, and transform a past that has never stopped being part of our present.
Compassion is truly the radicalism of our time.
* * * * *
Jack Kornfied wisely states, In the end these three things matter most:
- How well did you love?
- How fully did you live?
- How deeply did you let go?
It is time for humankind to evolve. This is something that each of us can take increasing responsibility for. Our strong voices of truth and love and fierce compassionate action are so deeply needed.
All of this also begs the question which I have recognized is so important to ponder in an ongoing way: What will my legacy be?
Bless us all,
💗
Molly
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