Short compilation of powerful reading on race consciousness for white folks

Amidst all the recent brutality, needed uprising, and horrific backlash, there has been profound insight. I've found some incredible articles that connected dots in ways that I had previously struggled to. As a white woman, I am particularly interested in how I can be aware of other people's experiences and how I can use whatever awareness that I might have to help other white people make more space for experiences outside of our known range. I found resources and help.

Here's a selection:

http://www.womboflight.com/white-women-racism-and-the-mother-wound/

https://bittergertrude.com/2016/07/08/whiteness-is-a-disease/comment-page-1/#comment-17289

http://virginiarosenberg.com/blog/2016/7/10/converting-hidden-spiritual-racism-into-sacred-activism-an-open-letter-to-spiritual-white-folks

http://chaninicholas.com/2016/07/haunted-by-our-history/

Hot frustrated Lilith Earth

It is and has been effing hot. I have resisted this heat. Kevin melts into it, enjoys it, softens, gets blurry, sweats, and then sleeps. I get frustrated.

I have been hot and frustrated. I have felt at odds. Misunderstood. Mistreated. Charged. Inflamed.

Things started to cool down recently. I felt calmer. I'm working on perspective. Unexpectedly, I've taken great refuge in astrology, specifically astrology as written by Chani Nicholas. I haven't given myself full permission to go in. There's a part of me that has been side-eying astrology for many years, even while I periodically read my Aquarius horoscopes. Recently, I've come to see astrology more the way that I see myth: as archetype and entry into the bigger story. I'm actually beginning to allow myself to see astrology as even more than that, but to fully explain what I'm playing around with, I think I'd need more study into astrology for more language.

Anyway, this week on my day off I found an interview with Chani Nicholas. Apparently, one of her favorite topics is the Lilith story. I'm not quite sure how this works, but somehow Lilith is also in many charts, and maybe in the sky? Again, I need to do more research.

I remember being interested in Lilith as a teenager, around the time Sarah McLachlan was touring the Lilith Fair. As that all cooled off, I think I relegated Lilith and my understanding of her to that womynist time.

Chani gave a synopsis of Lilith, Adam's first wife. For full context, we're in the Garden of Eden and God has created Adam. He creates Lilith and in Chani's telling, Lilith begins to ride Adam. Adam says, "no! I dominate you!" Lilith can't abide not being equals so she banishes herself from the Garden of Eden. Stories begin to swirl around her, about all that she represents: she eats babies, she commits horrible acts. Chani, with great sympathy, shared her feelings that Lilith became a place-holder for all our fears. Lilith being the archetype of the strong, wild, in harmony with nature, woman. The woman who couldn't abide hierarchy and differentiation. The original "Other."

Her stance ostracized her and the venom grew in her absence.

At this point in listening, I was crying.

I was crying at this idea of the Othered woman, of the Othered being, given all those who are excluded from safety and recognition in our larger community. I was crying at this original idea of being misunderstood and there being no space for mutual recognition.

I hadn't realized it, but I'd been wrestling with a version of this story, of this myth, this archetype in my own life. There were patterns and behaviors in my family of origin that my family members were unwilling to discuss, face, and change. Behind that, I self-exiled for a few years. I now have relationships with some family members, but I still feel largely alienated and misunderstood (I'm sure they do too!). I've wrestled for years with feeling like I belong to myself, that I have faith in myself, even if there isn't a clear place for me in the unit where I entered the world.

In both my personal and work life, I've had a few shifts in relationships. Many were quite unexpected and some hurtful. I've wrestled with feeling really misunderstood and like I had become a scapegoat for issues that didn't really have anything to do with me. For months, I've been thinking about how to not take personal actions and feelings that are both personal and not.

And Lilith contextualized this all. This is a period in my life where I'm stretching into being comfortable with being uncomfortable. I'm learning to not be liked and yet love myself. I'm figuring out how to inhabit myself unabashedly, to know where that's celebrated, and also where I'll feel out of context. And to simply be at peace with that breadth of experience.

So it's not about me. And it is.

Astrology can give us these larger stories to step inside. The shunned wild woman. The warrior. The water bearer. Just like yoga, we get to wear these costumes, see what we are, see what we aren't, and maybe get to what's real. These various lenses feel like such great riches. How lucky we are to have so many vantage points for insight!

I complained to my Aunt about the heat. She said, "I'm trying to accept whatever the weather needs to do. We've done enough to try to change the environment and complain about everything that happens. We need rain, we get rain, and we complain about rain. If it needs to be hot, so be it, just be hot. I'm trying to be OK with it." This is the same Aunt, who when I mentioned some of these feelings of being misunderstood said, "how do you think the earth feels? If you believe that the earth is a living entity, how does it feel to be thought so little of that you're punctured for oil, fracked, poisoned, and covered over with concrete? And yet the earth still is. Still moves, and breathes, and lives."

Lilith. How does the Earth feel? Who am I to feel so minimized when such great forces are so wildly mistreated? The story instead gets to be access point to deeper compassion. If I've felt maligned in a small, personal way, perhaps this is just connection, sympathy, and then advocacy for the being that sustains. This larger archetypal story helps me understand that this is a much bigger story that sometimes we slide within and sometimes without. It's an opportunity for understanding.

Fear of death or social media

My right shoulder has ropes running through to my neck. My right wrist at times gets painful and creaky. I feel tension in the muscle under my right thumb. It's not exclusively, but I think largely, due to my evil iPhone.

Evil and yet I love it. I love finding a coffee shop with an outdoor patio during a break between teaching. I love finding weird, quirky places when I pull up into town. I love that I can keep my inbox neat and manageable by frequently deleting the junk messages or sending a quick reply to something important.

I frequently check my email and Facebook. I get work-related messages on Facebook with some frequency and that's where I do most work promotions. Honestly, I don't mind it all but I do feel it in my body.

I'd been feeling like I wanted an internet cleanse really just to watch what happened. I wanted to see if my body did unwind a bit and what my mind felt like without the frequent connection and stimulus.

My work is pretty email reliant and I have certain obligations so it took a little coordinating but I did it-- cleared two full and surrounding partial days where I had fully communicated that I would be unavailable. Last Monday I taught three classes, squared away the last of my communications, made sure everyone had what they needed from me, jumped in the car, and headed north.

I printed out directions, which I hadn't done in awhile. I wanted my phone OFF. I also printed out swimming holes that might be fun to visit or other weird things I'd heard about.

I thought there would be a lot on my mind that I would want to remember-- tasks to attend to-- but nope. There really wasn't any resistance in falling into this parallel track.

Kevin and I returned to our favorite little cottage on a sweet creek in the Catskills. We walked into town and ate food at cafes. We walked back and kept the door open to the creek to feel the air and hear the rushing water. Incense stayed lit to keep bugs from our door. I opened up The Signature of all Things and didn't close it until I read the last word a day later. Kevin went through a few of his favorite works as well.

We swam in the creek. We laid on boulders and sun bathed.

We also did a halfday meditation retreat with Amma Sri Karunamayi but that's a separate subject for another day!

As I waded through the water I tried to feel what was different. The main thing I felt was that I had more of myself. My energy was all going into me, my relationship, the moment. None of my energy was siphoned away into another town, a different task, or a different moment. I felt more cohesive, coordinated, and potent. That felt really good, unexpected, and worthwhile.

I wasn't sure what I'd find-- that I was hopelessly addicted to social media and needed a constant hit? Nope. I like it. I like being connected but I was fine without it too. I wasn't sure if I'd feel isolated. No. I just felt like my energy got to be concentrated and directed more mindfully.

I waded through the creek and laughed as I thought, "if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it..." If I'm in the forest and no one hears me, did I happen? I think that's often the underlying motivation for constant updates and contacts. "I am here, existing, living, and trying to leave a record." Why? So maybe we can defeat the one undefeatable, seemingly chaotic, utterly consistent experience of our existence?

So, if no one knows what I'm experiencing, if no one knows me, other than me, is that enough? Is the present moment, this experience enough? Because ultimately, whether it's broadcasted or utterly private, this experience is all there is. This present moment, this feeling and engagement with it, this is it. As far as I can tell. No big meaning. No big culmination. No big quest. Just this. So if I'm the only one in my present, as all of us are both the only one and with everyone in this big is-ness, is it enough? Can it be enough? If it's fleeting? Ultimately unshareable? Ultimately unbearably private and completely universal?

Is that all there is?

Yup. Let's keep dancing.

I had Leonard Cohen wafting out of the open french doors of my cottage. I had an open book on a sun drenched boulder. Moss climbed on the boulder reminding us both that all is built and all breaks down.

It's all completely enough.

A process, not an instant

Last weekend I met my friend Julie for lunch. I became one of those vegetarians rolling my eyes at delicious bites of kale and sweet potato while Julie recounted her recent visit to Michigan. She'd read an article on the process of death-- that our thoughts of death being sudden and finite don't bear out.

And I got really excited.

Bear with me, but I love talking and thinking about old age and death. I don't mean to be morbid and in fact I don't think that I am. I love being intentional, aware, and finding light in areas of our life that are charged.

We're all thinking about death, or no-more-ness, all the time. Sometimes it drives us and scares us. I want to think about it to be more comfortable with it. I do it every time I practice yoga and lay down in savasana.

Another friend of mine had recently witnessed the death of someone dear to her. She recounted something similar-- that the body went through a process of shutting down but consciousness flickered forward and backward. The linear notion that we sometimes have of born, alive, dead, as being fixed firm places didn't bear out in what she saw.

Years ago I knew a pregnant woman who reached her due date and panicked that she hadn't automatically gone into labor. Other women who had delivered kids said, "don't worry, due dates are more suggestive than firm" but this first-time mother was scared and her stress was having an impact on her health and the health of her child. She went to the hospital, was induced and had a c-section to bear her child.

I remembered that and remembered how it shed light on this growing notion that our bodies aren't robotic, they don't function one way. In yoga I study anatomy and find that it's a beautiful map but the mechanics of two bodies rarely match. What is often more effective is understanding anatomy and biomechanics and then observing the intricacies of those systems in motion as they interact with environment and shifting circumstances.

According to my due date, I was two weeks late. My Mom was 39, unexpectedly pregnant with her fourth child, and I was breach. On my due date I turned. She said that it felt like an earthquake. When I was born I was 8 lbs 10 oz so I must have been nearing that size two weeks earlier. Two weeks late, a mother of "advanced maternal age" delivered me naturally. My progress into this world and pace didn't fit neatly into prescriptions around gestation and birth. I'm grateful that my Mom had already born three children so she wasn't so scared. She had a bigger faith in letting the process unfold and letting me emerge as I was ready to.

When a person is born is hotly debated in conversations around abortion. I heard a similar conversation come up recently in the yoga community about when the atman, or soul, enters the vehicle of the body. I heard one yoga teacher say it enters through the sperm in the moment of insemination. Ram Dass gave a lecture in the 70s saying that the soul might enter the body at any time-- at conception, during gestation, or after the baby has been alive for some time.

The cycles of birth, life, and death are more enmeshed than distinct.

There are parts of me that are dead. Some of my skin is dead and it sloughs off. I've been burned and watched new skin be created and form a shield across my body.

The me that was a baby is no more. It died. A child was born. That child died. A teenager was born. That teenager died. An adult was born. As an adult I've been a myriad of people living a myriad of lives. I grieved when some of those lives ended. Others I left gratefully.

And yet, all of those incarnations is still present in who I am in this moment.

I've known a multitude of lives and deaths. Their boundaries were not always so finite.

The other night I gathered with some friends to discuss chapters of Ram Dass' Paths to God.  The book is filled with beautiful suggestions, ruminations, and lectures on the Bhagavad Gita. He spends a good deal of time selling the reader on reincarnation because if you don't believe in reincarnation then some of the related concepts of karma and dharma simply won't make sense.

While we discussed evolving souls and the teachings of the Gita, I thought back to Helen Nearings' book Loving and Leaving the Good Life. She recounted watching her lifelong partner, Scott, near 100 years old. He started to find that he could no longer tote fire wood. That was an indicator to him that the usefulness of this body, this sheath, had run its course. He put his affairs in order. He made sure Helen was OK. They had a birthday dinner for Scott on his 100th birthday. He celebrated with his friends. Afterwards, he stopped eating. It took three weeks for the vitality to run out of his body. He left intentionally. Helen watched a man who entered the world with purpose, lived with vigor, release this life consciously.

Isn't that what we all strive for? Consciousness where previously there was not. A witnessing of the rising and shedding of lives, moments, and identities. A full investment in the moment and a willingness to release willingly when the moment has passed. Letting the transition not fill us with fear, but with awe.

One night in Panama

A few years ago, we set out on an adventure.

Kevin and I were weaving through Panama. We had no firm plans, just many ideas. We'd planted ourselves in the San Blas islands for a few sun-kissed days. In my opinion, the most worthwhile destinations take some doing to get there, so we were boats and shuttles away from internet and phones and infrastructure. We were lounging in hammocks and eating fresh coconut. But it was time to go.

Early in the morning we boarded a small speed boat to cut through the steel waters and low clouds. We passed the Kuna villages hanging off the edges of the islands. We wove through mangroves and canal channels to get back to the beach of mainland Panama. A jeep met us. Sleepy, groggy, loaded in for hours of weaving through mountain switchbacks. Five swerving hours later we were deposited back in Panama City. Mission in mind, we hailed a taxi to the bus depot.

With tickets purchased we boarded an eight hour bus to David. We squeezed ourselves into the back of the bus, where a teenage boy eagerly boarded next to us. I wedged my head against the window to rest while Kevin learned about this boy's apprenticeship at the bus mechanic and his appreciation for graffitti art.

It was dark when we arrived in the northwestern city of David. We had one leg left, a one hour bus ride into the mountains to Boquete. Wearily, we were directed towards a diablo rojo, a refurbished school bus with a big "Boquete" emblazoned over the front windows. Friday night in David meant that teenage couples were on the prowl for parties and secluded spots. The bus filled up with teenagers, arms wrapped around each other. The Phillies paraphernalia by the driver swayed as the bus lurched up the mountain. We were in Chooch territory.

Little by little the bus let out couples as they wandered down dimly lit roads to parties and friends houses. We were left with a leering drunk who stumbled towards us, past us, and then away again. The windows were open and the air soft on this tropical night moving up the Panamanian mountains. We were heavy and cumbersome-- all our luggage was buried between our knees, under the seat, and on our laps. Exhaustion started to weigh on me. We had started our day early, on remote island shores. We had only eaten a bit at various rest stops.

One of those travel moments set in: why am I doing this? Why am I here? I'm tired. I don't know what's going on. This was a mistake. A headache started pulling grey through my forehead. I leaned back and listened to the music the driver had playing. It was tropical and swaying. It lilted with the breeze. Just as suddenly as the weight of my weariness landed, it lifted. It was one of those travel moments: elation that I was here. I get to experience this. The music felt lighter and full of hope. The music held that moment: my exhaustion, Kevin's arm protectively on my shoulder, a wandering drunk, young kids in love, and soft, soft breeze. Of being somewhere unbelievable and going somewhere unknown.

We asked the driver the name of the artist as we disembarked. He growled, "bachata!" We made a note of this magical Panamanian music.

Throughout our trip we would occasionally ask about purchasing Bachata music. It wasn't until a few weeks later that we were back in Panama City and found bootleg CDs being sold. A young sales rep took us through the stacks to the Bachata section. We were sure we'd struck some type of rare gold! We picked up the artist we had heard that night: Aventura. We read the liner notes. Bachata is a type of music originating in the Dominican Republic. OK, we nodded, makes sense. The band Aventura lives in the Bronx.

We felt really bright.

A week later I was back in the US waiting tables at a diner. I waited for my food to come up and heard the music the Mexican chefs were playing in the kitchen. It was Aventura. It was Bachata.

I had heard the song a thousand times before that night in Panama.

But now Bachata is always that night in Panama. And a reminder to hear it all.

Reframe

Working to enjoy

not maintain, cajole, manipulate, change

my body

Working to find sanctuary in

not stress, maintenance, chore

my home

Working to revel in

not weed, mow, neaten, tame, stomp on

the land

Replenish

I have been very quiet on here for awhile. I've felt a strong urge to be more still and more internal. For once, I'm listening.

I've been reading more than I've been writing.
I've been quiet more than active.
I've slept more.
I've moved less.
I've thought too much.
I've been feeling how much healing and growth happens outside of our own impetus. Healing and growth happens in its own time and in its own way.

I've felt some profound healing. I'm still feeling it. It's very subtle and very cool.

I'm feeling more in touch with who I am outside of the stories of "what happened to me." (What I remember: unapologetic happiness, sun-kissed cockiness.)

I've been dreaming of whales and zebras and walk-a-bouts in Europe. (And realizing that feels connected to knowing a me before/behind a me.)

I've been thinking about this adage that gets tossed around in yoga: "If you're physically healthy, practice Ashtanga. If you're injured or ill, practice Iyengar." And I've been thinking that if that's true (and I think it's true) that the same applies to yogic spiritual and philosophical studies. "If you've taken time to work on emotional self-awareness, emotional literacy, and healing, then these studies might be appropriate. If you haven't, if there are unnamed fears driving many of your actions, or a cloudy lack of awareness, spend time understanding your own emotional make-up before delving into spirit." I'm starting to think that we need to teach each other emotional health as much as we teach physical health. In Master Patanjali's 8 limbed path to the state of yoga, clarifying the yamas, or relationships to those we perceive of as other to us, is the first course of action.

I've been thinking a lot about stars and retrogrades. I don't understand astrology. I've started hearing certain things-- Vedic astrology, herbalism-- that perk up my ears. Not that I'm a straight up believer that star alignment is predictive nor on the nose advice. More so the Jungian notion of reaching into our subconscious through symbols. Stars and archetypes are powerful symbols. Symbols are powerful placeholders for beliefs and feelings. Spending time with these symbols and ideas feels good to me. There are also some amazing writers working in astrology (check out chani nicholas) and their words have heft.

I'm feeling made of stardust. I'm feeling astral, Aquarian and Gemini. I'm feeling elemental and metal and earth. I'm feeling Vedic and earthy and full of fire.

I'm leaving space for both and. People are both awful and. Astral. Stars are both stars and. Reminders. Of the bigger picture.

I've been working a lot and working on new, bigger projects. I'm simultaneously stimulated and scared. So I stay the course and let the energy work through. There's no need for the fear to define my efforts.

I've been thinking about hauntings as genetic trauma. I've been reading researchers looking into how trauma passes through generations like a funny shaped nose or hair color. I read case studies on insomniacs remembering the death-by-freezing of an unknown uncle. Healing the insomnia offered a healing for the larger family.

Without the scientific studies, these instances would be characterized as hauntings. I've heard that by honoring ancestors and healing ancestral wounds, we free ancestors. And it helps me understand ghosts. And makes me believe in both. And.

That I'm not meant to be afraid. I am meant to pay attention. I am meant to feel power as energy. To listen.