Essence of the One
The following post is by my colleague, Shams Tara Wesley, Acupuncture Physician. Shams will be co-facilitating the program for Healing Racism & Bigotry. You’ll be hearing a lot from her over the next month, God willing. She’ll be on the livestream calls, interacting with you in the facebook group for the program and contributing regular posts. Thank you for joining us for any part of this program. You are welcome to participate in any way you feel called. Please read on…”
Tonight’s Live-Stream discussion is the kick-off for the FREE month-long program to heal the subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle acts and thoughts of racism. You are invited to join us for a journey of exploration and transformation.
Welcome!
We’re excited you’ve landed here today, and we hope you’ll be joining us for the program. By joining this program, you’re taking a real step on your personal healing journey and our collective journey of world healing! This is Day 1, Week 1 of the 4-Week Heal Your Inner Racist program.
With God’s help and guidance, this program will support the healing of any racism, discrimination, and separation within your heart. We commend you on your courage and wisdom and we pray that this program is of service to you, those in your life, and the world.
Who Are We?
I’d like to take a moment to introduce myself, Shams Tara Wesley, and the co-creator of this program, Mastura Debra Graugnard. We are two white women who grew up in white families that existed within predominantly white communities. This program is for white people who would like to heal and transform racist thoughts, beliefs, and actions that contribute to individual and systemic racism.
We are aiming this at white people specifically because we are intimately familiar with the subtle and obvious biases present within white culture. Debra and I have families with members who have racist beliefs and have committed racist actions.
We’re both working hard to transform the discrimination we find within ourselves, and we’d like to share some of what we’ve learned in order to make the world a better place–a place of peace, love, mercy, justice, freedom, and equality for all people, everywhere.
Why Racism? Why Now?
Racism and discrimination are practiced within the U.S. and around the world, both toward individuals and within the groups and organizations that run our world.
White people have been benefiting from racist systems in local, state, and federal systems for hundreds of years. As a result, white people often don’t even notice when they are participating in and profiting from systemic racism. It’s such a basic part of the mainstream white worldview and culture–it’s the metaphorical air we breathe and water we drink–and we often don’t even notice it’s there.
You may have noticed that the U.S. is having a crisis around race. Police officers are killing black people in disproportionate numbers–and have been doing so for a long time. Often, officers are using excessive force and brutality, and they are trained in a militaristic style more commensurate to war than to managing civilian crime and keeping the peace.
People aren’t taking this lying down anymore. Black people are speaking up, louder than ever before. They are peacefully protesting and making their voices heard while allowing the rest of the country to see only a small part of the deep pain they carry from centuries of systematic discrimination.
Some white people are also rising up, trying to change the systems that ultimately hurt all of us. We need to dramatically increase the number of white folks doing this type of work, for the sake of our brothers and sisters in humanity.
When Native Americans had an important decision to make, they would consider how the decision would affect the next 7 generations of descendants. What will our country and our world be like in 7 generations if we don’t heal our hearts of passive and active violence? How will our descendants and the descendants of all races live together in peace, love, mercy, justice, freedom, and equality, if we don’t begin now?
White people! Hear the cries of your brothers and sisters from other races and change this world into a place of racial justice and equality! Now! Not later, NOW!
White people, we need to look within, to find the places within the layers of personality, belief systems, wounds, and experiences that harbor racism. Racism stems from beliefs of superiority and entitlement which are rooted in fear, jealousy, anger, and more fear. We will be exploring this in more detail as we progress through the program.
If each white person reading this takes the time to look within and uses the healing techniques we teach to transform even one racist belief or pattern of behavior, we have all succeeded in making the world a more peaceful place. We all win.
The Gandhi Process
We will be using the Gandhi Process every day for the first two weeks of the program. A couple of weeks ago, Debra posted a video starring Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, Arun Gandhi. Here it is again, in case you missed it the first time around:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/essenceoftheone/2016/07/arun-gandhi-speaks-on-passive-acts-of-violence/.
In this video, Arun Gandhi describes a process his grandfather used to help him to look within and identify the areas where he was engaging in acts of passive violence and active violence.
We are going to use this process to look within ourselves and identify acts of passive and active violence. For the first 2 weeks, this will be our work.
To facilitate your healing, Debra and I are creating a safe space for you to do your inner work. Through our videos and blog posts we are transmitting the qualities of divine love, mercy, and non-judgment so that you have the containment to be as honest with yourself as possible.
Being honest about the thoughts and beliefs that live within your heart and mind is critical. If you aren’t feeling comfortable enough to admit what’s in there, how can you transform it? Our goal is to support you as you find the places of darkness within, so that you can transform them into Divine qualities using Sufi healing practices.
Each day we’ll offer a blog post that examines how passive and active violence manifests within our world, which we hope will help you to explore how it’s operating within your own interior and exterior worlds.
Join Us For Our First Live Call!
Our first live call will be Wednesday, August 10, 2016, at 8:30 pm. Debra and I will be live-streaming on the Essence of the One blog: Click here to access Live-Stream.
Once you’re on the call with us, you’ll be able to make comments and ask questions in real-time. We will respond and interact with you directly, making the process so much more powerful for all of us. This is your chance to deeply engage with the process! Take your chance to connect with us and begin this healing journey!
Your contributions to this class are part of what make it so powerful. When you are able to share what you’re working on in an authentic way, it helps others to do the same. Without honesty and vulnerability, there cannot be healing. Without taking the time to see where the darkness resides within us, we cannot heal it and create a just world for all of us.
Join us in creating a better world for ourselves and for the next 7 generations of humanity. Starting now.
We’d like to extend a special thank you to Arun Gandhi, Founder of M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, for his inspiring presentation at the Festival of Faiths in Louisville, KY, in May 2016. A special than you to the Center for Interfaith Relations as well for putting on the Festival of Faiths.
Photo credits: Adobe Stock © FlemishDreams #11533250
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