Saturday, June 27, 2015

Change Through Awareness


Change is happening at so many levels right now and it doesn’t matter what side of the issues you are on, it is rippling through our country like a firestorm. It is as if we are waking up from a long slumber to find a world barely recognizable and it is shaking us at our core. We are finding our voice after being silent and suppressed for decades. For me, it is a beautiful thing, I rejoice in the fact that systems are crashing and old ways of ‘being’ are no longer sustaining. We have a long way to go, but it is happening.


I stayed up late last night reading the flurry of posts on Facebook regarding the Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriage. I watched as people’s profile pictures became covered in rainbow colors. I listened to the Eulogy our president gave in Charleston, I watched as confederate flags came down and rainbow flags went up. I shared my own posts of gratitude for the changes happening. I also realized what a diverse set of ‘friends’ I am connected to through social media. I love the diversity it exposes us to, the connections, agreements, disagreements and debates this platform has brought forth (of course realizing its many restrictions and short comings). Most of all, I love that social media has helped us become more aware and more likely to question those we have trusted for too long. Institutions like McDonald’s, Monsanto and Sea World are crashing because of our awareness. We have better knowledge of how bad factory farming is for our food supply, our health as well as our planet. This global awakening is very exciting to me. Change happens through awareness.

Early this morning while walking on the Oak Leaf trail, my head was swirling with thoughts from everything I read last night. I began to further examine my own thoughts on racism and prejudice. Reading through friends posts last night and the comments those posts created, made me even more aware of how much we really do classify people and how outdated so many of our belief systems are. Statements like I have many gay friends, I have many black friends really bothered me, especially when being used as a way of claiming you are not a prejudice person. Why are they not just friends? Why would we classify even our own friends? I have always believed that if you truly want equality, stop categorizing people. Are we not all just sentient beings, created from the same source? When we record world records, we do so by race; first black man to hit this many home runs, first white man to run this fast. Why are we separating the white and black people, or any other ethnicity in recording those records? Why isn’t it just the fastest person? Why do we continue to have affirmative action? I understand the intent when it started, but doesn’t it just keep us segregated? Why did I as a child get called out of my 4th and 5th grade classrooms to go to the office where they offered me free school supplies because my parents happened to list that part of my nationality was Native American? We were a middle class family (when they still existed) and we could afford school supplies. If you want to provide free supplies, why not supply them to students of families that had financial hardship. Doesn’t that make more sense? Why single me out because of a checked box signifying a specific ethnicity? My parents refused to accept the supplies and eventually stopped listing me as anything other than Caucasian.


As I walked further on the trail this morning, I was rounding a curve through a heavily wooded area of the trail and suddenly I became fully aware of my own programmed responses. A runner came from behind, passing me. He happened to be black and there it was. I instantly felt it in my body before it even came to my awareness and for a split second I had a flash of feeling unsafe. But then something really interesting happened. I looked at his legs, his body type and how he was dressed. It was very clear that he was a runner; probably a marathon runner and I cleared him as a possible threat. I do not consider myself prejudice in any way, so I couldn’t believe I had that initial response, I was horrified actually, and it left me searching for an explanation. Five minutes before this incident, I was walking under an overpass, a darker secluded part of the trail. A white older man was walking towards me. I analyzed the situation – he seemed out of place. He wasn’t dressed in what would seem typical clothes for walking. He seemed over dressed, too many layers, heavier jacket. But he did have a bottle of water in his hand, I rationalized. I was very alert as we passed on the trail and I ‘neutralized’ him as a threat and continued on my way. This entire process happened in seconds. I then tried to convince myself that this was no different than how I acted toward the black man therefore I was indeed not acting from prejudice - right? Wrong. This man I saw coming and I was able to assess the situation with my conscious mind, based on something I was seeing in the present moment that seemed out of place. I convinced myself that I had ‘acted’ the same way towards a white man who seemed out of place and a black man. But what about that initial feeling when the young black man jogged past me? I didn’t see him coming therefore I didn’t have the opportunity to consciously assess the situation, as was the case with the white man.

This is a perfect example of subconscious programming. Because of my age, my race and the city I grew up in, I had a core programming, a belief that was placed there by society. We are a product of our environment and as young children we are programmed by it more than any other time in our life. Becoming aware of subconscious programming also happens to be the work I do with clients; creating an awareness of those programs and understanding how they create our current beliefs, fears and realities. Clearly I still have some programming that I am now aware of. Once you have the awareness you can make a change, you can rewrite the program. By being fully present in the moment I was able to assess if this person was indeed an actual threat, and that shifted me out of a programmed response to one based in the present moment reality.

Fear is a valuable emotion, and this is a perfect example of how it is most helpful to us – it creates awareness by heightening our senses, thereby keeping us safe by keeping us alert. I spend an unusual amount of time in nature, most often alone. Fear is a valuable tool for survival, yet I rarely feel it and I certainly don’t live in it. My awareness of it today was only heightened by the previous evening’s topics. Every day I practice being present in the moment, and I feel that has helped me be in tune with my surroundings and decipher dangerous situations by reading/feeling the energy of a situation. None of which is usually taking place on a real conscious level. I don’t walk around my life analyzing everything, but I am very in tune when something doesn’t ‘feel right’ and I always want that awareness to be free of irrational fear or someone else's beliefs.

Who you are is expressed more in your actions than your words but your words are a window to your subconscious beliefs. People may claim they are not prejudice, but their choice of words may say otherwise. If we are not aware of our subconscious programming that creates our beliefs which is then reflected in our personal realty (personality), we react more out of fear. We as a nation have a long way to go in shifting out of fear, but it starts with the awareness of it. That is what I see happening – people are becoming more aware – and that excites me.



I will leave you with words that I recently shared with a client who is struggling with his marriage. I said to him “love your wife, not because she is your wife, not because you have spent so many years together, not because it is expected of you. Love her because she is a soul who is no less worthy of love than you are. Love her unconditionally for who she is. If the marriage ends or the marriage lasts makes no difference, love her no less”.