Recently I heard an interview between two black people, a journalist and a Trump supporter.
As the two discussed the history of the evolution of black progress in this country the conversation turned to “Black Wall Street” in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as well as other places, where blacks had created a self-sustaining economic system that allowed them to grow and flourish; only to have it all burned down and destroyed by white people.
The Trump supporter agreed with the journalist that these were indeed pinnacles of prosperity and economic growth for the black community at the time but found it almost impossible to agree that white people were to blame.
“Wait”, the journalist said, “it WAS white people who did that!”
“Yes, but it was those white people.”
I found this to be a curious thing.
A Curious Racism Thing
One thing that’s curious is that there are certain ethnic blacks who seem subconsciously to want to, need to, identify with the white majority of this country, as if that allows them acceptance into “The Club”.
Do they just want so badly to be a part of a group they’ve been excluded from to willingly overlook all of the gross injustices heaped upon them for centuries?
What is the reward for forgive and forget?
Does being a supporter of a known racist make them immune to those injustices, or just blind to them?
What makes someone love someone who hates them? Does the lure of charisma blind them to reality?
What It Means to Be Anti-Racist
2015 saw a sweep of incidents that propelled the Black Lives Matter Movement into a major force. Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland and the Charleston Church shooting are but a few of the gross injustices that highlighted in no uncertain terms, blatant Racism.
It wasn’t too long following the George Floyd protest aftermath that I noticed a decided shift in public sentiment.
Not only within the populace, but within myself.
I found myself caught up in a ground swell of remorseful anti-racism, an overwhelming urge to make right the great injustices of the past that continued to perpetuate in the present; a critical mass tipping point of… STOP! Enough is enough!
Whenever I would pass a person of color in public, I had a very strong urge to be overly polite; an urge to make ingratiating overtures to any and all black people I came into contact with.
I felt like I just wanted to reach out and hug them and say, “I’m so sorry!”
I wanted them to know that I love them, ALL of them.
I felt a strong sense of remorse and sorrow and empathy.
I wanted to let my fellow Americans know that racism is NOT okay, and I would do my part to make sure it didn’t infect me.
I Know What Racism Feels Like
But I’m white in America, so it feels somewhat disingenuous to even say that. And perhaps I subconsciously manifested a circumstance just so I could experience a tiny taste of what it does feel like.
While Ubering I encountered a young black woman what was big into Primemerica. She recruited me into her organization and invited me to their meetings.
On certain nights of the week, they had raucous meetings in a room where they celebrated all who had achieved milestones. With everyone lining the large room in a circle, achievers were called out by name who would then run around, slapping the outstretched hand of everyone in the circle who smiled and congratulated them as they went by.
It was quite a lively, fun event each time. I assume. I only attended two of them.
It didn’t bother me that I was the only white person there. As a self-identified anti-racist, I felt honored to be invited and included as an equal part of this organization and so I enthusiastically participated.
The second time though, after I had successfully completed a test, I was one of the ones to make the congratulatory rounds around the room.
I made eye contact with each person in the circle as my hand touched theirs in the pass.
While most exuded a happy, welcoming, accepting acknowledgement of my presence, some were decidedly not so accepting.
It felt like hate. Or at the very least, tolerable disdain for my presence.
Taken aback by that experience, I consequently left the organization.
Not that I blamed anyone. How could I?
I’m white in America.
To be a “Conscious Anti-Racist”, I needed to experience racism firsthand.
On a spiritual level, that was perhaps the extent of my soul’s agenda in that experience, to feel and know both sides of the equation.
Racism’s Best Friend, RAGE
Another thing happened where I got to experience ‘both sides of the equation.’ Again, while Ubering.
It wasn’t long after Michael Brown had been shot in the back in Fergeson, Indiana.
It happened in a part of town that skirted the sketchier areas. I turned down a street I had grown up around. A declining mall on one side and an old, quiet neighborhood on the other, now bifurcated by a major interstate and gradually being gentrified by new, larger homes replacing the smaller, older ones.
On the two-lane offshoot of the highway where the DMV still stands, I encountered three young black men walking right down the middle of the street with their backs to me.
The two on the right, who looked to be in their twenties, turned to see me approaching and quickly scooted out of the way for me to pass.
The third one though, was a bit older, in his thirties I guessed. He turned to give me a look of hateful defiance and continued to walk right down the middle of the road, forcing me to follow him until I could pass.
This was the moment it hit me…
RAGE. I felt it well up inside me. I heard it’s urges, “Just step on the gas and run over the motherfucker!” (I don’t talk like that.)
It shocked me!
But I knew better, so I knew it wasn’t ME.
The thing about life-taking energies, when you feel the feelings, and think the thoughts, it’s quite natural to assume those thoughts and feelings are yours.
Here’s the truth: they’re not.
I just had to contain myself as I waited for the opportunity to drive past this guy.
Afterwards, I had to stop and collect myself. Angry, hateful rage is not a fun feeling. It makes you think the only way to relieve it is to DO something. To act!
Get even. Get over. Pay back. That’s what hate/rage wants.
It wants to lash out. It craves violence; mean, vindictive violence!
Revenge is the only thing RAGE wants.
So steeped in vulnerability, fear and powerlessness, its ONLY recourse is extreme, physical, survival-based FIGHT.
If I had a gun, would I have shot him?
I wouldn’t, but RAGE sure would!
Later, as I reflected on what happened, I realized exactly how officer Darren Wilson must have felt when he shot Michael Brown in the back.
It became perfectly clear. He felt that same RAGE.
And here’s my point: it’s an energy.
IT’S NOT WHO WE ARE.
The Meaning of Malu
As an ever-present inherent part of the World of Form, life-taking energies, malu as the ancient Hawaiians called them, will take every opportunity to barge into your brain with their thoughts and feelings.
Indeed, it is their “mission” to manifest themselves through us and express what they are: anger, rage, jealousy, guilt, fear, greed, contempt, etc. Their mission is to provide Contrast in the World of Form and so they do what they were designed to do.
Like a virus in a computer. Wherever there is a void of consciousness, people don’t know any better, and a circumstance provides an opening, they interject themselves.
Not only do they do this anywhere and everywhere an opportunity presents itself, these energies only exist in the illusory dimension of form, and so they have a survival need to express themselves and therefore, exist and fulfill their mission.
Had I been unconscious, didn’t know better, I would have thought those thoughts and feelings of RAGE were mine. But I knew better beforehand, so I knew not to identify with them, even though it sure did FEEL like me at the time.
An opportunity/circumstance presents itself, and we will either let those thoughts and feelings in, or not. In my case, I unconsciously let them in, but I knew not to identify with them.
This is spiritual work. You either learn how life works: the Law of Love and the Law of Attraction, or you get played like a fiddle by nefarious energies. As my spiritual teacher used to say,
“You can learn the easy way, or the hard way. You get to choose.”
Spiritual enlightenment is in reality, a practical skill because it gives you Choice; how to think, how to feel, whether to react or how to respond.
As in my example, I got to Choose (to not end up in prison for impulsively running over the dude). Unfortunately, Officer Wilson had to learn the hard way.
Out-To-Lunch
How many times have you heard someone say, “I was beside myself with envy, guilt, rage, anger, hate, jealousy, fill-in-the-blank life-taking energy?”
They WERE beside themselves because an opportunistic energy stepped in and took over, pushing them to the side.
People will sometimes say, “I don’t know what got into me.”
Victims of horrible violence have described seeing their attackers’ eyes glaze over and something “evil” glare back at them.
You cannot argue, reason or rationalize with malu. And the person who is identified with whatever it is, is checked out, not there.
“Evil” is “Live” spelled backwards. Life-taking is the opposite of Life-Giving. The ancient Hawaiians called these energies Akua.
Life-Giving is our natural state. When we are “checked in” we are grounded in a more Conscious state that is reflective of our Divine Nature: sweet, kind, gracious, loving, forgiving, compassionate, empathetic, helpful, joyous.
We have a “Guidance System”, an energetic ladder that elevates or descends. To be “Conscious” means to be aware of where you are on the scale and make a deliberate decision about where you WANT to be.
Malu provide Contrast
Whether you are black, white, blue, green or purple, RACISM is a life-taking energy.
And like all life-taking energies, they have a purpose. That purpose is to provide CONTRAST.
Malu, are here to dramatize for us, the difference between that which is Life-Giving and that which is life-taking. (What would a good movie, or life, be without malu?)
As Divine Beings, we come here to experience something other than the World of Spirit; the place where Love, Light, Peace and Joy are Reality.
But without the Clarity of Contrast, even Love, Light, Peace and Joy are somewhat meaningless.
Are People Racist?
People are “Divine Beings” as per the logic of All-That-Is.
If we call All-That-Is “Divinity”, the Entity that makes up everything that exists in every dimension, that has Consciousness of Itself, and we are all a part of IT; then we are all “Divine Beings” by that definition.
The World of Form is the place we go to pretend that we are not Divine Beings for a brief speck of time. Racism is just one of the many life-taking energies inherent in the World of Form, that we come to dance with while we’re here.
Racism is the illogical, irrational, unreal belief that some people are better than, worth more than or superior to others. Spiritually speaking, we ALL came from the same Source, are made from the same Source, and go back to the same Source. It is virtually impossible for anyone to be worth more or less than anyone else.
But this is the World of Spirit perspective.
The nature of malu is that they don’t make sense, and they don’t need to. Having been around for centuries, they are quite capable of rationalizing their existence in the World of Form with thoughts like:
“Those people are stupid, dirty, uneducated _________, who only want to __________, so they don’t deserve __________, so we have to __________.”
The Malu Lie: that any living being on this planet deserves to be treated like an object.
The nature of malu is to make some “other” less than, an object, not even a person, much less a Divine Being. This is the basis of vilification, defilement and justified aggression, oppression and every other form of subtle or explicit violence toward anyone else.
They only need an opportunity to hijack your brain and get you to express what they are to allow themselves to exist and therefore, fulfill their mission: wreak havoc in every way possible so that we Diving Beings can benefit from the Clarity contrast provides.
It’s painful, but when we’ve had enough pain, we Wake Up.
It’s a Perfect, self-correcting system.
People are not racist, malu are.
Perfectly Imperfect
It will always be a constant tug-of-war between the energies of Form and the energies of Spirit.
One is based in Reality, the other in illusion.
In the end, we go back to where we came from with what God craves, a diversity of experiences and therefore Meaning.
When the first guy said it was “those” white people, what he really meant was it was “those” energies that did terrible things.
It is possible to acknowledge that people do terrible things while at the same time, acknowledging they are Divine Beings.
Indeed, it is imperative to acknowledge that. Otherwise, malu win and the life-taking cycle is perpetuated by reinforcing the idea that they are what they are expressing rather than a Divine Being who is unconsciously identified with a life-taking energy.
We can Wake Up and Choose the path of Love and live in Heaven on Earth OR stay unconscious and live in a painful hell.
Either way, it’s all a Perfect Part of a Perfect Plan.
Now that you know, what will you choose then next time malu come barging in?
There’s a gap whereby you have a couple of seconds to catch it. Mind the gap!
Aloha!