The Spiritual Work of Healing Our Racial Karma*
Jul 09, 2020
With the most recent police killings of Black citizens in this country, more and more non-Black people are waking up to the reality of the evolving forms of institutionalized violence that Black communities in the U.S. have faced since the first enslaved people were brought to this continent in 1619. The need for healing the painful history and ongoing karma of racial violence and oppression on this land is urgent.
Racial justice is a keystone of all that needs healing in our world. If we do not recognize, heal, and repair the racism that is in the very foundations of the beginnings of this country, we will not see meaningful positive change in any of the other ways we might seek. Whether you care about issues of economic justice, environmental degradation and climate change, gun violence, human rights for immigrants, our military presence throughout the world, toxic masculinity and sexual violence — all of these issues are inextricably connected with the devaluation of certain groups, and widespread notions of superiority and inferiority.
Racism enabled the displacement and genocide of Indigenous Americans and the enslavement and forced migration of African people. As Hop Hopkins writes in his Sierra Club article, Racism is Killing the Planet, “Just as the settlers had to believe and tell stories to dehumanize the people they killed, plundered, and terrorized, today’s systems of extraction can only work by dehumanizing people... If our society valued all people’s lives equally, there wouldn’t be any sacrifice zones to put the pollution in.”
Thich Nhat Hanh says we can heal the past only by healing the present moment. The legacies of genocide and enslavement on which this country was created are no less relevant because they are in the past. They continue on in different forms unless and until they are healed. Everyone living in North America is living with this karma 400+ years in the making, and we must actively heal and repair the evils of the past that most of us still benefit or suffer from today. While we cannot change the past, we can educate ourselves and our communities about how these legacies of genocide and enslavement, dehumanization and disconnection, continue today.
We can engage in the RAIN practice of first RECOGNIZING and ACCEPTING the ongoing legacies of racial violence in the U.S. Notice the feelings that may arise when we do so, from avoidance and denial, to guilt and shame, to heartbreak and despair. From recognizing and allowing we can further INVESTIGATE the impact not only in society, but in ourselves. For generations, people of color have been identifying and attempting to heal the impact of ancestral trauma. But it is crucial that white people also touch and heal the pain of the karma of this land for collective healing to happen.
What is the mental, emotional, spiritual, and cultural impact of dehumanizing others, consciously or unconsciously buying into notions of superiority, and cutting oneself off from the suffering of other beings? How are these forms of disconnection and trauma passed down through generations? Where can we find white supremacy internalized and taken for granted, like the air we breathe, no matter what our own racial or ethnic background? How can we transcend the delusions that we are mired in? Who, what, and how do we NURTURE in order to heal the harms that were done in the past and that continue today?
These answers, our path to awakening and liberation, will look different for each person. But it’s critical for our collective well-being that we all engage deeply in this practice. Because only after our society reflects that Black Lives Matter, can we truly say that all lives matter.