Maybe you can relate. You have something to say but you are afraid of your words being minced inside mouths craving attention and regurgitated back at you with foul odor. Or, maybe you find yourself on long Facebook feeds, adrenaline pumping, reading the adversarial banter that has taken away 5–10 minutes, maybe years, of your precious life force. Or, you read something you know will be controversial and you begin to troll for the drama of that person being called out. Maybe, just maybe, you notice a quickening of pulse, a twist in the guts, and a lil something in yourself wanting to call them out, set them straight, make them wrong.
So that you can feel right.
Maybe none of this is you and you were raised by wolves in a faraway fairy forest. I would like to say that none of this is me. It is not my heart and soul anyway. But saying none of this is in me is akin to saying that racism does not exist in me.
I have felt every single one of those above-mentioned glitches in my system. I do not want that inside of my body-mind. So, I postured curiosity and sat inside where my nervous system revs up over someone’s words to scrutinize, cut down, make wrong, call out. I remembered how I felt my guts curdle when someone cut my words down with sharp shaming that did not educate or enlighten one single part of my being.
My empathic intelligence, and years of deep dives into trauma and ancestral/societal wounding, allows me locate and dislodge shadow like a ninja.
So here is what I uncovered. Underneath the cutting commentary, disguised as activism and constructive criticism, is a huge festering wound of deep worthlessness.
WE ALL HAVE IT FOLKS. If you live inside the walls of White Supremacy and capitalism then you have this seductive glitch. It’s inherited. Which makes it so hard to detect. Like white supremacy, you were born with and into worthlessness.
White supremacy, colonialism and capitalism are built on my/your worthlessness. Worthlessness breeds racism, oppression, and economic dominance/inequality.
Making someone wrong so one can feel right and better than, temporarily soothes the battered and un-integrated ego. It lives inside the same breeding ground as addiction. The fix temporarily fills the gap where Soul should be. The fix must be sought again. The addiction loop reinforces itself with every cutting word and further anesthetizes one from true voice. It then becomes systemic.
A majority of constructive criticism, cynicism and wrong seeking is a shadow projection of worthlessness.
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We are being called to rise.
“Use your voice”. “Educate those around you”. “Do your part”. Yes! We need your voice. I need your voice.
However, this also gives every pent-up shadow of worthlessness a green light to speak from behind a mask of do-gooding.
Silence does not always equal violence. If the voice is pandering poison called “I have a right to my opinion” while not doing the deeper work to understand why and where that intense stance comes from, then that voice energetically feeds the violence, the oppression, and the racism.
Feel into your body next time your voice rises to course correct another. Your body may pulse as you splay open your vulnerabilities for all to feed on. But there is a subtle difference between the nervous system being hooked into by trauma and the normal fear felt in the fluttering heart about to speak. Do you know how to sense and be with what rises in your body?
Energy matters. How your nervous system communicates with the collective nervous system matters. If your worthlessness is un- integrated, it will continue to contribute to white supremacy. Yes, I made that leap.
Anyone and anything that has seething worthlessness, even baby teethed worthlessness, will be fed by, need to see, that worthlessness played out externally to get a fix for the inner pain and confusion. The insides need to match the outsides. Police brutality, war, abuse, cutting someone down, needing to find wrongs, gossip, competition etc. are all external projections of inherited worthlessness that fuels/ is fueled by white supremacy.
White supremacy is a power over model. This mechanistic overlay NEEDS your worthlessness to survive. So much so that this virulent mechanism will disguise itself to seduce you. It is highly intelligent. It is a shapeshifter. It makes love to your addictions. It suckles on your traumas.
I have seen it for the past 10 years in the whitewashed Goddess culture. Women being fed lines, mostly from other women!!, about attracting abundance and creating a life of worth- all the while accumulating more external identity that can show the world how Goddessy and powerful they are. All the while BIPOC are being hunted and erased. All the while the Earth is dying under our feet at an increasing pace.
Anytime our abundance is sought within the walls of a capitalist, consumerist, white supremacy model we perpetuate racism. This is not the feminine principle at all. Abundance is not something gained. It is something the feminine inherently is. True worth has been manipulated because it is the endless, regenerative Well of sustenance that gives no living thing power over another.
(However, this isn’t everyone. I feel I need to add this to temper absolutism. The incredible beauty and integrity that many of the feminine movements stand upon may also be why we are seeing an uprising now. That this time is the answer to the prayers and ceremonies of the Goddess)
I digress…
No wonder the “spiritual communities” are getting so much scrutiny. Regardless of how centered in the heart the intention is, more often than not, that intention is quickly whitewashed and commodified. It is so deeply ingrained in us. The “best” and most trying of us- it’s there. It’s in our collective and individual, epigenetic nervous system. So that is where it has to be dismantled.
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Appropriation rises out of this shadow, this worthlessness, this trauma.
Learning from another culture is a high honor- designed to inspire the medicine in another. Retrieving that inspired medicine takes time- a slow and regenerative surrender to embodiment of Soul. Embodiment of Soul takes one upstream. One must become a salmon.
Capitalism and worthlessness have little time for slow regenerative processes. They have zero time for Soul. They love your traumas. They know not of intuitive wisdom that guides one home.
As a white woman, as a human being who loves other human beings, who deeply loves this Earth- including the slug that eats my garden and the rodent that just chewed through my car’s transmission, my work is to track these/this shadow(s) in my every day experience and unwind it/them from my nervous system.
Because this system we are all in runs deeeep, to embody the salmon, and live at that level of trust in the narrow upstream path, is HARD.
White supremacy is a highly intelligent organism and needs you to be a sheeple. And like any thriving organism, it will fight for its life and transform itself into many entities to dissuade the infiltrating force that is seeking to dismantle, altar or change its function. Often it masks itself in a face that looks friendly, compliant and in alignment with the infiltrating remedy. It is a virus after all.
Again, I see this with the women’s movement. If the patriarchal system detects the feminine rising as a real threat (*witch* it does), it will cleverly invite the feminine dynamic into spaces as tokens. Women in government and high corporate positions provide just enough pacification to keep “us feeling productive and worthy”. Just enough laws pass that support Life inclusive principles and freedoms to look like progress, but never enough to dislodge a cog in the machine. We become “abundant” upon a patriarchal, white supremacist designed pulpit. May we remain sober from this poisonous intoxicant as our BIPOC communities rise again. As they must.
There was always a hole inside of me when I listened out for our collective song. So many voices gone for good, so many oppressed by the weight of this machine. There was a whole rainbow body of wisdom missing- until now.
Unfortunately, these voices are still mostly being sung inside a system, that at its root, has ZERO cellular anatomy based in true worth, wealth, abundance and equality. The roots are fed by a soulless machine designed to silence, divide, oppress and conquer.
(I hear you. Yes, there have been some extremely valuable gifts that have come forth. May we not throw the baby out… But may we remember that all of our inventions likely have a cousin creation based in Life inclusivity. May we remember our incredible capacities for communication and invention that do not harm)
When true worth is forgotten, worth that rises from indigeneity and belonging, then the system can so easily replace the lostness with false value identities.
I have said, in the company of those who really know my heart, because it sounds like all the things it could sound like, that when a BIPOC, BIWOC or woman of any color has taken a seat upon the reigning political pulpit it will mean we have completely forgotten how strong and “powerful” we are as a people.
When we remember our song, unify with Life prolific laws and stand aligned with a system that is based in sovereign governance- there are forces of profound reformation and regeneration that will come to ally our intent. This is wisdom I carry in my body. I hold zero doubt about the pathway to this realignment. I am aware that this is a far-off idealist, Hawk’s- eye view gifted to me when I zoom out to the macrocosmic Ancestral realms. I am aware I am mostly alone, swimming upstream towards a North Star.
I understand why, at this monumental moment, simply turning towards the Wheel of Life, and away from the machine, cannot happen. It may not in my lifetime. I am actually ok with that. I feel that the revolutions and uprisings are what are supposed to be- because that is what is happening.
I am aware that we are not yet fully in that moment of the great remembering, the hundredth monkey etc. A slow marrying of the sacred to the profane helps avoid overwhelm of the holistic nervous system. We are clearing traumas. They often need first to be seen to be cleared.
At this time, to return to those ideal, Life prolific ways for all beings everywhere, the Voice of revolution must first be broadcast from within the ingrained, dominant system that most ears are still attuned. In theory, the voice of one BIPOC in political office will begin to shift agendas towards Life inclusion. The trickle effect will begin to have impacts everywhere in this country and potentially beyond. Add 10… then we begin to see something. In theory.
“Those who once fought against equality and love” (tracking my judgement here), over time, and again in theory, will feel a little something in their heart that was not there before. To rest in the heart at night with less contraction, anger, trauma, and violence is invaluable; to rest in the heart is to find a gold mine. Maybe then the ears so closed to Life’s song, those who project violence, hate and worthlessness into the collective web because of the trauma, political poison, and segregation wounds, will begin to open to new voices. Voices that sing of Soul, of people in right relationship to all living things, of Love.
Voice is an art form. There is a way to help someone understand where their opinion/action may be missing the mark, or perpetuating racism and oppression, without shaming and pacifying personal unintegrated worthlessness.
Channel the wise elder- oops that’s right- you don’t know any. Really though, see the wise grandmother with a stern gaze that lets you know in your bones where your boundaries are and how to course correct without one shred of shame but with bundles of love. A wise elder told me recently that there are no words for shame and doubt in Native languages. But that wise grandmother speaks from a body of integrated wisdom.
“Knowledge is only rumor until it lives in the bones- then it is wisdom”~ The Asaro Tribe .
I have been listening to Resmaa Menakem, the author of ‘My Grandmother’s Hands’. His whole premise around educating people about racism stems from decades of understanding that white supremacy lives inside the body. It deeply embeds itself into the epigenetic structures of the nervous system. Unfortunately, for complete eradication of viral, epigenetic worthlessness and white supremacy, one must eradicate colonial power structures from one’s life. Meaning- you must become a salmon. There are few to no solutions inside of a system 100% designed to oppress. It will throw a bunch of coping skills your way so you feel artificially sustained and “happy”- but the core wound will still fester underneath.
Very few want to be a salmon. It still seems easier to conquer the machine than to simply turn towards Life. It still feels easier for most to live in pain rather than love. Our nervous systems are wired to be adept in and addicted to trauma and worthlessness. That addiction feeds the collective nervous system, so it stays the dominant model we see played out externally. That is how trauma works. It creates what is inside the organism on the outside, in hopes of restoring to equilibrium.
In my opinion, this is where my work, the work, must begin. Become well informed about how trauma weaves inside of you. Fortify yourself with original wisdom so that when/if you decide enough is enough and step away from systems of oppression, you have the resilience to keep going because you have redefined your worth and deep innate sense of sovereign self. Your voice is guided by Soul.
Know every corner of your life where worthlessness gets hooked because it is also living alongside the inner racist. Do everything you can to reclaim your true inheritance to stop robbing others of theirs.
There in that intersection of your worthlessness and racism lives a wound- that connects us all. In that intersection you will meet others forging through the healing upstream waters, reclaiming the one and only true navigation tool ever needed. You will not be alone.
When I sit inside my wounds and allow them to be known with curiosity, I begin to pattern the original medicine of my Soul as the first responder; a little something known as self-love rises to the surface. I do not fear any single part of my feeling body. I invite it close. I make the subconscious conscious, so it too has a chance to learn and be reformed, or die in the love and be gone. I begin to regain my sovereignty which, in itself, is a “defense” against predatory life suckling energy.
Use your voice. But, first take a few slow breaths to understand which channel it is rising from inside your body. Words cast spells. Words carry energy. You will still be messy. You will still project woundedness. But when it’s married to curiosity + course correction you help weave a new mantra for humanity from your insides. .
I speak from what I have learned as a pilgrim of my interiority. We are all connected. I do not want this worthlessness inside of me anymore. I do not want to live inside the walls of White Supremacy one more day. I need your help. Thank you for being a salmon.
