You Can't Meditate This Away (Race, Rage, and the Responsibilities of Meditators)
This episode features meditation teacher and writer Sebene Selassie discussing how meditators can engage with the pain and anger coursing through America due to systemic anti-Blackness. She emphasizes using practice to face reality, understand historical context, and respond wisely, while also highlighting the importance of self-care and allyship.
Deep Dive Analysis
18 Topic Outline
Meditators' Role in Facing Societal Pain
Waking Up: Facing Reality and Understanding Systemic Issues
Impact of Privilege: Dan's Nervousness vs. Sebene's Experience
Spiritual Bypass: Avoiding Historical and Cultural Context
Internalized Anti-Blackness and Societal Conditioning
White Fragility: Shame as Self-Centeredness
Sebene's Decolonization Journey: Unlearning Anti-Blackness
Recognizing Privilege: Different Impacts of Racial Injustice
Systemic Inequities: Mortality Rates and Health Disparities
Engaging with Suffering: Compassion Practice and Opening Up
Self-Care for Black Communities Amidst Trauma
Allyship: Avoiding Performative Guilt and Doing Internal Work
Resources for Understanding Whiteness and Inequality
Overcoming Denial: The Persistence of Conditioning
Meditation for Seeing Bias and Making Choices
Hope and Progress Amidst Messiness
Navigating Fear in Race Conversations
Final Encouragement: Continuous Learning and Engagement
8 Key Concepts
Waking Up (in meditation)
In meditation, 'waking up' means moving beyond merely becoming a good meditator to actively leaning into and facing reality, including uncomfortable pain and anger. This process ultimately grants greater agency, wisdom, and freedom by acknowledging what is truly present.
Spiritual Bypass
This refers to the tendency within meditation and Dharma communities to focus exclusively on individual, personal inner work, thereby avoiding or 'bypassing' the larger, often uncomfortable, historical, cultural, and systemic contexts of suffering and injustice.
Systemic Anti-Blackness
This concept describes the deeply ingrained cultural and societal construct where Black people are positioned at the bottom, leading to pervasive unconscious bias and systemic oppression that is absorbed by everyone in the culture from a young age.
White Fragility
This is the emotional defensiveness, often manifesting as shame or guilt, experienced by white people when confronted with their own biases. This reaction is considered self-centered, as it diverts attention from the actual issue of racial injustice and prevents clear seeing and productive engagement.
Double Consciousness
Coined by W.E.B. Du Bois, this describes the internal experience of Black individuals who perceive both the societal messages (often anti-Black) and their own lived reality, leading to a complex and often discordant sense of self.
Decolonizing Your Own Mind
This is the conscious and ongoing process of unlearning internalized oppression, cultural thoughts, and biases absorbed from society. It involves critically examining and parsing out what is genuinely true from ingrained narratives about dominance and self-worth.
Allyship
Supporting marginalized communities, particularly for white people, means actively listening to people of color as experts, seeking out and learning from their resources and perspectives, and processing one's own discomfort and guilt with other white people to avoid burdening people of color with emotional labor.
Race as a Social Construct
This understanding posits that race is not a biological reality but rather a concept invented and maintained by human societies. It highlights that racial categories and their associated meanings are culturally and historically determined, not inherent.
12 Questions Answered
Meditators can use their practice to 'wake up' by leaning into and facing reality, including pain and anger, which provides more agency and wisdom to respond effectively rather than getting caught up in the practice itself.
Surprise often stems from a lack of perspective and understanding of the historical causes and conditions (karma) that have led to the current systemic issues and ongoing oppression, indicating a need to pay more attention.
People may be uncomfortable with the conversation, preferring to keep meditation separate from 'messy' life aspects, and there can be an internalized bias against certain teachings or teachers, reflecting broader societal anti-Blackness.
No, bias is a human condition absorbed from society, not a condemnation. Seeing it clearly, without shame or guilt, allows for navigation and different choices, as it simply makes one a 'human person' conditioned by culture.
It can manifest as a rejection of Black culture and a preference for white culture, leading to a 'double consciousness' where societal messages conflict with personal identity and self-acceptance.
For white people, incidents like George Floyd's death may be seen as horrific but distant events, while for Black people, they are deeply personal and cause outrage due to an understanding of systemic and continuous oppression.
Effective allyship involves listening to people of color as experts, reading and learning from their perspectives, and processing discomfort and guilt with other white people, rather than burdening people of color with emotional labor or 'mammying' white discomfort.
Denial is deeply ingrained conditioning. Continuous investigation, interrogating biases, and consciously changing consumption habits (e.g., media, social media feeds) are necessary to widen perspective and sustain awareness, as conditioning runs deep and doesn't disappear easily.
Meditation helps stabilize and ground the mind in the body, which exists in the present, allowing one to slow down, notice habituated conditioning and patterns of thought without believing them, and thus make different, more conscious choices.
No, meditation cannot 'meditate away' injustice or oppression. However, it provides perspective, grounding, and balance, enabling individuals to respond to these issues from clarity and kindness, rather than being flooded by habituated tendencies.
Yes, hope exists because current events are revealing deep-seated patterns and issues that can no longer be denied, leading to a 'cleaning out of the wound' and a growing collective consciousness and desire for change, despite the slow pace of progress.
Recognize that internalized racism is a cultural absorption, not a personal failing. Engage in the 'messiness' of the process, as it's necessary to clean out the infection of societal harm, and remember that it's better to engage than to push it all away.
21 Actionable Insights
1. Practice to Wake Up
Use meditation practice to wake up, lean in, and face uncomfortable realities, which helps you gain agency, wisdom, and perspective.
2. Connect Inner & Outer Work
Recognize that individual inner work and understanding broader historical/cultural context are intertwined for true freedom, avoiding spiritual or cultural bypass.
3. Commit to Continuous Learning
Engage in a continuous, long-term process of learning and deepening understanding about complex issues, embracing a beginner’s mindset rather than expecting quick answers.
4. Embrace Messiness
Engage with the messiness of difficult conversations and societal issues rather than trying to push them away, as engagement is necessary for healing and progress.
5. Shift from Shame to Curiosity
When personal biases or shortcomings arise, observe any shame without self-centeredness, then return to curiosity and interest to enable better decisions and engagement.
6. See Guilt as Centering Whiteness
Recognize that personal guilt and shame can center whiteness; instead, continuously pay attention to the daily experiences and systemic oppression of Black people.
7. Ground in the Body
Begin meditation practice by grounding in the body to stabilize the mind, allowing you to observe thoughts and emotions without being swept away or believing them.
8. Notice Unconscious Biases
Actively observe your initial thoughts about people, your media consumption, and where your attention is drawn, then question those assumptions to identify and address unconscious biases.
9. Unlearn Biases Consciously
Actively work to unlearn internalized biases by reading, studying, taking classes, and understanding the historical context of how these biases are absorbed from culture.
10. Diversify Information Sources
Examine your social media feeds and general media consumption; consciously seek out and learn from diverse perspectives, especially from people of color, to widen your understanding.
11. White People Talk to White People
White individuals should initiate and consistently process conversations about racial issues with other white people to avoid burdening people of color with education and emotional labor.
12. Listen to People of Color
Actively listen to and learn from people of color by reading their books and articles, following them on social media, and supporting their work as academics and teachers.
13. Practice Compassion
Envision people who are suffering (e.g., doctors, patients, those on food lines) and consciously wish them freedom from suffering, fear, and physical distress.
14. Prioritize Self-Care for Service
Practice self-care, including rest, healthy eating, exercise, meditation, inspiring reading, and journaling, to maintain well-being and effectively serve others, especially when engaging with difficult issues.
15. Feel Emotions, Drop Story
Allow yourself to fully feel emotions without judgment, separating the raw feeling from the accompanying narrative or story to prevent getting caught in rumination.
16. Manage Media Consumption
Stay informed about current events but prevent news and social media from dictating your feelings; balance information intake with self-care to avoid being overwhelmed.
17. Engage in Allyship
Participate in active allyship, such as physically supporting Black people in protests and creating protective barriers, without instigating violence.
18. Volunteer for Diverse Exposure
Volunteer in ways that allow you to encounter and interact with people from different walks of life to broaden your perspective and jar yourself out of self-centered tendencies.
19. Liberation is Interconnected
Recognize that true personal freedom and joy are found by opening to all of life, including pain and suffering, and are ultimately dependent on the liberation of all people.
20. Use Practice for Clarity
Utilize meditation for perspective, grounding, and balance to respond to injustice with clarity and kindness, rather than trying to meditate away the issues themselves.
21. Look Inward and Outward
To see clearly and gain full understanding, look both inward at personal conditioning and outward at external realities and systemic issues.
10 Key Quotes
We're not practicing to become good meditators... We're practicing to wake up ultimately. And waking up means leaning in and really facing reality, which is sometimes not comfortable and right now particularly painful.
Sebene Selassie
Bias doesn't make you a bad person. It just makes you a human person.
Sebene Selassie
You're not thinking your thoughts, you're thinking the culture's thoughts.
Sebene Selassie
If you're a white person, you look at what happened to Mr. Floyd. And you say, oh, that that that is awful. I am you know, you're horrified. But if you're a black person, he said, you get up and throw something and maybe want to kick something. It's just a whole it's an order of magnitude different.
Dan Harris
Guilt and shame as centering and really centering whiteness. When actually the challenge is continuing to pay attention to what's happening to Black people on a daily basis.
Sebene Selassie
We don't find freedom and joy despite or to spite pain and suffering. We find freedom and joy because we open to all of life, and that includes the pain and suffering.
Sebene Selassie
Don't make me fight for liberation while swimming in your tears.
Dan Harris
Once you see it, you can't unsee it. It's like the Matrix.
Sebene Selassie
Our liberation is dependent on other people's liberation. So we can gain some measure of maybe less stress and less tension in our lives, but we won't be truly free until everyone is free.
Sebene Selassie
The process is going to be messy at best.
Sebene Selassie
3 Protocols
Sebene Selassie's Self-Care Protocol Amidst Trauma
Sebene Selassie- Allow yourself to feel your feelings without judgment, dropping the story rather than circling on images or stories.
- Balance staying informed with ensuring news and social media do not dictate your feelings.
- Understand your particular calling and how you can be of service in the current time.
- Prioritize physical and mental well-being through resting, eating well, exercising, meditating, reading inspiring materials, and journaling.
Dan Harris's Compassion Practice
Dan Harris- Envision people who are suffering (e.g., doctors, nurses in hard-hit hospitals, patients in hard-hit neighborhoods, people on food lines).
- Consciously bring that image to mind.
- Say: 'May you be free from suffering, may you be free from fear, may you be free from physical distress.'
Sebene Selassie's Practice for Noticing Unconscious Biases
Sebene Selassie- Start by grounding in the body to stabilize and create space from habitual thoughts, emotions, and stories.
- In the world (or with media), notice who you pay attention to, what you agree with, and where your attention is drawn.
- Observe the first thought or assumption about someone, then question why you might have that assumption (stereotype replacement).
- Use the practice to see how the mind tells stories that are actually cultural stories, allowing you to make different choices.