As members of the Insight Dialogue Community Anti-Racism Education and Action Team (AREA), we are committed to support our community to become an antiracist, multicultural organization. As an evolving global community dedicated to spiritual freedom and ethical action, we see that our freedom is linked to the freedom of all beings.
We will invite you to engage in reading, reflection, and contemplation about issues of white supremacy that may be alive and thriving internally and externally in our biases, our privileges, and our conditioning.
We continued our exploration with specific inquiry questions posed by Ruth King in her book, Mindful of Race. For this newsletter, we offer additional inquiry questions from Ruth King.
We invite you once again to find time to practice Insight Dialogue using these deep questions as contemplations – with a meditation partner, or partners, and with your own conditioning.
Before engaging these questions, we suggest you bring in the Guidelines PAUSE – to restore a sense of mindful presence; and RELAX (Receive, Accept, Allow as best one can) – to bring ease to any racial tension that exists or arises.
Ruth King asks:
- What personal experience pains you to recall when you reflect on race?
- What has your relationship to your own race kept you from experiencing, knowing, or understanding about other races?
- As you reflect on what arises in the body and the mind with these questions, we invite you to contact a spiritual friend and engage the following contemplation:
OPEN. What is noticed internally, externally, and both, about what is present in sensation and thought forms?
LISTEN DEEPLY. What did you notice arising in the body and the mind as you explore each question?
SPEAK THE TRUTH. Discomfort, unease, resistance, shame, anger, numbness, and disinterest are human responses to societal conditioning.
How might the voice and presence of another help us find ways to hold our experience in compassion, kindness, and resolve?
With care,
Anita Bermont, Beth Faria, Holly Nelson-Johnson, Judy Bernstein, Mary Burns, Patricia Fontaine, Ruby Phillips, Susie Clarion, Nancy Zegarchuk
The AREA Team is a group of Insight Dialogue Community members currently located in the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Global South. The team has a culture of consensus and spiritual friendship, and we incorporate Insight Dialogue practice into our meetings. We are actively engaged in this important work and welcome new voices and perspectives. If you are interested in joining us, please email info@3.wilder.one.