“Who Am I?” Identity and Social Ills

1. Love Yourself
2. Love One other person
3. Understand history without guilt, blame, or shame
4. Avoid trolls. Nurture your tribe
5. Win with integrity.

Let’s take a look at those five principles in operation. Start with “Love yourself.” This means self-care, stress reduction: you need enough pain and fear to get your attention to act. More than that can be damaging and paralyzing. One of the best anti-stress mechanisms is meditation. And among the most powerful meditations are things like “heartbeat meditation” (triggering love and connection) and “spiritual autolysis” which is a largely intellectual process of questioning (I’ll describe it later). But moving meditations which connect with the body as well as engage the emotions and mind are IMO the safest, most powerful forms. Some (pranayama) focus on breathing. Others (asana or Tai Chi) have patterns of static pose or dynamic motion. Rooting in the body is the safest path. Let’s examine why, applying this to just one of the challenges we face as a culture: race relations.

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It seems that the implications of REAL racial equality as opposed to “legal” equality is terrifying to some. I will suggest most damaging to those who do not know themselves or their deep thoughts. If you keep a secret belief in inequality, and actually let in the evidence of multi-generational abuse, murder, brainwashing and oppression …well, I’ve seen people actually hating…