ENDING RACISM AND OTHER -ISMS.
‘There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.’
Henry David Thoreau
This article strikes specifically at the root of racism – and in doing so, at all other -isms.
But first, please consider two key questions:
- What is the most important quality of a multicultural, pluralistic society?
- What is required of you – of me – for our society to function with human decency shown to all?
When honestly exploring these questions, we may discover the answer to living in harmony.
Even more, it will shine a light on the true benefit of being in service to ourselves, our neighbours and our entire community.
FIRST, SOME CONTEXT
Born and raised in Australia, with decades travelling to many points of the globe, I write about the people best known to me – those making Australia home.
I’m 80 years old – born in 1941, when Australia was much less varied than today’s pluralist, multicultural society. Back then, it was no less racist. Probably more so.
Today, in 2022, we are the most ethnically diverse country on Earth. 26% of Australians were born overseas, and 49% of Aussies have at least one parent born elsewhere.
The great melting pot of North America is not even close to these stats.
With approximately 100 religions and 300 ethnic groups, Australia enjoys, on the one hand, the benefits of diversity and, on the other, the destructiveness of bigotry.
With our original inhabitants dating from around 60,000 years ago, with some 500 Aboriginal language groups and clans, we can collectively claim to be a cultural packet of smarties.
THE PROBLEM
Many Australians are concerned about racism, prejudice, and bigotry in our society. No group is exempt – the have-lots, have-some, have-little and have-nots.
Yes, intolerance (leading to discrimination) is evident among white European heritage peoples. Yet, it’s also apparent among peoples of each minority – no exceptions. Each pot, in its unique way, calls the kettle black.
As a result, the community we have created in Australia is, amongst other more healthy and endearing traits, Racist.
WE’RE ALL PASSENGERS IN THE SAME LEAKY BOAT
Each human being creates their view of the world and others – called our reality – in the same way.
Humanity also has something else in common: we each experience reality as if it exists outside of us—that our reality is objective, rather than subjective and created within our minds and unique to us.
Yes, you and I live in our own entirely separate reality and experience our idiosyncratic version of the world.
Consequently, we don’t see what is – we lack an unfiltered, unconditioned life experience. We see, hear, feel, taste, touch and experience a uniquely different and self-created version of reality.
Individually we become so lost in our beliefs, so sure we have the answers – so stuck in the illusion of our conditioned mind – we see ourselves as bearers of the truth.
We, therefore, remain the problem, not the solution to racism (or any human-created problem facing us).
WHY IS THAT SO?
We have stopped seeing what is. We see life through the distortions of our lifelong accumulation. We, therefore, can’t see the divisiveness and destructiveness of our racist thinking, feelings, and behaviour.
We haven’t awakened to ‘loving thy neighbours – of whatever ethnicity, religious, political or sundry beliefs – as thy selves’.
Please read on if you would like to understand why this is so and, more importantly, how we transcend that problematic state of mind.
With this understanding, you will also see an end to sexism, inequality, homophobia, nationalism and all such divisive ‘-isms. Each ‘-ism’ creates division, separation, and exclusion, each having a matching cause and effect.
POINTING TO THE SOLUTION
The mission is to understand how we create our reality – one that works for or against us – and (at the same time) for or against the common good.
Helping others see the origin of everything you and I create as our unique reality is the job of this message – all that we label good, bad, indifferent; all we care about, don’t care about, like, don’t like, love, don’t love.
The terms ‘our reality and ‘our individual culture’ mean the same and are used interchangeably. Our reality/individual culture is our moment-to-moment way of experiencing life in all its manifestations.
Understanding this is vital because our individual but separate realities collectively form our society – the culture in which we live, work, and play.
And please understand that words like tolerance or acceptance do not describe an inclusive culture. Both terms, by their definition, imply that certain human beings are not as good as us and that we must tolerate or accept them if we are indeed decent. That is not what we are saying here. Embracing others unreservedly, without fear or favour, as our own, is what’s being put to you – not tolerating, not accepting. I trust you recognise the profound distinction.
THE SOLUTION
Logically, then, we must start with ourselves, rediscovering within our mind the source of our kind, understanding, wise and common-sense personal culture. That which is inherent – “the kingdom of heaven within”.
Once rediscovered, your and my personal culture – your reality and my reality – become part of a kind, understanding, wise and common-sense collective culture.
At that point, you and I have awakened and see that we are the solution to creating a loving society. We recognise that without you or me, such a culture cannot exist for us.
I’m not suggesting we should abandon being discerning. But the distinction between discernment and discrimination is the same as between day and night. That distinction becomes clear upon waking up, and it doesn’t alter how we treat another human being.
So how do we achieve our transformation from you and me being the problem – racist – to becoming the solution – embracing all humanity?
FIRST: THE OUTCOME
Beyond our conditioned mind – beyond our beliefs, opinions, judgements and knowledge – exists another reality.
That reality – a state of our mind inherent and available to all humans – is our core, essence, heart reality, and the solution to everything that ails us mentally, psychologically, philosophically, and spiritually – The Realm of Possibility.
Within every human is that transcendent state of mind – our state of unconditional kindness, understanding, wisdom and common sense.
And a warning. The map to and of that place, outlined below, is not the soil of that place.
Knowing the words does not reflect one’s personal reality/culture. Being aware, awake, seeing into that reality, and thus living the experience pointed to by these words is.
SEVERING THE ROOT OF OUR BLINDNESS – THE SOLUTION TO RACISM – TO ALL -ISMS
It’s simple. So simple that you may discredit what follows.
So simple, it is in dot form – and so complex, it needs to be.
We will forever experience a more enlightened personal reality/culture when adopting this process as our daily yoga. Racism for you and me will be in the past.
It is not prescriptive. Each dot point is a signpost.
- Thought (with a capital ‘T’) is our Life energy. (When connected to an electroencephalograph machine, this energy is represented on the screen as waves. When this wave flat lines, we’re pronounced dead.)
- Human thinking (with a small ‘t’) is one form that Thought energy takes within the miracle of our human brain and body.
- Via our five senses, whatever we are thinking is brought to our consciousness as our personal reality/culture/experience in each living moment.
- That we think creates our reality. As Descartes said: ‘I think therefore I am.’
- What we think at any moment in time is our reality, the only one we can know until we know another – and so on, ad infinitum – potentially, a never-ending awakening.
- Everything we see, hear, taste, smell or feel is powered by Thought energy via our thinking, and experienced through our five senses, is stored in our memory (conscious and unconscious), becoming each speck of our conditioned mind.
- We seemingly have unlimited capacity to store that information in our conscious or unconscious memory.
- That data is our personal reality/culture/conditioned mind, and it’s that aspect of our mind that determines how we see life at home, work and play. It becomes the prison we live in – one prison bar being racism.
- Racism is simply an aspect of our conditioned mind. It isn’t inherent; it is something we learn, believing it to be the truth – as is everything we know and believe to be the truth.
- The prison bars remain for as long as we think and believe our thinking – whatever that thinking is – to be ‘the truth’. In that prison, we cannot experience another reality/culture. Call that prison – our conditioned mind – the realm of impossibility. Called that because so long as we think whatever we consider is ‘the truth’, we cannot see anything new, fresh or different. That is, by definition, seeing impossibility.
- Thought energy and its use enable you to read, accept, reject or ponder what I’m putting to you here as the home of a fresh start, to seeing life from a higher vantage point – The Realm of Possibility.
- So, to see life afresh, we need to see a new reality that so profoundly impacts us that our conditioned mind has, in effect, a ‘Copernican Revolution’. We see life anew, as if for the first time. Consequently, we live in a new reality/personal culture – one of a heightened state of kindness, understanding, wisdom and common sense.
- And, as soon as we see and experience that new reality, it will become an aspect of our conditioned mind – Possibility switching to impossibility – that is, if we see our new reality as ‘the truth’.
- Conversely, suppose we see what happens when we have such an insight – any insight – as just another step forward in our psychological/philosophical/ spiritual evolution. In that case, we are free to have another awakening, and another and another…
- The upside is that our conditioned mind has had a ‘Copernican Revolution’. One minute we see life one way, and in a moment of insight (call it what you like – epiphany, realisation, revelation, awakening, or a wake-up call), we see life differently.
- In that moment of heightened awareness, be willing to accept – to accept without exception – that you still do not know ‘the truth’ of anything – I repeat, of anything. This acceptance is crucial. Otherwise, we have created a new belief system by attributing our experience to god, some deity, guru, or anything other than Life’s pure gift.
- The evidence of how limited at best and counterproductive at worst any belief system is, litters the history of humankind. Our need to attribute meaning to this experience has us returning to the same prison with a different name and the accompanying arrogance in believing we have found ‘the truth’. I’ve witnessed many individuals seeing into the Realm of Possibility and turning their newfound freedom into a new belief system. Getting stuck, becoming as lost as before, going back to sleep, believing they, for sure, now know better than anyone else – forgetting that that was how they were before their awakening.
- If willing to take that critically important leap of ‘not knowing’, we see that each of our beliefs, opinions, judgements, and knowledge is not ‘the truth’ but the current form our accumulation has evolved to in creating our reality.
- At this point in reading this message, consider whether you are willing to accept that all your conditioning – your lifelong accumulation, the context through which you view everything and everyone – is your prison.
- When we see that what we think is not ‘the truth’, we are free – released from the jail of our own making, perhaps for the first time. We experience Possibility and a newfound level of kindness, understanding, wisdom and common sense.
- At this point, we embrace ourselves as the perfectly flawed human beings we are. With that insight, we welcome all others in the same way. Racism, for us, as for all other isms, no longer exist.
- We see our innocence and that we have done the best we have been able to see to do, and that others are doing the best they can see to do – even though they may remain racist and we may, on occasion, slip back into our old conditioning of being one.
- Our beliefs, opinions, judgements and knowledge have fallen away as ‘the truth’. We see life from a new vantage point, becoming increasingly our authentic self: a kind, understanding, wise human utilising our more profound, innate, common sense and now free to be a student of Life.
- We have become part of the solution to racism and all other -isms. In seeing the falseness of one belief, we see the falseness in all beliefs, in all -isms.
- And yes, we remain a perfectly flawed human, but kinder, more understanding, and wiser – a human being experiencing enhanced common sense.
So, it’s up to us, to you and me, to be the solution rather than the problem. That is how the world changes—one person at a time.
We can paddle in the stagnant pool of belief, opinion, judgement and knowledge. Or we can dive into the universe of the unknown – the yet to be seen – waking up in The Realm of Possibility and being free. Seeing -isms for the illusions they are.
Warmly … John