Hello.
If you're not familiar with me,
My name is Charles,
And I'm a psychotherapist and a variety of other things.
And just a heads up,
There is some quote unquote strong language here,
And that's just because those particular words felt most accurate for the meaning that I was trying to convey.
Sometimes I think curse words just fit the best.
Also,
This is not meant as a request or an indictment upon anyone other than myself.
I think that kind of thing often leads only to defenses being raised and true communication being blocked off.
So rather,
This is just meant as a sharing of my own experience and perspective.
I do have this little platform here,
So I figure I should say something.
And I also feel a little ambivalent about this statement,
Partly due to not wanting to say something just because it's what I think I should do or am supposed to do,
As well as to the fact that shitty things have been happening for a long time,
And the current state of affairs doesn't really make it any different.
So why say something now?
Well,
I just feel compelled to express myself,
And that may be coming from a selfish need to relieve my own discomfort.
But here it goes.
There's been a pit of unease that's been growing within me,
That's been hard to articulate,
And often ends up feeling really hollow whenever I attempt to do so in conversation.
So I thought I would try putting some of my thoughts together in a more cohesive way here.
As someone who falls into the category buckets of straight,
White,
And male,
I feel a little silly and guilty for focusing on my own reactions to social unrest,
And have noticed my selfish,
Visceral wish to not feel this unease and to return to a more comfortable normalcy for me.
But I'm also increasingly realizing,
For many reasons,
That what I've come to regard as normal is in many ways a fucked up place to be.
This certainly applies to the history of racism and oppression in this country and the world,
And maybe also touches on all parts of the human condition.
As I reflect on this,
The central current that I keep returning to is self-protection.
The attachment to a self,
The inherent identification of different others who are not the self,
And the subsequent drive to bring those different others down and lift self up in a zero-sum fashion.
In order for me to be up,
You or someone has to be down.
So I can use myself as an example.
From the moment I was born,
My own self-identity began to take shape.
I was adorned with the name Charles,
And through the color of my skin,
The location in which I was born,
The amount of money my parents had,
And a variety of other factors,
I inherited a particular pair of glasses,
Not of my choosing.
This pair of glasses came loaded with a preset historical context.
I was thrown into the world,
Already having so much of my identity chosen for me,
And then implicitly asked by society to continue to fit into this mold and play by the rules.
And luckily for baby Charles,
The pair of glasses that I received were rigged to win the game being played in American society.
But what if I'd been given a different pair of glasses?
What if I'd been given a pair that asked me to lose the game over and over again in order to maintain the status quo and keep society operating in the normal that is comfortable for some,
But incredibly painful to the point of murder for me?
How would that feel,
And what would I do with that?
The thing that can be frustrating at times is that I only have my pair of glasses to look through,
And I can't really know what it's like to be someone else as much as I might want to.
In my therapy work and in my personal life,
I'm so fortunate to get to know individuals who identify differently from me in a deeply intimate and human way,
But I still can't truly know what it's like to look through their unique pair of glasses.
What I can do is keep noticing and looking at my own glasses.
Keep noticing my own urge to protect my inherited self-identity and then let go of that urge.
It's not easy to do.
The whole world of Charles,
Quote-unquote,
Rests on the maintenance of the game exactly the way it's been played.
But I think there's a deeper version of me.
The me that was there before the name Charles and before my particular pair of glasses were manufactured,
And that I believe is ultimately the exact same within every person and everything.
This is really the essence of what I'm after in meditation,
Getting in touch with a felt sense of this nameless thing that connects everything and everyone together.
Anytime I notice myself judging someone else negatively,
I can catch the way in which this judgment is attached to my desire to lift up Charles and others like Charles and put down the different others.
I have a strong feeling that all negative judgment boils down to this zero-sum attitude,
Maintenance of me by destruction of you,
And it may be what continues to drive the roots of racism,
Bias,
And oppression between humans.
And one of the most beautiful feelings that I know in this world is the catching of myself instinctively judging someone else,
And then internally responding with a resounding,
What are you doing?
Why are you judging this person?
What if this person was your younger brother?
What if this person was your therapy client?
When I catch myself like this,
Something kind of amazing happens.
It might sound corny,
But the weight of this judgment literally melts off of me,
And I can sometimes even well up with tears of compassion for this person.
They are just another human being who inherited a pair of glasses,
Was thrown into the world,
And is trying to figure out how to play this fucked up game the best that they can.
After catching myself and allowing the judgment to melt off of me,
I'm relieved of a burden,
Relieved of the energy used for protecting myself,
And I can then use all of my energy to just try to understand and listen to someone else.
This is an incredible feeling,
But it requires a sort of continual death of the game-playing Charles,
That version of me that has an inherited history and that has been conditioned my whole life for its survival.
So this is what I think of as spiritual practice.
Noticing the ways I have become attached to my self-identity,
My pair of glasses,
And then developing a new conditioning of letting go of that again and again,
Letting go of that weight,
Feeling so much lighter through the process,
And opening up to the experiences of others,
Of being able to genuinely connect with that nameless thing inside us all and that ties us all together.
And I'm trying to do this every day,
And I realize that I often fail and that I can do better.
All I can do is continue to notice and then let go of that urge to self-protect,
Especially coming from a place of security and comfort inside the societal game that was rigged for me to win.
Being in those category buckets of straight,
White,
And man,
I can embrace some discomfort and keep letting go of self-protection,
To move into something bigger,
Beyond the self.
Along the way,
I also have compassion for myself,
Remembering that I did not choose this pair of glasses and I don't need to feel guilty for being born the way that I was.
I'd love to know what you think about this message,
Whatever your pair of glasses may look like,
What reactions you have,
What you feel may be missing,
What blind spots I might be displaying.
And I hope you know that I see and believe in the inherent value in you beneath all of the layers of the glasses that you and I have been given.
Thanks for listening.
