Walking Each Other Home - Nov 3, 2022

Through mindfulness practices, focusing on antiracism, we increase our emotional resilience, recognize our biases, and make real our common humanity. "Walking Each Other Home" is a guided embodied meditation practice.

Transcript

Welcome to Project Sanctus,

Walking each other home.

This is a time of our practice,

Our embodied anti-racism practice.

This is a time where we pause and we be mindful,

Focusing on building our resiliency,

Building our capacity to be in difficult conversations and challenging situations.

And I don't know about you,

But with elections right here on top of us,

With the holidays coming,

I think there's more than enough space and enough,

More than enough space to imagine challenging situations.

Excuse me.

And not even imagine,

But I think there's,

We've gotten just more and more,

We've gotten more and more violent out in the world with our words,

With our actions,

Even disconnecting,

Even dehumanizing,

Even wanting to put my head in the sand is a violent act.

And what makes it a violent act,

And I know some people can get a little hooked on that word because I'm not,

It's not physical violence,

But what makes it a violent act to ignore,

To put my head in the sand is just that,

By ignoring.

I am turning my head,

I'm turning my attention,

I'm turning my heart away from those who are those who need it the most,

Including me.

Like I need my heart,

Right?

I need my attention.

I need love.

I need compassion.

But so does everyone else.

We often,

We so often teach in Project Sanctus that when we lift one person,

We lift all that this world that we're in,

The world that we'd like to be living in,

To be there,

To reach there,

To embody it,

To build it,

To create it,

To imagine it,

A world of equity,

A world,

As we say at Project Sanctus,

A world with love,

Justice,

And liberation for all.

And liberation is different than freedom.

They have some similarities,

But liberation is really more,

Has more of a communal,

Has more of the,

It has the equity built in.

And freedom,

Not necessarily,

Freedom can be very individual and freedom is good.

It's not,

I'm not dogging on freedom,

But the next step beyond that is really liberation.

So today's mindfulness practices is going to be around that,

Around the liberation,

Around seeing where I might be putting my head in the sand,

Which prevents the liberation.

It keeps us each from knowing what that is.

It really does keep us from creating and imagining a world that we want.

And I know that if people,

If someone is listening to this,

If someone is in these practices and learning about anti-racism and discovering their own biases and their own discomforts,

If you're engaged in the work at all,

Then we don't want to put our head in the sand.

Then you'll want to be in this practice.

Because the mindfulness practice again,

Brings us back to ourselves,

Brings us back to,

It sort of takes the intensity out of what's going on and brings us home.

Brings us home in lots of ways.

You know,

Home can look a lot of different ways,

But we want to be in integrity with what we want to imagine,

With what we want to create,

With how we would like our world to be and what we believe and what we value.

That needs to be in integrity and alignment with what we do.

Always.

So we're going to do a practice this morning about a body practice for standing in our integrity.

I think I've done it before.

I often repeat things.

Because I don't know,

Can't get enough as far as I'm concerned.

I can't practice this too many times for me.

So we're going to start,

As always,

With our collective act of solidarity,

Which is the breath.

You can close your eyes if you're comfortable.

You can leave them open.

You can stare at a candle or a sacred object or just look into the camera.

Just follow the breath.

You don't have to slow it down or speed it up.

You know,

If you're listening to this at the end of the day,

When you take an exhale,

See if you can't drop the shoulders.

You know,

As we move through the day,

We tend to bring our shoulders up to our ears.

You know,

Our neck,

Our shoulders,

Our back can get very tense.

Just continue to follow the breath.

Notice the inhale and the exhale.

You don't have to change it.

Just be with it.

And the more that we focus on the breath as it comes into the body,

The more that we come into the body.

It's like a silent way of acknowledging my body is good.

My body is here.

I'm connected to my body.

This practice is called standing in your integrity.

Sometimes we do and sometimes we don't.

Sometimes it feels too hard.

Sometimes we think we might be risking something if I stand in my integrity.

I might lose a relationship,

A job.

Standing in our integrity can be easy when the stakes aren't very high.

It can be easy when it's not a lot of emotional discomfort,

Frustration or anger or fear.

I want you to think back to an incident from your past.

It could be last week.

It could be when you were young.

But when you stood firmly in your integrity,

Think back to something in your past where you stood firmly in your integrity.

Could be maybe you were small and you stood up to a bully.

I've done that.

Maybe someone asked you to do something that was unethical and you said no.

Maybe you've been part of a group and there was someone in the group that needed some assistance so you stopped to help them,

Even though everyone else in the group did not.

It's not about blaming the others.

It's just noticing when you're standing in your integrity.

Maybe a time when you were in a group of people and you spoke on behalf of a person or a cause that you knew was just,

But the other people would likely be offended by what you said,

What you spoke up anyway.

One of the hardest ways to stand in our integrity is to put a very close relationship with someone.

Could be a spouse,

A child,

Family member,

Friend,

But someone who's really close and putting that relationship at risk by confronting them about actions that they took or words that they said that were derogatory,

That were discriminatory.

And you stepped forward and you were willing to take the risk to confront them and possibly lose the relationship.

So I'm going to be quiet for a moment.

I gave you multiple examples of finding something in your past where you stood firmly in your integrity.

I'll just be quiet for a moment while you choose one.

And when you've chosen one,

I want you to bring it to life.

I want you to kind of put yourself back in that situation so that it's really alive within you.

The standing in your integrity,

The whole experience of that physically,

Mentally,

Emotionally,

Spiritually.

Take a moment and bring it to life.

Think about it.

All of it.

And notice what you first sensed when you needed to take a stand.

When you first realized,

Oh,

I need to stand here.

I need to act for my integrity.

And what was the first thing you noticed in your body?

I know for me,

Sometimes it's a little catch of my breath.

I might feel some tightening in my chest for a moment.

Other times I find myself putting the shoulders back and standing up even straighter.

So what did you experience in your body just when you first sensed that you would need to take a stand?

And then what did you experience as you acted from your integrity?

So as you move beyond that first moment and stand in your integrity and speak the words and take the action and that all of you was firmly in your integrity.

What did you experience as you moved into that,

As the events unfolded?

Notice any vibrations within yourself?

What images or colors or thoughts come up?

What meaning making is there?

What judgments?

And what behavior did you take?

What movement?

What action?

What emotions?

What physical sensations?

I know for me,

As I think about a particular instance,

When I could feel my shoulders kind of go back and stand up a little bit straighter and I had this image of just standing right in front of sort of a David and Goliath kind of image.

And I was thinking,

I can do this.

I feel really afraid and I could do this.

I don't know where this is going to go.

And I can do this.

And I want to do this.

So let's take a couple breaths together and then let's shift now.

Let's think back on an incident when you could have stood firmly in your integrity,

But you didn't.

When you could have stood firmly in your integrity,

But you didn't.

And by not standing in your integrity,

It allowed one or more people to be harmed.

By not standing in my integrity,

I was saying I was being complicit with the discrimination.

I was being complicit with a system of oppression.

I may not have thought about it that way.

I may not even think about it that way today,

But that is what,

By not standing firmly in my integrity,

That's what I'm doing.

And this is not to blame or shame.

It's just we don't want to make sure we don't do some bypassing.

So think back to those same kind of scenarios.

Maybe a friend when you were a child,

A friend was being bullied and you didn't say anything.

You didn't go get an adult.

Someone asked you to act in an unethical manner or to keep an unethical or illegal activity quiet,

And you did.

Again,

Maybe you've been in a group of people and someone makes a joke that is clearly discriminatory or racist or sexist,

And you were quiet.

And you knew what you were hearing,

But you chose not to firmly stand in your integrity.

So just find one time when you didn't.

It could be in the last week,

Last couple of weeks.

Just pick one.

Again,

Not to guilt,

Not to shame,

Not to coulda,

Shoulda,

Woulda,

But to use for our own growth,

To use for building our resilience,

For us to heal the reasons that we don't stand in our integrity because we're afraid,

Because we think we might say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing,

Or I might be harmed or someone I love.

There's a lot of reasons.

It'll feel awkward.

I don't have enough information.

There's a lot of reasons that we won't stand in our integrity,

And I completely understand I've done that.

So now I want us to do the same thing.

Take that experience,

Whatever that was,

When you could have said or did something and did not,

And bring it completely to life within yourself.

Bring it to life emotionally,

Physically,

Spiritually,

And where in your body do you feel it?

Because you think about that incident where you did not stand in your integrity,

In that moment when you chose to not,

How did that feel in your body?

And where did you feel it?

I generally feel it in the contraction of my shoulders.

I hunch over a little bit and the shoulders come in.

It's kind of the opposite of standing straight and tall.

The upper part of my body contracts.

What do you notice in your body at the point of decision to not stand in your integrity?

Notice it,

Allow it to be.

And then as you think about this event and you move past that first moment,

And as the event unfolded,

What did you notice about any vibrations in your body?

Any images or colors come to mind?

I sometimes get a sort of fuzzy gray cloud in my brain.

What thoughts or judgments or stories do you have about it?

What actions or what impulses or urges?

What emotions come up as the whole scenario unfolds in your memory?

And then what are you experiencing in your body right now?

What are you experiencing in your body right now?

Has anything shifted?

Maybe something's been activated or maybe something has been settled.

What are you experiencing in your body right now?

For me,

When I move through this practice of when I stood in my integrity and then a time when I did not,

I know very often one of the things I experience afterwards is I do actually feel more settled.

And that's part of the forgiveness piece for me.

So what do you experience in your body?

Take a few minutes and write that down.

Write down your experience of both times when you stood firmly in your integrity and when you did not.

And it's important to notice what goes on in our body.

It's important to notice the emotions and the vibrations and the thoughts and the meaning making and why on one occasion I did stand in my integrity and on another occasion I did not.

It's such a gift for me to think back to the times when I do stand firmly in my integrity.

I have the ability,

I have the capacity,

I have the compassion,

The love,

Strength.

I'm not alone.

And I'm gifted by looking at the times when I did not stand in my integrity.

I'm gifted with here's where my learning is.

Here's where I'd like to do less harm.

Here's where I'd like to love a little bit more.

So let's take a couple of breaths to close our time.

Inhale and exhale.

Inhale and exhale.

One more time.

Thank you for spending a little time with me.

If you want to know more about Project Sanctus,

You can visit our website at ProjectSanctus.

Com.

And I see you moving out into your day,

Into whatever time is in front of you,

Perhaps a little more settled,

A little more expanded,

A little more compassionate.

Thank you.