Positioning - Working With Trauma & Privilege

This meditation is the second in the Healing & Resilience Series for 2019. In this episode, I explore the embodiment of ancestral trauma and privilege. It is meant to open inquiry into the invisible inheritances we carry as recipients of our lineages.

Transcript

Hello and welcome.

The following is a guided meditation by Renee Seals,

A somatic movement educator,

Energy worker,

And astrologer.

This meditation is intended to help support your embodied meditation practice.

If in the recording you are prompted to do something that doesn't feel good for your body,

Please adapt and modify to make it work for you.

Please also note that the content of this meditation sometimes explores deep and subtle states and memories,

And sometimes guided visualizations.

You are encouraged to work with discernment as you practice with them.

If any of the guidance Renee offers feels too activating or uncomfortable,

Please listen to your body's knowing and pause the recording until a later time if you wish to return to it.

These guided meditations range anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes and do not require any supplementary equipment to participate.

We hope you enjoy.

Hello and welcome.

Thank you so much for listening.

This is Renee and this is a guided somatic meditation.

Somatic meditation is an experience of being in your body.

It is simply that.

It's connecting with the sacredness of your being and the sacredness that is inherent within you.

And a somatic meditation is remembering what you already know.

It's a kind of meditation and mindfulness that brings you back into your felt sense.

It brings you into the intuition of your body.

It helps you resolve and understand and get to know the places in yourself that have been hidden and cut off as many of us have been forced out of our bodies through generations of trauma and societies that really don't honor living beings.

So thank you for joining me.

And this meditation is inspired by astrology.

I'm an astrologer as well as an artist and a somatic movement educator.

And the meditation is coming from my own frustration and confusion around relationship with straights as white guys.

And so I want to just take a moment and position myself and say that I am a white woman and I benefit from a lot of privilege because of that and I know that.

And I'm trying to understand what that means even more.

And I'm also of an age when people still like pay attention to me in a certain way.

That doesn't that doesn't happen I think to younger women and also ceases to happen when women get much older than I am.

And I'm not that old.

I'm 35.

So just to give you that position as well.

And then also to say that I benefit from things that society likes.

I'm thin and the way that I look isn't it doesn't get me unwanted attention for the most part.

Like I'm not I don't gather that towards myself.

So I benefit a lot.

I get to kind of slide by a lot in ways that other people don't.

And that's something that I'm going to be talking about in this meditation.

And then I'm also talking about my frustration with people who slide by even more than I do.

And a collective frustration I think with these people.

And also a lot of compassion and desire to reach out and connect with people who identify as as men and who are straight and who are white and who are cisgendered.

And that means that their bodies are also masculine bodies.

They were born with penises and testicles and they feel like men.

And so these people have a tricky moment to get through I think in our collective evolution.

And anyone who doesn't identify in that way also has a tricky moment to get through because I think this is a class of people that has historically benefited from a lot of privileges that other people have not benefited from.

And this is invisible.

It's one of the things about privilege is that you slide through circumstances that might be a lot more challenging for other people.

Where there might be blocks or impediments that you don't even see at all if you carry a certain kind of privilege.

So that's what this meditation is about.

It is trying to really understand and unpack a little bit what privilege is from an embodied perspective.

And as I put it out there I really want to say that my intention with this meditation is healing.

And I don't want to make anyone feel bad for what they are.

I think all of us are caught up in a lot of bullshit.

And anyone who wants to heal is going to have to dig into that bullshit.

And no one doesn't have a part in it.

Unfortunately children don't.

You know,

Really young people.

They're not yet the perpetrators.

But once we get into adulthood it's like we're all playing a part in these different systems.

And they hurt all of us.

And they hurt all of us in pretty different ways.

But they hurt all of us.

And my intention is to be one of many voices that are calling for waking up.

So with that introduction I want to say that we're going to be working with the felt sense and with our emotional awareness and with some visualization.

And I think that this meditation might inspire some movement.

So I would suggest that you be in a place when you do it where you can actively let yourself express.

And that might come out as sound and it might come out as weird movements that maybe you don't want other people to see.

So perhaps you do this meditation alone in your bedroom or in a space where you can move around like a studio of some kind.

Or maybe you gather with a group of people and do this meditation together as some kind of collective process and then talk about it after.

And I know that a number of people are doing that now with these somatic meditations.

And so I just want to say hello to all of you that are practicing in groups.

I love it that you're doing that.

And I'm really curious like what's happening for you and what kinds of conversations you're having after and the answers that you're coming to in your own practices,

Etc.

So if you ever want to reach out and talk to me about it,

I would love that.

Okay,

So we'll continue from here.

And I would like you to be in a position where you're comfortable and where you can relax somewhat.

And so the idea here is that you don't need to use so much strength to be where you are,

But you're also alert.

You're also in a place where you feel like you can breathe,

Where you feel like you can be in some choice in terms of your relationship between gravity and levity.

So I don't know what that is.

For some of you it's going to be standing upright,

Maybe balancing.

For some of you it might be yielding to a couch or a lot of cushions or another body.

You can bring your attention into yourself anywhere.

And let's all take a moment to drop in and to feel gravity.

And if you listened to the previous meditation that really kind of sets our way into this meditation,

We did a whole meditation on connecting to the star nations and to our shared ancestry as beings who come from outer space.

And I don't mean that in a like,

Oh my god,

Aliens way.

I mean that in a kind of science nerdy way,

Which is that human life is probably the product of some kind of bacteria that was on an asteroid that hit Earth.

And because of Earth's magnificent conditions that it has this amazing atmosphere with oxygen in it and all these other gases that we need,

And it is the recipient of sunlight,

And it's at a distance to the sun where it's not too hot and not too cold,

And it has water,

And all of these amazing things,

Life has been able to grow.

And so that's something that we all come from.

So take a minute and connect to that idea.

And feel the earthly side of your body rest towards the Earth,

And the heavenly side of your body open towards sky and space.

And then start to take some deep breaths in and out.

And if there's any kind of tension or anxiety in your body that you notice,

Feel free to let it out on the exhale.

And I always find that exhaling feels so relieving,

So I'm going to take a couple of those with you.

And as you exhale,

Can you say to yourself,

Here I am,

And I am here.

And that's all.

So you take a deep breath in and you feel your body receive your inhale.

And then as you exhale,

You say,

Here I am.

And then you take another deep breath in and you feel the sides and the back and the front of your chest expand.

And you exhale and you say,

I am here.

And for this moment,

Just feel where you are in time and space.

And wherever you happen to find yourself,

Whatever country,

Whatever town,

Whatever environment,

Whatever structures,

What other people are around you,

What you're wearing,

What you just ate,

What you're going to do later,

All of that,

Just feel that.

And take another deep breath in and out and tell yourself,

Here I am.

And then think back into your ancestry as far as you can think back and just do a quick survey.

So it doesn't need to be really detailed stories,

But what are the stories that you know that you've been through?

And then you can think back into your ancestry as far as you can think back into your history as far as you can go.

See if you can just give yourself a glimpse of what you are and what you are.

And then think back to the people that raised you.

These are biological parents as well as other caregivers,

But they are folks who filled your mind when you were young.

And then think back to their parents and the people who raised them.

See if you can just give yourself a glimpse of where they were,

Like a snapshot in their lives.

And if they had lives that changed dramatically throughout the course of their lives,

Maybe a couple of snapshots.

And in these snapshots,

Place them in terms of a couple of different things.

And so place them in terms of their social standing,

How much power they had or didn't have.

Place them in terms of their economic status and how much they struggled or didn't struggle for just financial stability and access to the resources they need.

Place them in terms of race and whether or not they experienced an identity that was less important than white at any point.

And then think of them in terms of religion.

What were their practices?

What were their faiths?

And this is kind of an interesting question.

If some of you can remember back a number of generations,

There may have been significant shifts in religions or practices relating to spirituality.

And so as you think back in your ancestry,

Think into these snapshots.

Like what is someone experiencing?

What's the slice of their life in an everyday?

And don't get caught in the stories,

But just think about it.

And as you think about it,

Can you rest into your back body and rest down towards gravity?

And that's all.

So just think about your lineages.

And I sometimes have this image of rivulets,

You know,

The way that water branches out from a larger tributary into smaller and smaller streams.

And it's kind of like that's happening backwards from my body.

It's like my body is this watershed and all these different stories are happening in the same way that I'm in the same place.

And so I think about my body is this watershed.

And all these different sources are coming into it.

And first there's,

You know,

A couple of primary sources like my parents and the people who really helped me a lot as a younger person.

And then there's all of their extended networks.

And that goes out and out and out and out and out.

And I can tell myself the stories only to a certain point.

So I know the kind of general stories of my ancestors back about maybe three or four generations.

So great,

Great,

Great grandparents.

And you might know a lot more and you might not know a lot less.

And whatever you know is fine.

And then when you get to the edge of your knowing,

Just feel into the empty space.

And then once again,

Feel into your back body and feel your body rest down into the ground.

And then let yourself feel into the any knowledge that you have in terms of the cultural history that you come from.

So maybe you don't know who your great,

Great,

Great grandparents were,

But maybe you know where they came from.

And so just feel yourself in relationship to that.

And it might be a directional relationship,

It might be a longing,

It could be your imagination of what they looked like or felt like or sounded like.

And then really rest into your back body.

And feel yourself in relationship to the ground.

Just rest and rest and rest and keep taking deep inhale breaths and letting your body soften and expand.

And then as you exhale,

Just sigh out.

And a lot of us have tremendous pain in our ancestry.

And so as you feel back,

And you're getting these snapshots,

A lot of you might be getting snapshots of suffering.

And when you get a snapshot,

Just take a deep breath in and a deep breath out.

And then tell yourself,

Here I am,

I am here.

And feel that balance between the space that you hold right now,

In whatever kind of circumstance that is allowing you to sit and breathe and do a guided meditation.

As you think back to their circumstance then and just notice that and imagine the directions that these streams have moved so that you can be here.

And then feel into the snapshot,

Whatever that glimpse into their reality is or the imagination is.

And you might make a gesture like two hands together or a deep bow.

You might place something at the altar of their feet.

You might imagine laying your hands on some part of their body and saying thank you or I love you.

Maybe it's simply a quiet nod,

An acknowledgement,

I see you there.

And then as you continue to think back into any kind of cultural histories that you know,

So any locations,

Any larger narratives,

Feel down into the ground and imagine directionally now and kind of materially in your body how the earth has shifted in the memory of your lineage.

And so what I mean by this is if you know that your family came from the desert and you currently live in the rainforest,

Can you remember that terrain?

Can you imagine what it felt like in your ancestors homelands,

In the places where they traveled and journeyed by choice,

Not by choice?

Can you imagine all of the sensations that they had in their body and you don't need to know who they are?

And if your ancestors were part of a forced migration and many of our ancestors were part of a forced migration.

So of course one of the largest in the history of the world is the transatlantic slave trade and many many people are a recipient of that memory.

I know I'm a recipient of the Holocaust and of fleeing people,

The Jewish people who ran for a really long time and who didn't feel safe for a really long time and many of whom don't feel safe now for various reasons.

So feel into that.

What are the felt sense memories of your people?

And again as you feel them you might have all kinds of things coming up and when you do can you hold that feeling?

Can you take a really deep breath in a really deep breath out and then say here I am,

I am here.

And can you hold the complexity of the current situation which is that you are in the present moment that you're in and you're actively engaging in your own healing and there's still a part of you that is experiencing this terrible fright and that fright might be going on currently.

Might still be going on,

It might still be reverberating in your body from lived experiences or in your family or in your communities and for the moment right now you are doing this meditation and you're breathing in and you're exhaling and you're feeling the ground beneath you and you're feeling your back body and you're just resting.

So come back to that again and again and again and continue to resource yourself just inhaling you feel your breath you feel your body expand and then exhaling and now I want to invite all of us to remember the feelings that you have and now I want to invite all of us to remember the feminine ancestry and so these are the mothers your mothers your parents mothers their parents mothers etc etc etc back and back and back and back and just take a moment and connect to the feeling of them and connect to the feeling of your mothers the women that raised you any feminine beings that raised you and some people maybe had sisters who raised them or aunties who raised them or grandmothers who raised them so these people too like connect to the women that raised you and remember them remember how they felt the texture of their clothes how it felt to be close to them what kind of voice they had and the ways that they engaged with you and just remember that and take a deep breath in and take a deep breath out and feel the back of your body and feel the earth side of your body and feel the earth below you and then imagine the relationship of your mothers to their mothers to the women who raised them and of course surrounding all of them are the men the non-binary people the children the folks who don't care in the relationships but right now just feel into your feminine lineage and what I want you to feel for is where and how women had power in your life and there's a lot of different kinds of power there's internal power there is emotional power there's physical power there's manipulative power there's the power of love there's the power of a good sense of humor resilience so however you want to define power just feel that and maybe offer some kind of gesture just a hello an acknowledgement some gratitude but just feel that and maybe offer some kind of gesture just a hello an acknowledgement some gratitude maybe there's something you need to say and then take a deep breath in and a deep breath out and feel the back of your body and feel the earth beneath you and then we'll shift our attention and imagine our fathers and uncles and brothers and cousins and the guys in whatever bodies they showed up in in whatever ways they presented themselves it's always hard to talk about gender as a queer person and knowing that I have a lot of queer identified people listening to me I hope that you all know that when I'm saying these words like man and woman and female and male that I am including a lot of complexity in there and I'm not saying that I'm not saying a lot of complexity in there and I just want to acknowledge that that there's a lot of lineages and a lot of ways to express gender and I'll miss some of them sometimes but they're all there and as we feel back now into the masculine line it's sensing into the people in our families who have been perceived as masculine who were born into bodies that the as masculine beings and it's also the people who weren't born into those bodies and who knew that that's what they were.

And so they dressed like that,

They fought for that identity.

It's them as well.

But feel into masculinity,

Like what is it?

How does it live in you?

And can you feel back into the way that masculinity has been patterned in your lineage?

Just feel back into that.

And then consider this question of power.

What kind of power did they feel?

What kind of power did they take?

Where did they feel empowered and disempowered?

And see if you can feel the binary of gender that's been presented on this planet at this time of masculine and feminine as it lives in you.

As it lives in you.

The places where you feel connected and attached and attuned and identified with femininity or masculinity,

Just tune into that.

And then feel in yourself what this does for your own power.

And the question is,

Do you like what you feel?

Are you feeling honest with yourself?

I lived for a long time in my body,

Really trying to live into a certain kind of femininity that felt so not right for me.

And I don't identify as a masculine person.

I feel deeply,

Deeply feminine,

But I really didn't and don't resonate with that.

I really didn't and don't resonate with the ways that femininity is portrayed across the globe a lot,

But also in the white feminine ideal.

I really don't like it.

I don't wanna be like that.

It's not compelling to me.

And so for a long time,

I felt like I was performing something and it really wasn't me.

And something has shifted now as I feel my own gender and as I allow a different kind of masculinity or androgyny to just be present because that's how it's perceived right now,

But it's really just me.

I feel so much more comfortable.

And so that's a question that I have for you right now is how comfortable do you feel in your own body and in the way that you feel your history as a male bodied person or as a female bodied person,

Because you're both,

You carry both experiences in you.

And as you think back through your lineage and into your parents and into your sisters and your brothers and your friends,

Et cetera,

Just imagine what they all felt like because their memories also live in you.

It's a little bit of imagination.

Okay.

And now let's do a different kind of meditation and let's think about class comfort.

And this is a strange meditation,

Right?

It's like we're definitely coming into our thoughts,

But we're being very intentional about the things that we're thinking about.

So I want you to now imagine your own relationship to money.

I just say that word and I feel this tightening in my belly.

I don't know about anybody else,

But just feel what happens when you hear that word.

Maybe you get really excited,

Maybe you get scared,

Maybe you check out.

And think about money just as a concept and how you feel either attracted or repelled by it.

How do you feel in relationship to it?

And again,

It's not about the stories,

It's just the sensation.

And now notice your body state and take a deep breath in and a deep breath out and just rest into your back body and rest into the ground beneath you.

And I know for me that my nervous system just did like a 10 point deescalation,

Like the middle of the day,

Like a 10 point deescalation,

Like the minute that I thought of money,

My whole body got tense and a little edgy.

And then as I remember to breathe and just rest into my body,

It goes away.

So maybe some of you had a similar experience.

So we'll just now let our imaginations flow into the rivulets and the streams of experience that our ancestors have had with cash and resources.

And money doesn't make the world go round and it certainly doesn't buy happiness,

But it does buy a lot of the things that happiness is supported by.

And when there's not enough money,

There is a certain kind of suffering that is acute,

It's profound,

It's a survival kind of suffering.

And to live in financial precarity and to feel unsure of survival and to feel unsure of the capacity to receive help if it's needed is really scary.

And if you have stories like that in your own biography or in the collective biographies of your people,

Take a deep breath in and a deep breath out.

And a deep breath out.

And feel your back body and feel your relationship to the ground and really rest.

And then tell yourself,

Here I am.

Here I am right now,

Right here,

Doing this guided meditation.

And you might need to take a number of deep breaths in and out.

And then you're done.

With people who are struggling with financial precarity,

It is constant trauma,

It's constant stress.

And I know that I have felt that at many points in my life,

And talking about it is a source of trauma.

And I have to remind myself that at this moment in my life,

That is not my story.

And maybe you also know what that feels like.

Or maybe you are feeling the precarity.

There are a lot of people who are feeling that right now.

There has been a government shutdown for a month in the United States,

Where I am,

And a lot of people are feeling the reverberations and the economic shock.

So let's take a deep breath in.

And a deep breath out.

It reminds me of this parable.

So it's a Buddhist parable and that's all I know.

I don't know where it comes from.

I've heard it told a couple of times.

And my friend Suniti's husband David painted a picture that I have of this story.

And the story is that there's this person and they're walking,

Taking a walk through the jungle.

And all of a sudden they hear something behind them and they look back and it's a tiger.

And the tiger is like chasing them.

It wants them for lunch.

And so they take off running.

And they're running and then they come to this cliff and there's nowhere to go but to kind of jump off the cliff.

And so they scramble down and they find this vine to hang onto and they're hanging onto this cliff.

And they look up and there's the tiger on the ledge of the cliff.

And then actually there's two or three tigers now.

And then the vine is starting to pull away from the earth.

And that's happening slowly but surely.

And then the person looks down.

And down at the bottom of this incredibly rocky and steep and dangerous ravine is another tiger.

So for sure that's going to happen.

And then there are these ants that are crawling down the vine and starting to crawl onto the person's arm.

And then they look over and see this wild strawberry growing out of the side of the cliff.

And they reach for it and they grab it and they take a bite.

And it is delicious.

And that's the end of the story.

So the feeling right now is like,

Oh my God,

There's a lot of chaos in the world.

And so now we're going to take a deep breath in and feel the strawberry of that breath.

Like just being able to breathe just in this moment and feel the pleasure of that breath.

And feel the back of your body and feel the ground beneath you and relax as much as you can and take as many breaths as you need to.

And now we're going to do one that I think is pretty hard to do.

And this one is especially hard if you've lived in a body that has white or light colored skin and you pass for white.

And definitely much harder if you come from white people.

And as I say this,

I just want to invite any white person who's listening to take a deep breath in and a deep breath out.

And notice what your body does when the words like white and whiteness come up.

I know that,

You know,

I'm in kind of an activist community and a lot of what I do is trying to understand whiteness and white supremacy.

And still,

When I hear those words come up from someone else's mouth,

I get scared.

Like I feel like I've done something wrong.

So I just want to kind of hold space that even saying this can be like a little bit of a shutdown.

And I want to invite everyone to continue with me.

So take a deep breath in and a deep breath out.

All right.

So what is this thing that's called whiteness?

I'm trying to figure it out.

I definitely don't have all the answers.

I know just a very small amount.

And most of what I've learned,

I've learned from people of color.

I've learned from indigenous people and black people especially.

And these are the people who I think have had to do a lot of unpacking about what this is because it's a mind state.

It's a constructed kind of brainwashing and belief system.

Inherently,

We are all human.

And that's the truth.

And a lot of white liberal people know that.

And it's something that we say a lot.

So that's true.

Everybody has an embryonic experience,

A fetal experience.

They're born and they live into bodies.

And they have had whatever experiences they've had until now.

And in most places around the world,

If you have light colored skin,

You are a recipient to a certain kind of privilege that's often invisible.

So here's some examples from my own life because I am one of these people.

I am a white person.

I can easily walk through a health food store,

Which I frequent quite often because I'm also a middle class white person.

I have enough money to shop at organic food stores.

And I walk through the aisles and I often will sample liberally from the bulk bins.

Anybody else do that?

And I know because I've seen you that you exist.

And a lot of us are white women who get to do this.

And it's a particular kind of privilege we have because we're not the people who are being looked at with an implicit fear that they're going to be stolen from by those people.

The people who get looked at with that kind of fear are the people who we've seen in television shows and movies and commercials and in the news as being these people.

And they are the people who get reported on the most often.

And they are not the people who commit the highest amount of crimes actually.

But the people who get reported on the most often would be younger black and brown men,

Boys,

And probably who wore a certain kind of clothing like a sweatshirt.

So if you don't look like that and you have at some point in your life been able to just kind of casually stroll through the bulk bin at Whole Foods and take a sample,

That's privilege right there.

And it might not be only white privilege.

It could be age privilege.

It could be gender.

It could be something else.

So take a deep breath in and take a deep breath out and just feel what it is to kind of imagine that story,

That scenario.

And my question or invitation for you now is to feel into all the things that you have had to do in your own life,

Like hurdles you've had to move through.

So maybe you needed to save money to buy a car or you needed to get a loan of some kind or you had a person in your family who was ill and you needed to care for them.

And I want you to feel just the challenge and the suffering of the situation itself,

That just those situations by themselves without any external forces around them are stressful.

Getting a loan is stressful.

It's like you have to apply,

You have to put out some amount of risk and vulnerability with debt.

You are then accountable to something.

You have to go and fill out some forms.

Like it's not super relaxing to get a loan.

It's stressful.

You might be rejected.

And so then here's the thing is that there are all these layers of increasing chance that that stress is going to get magnified depending on what kind of flesh suit you're wearing,

What kind of body you're in.

And if you are a straight white guy,

A cis white guy,

If you pass as a white man,

People are more likely to give you money.

They are more likely to trust that you are someone who knows what to do with money.

And it's not necessarily because you do know or that your father's new or your brothers know.

It's that in movies and commercials and in the narratives that many of us hear all the time,

The people who know what to do with money are white guys.

So we don't have a huge amount of cultural narratives about black women,

Superstar economists,

And they're out there,

But we just don't know.

They're not the ones who are like really feeling our attention.

So take a deep breath in and take a deep breath out and just I need to come back to my body a little bit like that gets kind of heady.

And maybe you do,

Too.

So let's just feel our bodies and take deep breaths in and deep breaths out and connect to the earth and the earthly side of your body and connect to your back body and see if you can rest.

And as you feel into your ability to rest right now,

I want you to feel into the ability that your ancestors had to rest.

And there are lots of stories about ancestors who worked really hard and who were scared and who made their way.

And there are lots of stories about ancestors who were the recipients of terrible abuses and somehow managed to survive and their family lines managed to survive.

And you're here.

So as you breathe into this,

I want you to imagine like what was the experience of resting in your lineage?

And where and how have people been able to rest or not?

And let's just take some deep breaths in and some deep breaths out and hold all of the people who were struggling and say this breath is for you.

Like you struggled.

That was so hard.

The things that you did,

The ways that you had to maneuver and hustle and figure it out.

And then let's breathe in and acknowledge any of the ancestry that actually didn't have to struggle so hard.

So if you have people in your life that,

And this could be one auntie or a set of grandparents,

Or maybe it's an entire line,

You know,

Dating back generations and generations that you know,

They always had financial comfort.

They were never persecuted because of their bodies or their religions,

Or it's been a really,

Really long time since they were.

You know,

They were the victors,

They were the conquerors in some kind of story.

They're the ones that came out on top.

Just breathe into that.

And feel the back of your body and feel the ground beneath you.

And as you feel the back of your body and as you feel the ground beneath you,

Can you imagine all of the people who somehow have given space for you to be comfortable right now.

And as you imagine them,

I really want you to rest.

So see if you can rest.

Breathe into your back,

Breathe into the earthly side.

And this is not about feeling guilt or obligation or anxiety or taking on their burden or their stress.

It's actually a deep,

Deep thank you.

It's a really,

Really deep thank you that I want you to feel in your body.

All the people who have ever participated in your comfort.

And so that means anyone who did what they could in the moment that they could do it.

And that means all of the people who cleaned up your environment,

Who did jobs for you so that you didn't have to do them.

And it means all the way that you were given opportunities.

If doors opened for you or if you knew the right people in the right places at the right times,

It's if you belong to a certain class of people,

A group of people who get more opportunities or who are able to fly more underneath the radar,

Who get excused for bad behavior more often.

Just kind of feel into that.

And feel all the way into the places in the world where there are actual human beings manufacturing the things that bring you comfort,

Like the headphones or the speakers that you're using to listen to this recording.

And the chair that I'm sitting in as I'm recording it and the computer that I'm recording it into.

And breathe into all of the people who you are somehow responsible for bringing comfort to in whatever ways that you do.

And this might include people who you are in service to because you choose to be because you love them.

And this might be people who you are in service to because you have to be because your economic status means that you rely on them.

And so you have to help them out in some way and you may or may not choose to and you may like them a lot and you may not.

And that could extend a really long distance.

So if you're someone who has a job with Amazon and you're working in one of these packing and shipping places and your labor is something that produces comfort for people all over the world.

So can you just breathe into that?

And as you breathe into it,

Imagine that everyone is saying thank you.

Putting that fucking thing in the box,

Sending it my way.

So waking up to privilege and positioning is really complex.

It's really complicated.

All of us have very circuitous and interwoven tapestries of lineages and most of us do at least.

And all of us,

You know,

We find different paths and come into different relationships and different obligations and there's no one way to really paint the picture of what an entire experience is.

But it is maybe a spiritual path and one of the most important paths at this moment on earth.

And I'm not saying that this is forever,

But particularly right now.

It is so important for those of us with privilege to wake up to the ways that we rely on other people.

And all the work that gets done for us that we never ever see and all the work that got done for us that allowed us to be in the places that we're in now of whatever kind of comfort that we never said thank you for.

And if you are a person who benefits from economic security because of your class or your gender or your race,

This might be a time to let go of some of your money.

As you do this meditation,

You might think about,

Hmm,

How can I let go of some of what I've been the recipient of even though I didn't necessarily earn it,

It just kind of fell into my lap.

Maybe I could give that gift to someone else.

Or if you're a person who has a lot of maneuvering space because you have the right connections,

Maybe you're a person who could open some doors for someone else.

Or if you're a person who owns some kind of space that could be comfortable for other people to rest in for a while,

Maybe you open your space.

Or if you're a person who has a skill and you've been able to study this skill and develop it and you really love to do it and it brings you economic stability,

Maybe you can teach this skill for free to a couple of other people who couldn't go to school for it.

So it's this kind of thing that is the focus of this meditation.

And this kind of thing,

Which I believe is the thing that we need right now.

I think we're going to be on January 19th,

2019 in the United States and on the planet.

I think right now we all will do so much better in the futures that we share if we can drop in and connect and reach out and help each other out.

So the first step in that is kind of waking up and arriving where we are.

So thank you for participating in this meditation with me.

If you feel tender,

I would suggest that you listen to the meditation that preceded this one.

And it's connecting to your star ancestry,

To the ancestry of the universal dust and to the place in you that is cosmic intelligence and that is true also.

So please reconnect to that place if you feel tender with the human connections and remember all the way back to the moment when you were born as consciousness in the galaxy.

Alright,

Thank you so much for listening,

Sending you all the love and really wishing the best to everyone right now and hoping that we can collectively reach out and help people who need it.

Thanks so much for listening.

Bye bye.