THANKSGIVING

Every idea you have, every thought you think, and everything you ever create from now on will become whiter.

I will make sure you do not exist. - A racist

Racism is such an interesting concept to ponder on, meditate, spend time with because it highlights a profound need for humanity to cover weakness, fear, and intimidation with the cloak, the cover, the vibrato of “power”, domination, and an odd sensuality or alluringness.

When someone has a weakness, or rather, I have found in my decades of experience, that when a student has a weakness, whether it is spiritually or physically, when we're doing the asana, you will see a student overcompensate physically. You can find someone who has an old injury and see them compensating. And so it is a visceral reaction of the body to compensate for a weakness; it is also that when you have a weakness, you will want to cover it. This [is an] interesting technique...“Don't look at the thing that makes me look weak or feel weak.”

I'm going to cover it with “power” prestige, exclusivity, when it comes to racism...

“White is right.” It's exclusive...and it rhymes.

When I was at university, I had a good friend in my cohort whose great-grandfather was an inventor and businessman who had created generational wealth beyond comprehension. And he had a story about business and weakness, and he said he found that smoking was a weakness because “it showed” in a deal when you had someone “on the ropes.”

Since he was such an old man, they allowed smoking indoors at that time when he was doing business, and so he said, when you watch someone when you're making a deal when you're negotiating, and you would see someone need a cigarette, it's like playing poker, and you find someone's tell. Smoking gives away the game. Smoking shows a weakness. And so it doesn't matter how much the man has, or the partners that are in his deal, you're dealing with the man in front of you.

And if you can break that man, you can make your deal how you want it.

You're dealing with a man in front of you. And so he said that when you have chinks in the armor like that, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter your money, your power, your position, [or] your partners. The man in front of you has chinks in his armor, and smoking gives it away.

And that's what I have found about racism, is that it's a weakness, such an inherited weakness that you already know...You know how to deal with this person. You know who they are. The hard part is believing them...believing someone that nice, educated, could have such a gaping hole in their armor, and yet... racism and or otherisms have caused calamities in which we as a society until we heal those wounds cannot measure their impact however today is Thanksgiving and I think about The wounds that a country has caused itself with hatred, otherisms, racism, sexism, fear.

Building a country in which fear was your foundation.

Creating holidays around fear and rebranding it

Allowing your story and the story of who you are at your core to be based on weakness.

We're seeing those gaping holes in the armor, the chinks within leadership, in politics, in religion, throughout America; we're seeing those holes, those wounds that were self-inflicted, gather themselves up, we're seeing it.

And so, today, I give thanks to all those who've come before me and all those who will come after, because it's the people who do not live in fear, but in hope.

It's the people who carry the knowledge of what it is to exist without the weakness, without the need to “other”. The beauty of Thanksgiving is that the people are still standing. They are still strong.

And where there is strength, there is hope. And where there is hope, there is healing. I'm so thankful for the strength that I see in others because it brings hope to us all. And that's what I'm thankful for today on Thanksgiving.