It’s been a flood lately.
The barriers breached.
Took some time to examine the feelings that have been coming up for me as a white person engaged in abolitionist work to end white domination.
What I found was a flood.
Still after all these years, I was having a hard time identifying the feelings and when I pulled out the trusty feeling wheel, it became clear why I was having such trouble. I could locate myself on every spectrum of the chart over the last few months.
I thought I was doing a much better job at reclaiming my humanity. What I found was that I had been identifying the feelings that my mind still judged as acceptable and was holding back all of the ones that brought shame or confusion. If I removed the stone that was holding back my unsavory feelings, it came rushing out in overwhelming fashion. Rose all the way up. My head tilted back, struggling for the next breath.
This flood is the source of my antagonism. It can feel like the panic of a child learning to swim and choking for life’s necessary breath.
What would it look like to feel it all in the moment and without judgement of what’s coming up, but rather curiosity about where those feelings are coming from? How is my internalized white dominance impacting the feeling? How is my enculturation into white dominance the cause of my inability to identify feelings without a chart? How is this struggle impacting my practice?
All I know for sure is that the pace must slow. The impact of a feverish practice is a stone wedged in the flow of feeling.
