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| AK and Lalu sharing the window perch (2016). PHOTO BY NEONSAB |
Today, I see it in the hierarchies we have created around who's more socially and politically 'woke' right down to the lingua franca, the right level of 'wokeness', the lack of understanding and acceptance of people who are neurodivergent, and neuro-'dissident', the exclusionary and clique-preservationist tendencies in most of our movements...When people don't behave according to our self-righteous, grandiose, colonial-influenced-capitalist-types-devoid-of-thinking-feeling-emotionally-intelligent-emotionally-responsive-in-order-to-be-functional-and-productive-members-of-society, we judge them as unfit for the spaces that are supposed to be for community but that we define according to our agenda and our definition of 'social justice' which ultimately aligns with a social order centering colonial-settler-white-European systems of governance, law, crime, and punishment. We judge them, and then, through our subconscious conditioned and internalized oppressions, we use incriminating language to demonize them and their behaviours to neatly dissect these 'outcasts' from the purity of good manners, good functionalities, good productivities, approved by no other than the State apparatus. They teach us to be mindful for sure; mindful that if we should crumble, we will be discarded.
True to form, oppression invalidates the lived experiences and realities of so many of us who were born in different times and generations.
True to form, oppression doesn't differentiate, it paints us all with the same brush, and makes us ALL feel completely useless because of the ways our minds think and roam. Think and roam. As Creatives must.
True to form, there's no such thing as 'social justice', just different, and perhaps, more deceptive, layers of oppression to add to what's already there; deceptive, because we *think* we're in safe(r) company, among those who say they care, but actions always speak much louder than words. When they punish to teach us a lesson, we know they support the PIC and all other industrial-complexes because it suits their agenda, their plan, to win some coveted spot near the 'big man's' throne.
True to form, oppression has absolutely no interest and zero-tolerance for rehabilitation or anything close to a justice that is transformational, reconstructive, or restorative, or more aptly, Indigenous.
True to form, oppression never understands what brought a person to a particular moment in their lives. Oppression doesn't care. People act out and they alone are responsible and must bear the consequences of their deeds. This also allows the State to treat them in even more vicious ways than the acts they themselves may have committed.
True to form, oppression never recognizes the part it plays in creating the very energies that cause people to react based on their conditioning. Oppression does not take responsibility. Oppression and its multiple exploitative and violent systems avoid being held accountable. And anyone who dares to make it do so, the pushback will be intense and hawkish.
Sign of the Times.
How to fight our internal inclination to Oppress?
Here are some things I've committed to doing. They may not work for you, but the beauty of human intelligence is our capacity to adapt new information to suit our circumstances and personalities and dis/abilities without losing its spiritual benefits.
(1) When someone insults me, I offer them an invitation to unpack the insult and offer them a learning experience.
Someone once said to me that my eyes were scary because they nearly popped out and that person read my eyes popping out as an act of aggression. As an anxious persona, my eyes will open wide whenever I am excited or agitated. I used that as an educational moment to inform the person of why my eyes do that. Instead of calling them out, I called them in, invited them to learn something so they wouldn't be afraid next time they saw me get all bug-eyed. I also learned something new though from that person. I learned how past trauma can impact a person's reading of people's nonverbal communication styles and uncontrollable behavioural ticks.
A similar thing happened when I spoke to a stranger in my Spasmodic Dysphonic voice condition (adductor version - a strained, strangled tone). They said they had just heard the 'devil' speak. I invited them to unpack their fears, and provided them with details about my voice condition (notice, I don't self-shame myself by calling it a 'disorder'). We talked. Again, this person learned something about me and different voice conditions, and I learned something about them growing up in an orthodox religious household. Once they knew why it sounded the way it did and were able to move past their fear, we were able to converse about other things during the weekend retreat we had both registered for.
(2) People are not always (or never) the sum of their actions.
I made friends with a prisoner who as a young soldier went on a killing spree in the country he was stationed in. I wrote about him in a past post, but I might have taken it down. He didn't survive his guilt, unfortunately, and apparently died by suicide, but to this day, I don't believe he would have died by such means, as he had shown much interest in not only connecting with me, but also with others who were interested in his story and his desire to seek some deliverance from what he had done. He knew he had a lot of road to cover on this journey, and he knew all too well that his acts had made him more enemies than friends. When I first read the story of what had happened, I was in tears; tears of rage, tears of sadness, tears of grief for the families and people directly affected. But on that same night I found this story, my sorrow motivated me to write him. I did not think he'd ever get the letter but he did! Soon, he asked for permission to correspond with me through the prison email communication system. I knew that agreeing to it would mean that all our emails would be read by the higher ups. But for the short time we corresponded, we connected on a level beyond the narrow confines of our identity labels. He had also connected to a few other people too on the same level, and even though, I did not know them, it seemed we were all connected on a spiritual plain, not only guiding ourselves through the grief, but also supporting this ex-soldier's journey towards redemption. He died too soon for that to happen, but I am hopeful that what we began is now sacred healing energy bringing light and love to the families, friends, and all those who suffered such intolerable losses on that day when our soldier friend sealed his fate. Incidentally, a play was written about this person, and it was performed by this theatre company in 2015, subsequently performed by others in more recent years.
(3) When we meet people where they're at, we allow ourselves to see beyond our identity walls.
Have you ever had convos with people who are actually quite racist? How about homophobes and transphobes? How about people with ableist views, or who are ageist? And then, how about the misogynists, the patriarchs, those traditionists who think womxn need to stay in the kitchen? And the folx who treat people living with HIV and AIDS with revulsion and exclude them? What do you say, how about sitting next to someone on the sex offender registry and having a coffee at Tim Hortons with them? Or, maybe someone who's harmed animals in their past (by harm, I include even the lowest threshold of harm to animals, which for me, is giving them up at a shelter, which basically means that this person is no less placing them in line for the gas chamber - yes some States and I guess some places in Canada use the gas chamber to euthanize unwanted dogs, mostly cats, and other animals.
I continue to meet people who fit the above schemas because most often, they come through my door (my door means wherever I may be in some spiritual or temporal place), they come through my door, to start a dialogue, not a fight. That dialogue leads to story. And stories have the power to humanize us, no matter who we are and what we've done.
I've been blessed to witness transformations in people. You'll believe it can happen only when you allow hateful language to come through your door knowing that it 'can't touch this'. People will change when they know in themselves that it's time to change. They won't change cuz I'm screaming obcenities at them and calling them a bunch of "sexist misogynist violent neanderthals' or engaging in exclusionary practices within places I work or through my social networks to keep such people OUT.
I am not saying that those of us labouring for social justice change must suddenly open the flood gates to ALL those labeled 'deviants' or 'miscreants' by society (by a society which is actually not interested in preserving the good, but have its sights on preserving the wealth among the few). So, they ultimately decide who's in and who's out. Notice, some people get a thumbs up for their nefarious actions, while others don't make the cut and get processed in a PIC factory. If the latter are lucky and are saved from the PIC, then they're the ones who end up coming through our doors. They're the ones who are either going to keep doing what they've been doing - bringing more harm to themselves, and tragically, to others who are in their way - or they might do something about the potential option a chance encounter with us might offer them in the form of a seat or a spot in this inner sanctum that now they too have a hand in envisioning - but maybe their first response may be to manipulate. And throughout the trajectory of their presence in a space that belongs just as much to them as to us, we might witness when they experience the glory of awakening into a new persona, the moments when they struggle with their internal demons and the desire to harm yet choose other channels to allow those tempests to flow through without harming themselves or others; but, in reality, we may still witness the sometimes very public instances when their not-so-at-peace persona(e) has a meltdown and all their internal work comes to an abrupt halt. And we are flustered by this eruption. But the truth is, maybe it's just fate.
The question then for us is, will we - us, our communities, our children, our pets, our plants - hold space for these eruptions, disruptions, and triumphs all sporadically, incongruently, unpredictably presented by the broken mortals among us who are slow progressors in their internal trauma work? Who decides whose space this is? If we were collectively building a space, would we not want something closer to anarchy?
Then again, anarchy is not a thing to be 'built'; otherwise, it risks slipping back into the same rabbit hole all our other movements have slipped into - just another human-made mechanism of self-righteous control, exclusion, and violence.
Anarchy is something people can practice daily, to be attentive, open, respectful, decent, caring and loving, knowing that space can be shared, and we have the capacity to hold space for anyone, even for those who may look at us with disdain or label us as nothing but 'the dirt under their shoes', or even worse, when they're raging and throwing expletives at anyone in their path. It's easy to get provoked. It's easy to take things personally. What's not so easy is to hold space for that person, to meet them where they're at based on their lived experience, a lived experience I know nothing about until I ask, "Are you ok? Do you need to talk to someone? I have some time. What's on your mind?"
I have not yet figured out how to navigate situations where people are being physically violent, but I do know from experience, that I am not a passive bystander. When I have been witness to people's aggressive behaviours towards other humans or animals, I have not hesitated in stepping in to disrupt and complicate their performance. I may at first yell 'STOP', and once they're distracted and their eyes turn to me, with probably, thoughts of destroying the interloper, I shape-shift and start talking to them as if we're family, and that I'm their sibling, or parent, or child, or someone within proximity of a blood or chosen relative. That familial tone of voice can calm people down somewhat when it's coming from a genuine place. It's helped me intervene in situations where men were being aggressive towards womxn, poc boys starting fights with other poc boys, people uttering homophobic slurs at others, people being loud and obnoxious who are about to get nasty on public transit. I've said, "Hey, hey, are you ok? Come here, sit down, let's talk."
I don't always know what I'm doing, and so, I don't think everyone should try to intervene in what could potentially be a high-risk dangerous confrontation. But so far, I haven't been beaten to a pulp, and I thank my sweet mama for always praying for me and my bodily integrity. That being said, I have never come across anyone wielding a weapon. I will pray that if and when that ever happens, my instincts will kick in and I will know what to do to either remove myself from the situation and ensure that other people are safe too or to lend a helping hand in other ways, like calling 911.
I was once told that I saw the world through rose-coloured glasses. The person who said that was projecting their own toxic masculinity insecurities. I was born into violence, into a bloody ravaged region that became the birthplace of a new nation, born among a generation of immigrant-settlers who were uprooted from their origins and compelled to construct new identities in often violent repurcussive ways or reconstruct something close to the original but always falling short, never quite belonging to this group or subsect. If I see the world through rose-coloured glasses, then pigs can really, actually FLY (maybe once they did, and I wish they still could so they could fly away from those horrible factory farms and slaughterhouses).
I categorically deny any and all opinions regarding my purported illiteracy in what is referred to as real like. Who I am today and what I've done to bring humans closer to their humanity is a direct result of the violence I've both witnessed and experienced in my lifetime. If my 'rose-coloured-naive-foolish-sometimes-public' displays of holding space for all the ne'er-do-wells in our world are viewed as endorsements of their problematic behaviours, then I share with you what 47 years living, loving, and fighting on this earth has taught me:
Acceptance of our diverse and divergent human states is a virtue foolishly shunned by those in power and by activists controlled by social justice orthodoxies. When acceptance is intentionally practiced by those who society considers 'weak', this acceptance can bring about significant change overtime, even if the change can only be seen in the actions of ONE individual, maybe only benefiting the collective cosmic consciousness (where my Lalu and AK's energies are now among), but that may indeed be felt on earth in one or many of the billions of daily acts of human existence and of the human soul. (How many people and animals do we randomly come across in our daily lives? So, imagine what the transformed individual can do with this newfound way of living, living with joy, with purpose that creates a profoundly beautiful moment, maybe a humourous moment, or even a cynical one where they may laugh at themselves.).
Prayer 1:
May we commit to performing Acts, that in their simplicity, can spark life-affirming altruistic, tender-hearted, humane, and humanitarian beginnings where evil, hate, insatiable hunger for power and control, and the will to exterminate themselves and/or other sentient beings including kith and kin were once conditioned destiny.
The truth is, it never had to be nor has to be.
Let's get the dialogue started. Where it'll end, we don't know, but if we start with the desire to understand, the tension that might follow can be mutually addressed with gentleness and respect.
As long as you all know this, I'm with you.
You may not like me, may never like me, but I know you and somewhere in you, you know you know me, too.
Prayer 2:
Peace. Solidarity. Love. Liberation to all Sentient Beings on Planet Earth and the Cosmos.
Make Compassionate Evolution not Greed-filled Extinction our Contribution to LIFE, make it our our ever-lasting imprint for future generations and iterations of Being.
Make Every Life Form Count as ONE VALUED RESOURCE not to be used and exploited but to be appreciated for simply EXISTING. And if this Life Form needs to change for its own good and/or for the good of others, then may our Higher Consciousness and the Cosmos make it part of that Life Form's path to Healing, to Recovery, to Love, even in death.
Prayer 3:
I dedicate this pronunciamento, petition, meditation to my beloved kitties: Lalu (2006 - 2019) & AK (2013 - 2017); to all my ancestors and relations whose anthropologies I will never know; to the friends and chosen family members I call my peers who are, now, too, like Lalu and AK, consciousness, all traveling at lightning speeds through vast stretches of universe, radiating and twinkling hope for the material world, that wondrous blue-white-brown-green sphere that remains the envy of its planetary neighbours similarly suspended in the same galactic dust swirl, also colliding with the warming rays of a brobdingnagian solar Divinity.
No matter what may happen to us here on this blue-white-brown-green dimension or plateau or dream, the good in us is stronger than our material being, and when that being dissolves into dust, we are free to spread the love we've always known but may never have gotten the chance to share on earth. But for some of us, we may be fortunate enough to find how to create more love while we exist in human form, maybe through a chance encounter with someone who was brave enough to step in and offer to listen without prejudice.
I pray that somehow, somewhere, all those loved ones in the spirit world will instill in all us broken people here, the ones confined in sweltering, raging cages built by the PIC, the ones consumed by blood-thirsty evil in their basements, the ones falsely elected to lead who cannot lead, the ones who exploit and consume to maintain their 1% status, the ones driven by desperation who maim, torture and kill other sentient beings, the ones who remain in denial, the ones victimized by unimaginable trauma, the ones dislocated, the ones silenced, the ones colonized, the ones under threat of air attacks, the ones, those ones, these ones, everyONE...I pray that our Higher Cosmic Consciousness will instill the profound realization that we each have some untouched reserve capacity for spiritual self-transformation that, even if only for a moment, will gift us with an extraordinary experience...
...where we feel in our whole body and being UNCONDITIONAL LOVE for that unloved child in us, for the unloved children before us, for the unloved people in our lives, for the unloved people we've harmed or who have harmed us, for all other sentient beings who are innocent, domesticated or wild...
...and also the will, the urgent desire and commitment to self-transform and to reconnect with that most loving of spirits - that which remains in every human soul despite living through the ravages of human existence - that which a singular act of Divine Grace breathed into us before we rose in human form, that most loving of spirits that does not manifest the violence passing through it, and each time the violence implodes, what Divine Grace breathed into our dust will not allow the violence to explode by remaining in stillness, in acceptance, and in the wisdom of knowing that an impulse is fleeting, and with time, such impulses that lead to violence will fade as that most loving of spirits within us begins to SOAR.
And this concludes my prayer for the night on the second day of Ramadan.
Ramadan Mubarak.
Remember, we are our Own Liberators.
Peace be Upon You.
Neonsab
