Mindfulness Impacting Racial Justice

My story into this topic is related to my personal and collective experience in society. As an educator myself, we have a responsibility to help new and “old” generations develop empathy, compassion and kindness from a space of authenticity.  We are all one is a premise in all religious and spiritual doctrines. We are all one in different body shapes, skin colors, hair textures, ethnicities, ages, and gender.  We are all one, and our diversity as a whole is what enriches our experiences in life. However, what is happening that we see the other as a threat, with contempt, and hate? The answer to that question is that we are not relating in our hearts to the experiences of the victims who are suffering from racial injustice. We are ignoring their experience, and in my case my own experience as I am a woman of color. The experience of communities of color is not a fabrication, it is an unfortunate reality; however, the mental representations associated with  racism have been consistently fabricated, and enforced by law for centuries. Since Ancient times communities/cultures that display a different value system and/ or body image from the Eurocentric world view have been undermined, undervalued, abused, and subjected because of the mental representations created many centuries ago.  Written records show that those representations began during the Romans and Greeks times and those icons are part of our contemporary/ modern political and social institutions.Our communities in the United States are being impacted by the legacy of the Eurocentric world view  with social inequities, unfair laws, sentences, and etc. Mindfulness Meditation is one approach that will assist us in finding what mental associations and representations are blocking us from expressing love. Racism is LACK OF LOVE, simply that my friends.  Once we uncover our demons, and unlearn racism, our souls will begin appreciating the other with genuine love. Then and only then, we will be ready to look at the other in the eye and call him and her, my brother, and sister in the most sacred, authentic form. ©Maria Santiago-Valentín