enslaved thoughts

Hi Maggie,

I'm glad you had a rewarding time.  I took prenatal yoga during my second pregnancy, because I had a placenta previa. The midwife said that sometimes the placenta migrates.  So I took classes and meditated on placental migration. It worked.

I don't think we have sling yoga here.  I was doing Svaroopa yoga, which used a lot of bolsters to support various body parts, for awhile, but the teacher is not teaching here in the village any more. No one is teaching yoga here right now...

I have been caught up in thoughts of slavery...trying to understand.  Reading about the book I mentioned, describing the breeding programs for slaves, the forced pregnancies, discarding females who were no longer fertile - or as fertile.  Taking babies, separating families.

We have the stereotype of the absent black father.  We created that culture.  So what did we create for our white selves?  I think we created numbness.  We had to blind something inside to be able to live in a world where humans own humans. We learned to categorize and rank.

You are less than me, you are other, therefore I am not connected nor responsible for you. Or maybe, I am completely responsible for you, you pathetic heathen. It is what is happening between Palestine and Israel.  They each see the other as a different, lesser species.  I read a lot of literature about the horrible things that have happened to the Jewish people through time.  I've read about the ways they were treated as the UN created an artificial country for them in 1948.  Now they've gained power and rather than remembering the pain they went through, allowing compassion to shine through - the have decided to be even less humane.

I went to a peace roundtable years ago, and met a woman who was part of an international peace group.  The group was asked to come to Palestine.  In trying to find a place to start, they listened to one group tattle on the other, and the other explained what they were retaliating for, which led to the causative incident...they went for a long time, each remembering. They can remember generations...they tally each hateful event and remember.

That has influenced their genetics, I'm sure. It has led to their current culture, created who they are.

We are similarly formed by slavery. We are not past it.  It still defines who we are.  I mean, one thing that has always bothered me is:  Why is Barack Obama a black man.  He is as much white as he is black.  Why do we only see the otherness.  Because in days when slavery was legal, even octaroons - people who were 1/8 black - that means one black great-grandparent - they were black.

Why do we have such a hard time seeing we are all the exact same species.

So, I was also reading about and then thinking about the way we own and enslave animals - other sentients. Our comfort and ease with slavery means we don't see the wrongness, the sin, of factory farming and CAFOs.

I think, because we are so  comfortable with the rightness of slavery, we have a hard time seeing our own enslavement...

This numbness covers, therefore allows so much pain...but I see people waking up.  I feel it. I feel corners of light in the world where people are saying No More!

So even though my heart feels broken, it also feels like healing is not only possible, but imminent!

Love and hugs from Clare

Final thought - I saw a quote once that pointed out that human beings are the only species, where if we disappeared from the planet, the planet would be healthier. All other species are a necessary part of the web. We used to be, when we were humane...