Non-duality and white guilt. That’s not a good name, but you know what I’m talking about—white guilt, right? Are we responsible for what our ancestors have done? And white: it’s not accurate because there’s all sorts of conquering cultures that aren’t necessarily white, but what I mean by white guilt, white culture is a conquering culture.
I live here in the United States, and so here it’s very, very obvious and clear because the people that came in and conquered the land were white people, and we’re still here, and we’re still in charge, and mostly really, really terrible to anybody that doesn’t have the lightest color of skin, right?
So calling it white guilt works for what we want to talk about.
The real question is, are we responsible for the actions of our ancestors? The easiest answer, of course, is no. You were a little baby and you got born, and you’ve been trying your best to be good.
But the more useful answer is yes, yes, we are responsible, yes, we are guilty.
So what are we going to do about it now? Weak narcissistic babies will just whine and cry about it—”Oh, poor me,” you know, guilt… we’re not supposed to feel that!
Full-blown, honorable responsible adults won’t worry about the emotions and instead will go, “What can we do about this? How do we repair this?” We can examine, really examine, how is it that we actually are culpable.
It’s easy to look back in history and see that all these conquering cultures have been run by just a small handful of the complete population. Mostly everybody’s been subjugated.
One of the things people talk about, and it’s true, is that my ancestors centuries ago were also conquered. So I’m also the victim because I don’t have my indigenous ancestors anymore. It was only a small, small percentage of people who were actually the leaders. There was another small percentage of people who joined the armies which made it all possible. The rest of us were victims.
Or maybe we can look at it and say that the rest of us who were uninvolved, basically just sat back and said, “It’s not my problem.” They just tried to live their lives.
Isn’t that what many of us are doing right now? If so, that is how you and I are still culpable today! If we are sitting here doing that exact same thing and not making every effort to awaken ourselves to our full capacity, so we can be part of the solution rather than be the vast population that just tries to get by, then we’re culpable.
There is a big difference between awakening and revolution. If a revolution doesn’t change it’s worldview then we simply have new bad leaders. In the end revolutions become the new conquerors. So we need an entirely new consciousness of how we as human beings can live together in order to step out of this.
Guilt is useful if it inspires us to take action and gives us the strength to find the things that we can do.
The real question is: how do we step out of this immense culture that has sucked our ancestors along and has sucked us into it? We can name all the bad things: capitalism and greed and corporations and religions, all these things, right?
And how does non-duality fit into all of this? Well, first of all, non-duality means I am not actually that. There is something about me, my consciousness, that is way more awake than that. There’s something about me that is vastly more mature, more capable. There’s something about me that is so free that I will not get sucked into the morass of our culture. All of us that can touch that, who find that, who can become that, can start being a new voice in the debate of how do we live.
We need scientists who are awake, we need explorers who are awake, we need teachers who are awake, we need politicians who are awake. That’s a hard one, isn’t it, to spend your life coming to your awakening and then go be a politician? That’s a pretty tough calling, isn’t it?
We need authors, we need artists. We need to start drawing this picture of what an awakened humanity is capable of doing. And good news, it is happening everywhere. We are living in this moment in time that is blooming forth with awakened people everywhere. All of the stories and knowledge that is coming to us now from the current indigenous generation is incredible. The breakthroughs in everything that is happening now is remarkable. The number of people who are having deep awakening moments and who are starting to piece together a new story of humanity. This is happening.
White guilt, are we guilty? Are we responsible? Yes, yes we are. Let’s do something about it.