Spiritual Bypassing Systemic Oppression 

There is an issue with the phrase: “in this spriritual practice we don’t recognise systemic oppression in the material plane”.

Spirituality, in it’s metaphysical centric abstractions has the tendancy to enable a bypass of identity and a bypass of the kinship realm, the intrapsychic. By bypassing identity there is a space allowing ambivalence, outside the system of getting tied into having to resist, or fight for liberation. Certain ambivalence is necessary for survival, sure. But is there is an avoidance of the fight in total? If ‘the fight’ is reasoned to be perpetuating the splitting and the attack, this is a reduction and an over simplification. Which could also be a crutch to enable a non dencentralisation, or an avoidance of real world pressures and contexts.




IDENTITY AS BOTH SEPARATION & PARTS OF WHOLE


Of course there is an aspect to Identity which means the only way to define it is as ‘separation from the whole’, there is no way we can discuss identity, without there being separation present in the constellation - I prefer to call this ‘discernment’.

I do not think it is always a form of violence, splitting, or dualism, to define a part of our grid as separate from being fused with oneness.

To me it is a form of violence, erasure and non-recognition, which robs something of a portion of its power, to not define it as simultaneously a part and in contradiction or definition, from Oneness/Non Duality.There is a violence present in all definitions - and violence present in a disappearances.

We need to hold dualities and polarities and multiplicities.Bracha L.Ettinger speaks of a Trans-Subjectivity.

This comes through the discussions or Introjections, the Intra-realm or Intra-psychic: Relation.

Even within a Zen practice, where all is demolished or transcended, and shamanic worldviews where all is interconnected. This is also about acknowledging the Spirit within Matter, which is the yin, dark receptive feminine principle, being found held in the body, through witness and holding space and our lack of recognition of this spirit of matter also being instrumentalized within the psychic architectures that are creating all relations and reality itself. Our reality itself is woven within the same psychic architectures of gaze that our systems of currency, industry, capital and geopolitics are.


Without acknowledging all beings as ensouled and all beings and objects, and materials of the world as besouled and part of the spiritual situation - so also recognising the context of each being as unique within this world - Spiritualists who live by ‘not seeing’ or not recognising the fight, oppression, resistance and lifeforce struggles within identity, subjectivity, and inter-subjective spaces - is a form of not understanding how context also shapes a being, and how context demands a being to respond, to survive, how this affects a being’s shine.

This is a co-emergence which one cannot find which came first - cause and effect. And not recognise it is an ego inflation on only platforming the yang, being closed in the comfort of a centralised identity or whiteness.

A denial of recognition to identity as a signifier of also how a world intra-acts, through the collective of society, into and onto body-psyche - is an inflation a self centrism, that denies power and truth of revolution, transformation, agency, lineage, symbolic ethnicity, and warrior archetypal energy.



SIMULTANEOUS RECOGNITIONS

Those parts of us which identify within anything other-ised, need a simultaneous recognition for what they are carrying - we need to be able to recognise and respect personal identity and essential identity, also identity of spirits in how they present themselves. Identity expresses many subtle qualities on an image and part of that is about the context the image sits within.

Identity level traumas and differences or diversities, are made in relationship with the world, - intersubjective - and they also need to be healed in relationship to the world.

This is about mirroring and safe attachment. Also, because The World constellates them as much as they constellate the world, the world needs to be recognised in the state in which it is appearing for them.

To not recognise and accept the realities and limits that are shaping kin, is based on our own needs or assumptions for order, control, perfection.

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I am really sorry to anyone who has come up against the types of spirituality and healing in practice - which is not acknowledging our own gaze, especially when it is taking space as trauma healing… It can be very confusing if groups working with soul healing, (Soul being the darkness, the yin. Spirit being bright spark) are led by the belief that recognition of ethnicity, class, caste, symbolic ethnicity, racial identity is somewhat superficial or not of great value to a story and to power.This often demonises bodies of proximity in relational realms, and always affirms the capacity for centralised identities to whiteness, to have less work to do in adapting and accommodating for. In the intra psychic realm this is a loading-on of all the tabooed existences of the Dark Mother.

Having identity based trauma, having experienced erasure, disappearance, and othering, we can spend many many years in the squish, of not being able to recognise ourselves, feeling driven mad, made into ‘a novelty’ within groups, not being seen in a way which is able to respect our soul, feeling like we are being used and extracted from, on an energetic level, in response to what for others might exist as ‘opportunity’ within industry, within society.

Especially for artists if you are highly receptive and have a connection with the dark mother the ‘opportunities’ that come towards you, but still ask or require you to centralise something within you in order to fit the context of the opportunity, as something other than your own identity & context, can burn up your yang reserve energy very quickly. Its the over-adaptation that is tiring - because the over adaptation takes adrenaline & cortisol to manage, (for example), pumped through your body at a higher rate than centralised identities.


Having different material world and different spiritual world gates to pass through, different stress levels, different coping capacities, different economic pressures, different privileges, different knowings, different ancestral curses & emotional reserves within family units, different conditionings to overcome, means we need to deep listen to our own algorithm.

Since the world is ‘the way the world is’ - and that is unique for each of us - our images of ‘healthy’ is radically different to a societal image of ‘healthy’.



MARION WOODMAN: HOLDING THE TENSIONS, 1991





THOUGHTS CREATING REALITY?


It’s not only your thoughts that script a whole reality. We are in networks. We are not hyper individual, we are kin. There is no creation, without it having being creation with.

Also, are the thoughts in your head, really your own thoughts? Or are Ancestral Stories, and other peoples (your parents) shadows playing out like thoughts in your head? Are they planted in there? Or are they digesting and channelling other people’s material?

Yes, your choices with how you relate to others and how much space and time you give to your own shadow work, how courageous you are at self reflection, compile to create habits, relationships and these relationships build networks, communities, and reality is a networked community, also in collaboration with spirits.


“BUT YOUR THOUGHTS CREATE YOUR REALITY...”   ...needs to be understood *in context* to where we are at in the societal system, based on roles, and in context to collective power-biases. Also, which spirits are intra-acting with us?


We cannot only believe we can manifest ourselves, from one side of the equation, out of hundreds of years of systemic oppression and out of the collective psyche’s blanket. And recognising that systemic oppression does exist doesn’t ‘make more of it’. If anything, not recognising that something exists and pushing it into the shadow/taboo, makes more of it, it will jump into your life like a basebat.

If a critical mass of minds and hearts do ‘wake up’, we will tip the scales, but we need to wake up into the here and now and into kin, into soul, into world soul.

Recognising that something exists does not mean ‘going to war with it’. If something is Power-Over towards you in your grid, and you are here to actualise and build agency, to be in a greater service, then yes, the warrior archetype will be needed. Yes, we need to fight for our lives and for what we believe in, fight against harm and abuse. For this kind of ‘fight’ the trickster energy might be helpful.

Practices of the current moment which do not hold any space or dialogue for intersectionality or decolonisation, avoid to give witness and acknowledgement of very important parts of history, and very important aspects of balance and imbalance in society.

Spiritual bypassing, adds to the problem of silencing the voice of the Earth and the stewards of it and their real life struggles, humanity and the world that forms them. Since many of the practices we are practicing and the wisdom we rely on has been carried to us through the lives of the most oppressed peoples of our world. How can we avoid to sugar coat not being accountable to their experiences?

Especially of stolen lands and stolen generations.

If we cannot speak to the experiences of most oppressed, how could we ever hope to be able to speak for Earth Rights, or Water Rights.



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INNER VIOLENCE IS NOT AN IMAGE OF BEING BROKEN NOR UNHEALED


In the age of systemic shadow work, silence is not always golden. Sometimes it is freeing, and the most respectful way we can respect the soul of an other is by remaining silent.

But in other instances staying silent means not having to speak up for or take ownership over co-carrying the impact of certain violences.Those who Identify with the liberation to the Dark Feminine - are having emotions that are different from others who do not identify with this energy or power. Perspectives that are informed through violences which are not pleasant.

This does not mean they are the negative forces. They are messengers or containers of this substance.

They are wisdom keepers, fire or light bringers, truth seekers, but they bring the light through the shadow. It is not a light that is coming through the light.Most times these folks who identify with the darkness are picking up on all the other emotional content that is being refused by the bodies around.

We become vessels of collective shadows. And that is neither good nor bad. It just ‘is’.



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POSITIVE LENSES 

An issue is that many people are jumping over accountability and rather choosing an easier interpretation of ancient teachings which travels through a positive lens. There is a denial and avoidance by thinking certain spiritual planes of existence are possible to be lived in, all the time.

Life-affirming is also composting.

Once we become practitioners, I can understand that it takes a lot to prove oneself and hold the value of our practices, to convince our clients that we are worth paying a certain amount of money. And we are also expected to churn out results. This is pushing us towards offering the positive lens.



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GOD COMPLEX?


We are not an ‘all seeing eye’. What we are always not aware of is our hyper individuality, our privileges and our positioning. You cannot assume to have access to Karmic sight.

There might be realms we glimpse or perceive to touch into, to almost imagine, or to reach into in our dreams, in meditation, in ‘astral travel’ but 1. it’s different for everyone, depending on our own unique cosmology, and 2. it’s not possible to live in any of these forms of reality all the time, and avoid the banal and material existence.

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PUBLIC SYSTEMS & WHITE, WESTERNISED CIRCLE CULTURES: WHERE IS THE DIALOGUE INTO EQUITY AND INCLUSION?

The material existence, public systems - are all routed to favour the centralised consciousness of whiteness and maleness. Every system we move our bodies through in our world, is built from the consciousness that centralised the white male experience and made the female/black and brown bodies ‘other’. The Man is everywhere.There are differences between the gaze and knowing of a white cis heterosexual male gaze, a white cis heterosexual female gaze who is still pedestalling the white cis heterosexual male gaze, and a decentralisation and re-centralisation of the Dark Goddess, opening towards extreme contradiction, understanding brutality and torture, as boundary violations that exist with her, and identifying with the extraction of the earth body as our own bodies.

It’s only ‘her trauma’ (out there) for as long as we don’t co-identify with her and co-carry her load. In a circle culture one person’s trauma is meant to be an informant for the entire collective. Circle culture finds a way to recognise the extent of oppression that exists, for the people whose practices they seek or share in.

Circle culture is an active ally of the people who are undergoing similar forms of oppression worldwide.

Can spiritual practices remain non-political?

Are spiritual practices already always political in their act, and ethos?


Within white-body-led spirituality practices, where is the dialogue within the container, into lived experiences of equity and inclusion?


If we are not also taking into account systemic oppression through our gaze and style of relating, preparing spaces for non white bodies, or bodies with diverse gender expressions and identifications, nor looking into who we pedestal, whose voice we speak for, and how our projections flow - we create our experience all from the same (likely ethno-)centric lens. We perpetuate the same bypasses and gaslighting into and onto ‘deviant’ bodies.


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‘DEVIANT BODIES’

Not only divergent, but deviants are non compliant.Defensiveness to receive a ‘deviant’ bodies wisdom, is understandable. But to continue defensiveness is missing the deeper point. The deviant body has much to teach, all about shadows. 

It's a good idea to leave a few threads open and unravelled for the deviant’s teaching to sink in. Even if the situation was wrapped in context that caused an unavoidable ‘loading’, there is a core message and ask within to have spoken up for the Dark Goddess, and to speak up for the Earth Emotional Body in context to her real lived situation, existing amongst great harming violences in the world.


When a body who has been loaded with the deviant role comes in with wisdom, do not re-traumatise, shame and cause more harm. Do your shadow work, and leave the door always open for a return connection.Dig deeper into what Dark-Goddess-Affirming-Spirituality actually means and why and how far back it goes, and how somatic it is, how rooted in the limitations of matter being recognised as spirit it is.It is mainly the identities who don't have a choice but to live through these initiations that end up being the ones driven mad enough to have to be the only ones speaking to her. The label as being deviant, is not something which comes from within a subject, but it comes onto the subject from the relational realm. This is what I am talking about in terms of owning the splitting and the violence.



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TAO IS NEGATIVE SPACE


Practitioners seem to lead with productive and positive modes. This is not how the Dark Goddess moves. She seeps in through relational allowance, resting, process, chaos.

Connected with concepts of purity we are constantly eroding and boycotting respecting the incubative dark - Her strength, resiliency, struggle, right to resting and peace. Her timeline, Her flow, Her boundaries. Her value systems.

Not respecting her timeline means not holding her body. When the body is not held the ground gets swiped out from under her and she - as intuition - encounters a total disconnect of all chakras - third eye is blasted, sacral and root chakras are demolished from connection, heart is deflated. It is a violent uprooting, and when it comes through the deep bond of spiritual community it is the kind of ‘hoodwink’ that completely dis-members.



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How many healing practitioners are not aware of: unquestioning maleness, whiteness, need of politeness/efficiency, concepts of service, and hierarchies are expressed through how language is used, how systems operate and where recognition is going?



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A PRACTICE OF CORE SHAMANISM AS GAZE DECENTRALISATION, IS NOT ENOUGH TO OVERCOME OUR HYPER INDIVIDUAL POSITIVE POSITIONING AND SHADOW WORK


The very structure of the shamanic journey is to value process and incubation. The Way. It is abstract and undefinable. I do not believe that the same efficiency and progress can be expected of such a non linear and winding washy process.


I think it’s necessary to define that practice as one that must include shadow work and intense psychic de-centralisation that is not always inherent in the process of greeting and interpreting a relational practice with spirits. Psychic decentralisation cannot only be into the astral, but needs to also include the earth and her realities, also discussing that within earth mother consciousness, all beings are non binary or 2 spirit, and always in transition of gender energies, all beings at the core, bi sexual, and always in transition of libidinal energies, and all beings have an identity path to walk and an algorithm of reciprocity within that, which presents itself as ‘Path’.

The only way we can really understand what the messages and symbols from behind the veil (darkness) pertain to - is through shadow work as a form of illumination.



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We are alive in this time - here and now. The pressure for equal recognition on labour and identity has already built up. Noone is going to be able to do the inner work for anyone else. The inner work is having to put yourself in the shoes of the other, fully, and grieve the situation and somehow find acceptance, or  activation.

We practice what we preach - we need to be re-balancing and holding space for both - equally. To me that means to:

Actively turning focus from
The Mountain,
To turning focus towards 
The Valley.

Before all prophets the source is the primordial darkness and the sound ‘shhhhh’.

The time and space I associate with this as Shamanic is the Wu Matriarchy (South East Asia) who were the original dancers of The Tao.

( Neolithic Culture, Final period of Stone Age, Dates c. 10,000 BC to c. 2,000 BC )



DIASPORA POWER - NOT THE ‘DEVIANT’ - SCOOPING OUT THE OPPRESSOR & LEARNING THROUGH ANCESTRAL LINEAGES ENCOUNTERING COLONISATION


I am approaching my work with the support of all of my supportive ancestors, to own all ancestral connections.

LUISAH TEISH ON CLAIMING IT ALL:




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Some of those ancestral lineages I am claiming were colonised, and some were colonisers. Some had access to resources and had accumulated wealth, some migrated, some lost important family members very young. The difference in temperaments, how they treated each other - whether they entered into competition or not, how jealousy is manifest in the relations, how disagreement is handled and how belonging remains or not, and which types of woundings these lineages have at their core, is quite starkly different, yet all converge to make my perspective and experience, which also has a constant quality to it.

I have been able to see clearly the difference with which energy is being burnt up, where and how it is denied recognition. And in which context the energy is more passively syphoned or lived through the shadow: as lost dreams, and unlived lives.


The past few weeks I realised, I can [and do] have to kick out The Oppressor - which is overbalanced power - regularly. There is alway an inner something, to ‘overcome’, in order to exist.

This can become a magnet for the shadow of others - the affects which are buried in the unconscious and that which they themselves have not recognised.

I also use a simple spoon to scoop out the shadow of others from my energy feild.

We can make a ritual of scooping out some of the weight of the over-loaded oppressive paradigm.

I definitely do not shame myself or try to correct my inner paradigm out of a self perception that oppression ‘is not really there’ nor from an ideal image that ‘healed’ is to defy or be different to the world.

Every capacity that is within the world, is also a capacity in my pysche. 

Working with Dark Goddess Energy comes with a cost, because of what it alienates us from.

The kind of discord it makes obvious that exists with society is uncomfortable.

It is very hard to not get fused to this opposition and merge all of the time with the apotropaic: healing through posisons. It is exhausting to do so.

(Especially with the current politics).

There is nowdays no relation that I would put above the importance of my own connection to Dark Goddess Energy.

Some of this power was provided to me by a Wild Boar who ran through my body, obliterating a former self, in dreams in 2014.

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SOCIAL RESTORATIVE JUSTICE 


The need for social justice comes from the heavy emotional and physical toll that cultural and systemic oppression takes on us. Within Europe we need more dialogue on this. 

We understand that modernised practices are often not sufficient in addressing the concerns of the historically or systemically oppressed - LGBTQIA+ Diaporic BiPoC folk and anyone not from this group who is doing the inner ownership work and coming into real, embodied ally-ship alongside us.

Humans are brilliant learners, absorbing messages from our environments — families, society, culture. These external influences shape our identities based on creed, gender, colour, etc., which then shape our realities. To know who we are requires understanding these influences, and how it has shaped who we are. knowing which layers of that are personally transformable and which layers are to not waste energy with attempting to rebuild. By doing so, we can tease out who we are at our “core,” from what we’ve been taught.

On a psychic level and on a shadow-work level, it’s deep and into restoration of darkness & matter to her ensouled place.

With courage to keep showing up for ourselves and each other +++

Sarah