White People Aren’t Allowed to get “Enlightened”

The Upside of Systemic Cultural Diversity

Full disclosure: I don’t believe that every problem is about racism. When it comes to enlightenment however, systemic racism may be inhibiting many from their spiritual enlightenment in North America.

Let me explain:

The Superficiality of Cultural Diversity

I’m Canadian, and we proudly advertise ourselves as a cultural mosaic instead of a melting pot.

“Where ethnic groups have maintained their distinctiveness while functioning as part of the whole, and an American melting pot, where peoples of diverse origins have allegedly fused to make a new people.” – Sage Journals

As a black Canadian woman, I can see the cultural diversity however, when I look a little closer, it seems to fade. This is especially true for certain levels of management in government positions, politics etc.

What does that have to do with white people not being able to get enlightened you ask?

Leaving cultural diversity out of our systems is preventing us from becoming the cultural mosaic we claim in ways beyond the superficial.

I wish more people understood this simple fact:

Racism doesn’t have any winners.

The generational trauma of being on either side of the racism equation (perpetrators and victims) is palpable.

Let’s look at systemic racism for example, which is defined as:

A form of racism that is embedded in the laws and regulations of a society or an organization. It manifests as discrimination in areas such as criminal justice, employment, housing, health care, education, and political representation.

Fact: White people suffer under the heavy oppressive hand of institutional racism as well because guess what that means?

It means that white people aren’t allowed to get enlightened, at least not in this current system.

Proof?

Read My friend Dan’s Story

Dan is a tall, well-educated white man. He’s also a musician and the host of The Dang Lantern Podcast.

Though a bit quirky, once upon a time Dan described himself as “Average”. He went from being a non-spiritual person, to learning about the practical effects of meditation and giving it a shot, to having what he came to believes was a spiritual awakening. Dan described it as an out of body experience that completely transformed the core of his being. His side-effects included a state of bliss that left him feeling elated and much more connected to himself and others, great right?

Wrong.

Apparently, there’s such thing as being too happy.

That was his first lesson.

His behaviour was so foreign to those that knew him best, that his own brother got him admitted to the local psych-ward for evaluation.

His second lesson was that it didn’t matter what books and articles from brilliant well-known brain scientists he pulled up about spiritual awakenings and enlightenment, he still got blatantly ignored.

“They treated me like shit.”

Dan’s face dropped as he described this part of his story. He was met with so much cold mechanical “concern” , that it was insulting.

“Once they confiscated my computer after tirelessly ignoring everything I was trying to show them, I began to wonder if I’d ever get out of there.”

It wasn’t until, after a friends recommendation, he stated that he had a “religious experience” and threatened to sue them for infringing on his rights that he was released.

Trouble is, for Dan, it wasn’t a religious experience.

At the time he didn’t subscribe to any religion per se, however he is now deeply interested in Buddhism now due to their proliferate language revolved around spiritual awakenings.

The Upside of Systemic Cultural Diversity : An Updated Lexicon for our Human Experience

According to Buddhism, there are several ways to be enlightened, and these kind of experiences occur quite regularly… just not in the west.

Despite what the, let’s face it, probably racist forefathers of this country, most of the western countries have evolved into beautifully diverse ones.

Those with the eyes to see and the ears to hear black and indigenous people of Color have noticed something: spiritually, we’re deeply connected to a profoundly metaphysical part of existence that we’ve given a rich language to. In my own African culture for example, the spiritual and the physical world are inexorably linked. This fact is taken rather seriously and embedded into our systems.

Saying you’ve had a spiritual awakening in India receives questions like:

“Which type?”

One of the only questions that my friend Dan received about his experience was

“Are you mentally unwell?”

Our systems are ancient and haven’t been revised in far too long. The world is changing everyday, and people are waking up to new ways of experiencing it that include the metaphysical/spiritual.

This brings us to the next upside:

The Upside of Systemic Cultural Diversity : Spiritual Enlightenment for All

One of the many upsides of cultural diversity is spiritual enlightenment. Among other things, many BIPOC have centuries of experience speaking about such things, the west is essentially just scratching the surface in this way.

Although meditation as a practice today is pretty common and widespread, it’s good to understand that the origins and roots of meditation go back a long way.

As meditation has grown in popularity, so has its interest within the research and psychology communities. The first piece of scientific research on meditation occurred in 1936, and in 1955 the first study using an electroencephalogram (EEG) occurred. An EEG records electrical waves of activity in the brain by using electrodes placed across an individual’s head.

In the 1960s, some of the first Western research took place at the Menninger Clinic in Kansas, United States, with Swami Rama, a senior Yogi from the Himalayan International Institute of Yoga Science.

Some Immigrants however? They’ve been meditating for centuries. We are still in the infancy of our scientific understanding of the practice. Leaving diverse cultures on the complete outside of the equation of the research would be a grave mistake.

There is so much richness in the human experience, and that sharing can help elevate us all to levels we couldn’t even fathom.

Just imagine how different Dans experience would’ve been if our health system had the language for spiritual awakenings embedded into it? What would that even look like?

Right now, we are so far off from that. Our health systems are busying themselves with diagnosing the “toos” “Too happy? here’s a prescription.” “Too sad, here’s a prescription”. Imagine if instead we recognized depression as a spiritual Dark night of the soul which describes :

an extremely difficult and painful period in one’s life, before a spiritual awakening.

May we embrace the fullness of cultural diversity in our systems and our lives in every way possible. The shared-learning potential could truly be life-changing.

Have you ever heard a story like Dans?

Rumor has it, they’re happening more often than we Think! Please comment.