EP 162: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out | Ruth King

Welcome to Radical Responsibility, the podcast dedicated to ridding the world of blame and shame, where we explore the issues you care about from a unique perspective. 100% ownership for each and every circumstance we face in life, day in and day out. Hi. Welcome to the Radical Responsibility podcast. This is your host, Fleet Moll. And in today's episode, I'm having a conversation with prominent mindfulness teacher Ruth King, and we're going to explore the transformative potential within mindfulness meditation and the healing power of accessing expanded states of consciousness. We're also going to explore the potential for deconstructing and transforming implicit biases and racism that still beset our society through mindfulness practice and accessing expanded states and also the potential for doing other kinds of shadow work. So, so listen, and this is going to be a great conversation. Really happy to be here today with Ruth King. Welcome, Ruth.

Thank you. Happy to be here.

Well, we're really happy to have you be part of our summit. And I'm going to share a bit of your bio and background for audience and we'll jump right into the conversation. Sound good?

Great. Yes.

All right, so Ruth King is the founder of Mindful of Race Institute and a celebrated author, educator and meditation teacher. She, she creates and leads programs that weave mindfulness based principles with an exploration of racial conditioning, its impact and human potential. Ruth teaches mindfulness meditation retreats worldwide and develops meditation practitioners at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Insight Meditation Society, and the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program. She has a master's degree in clinical psychology from John F. Kennedy University in California and is the author of several publications, including her most recent, Mindful of Race Transforming Racism from the Inside Out. Her web website is@ruth king.net today on the summit, we're focused on practices, strategies, practices, tools for integrating expanded states of consciousness experiences that people access through various means, whether it be psychedelics, plant medicine, psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, various forms of meditation, transformative breath work, shamanism, many means, music, ecstatic dance, and.

So really the importance of integrating those states in order to really experience their benefits for healing trauma, healing attachment wounds, for overall spiritual growth and awakening and to avoid some of the pitfalls. Some of these states can lead to some kind of ego inflation, or they can lead towards a kind of spiritual bypassing, or they, you know, can lead us to avoid doing some of the deeper work and the kind of shadow work and so forth. And so people can have amazing experiences but still have unfinished business that then arises and creates problems. So, so it seems very, you know, it's one thing to have various kinds of expanded state experiences, but it's really important to integrate them. And in terms of expanded states we're really talking about anything from just, you know, our, you know, basically moving from any kind of constricted defensive posture to an open posture to an open heart, to empathy, compassion and all the way into some of the extraordinary states that people experience on, on psychedelics and to transformative breath work where there can be a dissolution of the self identity and, and you know, somewhat mindable experiences. Anyway, so there's quite a range there of expanded state experiences, some of which are situated within our normal waking consciousness and some of which could be called altered states or non ordinary states. So anyway, that's the general territory and I'm curious as a meditation, longtime meditation practitioner and teacher, just how this, the term expanded states of consciousness resonates with you. What does that mean to you? Where would you go with that?

Yeah, yeah, thank you, Fleet for that kind of context for this important summit of inquiry and investigation.

And I appreciate being a part of it. And I especially like the question because for me a lot of times I think the idea of expanded consciousness is taking people up and out. And so much of.

What speaks to integration to me is about bringing ourselves in and down. And so that brings us back to the body as a primary domain that is actually having the experience, you know, and not body as in this body as much as body as the.

As the vortex, as the vehicle for.

Of which experience is washing through.

I think when I think about integration of expanded consciousness, I'm thinking of how we bring ourselves into an experience of what's happening in this body, granularly almost and allowing ourselves to feel deeply the moment to moment experiences and lack of experiences, the empty experiences that we can have at any given time.

I love that. And actually I think mindfulness of body, mindfulness of breathing is a great portal both for integration but also even accessing expanded states. Because the more deeply we go into the body, we start with that kind of very tangible, maybe gross level of physical sensation. But the deeper we go into the body and into what's called the interoceptive awareness and the, the internal landscape of the body, we're starting to move into that sort of body mind spectrum into subtler and subtler sensation and energy and even into, you know, what might be called subtle mind eventually. So I think the body can be both the, the way to ground these states and also can be an access point. I'm curious about your thoughts on that.

I think so. And I also feel like.

What'S been fascinating for me lately in my own practice has been the sense of.

The emptiness of experience.

In the sense that there's aspects of this body where there is tangible aliveness, vibration, energetics, and then there's aspects where there's emptiness, right? There's spaciousness, if you will. There's like the sky is vast and then there's these things that appear in it. And that is also true in the body. It's vast and to open. It seems to me that this kind of entering into experience and I'm. I'm primary on the ground with expanded consciousness, it's very intimate to me. It's. It's not.

Something that's over there or something I'm trying to get. It's. It's in a moment to moment experience. And I'm just, just in awe with the vastness of the experience this body's able to touch into and the potency of touching these experiences when we're not so caught in our fixation of experience of any one experience that we can have. So a piece of my experience, my practice has been sitting with both the aliveness that I feel that's very vivid and tangible and at the sensations level, and then there is the emptiness that I experience. And that this body then doesn't have just this shape to it. It's. It's nature, it's expanded, it's. It's. It's just another way that nature is expressing itself.

That's really beautiful. And I think, you know, we think of that when we combine all the five senses into the moment to moment experience of reality that feels very solid and real and we feel separate from it, that we have this dualistic perception. And the brain has evolved to give us this particular representational reality by basically leaving a lot out and letting us focus on something that feels very real and tangible. But even if we just close the eyes and focus on physical sensation now that same physical sensation that we think of as this solid, real stuff really feels more like energy. It feels more like. It's much subtler. And all of the, you know, the meditative traditions, even the Satipatthana Sutra and Mindfulness of Body, you know, it's very much about realizing that that emptiness, both the form, the form and the formlessness, and, and there. And therefore a lot of what people experience in some, you know, extraordinary altered state, kind of expanded states of consciousness where they experience a dissolution of the self, also basic mindfulness of body and breath practice, we can begin to experience that egolessness of self the formlessness of the body, the formlessness of self and so forth in that way. Which then is that very same expanded state of consciousness.

Exactly. And such a state of freedom.

The ungrippedness that can happen when you tap that territory or dissolve if you will, the, the construct of our day to day movement. I think there's just tremendous.

Liberatory.

Moments and a vast arena that you can touch that I found quite magical and expansive.

And, and a release. It's like the third foundation, that kind of release from suffering which feels like a dissolve and surrender into the emptiness that is there.

Waiting for us.

So, you know, with mindfulness practice, it's not as common, but you know, our colleague, I'm not sure if you know, Willoughby Britain, I used to live in Providence. She's at Brown University. She's done some writing around some of the risks in mindfulness practice. People getting into a kind of destabilized experiences of emptiness. And I think from my, my knowledge of the people she's worked with in those studies have been about. There's been a kind of spiritual ambition going on. People kind of pushing, really using the practice to push themselves into an experience of emptiness and then kind of getting destabilized. But anyone along the path can have moments where, or even just not necessarily in a negative sense. Sometimes we do an intensive retreat, like we do a week retreat or we do a month long retreat and you know, we may feel kind of like we're there or we, you know, anyway we have these extraordinary experiences and experiences of tremendous freedom and maybe selflessness. But then as we step back into our life, there's still that, that process of integration. Right. And sometimes that, that momentary seeming enlightenment can disappear pretty quickly on us, which can feel disappointing. Right. So. But it seems like where you started, it seems like it's all about somehow bringing it back into, by connecting with earth, connecting with the heart.

Yeah. I mean, so much is happening when we begin to engage this process. I think of mindfulness. It is quite something to have those moments in meditation where you feel like, oh my gosh, you know.

There has been some letting go here and then, oops, who am I now that I've kind of actually allowed some of that to come through that the ego doesn't give itself up so easily. But there's also our conditioning around feeling like it's a, it's, there's a destination that we're going to reach. So I really can see how this ambition to kind of be enlightened or to know or the hierarchy of enlightenment and the judgment we can bring about what we might see or how, you know, how, how we might even judge ourselves in our process is so much a part of our conditioning. Right.

So it takes a minute. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've looked back on my practice and there are times when I thought I knew something only to discover that there was a deeper meaning to what was actually happening. But I couldn't see it then. And maybe I'm not even supposed to see it then. And this is where I think the role of the teacher or the guidance plays pretty important to hold that territory tenderly and to reinforce this idea that it's not.

In state, like we're not trying to drive to something and that this can be different tomorrow or the next minute in our experience. But yeah, I think there is a level of desperation, I think as well to be relieved from some of the ways we've been constructed and the way we hold, the ways we hold our experience is so imprisoning that when we have moments like that, of course the heart wants to lean into having more of it. And the reality is that we're in a warp zone around these very liberative teachings and our day to day lives. And they have to come together gently and with a lot of self love for integration, the really be embodied as opposed to just a concept. So I think all of that is in the mix when we talk about this.

So you brought up self love, self compassion and there are the loving kindness practices, the meta practices and so forth that have become part of the mindfulness tradition originating from Theravada and Buddhism. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about that, about the importance wherever we are in our spiritual journey and whether we're using primarily meditation or maybe we're accessing expanded state experiences by other means. But that, that. Because if we're, if we're not developing more self love, more self compassion, more self acceptance, then whatever we're doing can really be driven by not not being okay with who we are, not being okay with where we are. And so we're trying to get someplace else which can create this linear thinking like you were rep talking about in that. And it can create that kind of ambition which is actually counterproductive to the journey. You know, it may be that there are things in our life that we're suffering and we would like to not suffer. But you know, it seems like most traditions say, you know, it's by being willing to be with rather than trying to Escape all that. But we can get into this kind of linear thinking. And it seems like without really doing some intentional work around self compassion, it's hard to get away from that.

Yeah, I agree with you. I think self compassion in the, in our tradition is very helpful. I also think.

The psychological arena helps profoundly in helping people shift into being able to even entertain the concept of compassion more deeply. I think when we look at compassion, what are we really talking about? We're looking at how we love ourselves. And I think a way to shift into the practice is to like, for me, it wasn't just, it wasn't so easy to just say those statements of, you know, I, I, I feel the suffering. I, I, I understand the suffering, or, or may you be free from suffering. I, I needed to really feel.

The wounded part of me in my arms. I mean, I needed to have a more tactile image of being able to then embrace.

The part of me that was hurting. So it was a different language that I brought to the table before I can then entertain the teachings in its classical sense. Does that make sense?

Yeah. No, absolutely.

Yeah. I needed to hold the wounded one. And so then we're talking dualistically, of course, but I needed to have that felt sense before I can then open to a bigger space of surrender and, and, and to the nature of, and power that.

Compassion practices and heart practices have. So it's, there's something to be said about us bringing our own language to the heart practices.

Something holy, something that puts you in touch with the tenderness. Otherwise, I think it can feel kind of conceptual. And I think this might be the experience that's unique to the West. I'm not sure, but I know having a psychological background has helped tremendously as an integration focus with these practices to really land in the body so that I can let it go.

Well, we're coming back again and again to the body, the importance of connecting with our body. And, you know, by connecting with the body, we connect with our heart as well, because the emotional body and the physical body are inseparable. And this idea of really starting where we are and, and kind of seeing the spiritual journey, our spiritual development, our human journey, not as some kind of escape, but more a journey. Right. That where we are is actually not wrong. It's just where we are and it's what we have to work with. Right. My first.

Exactly. I mean, I think the other thing that I think is important around this integration is.

A reminder or a mantra to trust your life. Right. There's so much to our Lives. I'm just back from a road trip to a civil rights road trip that we took down to Montgomery and.

Selma and Birmingham and Atlanta. And I'm looking at my people through these, through the Legacy Museum, from slavery to mass incarceration, which is a exquisite. It was an exquisite examination of then and now. And the question that came up for me in terms of trusting your life is, you know, when I think of the parmis in our tradition, these moral principles that guide us in our moment to moment walk, and as they're ripened.

It becomes a way of calibrating how to make choices that lead to freedom. Right? And I was thinking, what were the parmis back during the Middle Passage? And. And, you know, what. What did generosity look look like? You know, what did loving kindness look like there? What did. What did truthfulness look like during the Middle Passage? Because my people had something to get us over to this land. And so when I think about that and I think about this tradition, I say to people, it's okay to know your, you know, the journey of how you got here. There's spiritual depth and wisdom in a lot of what's being streamed in our moment to moment experience that enriches and texturizes our practices in mindfulness. So bring your life to the cushion. Be willing to know the roots of where you come from so that there can be a real deep gratitude for how we have the privilege of sitting in this seat and entertaining the deep wisdom that the Dharma offers to us. But the fact that we can sit in these seats is rooted deeply in our heart wanting to love, our heart and body wanting to be free, and the inheritance that we bring from what's unfinished that psychologically we're also trying to make sense out of and elevate, if you will, or expand to a higher consciousness so that suffering is not a repeat dance or.

You know, so I think there's something to be said about us living our lives in that kind of textured way that supports a transcendence of suffering that has been more of a legacy and also now a reward, if you will, a way of taking it to another level. So I just feel all of this, you know, when I sit on the cushion. When we sit on the cushion, we bring our lives to it. And. And the question of, why are we doing this? What are we. What. Why are we here? How did we get here? And how do we.

Connect? You know, ultimately, where we live in this world, we're connected, we're impacted each other, and.

And our habits around that are things that can teach us how to, to elevate to, to more levels of freedom. I think that's a piece of what we're doing as well.

Well, it sounds like an extraordinary journey that you took. And again, starting where we are, part of that is acknowledging and being aware of how our sense of self is constructed and all the identities around that and our own personal individual suffering and trauma and all the ways in which we constrict and things that can trigger us into constricting. And then there's all the social conditioning. And part of that in this country is all the conditioning around race and how for people of my ethnicity, of being a white American, all our conditioning around race has caused a lot of harm to others. And so we could think of one type. I mean, that's one form of constriction. Anytime we unconsciously allow biases, prejudices, racism of any kind to kind of take over how we're being or how we're perceiving the world, we're in a constricted state, we're not in an expanded state. So part of that work of overcoming racism and or even at least just being aware of our conditioning, that awareness of our conditioning is an expanded state. I had the opportunity to visit Equal Justice Initiative or the, Is it Equal Rights Initiative?

I think it's an Equal justice.

Yeah, Equal justice eji, that amazing museum they have around the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and mass incarceration, as well as the memorial with all the kind of monoliths representing the lynchings that happened in counties throughout the US and it was quite an awakening to just be there and spend time there. And, and so these are very much expanded state experiences as well, I think. And I'm just curious about your thoughts about our individual and collective journey.

You know, it's not going to do us a lot of good to have, you know, these kind of mind blowing journeys with all the fireworks and the cosmic and everything. If we're not really changing who we're being and how we're being in the world and, and one would hope that those kind of experiences would cause one to be aware of one's racial conditioning, but maybe not, you know, not if one doesn't bring a focus there, one might not see that conditioning or have the opportunity to begin to let go of it.

Absolutely. I, I mean, I think a lot of people of color have deep awareness around some of their conditioning. Racially, I think a lot of white people are waking up to that on a different timeline, if you will. But if you don't have an awareness of your racial conditioning. It's difficult to examine it in this practice because it just isn't what comes up in your consciousness. I think the combination of being educated around your history, hence the invitation to really know your people and know that journey and know how it plays. And also this practice really supports a journey of deeper investigation so that the.

The tenderness and, and intimacy required to really uproot some of the collective suffering that's in the world that we're all entangled in.

Whether we know it or not, is actually examined. So I think the education around race needs to be dropped into the practice. So people need to be willing to look at that to address some of those issues. And I think a part of privilege that plays in our sanghas is that it, it. It's an option, right? And, and the part of sitting on the cushion, being with what arises is an important thing. But if race doesn't arise, then we're, you know, it's like, how does that get introduced? So that's a big part of why I do what I do in the world. But I think the, the mindfulness practice has potent medicine, if you will, for the uprooting of our conditioned way of being in relationship to, to, to that. And I think as you were saying a little earlier, if the aspiration is to transcend and bypass our day to day life.

Toward an ambition of expanded consciousness, moving us away from the intimacy of our lives and this very.

Important way, or if we don't come back to how we are moving in the world with our expanded consciousness, whatever that might be, to me that's core to integration.

So, you know, we're in this era of.

Tremendous interest in expanded states of consciousness. We're in the era of what people are calling a psychedelic renaissance, which, and I've done a lot of research on that for this in a previous summit and which focused on psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. And I went, you know, through that, I think maybe was the first wave, I don't know, the second wave. But back in the 60s, that whole psychedelic era and then doing my research, it's a much bigger thing today, it's much broader landscape and people, I think are for the most part being more thoughtful about it. There's a lot of wonderful nonprofits, nonprofit organizations involved and kind of trying to do it right this time. And, and so there's a lot of wonderful things going on. There's huge interest in meditation and mindfulness. I mean, you know, there's a, there's a, there's a Whole kind of consciousness movement in. In the world that's ever broader. And I would hope that that would also intersect with certainly here in the west, with.

Legacy of the civil rights movement, now, the anti racism movement, the Black Lives Matter movement and so forth to.

So that we. Because there could be a wonderful possibilities of coming at overcoming our conditioning, overcoming our racial condition, first owning it and then, you know, overcoming it, working through it, overcoming any ways in which it's harmful.

In a. In a. Grounded in a more spiritual approach or a more.

Maybe expanded consciousness approach, rather than just getting locked into kind of blame and shame and feeling bad about this and blaming others for this and that. You know, if we could bring these movements together, it kind of reminds me of, you know, it seemed like Martin Luther King was certainly at that juncture of spirit and social justice, very much, you know, a social justice warrior and at the same time, someone completely infused with spirit. So I would hope somehow these movements could influence each other a bit. I mean, there are some trainings I've been involved in over the last four decades of trying to develop more spiritual approaches to activism. We have the work of the Zen peacemakers I'm very involved with. And so I'm just curious about your thoughts about that, of how kind of some of the positive movement that's going on in society, how that could come together with the need to continue to do our work around social justice and racial justice.

Yeah, I think it's a big question. And.

I think what I'm excited about with this new kind of this renaissance of the psychedelic arena is that it has been. The context in which it's being offered has been strengthened to some degree. I like that there is to some degree, an emphasis on the.

Experiences where suffering is not primary. But there are moments of release. And those moments can have quite a hit on how we then reorient and position ourselves in response to some of the ways and struggles of what we have to walk through. I think that from what I'm understanding with people, therapists that are using.

Therapies, psychedelic therapies, teachers that I know that have profound insights that have.

Strengthened their understanding when they're teaching the Dharma.

People of color that I know who have had experiences that are supporting them and not being so locked or destabilized in the experiences of looking at race and working with it. So it seems to me, from what I can see, is that this serves.

What I like, that I'm hearing from a lot of this I learned from one of your summits. These associations that are out here, the research that's being done and the therapists who are seeing clients over a period of. So they get a chance to know them, be with them, introduce.

An intervention, track it, support understanding around it seems to me very important. And I'm seeing more of that with this. And I saw back in the 60s with people that I felt didn't have the kind of support that they needed. I don't know if it's for everybody, but it seems to be supporting a certain release of internal. Internalized oppression.

That gets us so gripped and destabilized that we can't function. So I don't have a lot of personal experience around this. Very limited experience around psychedelic interventions. But I feel that there is something to be learned about it. And I think it's a discussion that still needs to be had. And most importantly, I think people need to be in a supportive environment that supports the insights that come from the experiences that are associated often with this.

Yeah, a couple of organizations that come to mind. For me, Chakruna is really taking very strong position of bringing forward the voices of people of color within the psychedelic movement, the psychedelic assisted therapy movement. And then also there's a wonderful organization called Black Therapist Rock that's very involved in the emergency psychic assisted therapy movement. So really important work on. We have earlier in the summit, we have two days focused on plant medicine and shamanism. And two of our speakers there, Louisa Teich and Marie Mubumi, very much their work is very much grounded in the roots of African ancestral wisdom. And. And so I'm just curious about, you know, your. Your thoughts on that.

With, you know, as you know, human beings have been accessing expanded states for millennia and. And have been making use of various plant medicines for millennia. Not exclusively indigenous peoples. There are even the. The illusion mysteries in Greece. Many people think we're associated with some kind of substances, but certainly that probably the primary stewards of these plant medicines have been indigenous people across the world throughout millennia.

And these substances have tended to be marginalized, and the indigenous people have been marginalized. And then, of course, now with this explosion of interest in this, there's always the risk of exploitation or appropriation and so forth. So I'm just curious about your. Your thoughts about, for you, the tradition of wisdom and expanded states and use of plant medicines and so forth. That's grounded in the African traditions.

I believe. Louis Satish. Yes, Chief Louis Satish was my teacher in the Bay Area for many years. I studied the Yoruba tradition under her tutelage. She's a master chief in the tradition. And I learned a lot.

From the West African tradition, the Yoruba tradition, the orishas, which are ancient, what I refer to as our eldest of ancestors from the West.

I also studied this tradition in Cuba, I studied it in Haiti, and I've studied it in Brazil. Brazil. I haven't studied it as a practitioner as much as I've studied it as a.

Researcher. And how I use the teachings of the tradition archetypally. I especially use this in my rage work, using the energy, understanding archetypes of the orishas to bring balance and as a way of reverencing.

Of honoring our ancestors in that body, the healing rage work that I did. But getting back to the tradition itself.

And I don't know if I associate plant medicine with this tradition as much as I associate energy and spirit invocation and reverence to the ancestors.

With the understanding that what's not.

What hasn't been finished, is reborn. And then our job is to please the ancestors by making what didn't work come together. And that's done by your role in the community.

Where you are supported in association with. With one of the orishas. So one of my orishas is Oshun, the goddess of the sweet water, the rivers. And so with that.

Responsibility, you have certain responsibilities for teaching. Your element is water. You have rhythms, you have songs, you have a number, you have children oversee. You have these responsibilities that are deeply rooted elementally. And you are in reverence with ancestral energy and altars and offerings with the land. So there's a lot to be said about this African tradition, which I think a lot of which was in place for people that came through the middle passage. And part of what was in place that supported.

Some capacity, some deep faith, if you will, and being able to survive that passage. So.

You know, I guess you would call it shamanism.

I think it fits in the.

It. It feels very much shamanistic in the sense that it's close to the land, it's close, is close to nature, is close to the elements, and is close very much to tying the past with the present so that the future is cared for and that we all have an orisha on our head and a responsibility to give to communities so that in service of well being. So in a lot of ways it's very, you know, it has a flavor of our tradition here in Buddhism.

So I don't know if this answers a question around shamanism or plant medicines, but I think it does speak to a certain.

Tradition of transcendence because so much of the practice and the Yoruba tradition is not about yourself. It's so much about service to spirit and service to the next to the generations to come.

Well, I love what you said about responsibility.

And, you know, and, and excuse my anger. I'm really not very knowledgeable about plant medicine traditions in Africa. I, I would be surprised if there are none. Certainly the Americas indigenous cultures and our two days on plant medicine and shamanism where we're addressing both shamanism that, that does not involve plant medicine and shamanism that plant medicine. So.

But however, we're accessing expanded states. Well, let me just for an example to begin with for a moment. In many cases, the, the wisdom holders that steward plant medicines often reference that, that these plant medicines all have a spirit very similar to, I think, your idea of the Orishas. And, and, and there's a respect and a relationship there. And you know, in, in the modern Western culture and as I came to the 60s with synthesized psychedelics like LSD and so forth, people aren't really thinking about them that way. Fortunately, I spent years in Latin America working with plant medicine, was introduced to it in a sacred way and, and in a very respectful way. So I had that experience as well. But, you know, part of, part of, part of that is that how, whether, whether we think we're, you know, that the vehicle by which we're accessing expanded states is, you know, putting us in touch with some spiritual dimension or some spiritual guides or not, there's still some element of responsibility, of ethics, of, of respect for lineage, of respect for the transmission over time. Certainly our Buddhist traditions have a strong respect for lineage and transmission of wisdom. And so it seems like that's often, you know, just the nature of our kind of rugged, individualist, kind of egocentric culture. In many ways, it's, it's all about me and my experience and wanting to have these experiences. But I think what I hear you pointing to is really a need and part of integration could really be coming back, okay? I've had the opportunity to be, to open to something, whatever it might be, through any of these traditions, okay? With that comes some responsibility on some level. With that comes some responsibility to hold what I've experienced in a respectful way, to have it changed my life so that I'm showing up in the world in a more respectful and responsible way, but also, you know, just to be part of, of a human culture that respects these vehicles and passes these vehicles on in a respectful way of some kind or another. So I just love that idea of bringing respect and responsibility into the equation of integration.

Yeah, I think it's. I think it's pretty important. And I think some of what comes up for me, as I hear you speak about it, is the intention that people are going in with, you know, when they are seeking.

To expand their consciousness. You know, I think. I think to enter with a sense of wanting to serve a greater good, you know, as opposed to, you know, maybe self interest. I think that was a distinction in the West African tradition of, you know, this. This is not you being about yourself. Right. So I. I think perhaps what that suggests is that we. We are expanding our intention when we go into an inquiry around expanded consciousness. To what end? You know, what are we really trying to do here? What. You know.

I. I know for myself, you know, sometimes I've gone into.

Shamanic spaces where I'm open to know what comes up, but there's an. There's another side to it. You know, I'm opening to that because I really want to know freedom. I want to know. I want to. I want to be free so that I can serve well. You know, I want to. I want to be clean in my heart so that I can love better.

So I think we all have some version of that in us, but to really bring that to light as we enter, I think brings a certain luminosity to our inquiry. Because I. I think we are. We're connected in that way. So owning that coming in, it can really bring more light.

And perhaps more release to the experiences we're having.

No, I think that's really wonderful. And, you know, in the Buddhist tradition, there's the idea of bodhicitta, the awakened attitude. It literally means awakened heart, mind, but it means the aspiration to attain freedom for the benefit of all beings. So the aspiration is always about all sentient beings, about all of life. So it's that vast motivation, the Bodhisattva, you know, motivation. And that changes everything about how we approach any of these practices or experiences. And that in of itself is an expanded state. If we could just engender a little bit about, you know, I don't know how, but I'm doing this. I. I hope my involvement with this is going to benefit others. That that itself is an expanded state of consciousness.

Yeah, I think we have to re. Remember that and remind ourselves, you know, sati. We have to remind ourselves that, you know, and to re.

What's the word? Recommit ourselves to that aspiration. Because I think sometimes our conditioning has us very self selfish or self centered. Yeah.

I think we're always at risk of falling back into that. And that's the human condition we don't need to feel bad about, but we need to be aware of it so that we can continue to open and have our motivations be more than just, you know, our own.

How do we come back to that? How do we recommit ourselves to.

To that kind of membership that we are. Yeah.

Wow. Wonderful. Well, this has been really wonderful and I really appreciate everything you've shared with us so generously, Ruth, and, and thank you for being part of our summit and for the amazing work you do in the world to bring a mindfulness and spiritual perspective to transcending, transforming racism in our culture and bringing forth your wisdom. So, so, so thank you so much for, for joining us.

Thank you. I'm so excited about the com. The summit and I, I wish everybody well that's listening and people can find.

Out more about your work@ruthking.net right.

Ruthking.net and there's a free webinar that's happening right now. So I encourage people to. It's, you know, let's talk about race is what it is.

Oh, wonderful, wonderful. Yeah. Well, I think that whole conversation is about expanding our consciousness.

So is.

Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for that reinforcement. That's beautiful.

Thank you.

Alrighty.

Be well, be well.

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