Embodied Evil 101
I wish it didn't come to this.
I humbly honor Indigenous People's Day, the founding of the Black Panther Party, the beauty way of First Nations people, the lifeblood of descendants from Africa and the global majority. As I do, I feel the grief and terrifying Evil perpetuated by my Northern European ancestral lineage. As I take my whiteness upon myself as a condition of my liberation, there’s a strange relief in confessing Evil in my lineage and in an invitation to start over and Become a Good Relative to those Calling for Truth, Healing, and Repair. I do this with help from Divine Love, community, teachers, and melanated and GLBT friends who confront evil daily and spend so much time figuring out when to duck.
I don’t want to address Evil, but I am ready to write about it as someone who is sensitive to it. Evil, too long projected on the most vulnerable, is a dangerous and scary word. Even so, I was made to address it while attending an ultra-liberal seminary and in my ordination process. I did a poor job in my twenties.
Now in my late sixties, having danced hard on the footpaths of body and soul, I've met the Terrorizer face to face a few times. Recently, I felt the gnaw of everyday Evil in one of those embodied yet mysterious experiences that "modern" minds dismiss.
Like other mysteries, Evil is something that we can't pin down, dissect, correct, or master. Still, I am not blind to its trickery, force, and violence or to the fact that it offers benefits in the present in exchange for a soul tax in the future. Evil is the opposite of Love.
"The most fearful thing to approach is often the true point of entry."
I've been warned not to name Evil as if doing so would make it more real, but I think repression may be a tool of Evil, too. As someone sensitive to Evil's deep disquiet in my body, how can I be wise if I don't recognize it as a phenomenon embedded in life? I need to dance with Evil using clarity and intention.
I am not looking at evil persons. I am addressing a phenomenon that is the opposite of the Unconditional Neutral Regard that I know to be the heart of the Universe.
Evil is unspectacular and always human
and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
—w. h. auden, herman Melville
How much is evil present in me and the world? Let me invoke the G-word: Genocide. The word genocidal is taboo when speaking of oneself or one's group. Meanwhile, we kill our kind en masse by following leaders who ask us to surrender our sanity and inflict horrendous multi-generational burdens.
Could genocidal ideation feed my appetite for multi-season murder mysteries that focus on serial killing? Don't I live in a home purchased out of the inheritance accrued from my father's job in the aerospace industry, securing our weapons of mass destruction? And what about my privileged lifestyle bought at the cost of those people of color killed off by disease, land grabbing, abuse, and slaughter? And, am I not a citizen of a country that calls itself Protector and generically kills innocent people?
I want to separate myself, but I am not separate. I am part of a Gencoidal legacy that is the collective opposite of Love and, therefore, Evil.
The word genocide was coined in 1944 by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkinto to describe "the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group" by means such as "the disintegration of [its] political and social institutions, of [its] culture, language, national feelings, religion, and [its] economic existence." Professor of History Timothy Snyder, an expert on fascism and the war in Ukraine, writes, "Genocide is not only about killing people, but about eliminating a culture, making it untenable by destroying the institutions that transmit it. Thus, Russia burns books, steals museum artifacts, and bombs archives, libraries, and publishing houses."
"Thou Shalt Not Kill" is a commandment not because we aren't tempted
to kill, but because we're too tempted.
Born in the 50s, I grew up believing that World Wars and the Holocaust were over. I aspired to humanity's Original Goodness, felt it, and saw it in people even as I protested the nuclear threat. Racism was a problem of injustice but wasn't called Genocide.
I knew things were not "right." I felt the interpersonal distance and distrust of black, brown, and Indigenous people. I fought to open up and understand it. My teachers made sure that I would not forget injustice. Meanwhile, our embodied memory of intergenerational genocides of Indigenous, enslaved, non-European cultures, queer, neurodiverse, the slaughter of women at home, and ecocide- the killing of Mother Earth remained collectively buried.
Humans are currently the most deadly species on the planet. Genocide is accelerating even while we pour our resources into peace-making. This is a dark night of the soul for humankind struggling to accept this reality.
Last summer, I paid big bucks to join a multi-day salon led by two lauded white liberal leaders for a conversation on art and social change. I left utterly devastated after witnessing their refusal of empathy and openness to challenges from BIPOC participants and allies. Furthermore, they killed the conversation in the whole group. Their betrayal of the trust was egregious. How could they "perform" empathy in an interview with a famous black queer activist one day and the next day shut down the pain of those similarly impacted?
I anguished alone and with group members for months, struggling with something that seemed beyond me. Why was there such a big disconnect? Then, it hit me.
My friends and I, dedicated to body and soul and fostering freedom, are in active healing from epigenetic traumas. We recognize the harmful, dehumanizing impact of harmful systems and forms perpetuated by white, dominant, wealth-seeking people and nations. As a white woman, my lack of empathy and awareness reactivate the fear of Genocide. Meanwhile, "good" white people aren't told or don't think that Genocide applies to us.
Collectively covering up our history of Genocide is symptomatic of Evil and leads me to participate in Evil without my consent or knowledge.
Do humans make war on each other? Yes.
Do humans kill off other cultures, languages, identities, and artways? Yes.
Does the killing extend to Mother Earth and other species? Yes.
Am I part of humanity? Yes.
Am I a child of a culture that makes wars, takes lands, and obliterates identities? Yes.
As a member of my lineage, am I accountable for Genocide? Yes.
If we want a profound change, we have to see Evil, name it, and reckon with Genocide as a symptom. To do this, instead of the Alpha Male model, it's time to recenter a Loving, Nurturing Love.
A theory about Evil as a trance
Humans get entranced. Scrolling on our phones, we enter a light trance that we enjoy. When we go to a concert and enter the "vibe," we synch up with other bodies in an experiential world created by the musicians and the venue. We ride the trance. We enjoy it. We feel part of something bigger. We are experiencing something real, beautiful, and necessary in the way humans are designed to do.
Sadly, we also conjure militaristic, deadly trances that some even "enjoy.” To survive, everyone must leave behind everyday moral consciousness. War’s most violent, full-body physical trances, much like sex, ignite in us an overwhelming, immediate, addictive power. But it doesn't last. Horror, shame, and soul loss follow.
Is there one trance? Is a trance a reality? A trance is one reality among many. Most people are not made aware that in body and soul:
We are born with the facility to be in trance states.
We will be impacted by them.
We have the choice to enter them or not.
Trances induced by Evil, the opposite of Love, like most addictive states, are spicy and make you feel alive. They feed on fear and are sadly more compelling than Love. If we are not equally awake to The delirious trance of the Dancing Center, a trance that is so simple, pervasive, and exquisite, we may miss it. And, if we are not alive to body and soul, how will we know to choose Love?
My instructions are to cultivate a Dancing Center using the unexplored landscape of human play. Fostering the freedom and joy available in the most organic trance of all requires a direct connection with our bodies' wisdom. Playing together needn't rely on a particular culture. Play allows respect for the organic lineage of each body and soul because it does not seek a specific outcome. The Art of Ensoulment: A Playbook on How to Create from Body and Soul best expresses what I'm learning to practice with playmates.
After centuries of gorging on the poverty and power of hegemony, sometimes we white settlers are starving for connection. When we seek connection by bypassing our inner work or denying our White Peril, our presence can easily have unintended consequences. It is possible to harm cultures we so admire by consciously or unconsciously co-opting their identity.
Hilary Giovale
Last summer, while praying and grappling with Genocide, I was fortuitously asked to review Hilary Giovale's Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers Toward Truth, Healing, and Repair. Although it's written as a memoir, it offers so much more.
Hilary is an embodied, ensouled white woman guided by Indigenous and African-descended elders. A dancing soul, she is not afraid of the embodied way. She follows those who know that the path forward requires more than sensitized intellect.
I am thrilled that finally, there is a book that underscores and reveals that Truth, healing, and repair require the wisdom of body, soul, ritual, dream, and profound listening. When we tune into intuition, dreams, and practical rituals, a powerful way opens up to help us transform the harms of colonialism, racial hierarchy, and economic inequity.
Becoming A Good Relative is strongly recommended by a field of community leaders like Luisah Teish, Lyla June Johnston, Sherri Mitchell, Indigenous lawyer and author of Sacred Instructions; Sharon Leslie Morgan, founder of Our Black Ancestry; Patty Krawec, Ojibwe Anishinaabe and Ukrainian author of Becoming Kin; Springboard to Opportunities CEO Dr. Aisha Nyandoro; Oglala Lakota Elder Basil Brave Heart; and Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons, who calls it "required reading." Proceeds of the book go to the Decolonizing Wealth Project and Jubilee Justice.
Next year, I plan to lead an embodied book circle centered on Hilary's book. In an embodied book study, I engage the creative birthrights of movement, voice, story, word, and stillness to explore themes and prompts. Let me know if you'd be interested.
To wind up, I'm inspired by a remarkable conversation between one of my teachers, Dr. Sharon Blackie, author of Hagitude, and Sherri Mitchell, author of Sacred Instructions. Sharon is a Jungian mythologist uncovering the decimated myths and wisdom of women in the UK. Sherri convenes the global healing ceremony, Healing the Wounds of Turtle Island, a gathering that has brought more than fifty thousand people together from six continents, with elders from forty Indigenous nations, to focus on healing our relationships with one another and with our relatives in the natural world. There is truth and hope in this interview, as is the case in Hilary's book.
All ways forward require our body, soul, creativity, and Love.
Cynthia,
Thank you for this deep sharing and it saddens me to see you in such despair. We all must do what we can within our awareness and capabiliites and I don't feel that I am able to assume all the injustices that may have been or were perpetrated by my ancestors, both those related to me and others of my culture.
I spent Friday night attending a virtual Yom Kippur service, invited by a friend whose wife served as cantor and leader. She was lovely and inviting and I was thrown back to being 12 years old where I found myself mystified by how little of this helped me understand or consider how I could atone for my past sins. It was, once again, a display to me of how religion distorts me away from any kind of spiritual engagement and fulfilment. I know religions are the common theme of the evil you write about whether it was American "westward ho" to fulfill "manifest destiny," or the work of Hamas to kill, rape and hold Israeli hostages or for that matter, the orthodox,ultra-right Jewish leaders who want to turn Israel into a theocracy.
That is the great evil.
Thank you Cynthia, for taking up this topic that’s so relevant to me.