EP 21 How to be a better person

I wrote an article on Medium on how to be a better person in December last year where I talked mostly about being a better listener. It talked also about the prejudice we carry towards groups of people that maybe have been known to have conflict with your own. In this episode, I go further than that and examine what we, as spiritual seekers, can do to stop some incredibly damaging practices that are commonly carried out by our peers and take a stance. I am talking mostly about cultural appropriation and white washing. When I started my spiritual journey, these two topics were not talked about much. Because of that, I harmed marginalised groups without being aware of what I was doing, and although it is not an excuse, I want to forgive my younger self for what she has done. It is because of this that I feel the need to be vocal about this. And it was only last week that I saw a post on LinkedIn by Steve Barlett, sharing what happened in the Dragon's Den, which gave me the proof that these practices are still very much happening right here and right now. As white spiritual people, it is our duty to educate ourselves into topics such a anti-racism, our own biases and beliefs but also the systemic discrimination that marginalised groups suffer at the hands of our institutions such as hospitals and the police for example. Did you know that black people are nine times more likely to be arrested and searched for suspected drug possession in the UK despite the fact that they are statistically less likely to be users than white people? These statistics come from the Institute of Race Relations. I knew that instinctively as a teen. What I did not know was that people of colour are prescribed less pain medication than their white counterparts by the NHS. This stems from remnants of beliefs from the European slavery days when white people considered people of colour as animals and pretended they could not feel pain, to ease their own conscience with how their slaves were treated. Your beliefs are like the furniture in your house. You are so used to them that you hardly notice them anymore. The other two topics we need to actively seek more information about are cultural appropriation and white washing. Cultural appropriation is taking a sacred object, ritual or food from a historically marginalised culture and making money out of it, turning it into a costume or using it without showing understanding or respect. The man who pitched the Dragon's Den last week did exactly that. He took a ceremony from a Guatemalan shaman around cacao ceremony, and is now making it the centre of his business by training people in cacao ceremonies (he has his own school) and selling the product in the UK. Other example of cultural appropriation are: dream catches, sage bundles, reiki, but also using the word chakra and desacralising yoga and turning it into mere exercise. Whole industries have been built on this and it time we stopped. I am inviting you, actually scratch that, urging you to decolonise your spiritual practice now. You didn't know better but now you do. And please share this episode far and wide so we can collectively put an end to the damage we are doing to marginalised groups. Thank you.