Felt like sharing this audio file, which was created in a short amount of time as a class exercise.

Transforming Perception monologue

Transforming Perception monlogue transcript:

I am someone who tends to intellectualize or rationalize my inner world, whether it be my feelings, thoughts, experiences, etc. This is likely partly rooted in my upbringing with parents and within a diasporic culture in which inner experiences are engaged in particular ways. This includes putting aside personal emotions for what is socially expected; for example, as the oldest child in my family, I was taught from a young age to emotionally yield to my younger siblings as part of my duty as the eldest. This also includes expressing emotions in passive or roundabout ways; for example, it is a common experience in Korean culture, as well as others, to express love through actions such as preparing food for someone, rather than verbally expressing these feelings. I think these experiences contributed to how I would compartmentalize my inner world, resulting in an instinct to intellectualize and rationalize my feelings in my mind, rather than fully feeling them in my body.

I have learned about myself that this intellectualization and rationalization contributes to these feelings, thoughts, and experiences becoming stuck and fixed within myself, rather than being digested, processed, and transformed. For a long time, I wondered why I couldn’t move past certain feelings, despite my efforts in understanding where they came from and what I thought they were telling me. I was missing the fact that I couldn’t just move past these feelings through understanding, but that I had to move through them by fully feeling them in my body. I learned how to do this through mindfulness and meditation practice, in which these internal experiences were invited into my being as a welcome guest, rather than as someone I was trying to avoid because I considered them to be bad, unnecessary, or unhelpful. These practices of somatically engaging with my inner world has allowed me to reconnect with my core innermost self, which can accept without judgment and resistance these feelings, thoughts, and experiences that arise and fall just as the tides swell.

These experiences have built my understanding of how much I really am conditioned to be hard on myself, and therefore others as well. In this way, by building deep compassion for myself, I am simultaneously building deep compassion for all life. In the regime of capitalism, we are physically and metaphysically embedded in the concept of a world of scarcity in which survival is only possible through competition. This has given rise to a precarious and violent state of the world. We are currently alive in very trying times, and sometimes it’s hard to see the light of life because there is just so much suffering happening on all scales. 

Some of us believe that it doesn’t have to be this way, but many believe that we do not have the power to change the way things are, or that this kind of brutal survival of the fittest is just our biological imperative. My experiences in becoming reacquainted with my core innermost self, dissolved what I believed to be logical truths, and raised inquiries of what else we are conditioned to perceive. This includes the pigeonholing perception of people as naturally hierarchical, self-serving animals, in which the rise of power in a few is inevitable. I don’t think that the purpose of my inquiry is to completely deny that this could be part of a greater truth, if one even exists, but rather to uplift other perceptions of human nature, and how these perceptions shape people’s material realities and inner experiences for the better, which to me means a more survivable, caring, and joyful life, even through the darkest of times.

Capitalist, settler-colonial societies do not know how to digest, process, and transform hidden or shadow realities which then continually manifest as darkness: violence, oppression and injustice. Societally, I believe we are in a place where we struggle to celebrate the full beauty of life, because we do not know how to celebrate the full beauty of death. We struggle to meet eye-to-eye with those who are different from us because we are attached to our ego’s defense mechanisms. We cannot fully love our neighbors, because we do not know how to fully love ourselves and come face-to-face with our traumas and shame. We struggle to enact the power of the people, because we cannot see how the people hold true power. Yet, to struggle is a continual, unfixed process that is engaged individually, collectively, and generationally. I believe that conditioned perceptions of capitalist settler-colonialism can be transformed, because I and others have experienced the power of transformed perceptions within ourselves. And because of that transformation, I can see myself in everyone, and everyone in me. What are the pathways of possibility that are hidden from us, and how can we bring them to life in our day-to-day lives? I believe this line of questioning can lead to grand transformations individually, collectively, and generationally.