Those of you that know me understand that I don’t usually follow the news. However, there is an item that keeps cropping up that I thought would be worthy of a blog article. Recently I have noticed the large amount of news around racism especially in sport and I wanted to add my perspective on the matter and communicate how I feel emotional release can help. Furthermore, I want to ask is it possible to change our perspective on this subject in such a way so that we see it as a gift? Can we truly see matters such as this as a gift even if you are the one receiving the racism and abuse? And does seeing it as a gift give us an ability to help us handle the situation in a more positive way?

Whenever there is anger, there are suppressed emotions. Anger is a projection outwards to another person so that the true core emotion does not have to be faced. It is challenging for the person receiving the projection and can cause a great amount of harm. However, I believe that whilst on surface racism causes more harm than good, it is possible to switch your perspective and use it for your benefit even if you are the one on the receiving end. We must understand that when we find ourselves in a situation which is challenging, moving away may not be possible at first. However, it is possible to make a choice not to hate even when others are doing so. In making this choice, you free yourself from your past and start the transmutation and release of your old suppressed emotional energy to that of its purest form, love.

Let me first begin to say that as I white person in their 40s I probably have not been subjected to the kind of racism that a black person playing in a stadium full of people has found themselves subject to. However, at various times in my life, I have found myself the target of various racist comments from non-white people. I often took this as an attack, and I felt myself becoming more disconnected from the people sending out those harsh words. At the time, I did experience quite a significant emotional charge. Even as I write this article, I know that I still have to let go of some of the pain from those early experiences.

As a child, I was a mild, shy boy who worked hard and did as his parents told him but then I didn’t really have a choice. Many of my parents’ friends would often say how they wished their child was like me. This was very embarrassing for me to be looked at like this because I didn’t want to be classed like that. People would think that I was not the type of person to get into angry confrontations but deep within me this is the type of emotion I carried. Since, I was not allowed to be myself I grew more and more angry and had to find ways of hiding that anger. I didn’t look angry because I put up the nice guy mask very well. Inside, however, I was angry at everyone and if you spent enough time with me you would have probably detected this. I think it was because of this deeply buried anger that I attracted the people and circumstances in my life for purpose of healing that anger. I didn’t know about emotional release and inner development so at the time the anger just built up.

We need to go deeper to understand why we carry these emotions and how life will change because of what we hold inside of us. We need to examine what we really carry inside of us not just as an individual but as families, nations and ethnicities. Eckhart Tolle describe this unhealed, old emotional energy as the painbody and different people have different names for it.  However, it is the unresolved energy of the past which has been passed on from generation to generation. Each family, nation and ethnicity carry an energy or painbody of a specific signature. For instance, as a generalisation, English people are known to keep a stiff upper lip and not to show their vulnerability. This is the specific signature of fear but not all fear is the same. The specific fear signature of Polish or Spanish people will be different to that of English People. You can say the same for families and people of different races. Each one carries a different signature of unresolved emotions.

This unhealed, emotional charge is what needs to be integrated and released. What needs to be understood is that as long as we carry this painbody then we will attract circumstances and people which come into our experience for the purpose of integrating it. When it is released or integrated, we no longer need to attract those people and experiences. This is because that energy is no longer inside of us. This is an unconscious process happening at a level behind that which we can normally comprehend.

Black people have been subjected to racial abuse for a long time. This would have resulted in a tremendous amount of suppressed and repressed anger. The painbody that Eckhart Tolle mentioned is ripe in each one of us not just in black people but in all people but now we have an opportunity to let go and emotional release is one of the mechanisms we can use to make this happen. We need to be truthful about what each one of us carries so that we can start the process of emotional release. When we get in touch with our anger, sadness and grief then and only then can we release it. When that happens the people who initially threw abuse in our direction will unconsciously start to change. It doesn’t happen at first but each time we make that decision we are changing our past programming. To some people this may seem far-fetched but as time passes, we are going to see how much power this really gives us.

When we provide external solutions to the problem of racism in sport we will forever be running round in circles. Punishing clubs and supporters will not resolve an individuals own anger and suppressed emotional energy. It will eventually be redirected to someone else. What we must do is highlight the true problem and find a way of resolving this. Until then for anyone caught up in any episodes of racism I offer the following changes in perspective.

First Perspective Change – This Situation Helps Me Heal

Let us assume, that everything that happens to us, really happens FOR us in order to heal our suppressed emotional charge. i.e. those emotions that have been deeply suppressed for many generations have been unconsciously passed down from parent to child are now been made conscious and can be let go of. Emotional release can help you take that next step.

Second Perspective Change – This Person is Actually a Gift

Let us decide to see those people, that throw their anger at us, as gifts, brought into our current experience in order for us to heal our suppressed emotional charge, a charge that may have been with our family, nation or race for many lifetimes. Without those challenging people, we would forever carry this charge. Seeing this person as a gift helps us release those emotions if we can stay fully in the present with that emotional energy. Once this happens, we will not only see the gift as a concept in our heads but we will realise it deep within.

Third Perspective Change – I Came into This Lifetime to Heal

Let us take the shift in understanding that perhaps this is not the only lifetime we have lived and our unresolved issues (i.e. anger etc) from previous lives have been brought forth into this lifetime and we are experiencing the events that we need to in order for us to be made whole again. Let us try to understand that we might have even made a choice to come into this lifetime in order to experience what we have done so that our painful emotions can be released.

Fourth Perspective Change – I Make an Intention to Choose Love No Matter What

This last shift in perspective is to see, no matter what, those that throw their anger towards us with love. To make an intention, in each and every moment, to choose love. As this happens, we begin to experience emotional release and in that moment those that throw their anger towards our direction no longer need to. The anger that was previously inside of us has been dissolved and is no longer reflected in our external world.

When I was subjected to abuse based on my colour, I did not know there was a choice. I only saw the road of anger and hatred. I was still too young and the world to me was full of angry people. What I did not see and was not ready to see at the time, was the quantity of anger within myself. As life has moved on and I have started to see how much I have really carried, this has given me an opportunity to let it go. Each incident that upset me was now a gift given to me by life so I could let go of my unresolved painful emotions whether from this lifetime or a previous one. Since then, I have continued using the tools of emotional release in order to see people with more love.

The ability to choose love in the midst of immense hardship and torment is displayed in the truly astonishing story of Victor Frankl who found himself imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. With many of his friends and family murdered, he made a choice to love his captors no matter what. In return, he found that they started to change towards him and in ways that would previously be considered impossible.

Emotional release and letting go gives us the tools to make all of this a reality. It is not the only tool, but it is one of many that we can use to help us finally heal the human race.

 

 

 

Photograph by Sebastiann Stam @chillarea