Ayana Young Hello and welcome to For The Wild Podcast, I’m Ayana Young. Today I will be speaking with Dr. Larry Ward.

Dr. Larry Ward And so I think it's very important to remember we are not simply defined by our colonial experience. I have ancestors and so do you that go all the way back to the beginning of time. And so I access the energies and wisdom of those ancestors as part of my energy of healing.

Ayana Young Dr. Larry Ward (pronouns- he/him) is a senior teacher in Buddhist Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village tradition, author of the book America's Racial Karma, and co-author with his wife Peggy of Love's Garden, A Guide To Mindful Relationships. Dr. Ward brings twenty-five years of international experience in organizational change and local community renewal to his work as director of the Lotus Institute and as an advisor/dharma teacher. He holds a PhD in Religious Studies with an emphasis on Buddhism and the neuroscience of meditation. Larry is a knowledgeable, charismatic and inspirational teacher, offering insights with personal stories and resounding clarity that express his dharma name, “True Great Sound.” 

 Well, hello, Dr. Ward, thank you so much for sharing some time on this wintery day with me.

Dr. Larry Ward Well, thank you, Ayana. It's a pleasure to be here.

Ayana Young  Happy to hear that. As an introduction to your recent book America’s Racial Karma, I’d like to begin by making sure listeners have an understanding of what we mean when we talk about healing and transforming America’s karma. I think so often, we might misunderstand karma on an individual level, as an act of divine retribution. So how are you framing the persistence of racism in relation to a collective, Buddhist understanding of karma? 

Dr. Larry Ward Well, what I tried to point to in the book (which is still a very small book), but still nevertheless tried to point to how I understand karma based on what I understand from the Buddhist tradition is: it is action, that's the translation of the word. And it's not just action, it is every action creates other actions. It's like I'm sitting in front right now with a sycamore tree and it is perfuming the air. And that's what actions do, actions of thought, ways of thinking about things in the case of race, is the way of thinking about which in Western mind means categorization, in particular, of different species. And then in the work of that (if you want to call it that), that description of different kinds of species, people with different skin tones, got categorized along with flowers and other phenomena. And so what I mean by karma is that categorization has been feeding itself, it is still alive. It is a repeating pattern, in our thoughts, in our speech - look at the way we talk about race and the way we're silent around race - and then in our behaviors. Someone just reported to their surprise that the covenants of not selling property to African Americans, Native Americans, etc. in this case, are still in the books in many places in the United States, which I already knew, so that's the behavioral pattern. And so when I go into a conversation about buying a house or something I always read everything, and I always have asked, “why is this still here?” And the evasiveness of facing the result of the action of racialized consciousness, is what I mean by karma, is the results of previous action. And every previous action creates other previous actions and the pattern gets repeated - unless you change it.

 Ayana Young In an article titled “Healing America’s Racial Karma”, you write: “Most of us know that changing habits is challenging. How much of what we do is habitual? Studies by neurobiologists and psychologists researching habit formation indicate that 40 to 95 percent of human behavior—how we think, how we respond with emotions, what we say, and how we act—falls into the habit category. So when it comes to deeply rooted thoughts and behaviors, however good we think our intentions may be, without insight about the need to change, the strong resolve to make it happen, and the corresponding action, a good 50 percent of the time we will default to habit.” Which raises the topic of neuroplasticity in terms of our upbringing in an incredibly racist culture, as someone who has also deeply studied the neuroscience of meditation, I wonder if you could share the importance of bridging the in-between spaces of habit, culture, and healing the world’s racial karma? 

 Dr. Larry Ward  I think what is one, both occurring at some levels of societies around the world, and what needs to occur is rewiring our brains. And what I mean by rewiring our brains is consciously choosing to activate our neuroplasticity toward wellness, justice, and harmony, rather than conditioning our neuroplasticity and rewarding our neuroplasticity for cruelty, abuse, and negligence. And so if you don't change the connections in the brain and how the cells communicate with each other, you're not changing the habit. But habits can be changed otherwise we wouldn't even be here now as people. Because our ancestors learned how to adapt. That is in us, no one can take that away from us. And so for me, it's not a curse, I don't use karma in terms of like a curse, or final judgment. I'm using the word karma to me here and now waking up to what's happening, and the pattern of what's happening. And so for me, a lot of individuals around the world need to step up into learning how to be in their own bodies, and in their own minds at the same time, to learn how to recognize our unprocessed trauma which all of us have everywhere in the world. And I became clear over my lifetime that there is so much trauma in individuals and cultures and societies that is unprocessed. And so our reaction to it is easily triggered, easily manipulated. And so for me taking charge of your own development as a human being and as a group of human beings around this planet is what we must do. Otherwise, the patterns will continue because people, for one, are making money out of the pattern: for two, people are making power out of the pattern. So that's one reason it's so hard to change is because so many people in the right positions still benefit from the habit of racism sociologically. And then of course there's the personal benefit of thinking you’re superior, which is another illusion.

Ayana Young  Yeah, those are really good points. I’d like to stay on the topic of neuroplasticity for a bit longer, and specifically ask you about what living in a constant state of fear does to our body, and I know this is a broad-ranging question because we could say that everyone in this country is living in fear of something, but it is certainly not the same type of fear, so I invite you to respond with whatever examples feel the closest in alignment with your practice.

Dr. Larry Ward Well, our autonomic nervous system is evolutionarily designed to alert the fear response when we are threatened, or think we are threatened, or imagine we might be threatened. And we have to understand it on at least all those levels so we won't see a subtle power. Fear of loss, of wealth, of influence, of power, of control over what's been constructed so far in the modern world, is for me where this lies. And then I'm not trying to say only certain people have to change. We all have to change because we have been conditioned to react to that our whole lives. And so for many of us, we don't recognize ourselves out of our participation in the commercialization of the planet, the destruction that seems to be economically and culturally driven - forests, rivers, and mountains. And for me, that is the same attitude that created slavery. Someone asked me on another interview a few months ago about the difference or connection I saw between racism and justice and environmentalism and justice, and for me it is this perception within the human mind, so I want to make sure we understand this is a human issue, then it becomes a racial issue. But in the human mind and body, we respond with reactivity to fear - only natural, we can escape that body body response. And when that happens, we either go into fight or flight: flight meaning disassociation, flight meaning running away, etc. We can have many degrees of flight - flight inward into depression, etc - or the fighting response: the defiance against or toward whatever is an aversion to one's mind. And that state of response, of all three of those kinds of responses… and there is a third response: that response is equanimity, peacefulness - but one has to work to discover this in oneself. So most of our societies are constructed between fight or flight. Or I guess another one I should mention is immobilization, paralysis, caught between “I don't know whether to fight or to run,” like deer in the headlights that we talk about. And that evolutionary response is a quick response. It is not designed for 24 hours. It is designed for us to respond to the threat of the moment. And if you watch the animal world you will see that animals, when faced with the threat response, act out their response by instinct. And then if they survive, the next thing they do is rest. And our dilemma on the planet today is we don't have any time to rest. Everywhere we turn we are being met by the debris of the collapse of the postcolonial model of what it means to be human in human society. And so hypervigilance is one of the reasons so many people are exhausted and don't know why. Their body is still at a primitive level accessing all this information. This is way below cognition; you might think you're fine but your body is still on the edge of fear, and a reaction to fear. Which one will either shut you down into immobilization causing you to respond with fight or flight - all of which is normal and natural. Spiritual practice has to do with being able to recognize these responses in myself and evaluate them quickly enough so they do no harm. That's why for me, spiritual practice weaves in as a foundation of intelligent change in society. 

And I've been recalling Dr. Ambedkar from India - I spent a couple of years in India and I got to visit his place and I've been reminded of his work. He was asked why did he choose Buddhism instead of communism, because that was part of the debate going on at the time in India, and he said because he thought any new society without a spiritual component (whether it's Buddhism or what have you in my opinion, as long as it's deep enough not to get caught in whatever it is, and be to be confused by what it is, and be become extreme by the thought process it may create anew) that equity, justice, and spirituality go together. They are not separate and they are not separate from our life as Earthlings. So many of us still don't recognize what we are; we have all the great constructs in our heads of our identities and all that, that's all fine and natural, but the more intimate I have become with the natural world, I realized that I am a part of it and that brings me joy to recognize my siblings in other forms, and that evokes compassion and caring for the whole earth. And to build, and to create new patterns of how we can think, speak, and act together in ways that are well and create wellness. The extinction we are in at this moment is not leaving us out: COVID is making sure that. So we begin to understand we are connected. Whether we like it or not, that's irrelevant. Whether our personal narratives fit with that or not, that's irrelevant because this is how it is. And so learning to accept what is, for me, is one of the first key breakthroughs, and spiritual practice, and continues to be a spiritual practice lifelong too - to be at ease with what is and transformational with what is at the same time. And this is what we must continue to do, and encourage others to do.

Ayana Young  You said so many beautiful things in that response. And some of what you said, I've definitely been embodying or noticing a lot lately with the hypervigilance and the exhaustion and the need for spiritual practice to stay regulated. And to be able to make different decisions and make different habits out of a place of regulation, because otherwise, it feels just too impossible to get there when we're in these states of being so out of our… I'm kind of losing my words right now because I'm thinking about so many different memories. Thank you for speaking to that.

Dr. Larry Ward If you use a basic model of the vagus nerve, above the state of being of fight, flight, and immobilization is another space that activates the vagus nerve that creates a sense of peace and stability - of deep regulation. And what I have learned in my own life, and through my studies and continuing of neuroscience, etc. is that in the states of what you just said, fight, flight or freeze, we can't even hear each other. You know this if you're in a relationship, you have an argument, it's like, well, “what are you fighting about?” Sometimes can't even remember we just got triggered. And when that happens, our hearing changes… I mean, I can go through the whole neurophysiology of it all, but we know this in our bodies. And so for me, spiritual practice is not to deny my normal evolutionary capacity for reactivity. That's the gift. Now I can respond in many different ways to life. But being caught simply in that state constantly robs us of our joy and robs us from being enchanted with the world we have, so that we can not be taken away by the flood of suffering that is apparent when we have the courage to look deep enough at our state of things in the world today, on the planet today. So dystopia, yes, it's very clear that's a state. For me, however, I'm approaching this one: “yes, things are breaking down, need to break down, need radical change.” And on the other hand, Earth is communicating all of this to us, as well. On the other hand, the apocalypse (as the way I like to talk about it) is actually a portal into a new world. What's been called the Anima Mundi: a new world soul which has never existed before - a new fabric of consciousness of people all over the planet, animals all over the planet, all aware of the transformation we are in and are leaning in the direction of that transformation.

Ayana Young  I really love that and what you said about being robbed of our enchantment. I loved that, and to be robbed of our enchantment with the world, I do think that is such a problem. Our lack of gratitude and enchantment for the world allows us to do really terrible things in our desensitization, or a denial, or just our disconnection. And I love that word disenchantment, or enchantment, because I know in myself when I feel the enchantment of the world, the energy, I feel for that, and the love that comes and the gratitude and the joy and the connection is so strong that all I want is to be in deeper intimacy with others, whether that's our more-than-human kin or our human relatives or the earth. So that's just such a beautiful point. And I love that. 

In preparation for this interview, I came across a conversation where you shared a recent study on how human created trauma has a far greater impact on the body and mind than that of natural disasters, which when we think about it, it makes complete sense, but it gave me a moment of pause because so often in this realm we are talking about climate adaptation, mitigation, and the sort of climate based trauma that many are beginning to experience...and in doing so, I think that sort of pushes aside recognition of the collective trauma we live with when we remember that the greatest of humanity’s wounds were caused by power hungry people. Can you elaborate a bit more on the importance of recognizing the difference in magnitude between human-made trauma versus natural disasters?  

Dr. Larry Ward Okay. So, one way to share about that is: there are different typologies of trauma. One is really (this is a really brief summary) the kind of natural event occurrence. That's also one of the ways the apocalypse is described, as a natural disaster. And the other kind of trauma is, we call it the personalized trauma: trauma that's happened to us individually in our lifetime. And then a third kind of trauma is systemic trauma: poverty, sexism, racism, classism, gender-ism, however you want to describe it, these systemic habits that are like bureaucracy that won't seem to change. And the fourth kind that is really at the frontier of some new research is the trauma in our genetics from our ancestors. And I was having a conversation this morning with someone who was talking about a retirement center near here, and its name was Pilgrim Place. And I told them I had heard about it years ago when I used to live in Claremont and teach a little bit at the University, and I knew some professors and good friends who were there (a few). But I couldn't imagine living there myself because just the word pilgrim activates traumatic memory and the traumatic memory that's activated is not mine, personally. It is a traumatic memory of what happened on this land, to the people on this land, if I want to stay particularly grounded. And so I have that in me. And not to know, not to have the courage, and not to have the space to hold that much pain is what makes our change process so challenging to create the mind and heart big enough to greet the immeasurable loss of land, of trees, birds, of humans, of all of us. And the pursuit of that which passes away is true insanity, from a spiritual, and I think also social perspective.

Ayana Young You write: “We know America was built on the backs of slaves and founded on the bodies of the first peoples of this land, but many still find difficulty in accepting such facts because they go against the American Dream narrative. We have spent the last five hundred years becoming so skillful in denying our atrocities and projecting the shadows of America's racial karma onto the bodies of nonwhites that we are like people suffering from traumatic brain injuries and amnesia...” And I think about this comparison to amnesia here, because it is so remarkable to reflect upon how many have shielded themselves from this history, and suffering, and what that does individually and collectivity: so I’d like to ask you about what you think are the ramifications to the self when we push away suffering and sorrow?

Dr. Larry Ward The word that's been coming to me most recently is numbness. We become numb to the present miracle of our own life, as a human being, to the lives around us, to the different forms of life around us, to the galaxy… I see people walking down the street, all looking down on their phones, and I keep wanting to stop them and say, “Look up, just look to the left, the sky is actually all around you. It's not just up.” I mean, standing up apparently was one of the great evolutionary adaptations of our species and our lineage from primate siblings, and standing up made a huge difference in the outcome of human evolution, and I just see us spending too much time looking down. Not that we shouldn't look down, we must look down, but we must look up at the same time, and all around at the same time, because it's all connected. So our technological habit patterns are… I have to watch this in myself. You know, you're invited to dinner and if you're not careful people have their phones out, blah, blah, blah, blah. Which is fine if that's what everybody is comfortable with. But this is how easily we as human beings can get co-opted into a new habit, especially technologically, because it's kinesthetic and it's easy in terms of repeating things, which our brains love to repeat. So again, back to habits. And the trauma that is unprocessed in an individual's life sets the tone of all their experience. It’s like the background sound and influences our thought patterns, our perceptions, our interaction in relationships, our capacity to recognize the miracle that we are in the miracle of life all around us. You know, the increasing rate of suicide around the world is our own kind of weird keeping up with the extinction process that's going on across species. 

And for me, again, spiritual practice is to recognize this energy in myself, this death urge, and have the courage to step into the life urge, to step into the stream of creating profound possibilities for generations to come. In the Hopi tradition, which I had the fortune of studying a little and practicing a little bit with, their medicine wheel is a great circle of archetypes but in the center of that wheel is a fire, and it's called the children's fire. So every archetype, every function in the relationship of the circle is to first make sure the fire does not go out. And I think the new values that are emerging around the world are at least embedded, and in many places they're embedded quietly because people have been conditioned not to speak out, but they're operating and desire to operate at that level around wellness, justice, and harmony. And Jonah Sachs research suggested that once 5% of new energies, new values, new visions are embedded or emerging, once we get to 20%, it's unstoppable. So for me, the work is to nourish the embedded so it is as rooted as possible so that it doesn't get blown away by greed, hatred, or ignorance, and to invest time and energy and love in the transition from embeddedness to more permanence, more stability, in values of wholeness and care. 

I see and know people around the world that are doing this and none of them are ever in the news of course. So most people have no idea what's going on around the world: how many thousands of people are doing what they do every day, and taking great care for our precious Earth and our precious peoples. And again, I'm just horrified at how casually we can take the waste of human life. What I mean by the waste is our killing of it, our disregard of it. The children that are dying are also like our trees that are dying. And I'm not willing to live with that. And I know many people who aren't, or who aren't any longer willing to live with that kind of callousness about life itself.

 Ayana Young Thank goodness for that. Yeah, I'm just metabolizing your response for a moment.

The lesson I have been receiving personally as it relates to moving through suffering and grief has been the importance of vulnerability in allowing myself to feel the emotion rather than get caught up in the story, and through that I find release. I wonder if you also might have something to share about the importance of respecting our own vulnerability as we work to heal the wounds originated by colonization? 

Dr. Larry Ward For me, it comes back to applying mindfulness as a practice to my own experience of my wounds of history still alive in my body. And so every day I design my life as best I can, so that I can have my heartbroken and face those wounds, and face the fear that comes up, the pain that comes up, the agony, the distrust, the imposter syndrome of all of this Dukkha and all of the suffering, and understand that what I call suffering exists along with nonsuffering. And so for me, part of the skill is learning how to create an awareness of a space within that is not touched by suffering, and use the energy of that space to help heal suffering, to enclose that suffering, or embrace that suffering, name that suffering, be with that suffering… not as an enemy, not as an other, but as a part of my own body and mind. And I told my wife not long ago, I never knew I had so many tears. Just every day looking, listening, and tears. 

And so without the vulnerability to one's experience of life, we remain closed, trapped in a trance of fabricated - whatever, success, happiness... So unless we are willing to come face to face with ourselves in the deepest possible way emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually we won't heal. We may be able to limp along for a while but then we'll flip back into our habits, our social habits especially, because social habits - however detestable they may be - in many places are rewarded just enough for people to keep hanging onto the habit. And so our healing will necessarily take us outside the habit to come back to the habit, or as Einstein put it, you can't solve a problem at the same level of energy that created it. And so we must get to recognize in ourselves another level of energy that can assist the dismantlement of what needs to vanish. But also, as you point out, very important to keep your eyes and hearts and behaviors focused on creating the next civilization. Grace Lee Boggs likes to say, yes, short-term priorities, voting, economics, media justice, all very important. Keep your eyes on that, and then keep your eyes on the long term. So learning how to do both of these things like a rosebush that can shed and bloom at the same time.

 Ayana Young  I hope I get there. I came across one of your Dharma Talks for The Lotus Institute, titled The Fires of Grief Are Burning, where you share that your practice is intended to help you deal with constant disappointment, and I think many might think that spiritual or theological practices are used to bypass or transcend the heartbreak and disappointment of what it means to exist in the echoes of colonial and capitalist world, can you dispel that myth for us that's what these spiritual practices or theological practices are doing?

 Dr. Larry Ward Well, I'd have to respond this way. For me, first of all, it has to do with one's intention in the practice. And so there's a spectrum here of unconsciousness at one level, there are people who are like, “Oh, my God, I didn't know this. I didn't know that happened. I didn't know there were 60 million Native Americans and it went down to five in 100 years.” And there's that level of unconsciousness. There's a level of people are starting to think about some of these issues. And then there's passive-aggressive: people who are beginning to really get angry about thinking about these issues. And then there are people who get actively aggressive: who attack, who shoot, who murder, who bomb because they are not well in facing these issues, and do not know how, in many cases, to face these issues. So I think it's not an either-or question. The legacy of colonial impacts is global and all over - and not just the impact. 

So, this is again about trauma. Trauma is not just what happens to you, trauma is what happens to you because that happened to you. And then trauma is how you've learned to cope with what really happened to you because that happened to you. And so to go through these levels with the skills of resilience practice as a component of spiritual practice, helped me and helps many people embrace the reality without becoming victim to the reality. So, these practices are designed for you to grow up spiritually, and to be revolutionary socially, in a mature way. So for me, at least in the four noble truths of the Buddha - the first truth begins with suffering: and not just what happened but what happened inside of you because that happens, and your narrative and your coping mechanisms because that happened. And these patterns, if they're not recognized, named, healed, and then transformed, will continue and will be transmitted to everyone around you and the next generation to come. No hiding place down here.

Ayana Young  I've thought about how in my family when I think about the next generation, I sometimes say to myself, “the intergenerational trauma stops here” meaning with me. I know that suffering is not something that we can completely run away from but I think to not continue to pass on the traumas is such a huge challenge but so necessary to at least try because we're seeing what these past intergenerational traumas have done on top of the traumas of everyone else's life. So the traumas are compounding at this point and I think that's so much of why we're seeing what we're seeing and why we're experiencing this. 

I wanted to bring up another article, and it's titled “Race, Reclamation, and the Resilience Revolution.” You share: “I spend as much time as I can outside of the four walls of my house. I spend time with the birds, chatting with them every morning and every evening. At sunrise I’m outside feeling the warmth of the sun and at sunset I’m outside with the moonlight. It is very important not to undersell ourselves simply as human defined. We must understand ourselves as nature defined. When we understand ourselves that way, we can touch our generativity, we can touch our resilience that is in fact beyond time and space.” And I think we need this reminder in a world that has become so commodified, and so consumer oriented, so I wonder if you could share the importance of once again recognizing ourselves as nature-defined beings? 

Dr. Larry Ward Yes, I was sharing recently with a group that when I was eight or nine years old, my mother's father passed away. I had never met him - he lived in Georgia in the mountains on a small farm in the hillside in the bush, small farm with a couple of chickens and goats and turkeys, etc. I’d never been to Georgia and never been to a farm, etc. So we did our usual routine, as I understand it from those days, of every African American family who was going to travel from north to south. We were traveling from Cleveland, Ohio. We packed all of our food, made meals, left at night so that we would be the least seen and arrive in the daylight. So we arrive, walk up a little path, pack our little car, knock on the door, door opens, we walk into the living room which is a little tiny living room, and there's grandpa Paris in his casket sitting in the living room, and everybody's laughing, talking, crying all around him. And when it came time to go to bed, I was put in the alcove right across from the caskets. And so that was a long night of seeing life and death as one. And so I think it's very important to remember we are not simply defined by our colonial experience. I have ancestors and so do you that go all the way back to the beginning of time. 

And so I access the energies and wisdom of those ancestors as part of my energy of healing, and song, and dance, and art, and music, and poetry, etc. So I mean the real job that was done on People of Color in my view, by the colonial system, is we still think that's who we are. And that is no adequate definition of any kind of a human being as we can see now by the debris of bodies, and trees, and the countryside of our world, and the cities with the smoke and poisonous air. So how I approached this is from a sense of being a much larger reality than the narrative of Larry Ward. If one gets caught only in that narrative, you do not have the energy (I don't think), to create enough space inside of yourself to do the alchemy of healing. All you can do is get stuck again in fight, flight, or immobilization.

Ayana Young As a follow up to my previous question, you had mentioned wanting to discuss the link between America’s Racial Karma and our crisis in loving the wild, and I’d love to hear how you view these patterns linking, or furthering our binary approach to each other and the world?

 Dr. Larry Ward Okay, a couple of ways of responding to that. One is that from a neuroscientific point of view, we have an instinct toward a subject/object relationship with everything we encounter as human beings. And even further from a Buddhist perspective, we have a kind of addiction to dualism of duality, of not being able to see the connection between things, and ourselves as one reality, one living reality. And so for me, this is why I'm back to Dr. Ambedkar - without having the opportunity to do the spiritual transformational work, which is possible and many people are doing it, without disengaging from concrete work in the suffering of the world or of this planet. So what I began to see is, oh, the same way the colonial mind treated Indigenous peoples, which is still going on today, and slaves is the same way we treat the Earth. It's an extraction principle. It's a resource strategy for wealth creation, power creation, and meaning. And this is one of the reasons it's so hard to uproot.

A lot of people have their meaning so tied up into their willingness to be unconscious about the state of our planet, and the state of our relationships with one another on this planet. So bravery, and in the spiritual aspects of it, is partially learning how to ask brave questions about myself, my life, my thoughts, my language, and my behaviors. And for me, unless we begin to actually re-awaken our imaginations, rediscover the profound nature of being human, and we reconnect to our kinship with all things, we will need at least those three energies pointing toward creating a manifestation of the new, never-before-world soul. So I put my energy into manifesting the new without being attached to the outcome of the process, and at the same time put my care for those who are devoting their time and energy to a positive deconstruction of what we have on the planet what we've inherited. Our challenge is, as a species, we have a pattern of learning slowly. And we don't have time anymore to be this slow. Technology is already way ahead of our ways of thinking and operating, and at the same time as that happens, driven by economics and dominance, we start to lose even more of our human sense of soul.

 Ayana Young Yes. There’s so much in that response too that I'm sitting with and mulling over. Thank you for that. 

Well, Dr. Ward, as we come to a close I’d like to ask you about the curriculum you developed to follow America’s Racial Karma, which I think listeners will be eager to hear about as so often we digest information, yet we don’t know what to do with it next. What is the importance of cultivating a mindfulness practice alongside efforts to transmute our collective trauma? 

 Dr. Larry Ward Well, practically, to that end, we created an online course called the Earth Gate, which offers training and understanding trauma, the skills to recognize it in one's own body, six, seven skills to learn how to respond skillfully to traumatic occurrence within as it gets activated through a memory, or any event, or a circumstance, or sound, or color. All of our senses are doorways into our body's experience of dysregulation, which is what I mean by trauma when our nervous system loses balance and integrity. And so I think that's one part of it - so we created the Earth Gate. The next course, which will come out in the spring of next year, is called the Wind Gate. So the Earth Gate course is to give people the skills to work with their trauma around race, or around gender, or around catastrophe. Any form of traumatic experience, the Earth Gate gives you some basic skills and education to work with trauma. 

The next course, which follows the book America's Racial Karma, is called the Wind Gate. And the Wind Gate is the gate of change. And this follow-through of the book is a deeper look at what sustains racism: what feeds it, what nourishes it, both in individuals and in society? And what can we learn about practicing mindfully with recognizing that energy in ourselves, and in our society, and in our systems: being able to name that energy, being able to face the truth of that energy, but also to be able to transform that energy into energy of goodness, of wellness, of justice, and harmony. So we're in not just a social battle, we're in an energetic battle, for where energy is placed, where energy is enhanced and cared for. And because you know, 10% or 15% of the world pretty much determines the world's agenda, the rest of us must know that our energy is as profound as anyone else's energy. And I'm thinking back to civil rights days and understanding that our energy is much larger, much deeper, much more refined, to handle our suffering because we have had to learn how.

And so part of the challenge for me, and I think all of us around the world, is how to make this shift which we're in the midst of, how to make sure this shift survives: this energy, freshness, this energy of new language, new art, new music, new sound, new decisions, new kinds of institutions and systems to make sure that the energy survives to create these things. That our generativity is not lost in the folly of politics, or in the pain of commercialism. All those things are true and we must deal with all those things without getting lost. So that our energy, it's like the lawsuits, like the process you talked about with the minds, that's their strategy - to force you to use your energy that way, so that you don't have the energy to do what you're talking about would be the greatest thing. That's a conscious strategy. And so many North Americans don't understand how their consent is manufactured to use. To recognize this, checking in myself, rather than living on someone else's definition of who I should be, who I could be, who I wish I was, to have the courage to create a life that is based in individuation, not simply individualism.

Ayana Young Yes, wow. Again, there's so many things that you just responded to, you just said so many things that I'm excited to go back and actually pause with some of those statements. 

Well, Dr. Ward, this has been such a beautiful and healing conversation, and I think as we become at times confused, and overwhelmed, and just seeking how we can move through this time, I think what you've spoken to is a foundation of a type of spiritual and mental health that's completely necessary for us to be able to make conscious decisions, intentional decisions, healthy, and soft connections with each other. And the more and more I interview people and research, I come back to the themes that you speak to as even sometimes more of a priority than what we think should be the priorities at this time as in solutions or these large global-scale decisions. I'm not saying those aren't necessary, but if we're not coming from a place of this type of spiritual stability, I worry that we're just going to continue repeating and repeating and repeating and the traumas will just never fully dissolve. Or maybe they will never fully dissolve regardless but at least our intention and our awareness is there. So this has personally been a really important conversation for me and I can imagine for our listeners as well, very moving and guiding. So thank you. 

Dr. Larry Ward Well, thank you. I'm convinced that trauma can be reduced, healed, and transformed into the energy of light.

 Ayana Young  Well, I will remember that when I'm feeling really low. Because I think this belief system, and also you mentioned imagination a few responses ago, which I think back to adrienne maree brown’s interviews and this idea of the imagination battle that we're in, and whose imagination are we living in, and how do we take hold of our imaginations again, and decide, “no, we're not living, we're not consenting to this manufactured.” Like, I love that you said that that was so powerful. “No, we're not doing that. We're going to take our power in our imagination back and our consent back.” And just starting with that seed alone is so empowering and empowering though in a very grounded and humbled way, as well, which I think is so important to be empowered in humility so that the empowerment doesn't feed more power hunger, which is a real nuance, but I feel like you guided us through that as well.

 Dr. Larry Ward Thank you.

Emily Guerra Thank you for listening to this episode of For the Wild Podcast. The music you heard today is by Daniela Lanaia, Curran Runz, Lady Moon and the Eclipse, and The New Runes. For the Wild is created by Ayana Young, Allie Constantine, Emily Guerra, Erica Ekrem, and Julia Jackson.