What gets in the way of our remembering? :: our mental health context

00:01 Okay, so different forms of oppression that I just want to give an overview. Um, so that you have a little bit of a picture and understanding what's in the way often of remembering.

00:19 And when I say I remember, I mean, like the capital R, remembering of, like, our indigenous practices and the ways better ancestors did things.

00:28 Also, the way that we can connect with our ancestors and it's very natural and there's like nothing weird about it and like having you know things like extra sensory abilities and all of that stuff is not like weird.

00:48 So that's it means capital R remembering. And then I also am speaking to the remembering of dreams specifically. So imagine a carousel.

01:06 And if you've seen a carousel, it's like a round thing at a carnival that rotates around and around and there are these little animals usually horses that are mechanical and they go up and down around and they take the children and usually the parents around the carousel and it doesn't go very fast so

01:31 it just like keeps moving at a steady pace so there's different horses and they're all on a different hydraulic pole that moves them up and down.

01:44 So this is what I want you to be picturing is this. And we're going to think about oppression as this carousel that just keeps turning.

01:55 Moving, moving us around and around and around and it seems like you're never going to get off. But actually there is a starting point where you get on and there's a during point where you get off.

02:10 Usually the starting point where we get on is our birth. The first time somebody says oh it's a girl or you know it's a black person or whatever.

02:23 But usually the part of getting on is not our decision, right? We're in a body, we enter the body, we come here and we're in this oppression that I'm talking about since colonialization and we're in this period of history.

02:44 So each horse is like a different form of oppression. There's racism, that's one, hydraulic, there's sexism, there's another, there's heteronormativeism, or oppression of sexual identity use.

03:04 There's anti-semitism, there's, I mean I said racism which covers a lot but there's ableism.

03:18 That's a big one, one that a horse we often forget about. There's, I'm going to give a moment for you to add something that's here, I've already said, heteronormativeism or homophobia is another way of saying that fear of, you know, or oppression of, oppression of different gender identities, all of

03:49 these different things. And they're separate but we're all on the same, we're all moving on the same, parasol, around and around and around.

04:01 Now, at the top of this, well, at the bottom of this carousel is class. That that kind of keeps things staple.

04:14 And class is an invention of colonial societies. There was class or there are hierarchies that have existed in millennia, for millennia, in human society.

04:31 So it's not only that that that belongs to colonial time and and then the fallout of colonial time, which is what we live in, but what I'm speaking about is the modern day way that you and I understand and know class.

04:52 So there's that at the bottom. That that keeps all that's underneath all the isms. It's why the islas matter. And then the thing that I really want to focus on is the top.

05:08 What's at the top of this carousel? And what's at the top of this carousel is mental health oppression. It is the thing that keeps all the other oppressions in place.

05:21 And this is deeply, deeply connected to the way that we evaluate our mental health or evaluate the mental health of others and has been something that has been used throughout the last four hundred years to keep women in their place to keep children in their place to keep certainly folks of color people

05:58 of the global majority there's all kinds of ways that we pathologize people's behavior and in some ways as things as we're inside of collapse of colonial time things are becoming even more intense in that regard because now everyone's kind of participating in the pathologizing of each other and of themselves

06:27 and you know a lot of diagnosing of this and that and I want to be clear that I'm not saying it's inherently bad or negative to take part in a categorization or even understanding a pathology because it can be a very helpful tool in helping us to understand how to relate or how to interact with ourselves

06:54 , with our environment, and with one another. However, mental health oppression, it is important to understand how deeply we carry a fear within our bodies and within in our being seen as crazy, labeled as other in any regard that can impact our access to resource, which mental health has a direct impact

07:35 on that. it is something that we constantly are coupling with unhoused people, people who don't have homes, and there's spiritually a very important, Yay!

08:06 Spiritually Okay, I'm gonna talk over it. So spiritually there's a very very important correlation between people that we see as unhoused and people that we see as mentally other.

08:27 That person could be unwell and also that person could be somebody who is actually experiencing spiritual giftedness and our colonial context does not not is not able to hold the container for that kind of giftedness and remembrance and I'm bringing that forward because I want to start to move you into

09:09 just recognizing where in your life you have started to shift your mind or close your mind or bring your mind to reality.

09:26 For many of us it happens when we're children because we understand through the school system, through the ways that we begin, through our the lessons to interact with our peers and with our parents, we understand that there's a way to behave that broadcast a kind of mentally stable self, and there's

09:54 a way to behave or there's a way to mask, because there's a way to perform that can suggest something that could potentially outcast us or even cause us to be put into some sort of monitoring, You know, in a way that is a different kind of monitoring than the monitoring, let's say, of, you know, a grandmother

10:28 who's nurturing our gifts spiritually or, you know, a mentor who's looking after us and looking after our minds, you know, mentally, spiritually, those things.

10:44 So mental health oppression is a very, very, very important piece. It is the roof of the carousel that keeps everything else in place, including the class, including all of the these that are moving up and down on the carousel.

11:09 And this is where we enter into dream work as something that is a way of reclaiming the various aspects of the mind that have had to make themselves smaller and make themselves legible inside of a colonial context.

11:30 And it is the reason that we can struggle to recall our dreams, remember our dreams, at a very deep psychic and fundamental level, there is a fear that connecting with the world of spirit or connecting with things that are not of the real world is something that will get us into trouble and I really

12:05 want to validate and honor that that is a real thing that exists in almost every lineage that I have encountered as a practitioner that in my own experience and my own lineage I had a reading and one of my first spiritual readings ever one of the first things that came forward where the members of my

12:32 family who were killed are practicing our ways. We were killed on this land. This is, I'm sitting right now right below the Mason-Dixon line, delivering this message to you and my people brought their their ways and their practices and we're killed, so not all of them obviously because hello.

13:01 Here I am. It's never all of us. But all this to say that I want to introduce this to you and leave you with the task of journaling your responses as you listen to this, where do you feel like there's a connection between your mental health or the ways that mental health oppression has impacted and affected

13:34 you thus far in your life. And then also looking at where in your family, perhaps you haven't, or you don't know of any particular things in your life personally, but you've heard about an aunt perhaps, or it's often an auntie, or you know, someone else in your family who has either had some direct connection

14:01 or experience with a mental health oppression of some kind and when I say that I want to be clear to it's not necessarily you know I am I personally am not a medicine woman who thinks that But there's no place for things like mental health medications or things.

14:29 I think that there are, it's important to recognize that we are in a time where there isn't a way to go all the way traditionally back to things that were done.

14:48 Well, I won't say there isn't a way to go back. what I will say is that sometimes I feel that it's extremely necessary to go for the things that will be stabilizing for a person so that they're able to be in a position to make their own choices or to be well enough for their nervous systems to be stable

15:19 . So that that's my current position. Then I can unravel that position in a lot of different ways. But I want you to just do some journaling about this oppression carousel on the different ways that you find yourself engaging with it specifically around mental health and like, what are the ways that

15:42 that has impacted your life? And then also just starting to see like where that relationship to your to the spiritual, you know, how you feel about the relationship between your mental health and the spiritual and your spiritual life.

16:02 You might feel really good about it so it might just end up being like a gratitude, you know, journaling practice or a celebration of how far you've come or something like that or it might be something that you know we can really take into prayer and and take into the next parts of the course.

16:25 So that is what I want to leave you with that was a lot in this video to digest along with the last one.

16:36 So feel free to watch these a few times and listen to them in different locations while you're walking, while you're laying down, just while you're you know while you're moving your body, and just seeing how the different transmissions and teachings that have come through here are moving for you and

17:03 of course as I was saying the journaling, writing down anything that you feel too around where we are right now and we'll continue from here.

17:18 See you see you soon.