I Hate Margarine - Give me the real shit.
I've never been a fan of margarine. I'd rather have the Real Thing….
The oily taste lingers and sticks to the roof of my mouth, caking everything else I eat in a Canola hue.
As a formerly incarcerated person, I know a lot about margarine because they don't have butter in prison.
Election Day is around the corner. There are at least half a dozen flyers outside of my front door
with my shoe print on them reminding me to vote. As a formerly incarcerated person with a
Felony conviction, my odds of being eligible to vote in this country are about 50/50. Maybe I
should just run for president instead?
[Before the Election]
I'm a spiritual counselor, an avid meditator, and fan of breathwork -- but as we enter the final
week before Election Day, I find myself holding my breath in unhealthy ways. More recently, and
more consistently, I've found myself microwaving packages of popcorn, stuffing my face by the
handfuls, and doom scrolling endlessly through social media politics. As I scroll, I can see the
margarine finger prints on the screen of my phone, reminding me just how untrue to myself I
have been.
Whether I'm clicking through blogs, or scrolling through Instagram reels, I can sense a real
energy of dread underneath the satirical posts. Everybody seems to be tired of walking on pins
and needles. I think we're all in need of some actual acupuncture.
Social Media clickbait adds salt to my already salty saturated popcorn fingers: I see images of
Trump in a photoshopped suit belonging to Ronald Mcdonald,J.D. Vance getting beat up by a
can of Mountain Dew, Beyonce in an Atlas-like pose holding the world in the shape of Kamala's
face. I click off of Instagram and onto NPR: Immigration, Border Security, Venezuelan gangs in
Colorado, Inflation and our Economy, Israel. But regardless of what I'm reading, or where I'm
scrolling, there seems to be an important topic of conversation that has been omitted from both
presidential candidates: Prison Reform.
As a person of color, I'm excited that Kamala is the nominee, but as a formerly incarcerated
person, I am not super enthusiastic about a former prosecutor who wears her conviction rates
as a badge of honor being a presidential candidate. As a formerly incarcerated person who has
really focused and dedicated his life to doing the real healing work, I'm not okay with how Trump
responds to almost anything. When I watch him I'm reminded of a lot of the people I was
surrounded in prison by: White supremacists, nazi-sympathizers, proud boys enthusiasts.
Trump is a walking wound - this is clear. But Kamala is a knife unaware that her point only
burgeons the trauma - it doesn't heal it.
I'm highly aware of my own spiritual trauma, racial trauma, and prison trauma; I understand the
imperative need for prison reform conversation. Our prison system has the highest incarceration
rate in the world, and the highest recidivism rate in the world. (Recidivism is the rate or
likelihood that a formerly incarcerated person will go back to prison.) My time in prison has
convinced me that our prison system is not a reflection of the people in prison more than it is a
reflection of America itself - a young country in its adolescent years, unwilling to address the
underlying wound.
I was incarcerated for nearly 3 years in an almost all-white prison. There, I learned to go into my
body, into the wound, and address the hurt and impact of racial trauma underneath. I began
experimenting with my own techniques in meditation by going into my body and sitting with the
wounds. My spirituality has taught me a lot about acceptance and letting go. I've learned a lot
about owning the story, and also about seeing the narrative for what it is - just a narrative. In
doing the healing work, I've come to the conclusion that we are a country built on shame, and
it's something we need to learn to let go of because it doesn't do us any good. As I scroll
through the various forms of political satire and jargon, I'm reminded that shame seems to still
be both parties' main strategy and point of attack.
In a country with a hurt bursting at the seams, meditation and spiritual work might be the exact
thread we need to weave this country back together, but we have to be willing to do the work. It
takes real work to address the layers and layers of hurt. It starts with the willingness to have real
conversations about real wounds, like prison and systemic racism.
The deeper healing will happen if we begin to reach across the aisle a bit. I know this from
experience. My meditation and willingness to heal while incarcerated inevitably led me to
studying the law where I became the prison's only resource for legal advocacy. Essentially, I
became the prison lawyer. As a person of color, standing at 5'2, it was an interesting position to
be in - sitting across from my oppressor knowing that I'd inevitably help them because it was the
right thing to do even if they were white, racist men, three times my size, who for decades, were
raised with a reinforced notion that people who look like me must be less than human because
of my skin color (rhetoric that Trump uses today).
As I sat across from my oppressor I began to learn to see the commonalities. I used what I
called a stick of kindness. If they called me the N word, or Vermin or another racial slur, I'd hit
them with an unexpected kindness, but I'd do it in a firm way. I'd say something like, "I am
willing to help you out, but you need to leave that language at the door. In here, you'll treat me
like a person, and I'll treat you like a person too." Afterall, we are all just people needing to be
seen, needing to be validated, needing to be heard.
How could I get this white supremacist sitting across from me to see my brownness? I learned
that in order for him to acknowledge the "brownness" in me, he had to learn to see the
"brownness" in himself, and in return, I had to learn to see my own "white supremacy" within
me. Spirituality has taught me that the energy underneath points to something much larger than
myself. In a world of disconnection, it is our humanity that connects us.
Over time, some of these men began to learn to comply, to see me not just as other. Over time,
for a few of these men, they began to learn to even see beyond the cultural racism they had
been raised in. This kind of healing is a healing that transcends skin color, and transcends
politics.
The sentiment I felt in prison is a similar sentiment I feel today with our country's coming
Election. Can we turn the page and move past our own tribalism and wound? Are we willing to
see the marginalized and the oppressed as people, and meet their needs too? The more
conversations I have with people around me in my own community, the more I'm beginning to
see that a lot of us are hungry for something other than the comfort popcorn we've been
snacking on recently.
I'm halfway through my bag of popcorn when I decide to get up from my chair and toss the rest
in the trash; I want some real food. I put my phone on silent and leave it on the kitchen counter. I
pull out a carton of eggs, some shredded cheese, red peppers, and sausage from the fridge. I
grab a frying pan from underneath the stove, place it on the burner, and turn the stove on
medium. I turn back to the fridge and pull out stick of butter from the door. I pull back a corner of
the waxy paper, slice the butter with a knife and flick it into the pan. As I watch the butter melt
and sizzle in the pan I can't help but say aloud to myself, "Ah, that's more like it."
[After Election]
After the events of the election, I looked back on this post and it all still applies. We are hungry for the real thing right? We are ready for something less oily, less processed. We are ready for a spirituality that can really lift us, and not just some of us — all of us.
[CTA]
My book, The Ocean Inside Me, is available now on Amazon/ in your local bookstore. If you want to support my writing, and my spiritual nonprofit NORTHWEST WISDOM, please help me by getting a copy of my book, sharing it with others, or signing up for a free spiritual counseling consult today. Thank you.
The Ocean Inside Me: My Journey to writing my Spiritual Memoir
Written By R.G. Shore
It started out as a thought…
“It might be time to share my story.”
I wasn’t sure where it would go, I wasn’t even sure what it would be called, but I knew it had to happen. My spiritual journey is not linear, nobody’s is. It undulates and spirals… Heaven is not an upward path afterall, but an inward path.
My spiritual journey is a journey toward healing racial trauma, spiritual trauma, abandonment trauma. At first, I thought it was my own… and as the writing process opened up to me, I began to discover the healing was meant for something so much larger.
Sometime it isn’t the artist who paints, but the paint that guides the artist, each stroke allowing the artist’s hands to move with the brush, collectively one, no longer separate.
As I wrote, I knew that I was being guided to something much larger than myself. That is what spirit does to us, that is what creativity and expression, and longing continually do for us.
Spirituality is about expressing the Isness of our very existence. Spirituality is about expressing the Isness of our very self. The Ocean Inside Me quickly became not just my story, but everybody’s story because it was a story of finding myself in pain, and loss, and guilt, and shame, and wound and hurt, and realizing it was never just my pain, or my loss, or my guilt, but it was everybody’s pain, everybody’s guilt.
I realized through the writing process that I could connect through others just by sitting in my own pain. After all, meditation is not about escaping the world, but learning to find it in a much deeper way. Spiritual Wisdom teaches us, inherently, in the earth, that we are grounded and we are held in something much larger than ourselves, that takes us beyond this present life.
Spiritual Knowledge, or Spiritual Wisdom is flowing within us, like an Ocean. It gently guides us and helps us to see that each wave is not separate from each other… Each wave, though seemingly different and disparate, is actually a part of a much larger wave:
1 Wave
1 Hurt
1 Wound
and also — 1 Healing.
undulating in and out
of a much larger experience
Spirituality, at it’s core,
teaches us
— that we are one.
My writing Journey spilled out of me onto the page. The process was painful and also cathartic. When we allow the processing to happen unto us, we realize that the allowing and letting go is always happening, but not to us - - - for us.
The Ocean Inside Me is a continual spiritual Map, showing me my own spiritual patterns and loops that have maybe transcended life times.
I encourage you, as you go on your own journey, to sit within your own pain and your own patterns. The pain allows for the creative expression. The pain begins to open up and we begin to see from a separateness to a oneness.
Meditation Practice:
Spend 5 minutes today, just breathing in and out. First, close your eyes, and picture yourself as a wave on an ocean, floating vastly and ever expanding.
Notice How this feels, how does your breath feel as you expand in and out?
How do you feel as a wave?
I want you to imagine other waves coming in and out of your life, what do these waves look like? Do they brush up against you? Are you sad when they depart?
Just Notice, and Allow.
Spiritual Patterns are showing up in your life? Do you need help learning how to discover them?
To Purchase my Spiritual Memoir, The Ocean Inside Me, please visit my book page to buy the book and support my journey. Thank you!
https://www.northwestwisdom.org/book
In Kindness,
R.G. Shore