Click on the link to visit Micah’s Facebook page for this post – which resonated strongly with the writer. Micah has featured here before. He is a Texan psychologist and counsellor. We experience him as heartful and wise. Here, it’s the links he makes between his voiced perspective, and connection; the web of life in which we all participate; our need of each other and how it is through each other that we most make contact with aliveness and the beauty of life, and may best serve ourselves, each other, all living beings and our world. What Charles Eisenstein calls interbeing. Love, rather than fear. Deeply person-centred perceptions….
Here’s the text, for those who have trouble reading FB links – but the comments on the original post are well worth a read too:-
‘I think a lot about why white guys have such a hard time with narratives about white colonialism and feminism and stuff…the thing that cracks me up the most is that when I tend to talk about those things, a lot of times they assume I’m being self-loathing or experiencing white guilt or whatever.
I’m not, it’s actually inspired by a few different things, at least as far as I can tell:
1) a recognition, like I’ve posted about before (probably to an obnoxious degree), that the fate of self and other are intertwined. What hurts minorities hurts the majority. The relationship may seem distant, but it’s actually not. You know that whole narrative about aliens showing up and humans finally uniting against a common enemy? We have common enemies right now, already: ecological destruction, the slavery of money and greed, etc. Our fates are intertwined.
2) a feeling of vulnerability, like I’m not able to do everything on my own. I value feminism because I’m not strong enough to take on the world alone; I want partners, and a lot of the women I know are very strong. I want them as partners/equals.
3) a love of life, buried sometimes (often, maybe) under the weight of things, but a desire for the beauty and truth of self-expression, because that’s what makes life worth living, and if we’re caught in a master-slave/oppressor-oppressed relationship, nobody is going to be able to really express/channel the beauty in the world. It makes slaves of everyone.
Love of self isn’t at odds with love of the other.’
Micah Ingle
Thank you, Micah, for writing this and giving us permission to post it.
Palace Gate Counselling Service, Exeter
Counselling in Exeter since 1994
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