010: Becoming Aware of Our Biases

I've just released a new and very powerful episode of the Latter-day Faith podcast. I hope you'll check it out!   We live so much of our lives unconsciously, in many ways reacting, seeing, and judging based on understandings that were primarily "given to" us during our formative years. Among the toughest of these biases regards race. In fact, this week's guest, Dr. LaShawn C Williams, suggests that if we can talk about this one, we can talk about anything! And so that's what we do in this episode.   After a fairly Mormon specific, what's-occurring-today chat, LaShawn and I dig into the subject of bias, using race as a primary example, but at every turn also generalizing from it to all the types of bias that we unconsciously hold, while also offering strategies for becoming aware of them and moving through healing processes. In short, as is the case with most Latter-day Faith episodes, we always tie bias with inner work and how to remove it as a block or cover that keeps our full, deepest, true soul manifesting itself and the love and compassion that is the its natural stance.   As part of the discussion, we get into a great section about situational vs systemic privilege or oppression. About the importance of understanding the way our bodies work with regard to scary or foreign situations and people. About the importance of trying to understand all situations and others' as well as our own biases, in context. How did they or we come to hold these biases? We talk about how important it is to seek to understand how this or that action, reaction, or attitude "make sense" to that person or to us. Only in this way can we avoid thinking of them, or parts of ourselves, as evil. We must also learn how often our interactions with and understandings of others are based on our "projections" onto them. Do we really know who they are? Are we really experiencing them, or just ourselves?   All of this is very hard work, but it is also joyful work, and at each step LaShawn exudes hope and optimism alongside her realism. She models the best of ways we can approach the world and our lives through inner work, as well as reminding us of the importance of patience in all these processes. LaShawn is powerful, and this is a powerful and empowering episode. Listen in! You'll be glad you did! _____ Links: "Becoming Powerful," Mormon Matters episode with LaShawn C. Williams, October 2018 Zandra Vranes, Facebook post on grief among Latter-day Saints referred to by Dr. Williams in this episode