A Meditation on Empty Force
A MEDITATION ON EMPTY FORCE
A MEDITATION ON EMPTY FORCE
We still the mind so it becomes clear
When the mind is clear and steady it can see what is.
When it sees what is,
It must look to see what supports what is.
When it sees what supports what is it must ask the question:
If Derek Chauvin’s knee on George Floyd’s neck
Is not an aberration (it isn’t)
But is the gravitational arrangement, the constellation of forces around which this country is organized (it is)…
If, as a White man, it is my knee because I benefit from that knee
In the tradition of the great teachers of non-violence: Martin, Mahatma, Colin
Sitting where I sit
What is the appropriate response?
Comes the answer:
Re-architect the gravitational forces in the knee.
How to do this?
From within.
The force is empty.
To compel a body to move by actual force is the knee.
To compel a body to move by empty force is to change the impulse of the knee itself.
How do we change the impulse of the body from within?
This is trauma healing.
We reveal the mechanical driving forces that structure the way it takes up space:
That cause it to act from automaticity.
We enter the field of implicit memory, of cultural memory, of inter-generational trauma until we teach the knee, in the language of the body,
That kneeling in prayer on someone’s neck
Is a prayer to Evil.
We teach the knee a new way forward,
So that when it kneels it will touch the actual Ground.
Then, and only then, can the body of which the knee is a part be healthy.
Only then can we heal the soul-wound that is known as Whiteness.
