By Sonal Shah Taylor
I am not trying to race bait during a time like this.
But this is truly how the world we live in is. Where every brown person is just glad that it wasn’t another brown person during yesterday’s shooting in Las Vegas.
Because the backlash against minorities will be vicious.
We will be held as an example. We will be yelled at for our race and/or religion. I have felt it. It’s painful. It’s what other races have felt for hundreds of years in this country. Ultimately, I don’t even need examples because they are all there for the world to see.
I am sorry for humanity that this man would decide to kill so many people on his way out of this world. Truly disturbed. There has been an exponential rise of mass shootings in my lifetime and we seem to be numb to them (and most are white men). Outside of teenagers in Silicon Valley, white men have a rising suicide rate. To me, it seems there is an existential crisis.
Humanity is crying, can’t you hear it?
I just want to state that I am not trying to cause any divisions. There is white privilege, but humanity is suffering. All of us. We aren’t against each other.
I am married to an Appalachian white male. He is the kindest, most beautiful person in the whole world. He would give the shirt off his back to any stranger. We are in a mixed, multicultural religious family that loves one another deeply.
Let’s respect and understand where others come from. But also be realistic. Black lives matter. Most of the immigrated Mexicans I know, work harder than most American born (that I know). More white Christians have enacted domestic terrorism than Muslims. The people of the first nation were the only ones who aren’t recent immigrants.
There is a lot more racism in this country than we thought, but let’s really sink into that. What are your prejudices? I have my own. I can look at myself. I can be better than what I have been conditioned to be. I have a choice to rise beyond my identity as an American born Indian female of Hindu and Muslim origin.
At a fundamental level, I will love you even if you spit at me. You are me and I am you. Hate is born out of lack of connection with the divine, not in the name of God.
We all feel it. The collective unconscious. It’s keeping us adrift and unstable. We are lost and isolated.
Yet we are connected. We are not alone (we are all brothers and sisters). Please remind yourselves in this time, there is no enemy. We are just playing out cycles of consciousness–destruction and creation.
I understand my privilege. I was born in a household of Indian physicians with expensive vacations and private schools. I am a physician myself now with a six-figure salary. I have a beautiful home and don’t have to worry about money. I live in a progressive town that allows growth.
Let’s all be aware of the hoax that has been perpetrated on humanity. That there is a master race, class, etc. It is all guns, germs, and steel. We are all one. You are the one you have been looking for. Don’t let the powers that be control your emotions. Be focused, discerning, and protective of yourself. But also be empathic and loving and aware.
Send love to every other human that is suffering. You are beautiful, pure, and without sin. And the illusion of this world will never touch you. So give up your suffering/attachments/confusion and we will fly together in a place beyond wrongdoing and righteousness.
Let’s soar together there.
Sonal Shah Taylor graduated from Indiana University with a Bachelors of Arts in Biology and History in 2000. She graduated from AUC school of medicine in 2004 and completed her internal medicine residency at New York Hospital of Queens in 2007. She is a diplomate of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine. Sonal is a certified functional medicine provider. She was involved in the Earhquake relief effort in Haiti in 2010 and has continued work in Haiti with Rise 2 Shine. Sonal has worked for the Indian Health Services on the Navajo reservation and has an ongoing interest in nonprofit and relief work. She is deeply committed to health equity and death and dying work. She has been a Hospitalist for the last 10 years
and began working at Mission Hospital in Asheville in 2011.