Healing Racism Within: A Lightworker’s Guide is a book for our times—it goes beyond naming the cultural demons that hold together White America’s historical racist fabric, and boldly offers techniques and exercises for looking deeply within, both psychologically and spiritually, to confront and transform internalized racism, and bring about positive change within oneself and then out in world.
The book draws upon author Brett Bevell’s own journey to heal the psycho-spiritual baggage of early childhood trauma, sexual abuse, and growing up within a racist community. Bevell shares key insights that were essential to his personal transformation along with haunting stories about his childhood experiences, including witnessing a race-based murder when he was a toddler and being sent as a young boy on fishing expeditions with a known racist murderer. Bevell infuses his insights with user-friendly exercises which most anyone can access—journal writing, art therapy, affirmations, lofty questions, exercises in gratitude, energy healing, both Buddhist Tonglen and shamanic meditations, and ancestral lineage healing rituals—to mine one’s inner landscape regarding race and transform the self. From this new vantagepoint, we learn to become our own better angels by finding the courage to speak out, be in service to the cause of social justice, and marry the paths of internal and external actions to create a better world.