Ruth King: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out
Good Life Project
Jonathan Fields / Acast
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 7 August 2018
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Growing up in South Central, LA in the '60s and '70s, Ruth King (https://ruthking.net/) was taught to bury her emotions, to hide her heart and do what was necessary to survive. Feeling was not a good thing, getting home safe was. But, eventually, a call to reconnect with her big heart deep empathy came in the form of open-heart surgery in her 20s.
Returning to school, King pursued her Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology, managed training and organizational development divisions at Levi Strauss and Intel, where she designed diversity awareness programs and consulted to leaders on cultural change initiatives. Over time, her interests expanded to include the study of insight meditation and Tibetan Buddhism. King is now an insight meditation teacher and emotional wisdom author, mentored by Jack Kornfield in the Theravada tradition.
King’s work has been influenced by many cultures, and is often described as “ceremony.” Her intuitive methods, knowledge, and skills weave the fields of Western psychology, Buddhist philosophy, leadership development, mindfulness meditation, and fun! She is a guiding teacher at Insight Meditation Community of Washington and Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and the founder of Mindful Members Insight Meditation Community of Charlotte.
King is also the author of The Emotional Wisdom Cards, Healing Rage: Women Making Inner Peace Possible, and her new book, Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out (https://amzn.to/2MrygRN).
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Today's guest Ruth King grew up in South Central LA in the late 60s and 70s. |
| 0:08.8 | A time of incredible unrest where her grandmother as she described it would pace back and forth |
| 0:15.1 | in the home just kind of hoping and praying that the grandkids would make it home safe |
| 0:19.9 | on any given day. |
| 0:21.8 | The rule there was not so much how to live a good life but how to survive. |
| 0:25.9 | She had a large family with a lot of siblings. |
| 0:29.4 | She was sort of focused on how do I get through each day but also she was the kid in the family |
| 0:35.5 | that felt everything that had a huge heart and being tough and shutting down was not the easiest |
| 0:41.6 | thing for her. As she grew up and became more active and really wanted to change things, |
| 0:46.4 | she eventually found herself at the age of 27 in open heart surgery. |
| 0:50.5 | And that was a wake up moment in a lot of different ways for her. |
| 0:54.3 | She had been putting herself through school studying psychology and started to build a life |
| 0:58.3 | in corporations and she wanted to focus her energies a bit differently and talk about the big |
| 1:04.6 | issues and stay involved in learning and training but also have conversations around race and power |
| 1:11.6 | and differential and equality within organizations, within culture and with individuals. |
| 1:17.4 | And she wasn't afraid to do it but she also started to explore mindfulness and |
| 1:23.0 | a path to her own stillness and it changed her. |
| 1:27.4 | It changed the way that she operated in the world, the change the way that she went about her |
| 1:30.9 | mission. She has since built a tremendous career in large organizations like Levi Strauss |
| 1:36.1 | and Intel and then developed a long-standing study and a teaching path in the insight meditation |
| 1:44.0 | focusing on dealing with hard issues and one of them is race. She has a really powerful new |
| 1:49.7 | book out now called Mindful of Race that I strongly recommend. In today's conversation, |
... |
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