Transforming Unconscious Bias

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today I'm going to talk about how we can transform unconscious bias. But first it's worth asking why do we have unconscious bias at all? Well, it's because for most of the last 200,000 years, our ancestors lived as hunter-gatherers in quite small groups or tribes. And their survival depended on their ability to care for and cooperate with the people in their own pack. Now, at the same time, it was important to be very alert to the danger of people outside the pack, the others.

Now the, the others or the outsiders were actually often a source of fear and danger. Therefore, feelings of animosity and even aggression towards them was a basic survival strategy in the human mind. Now in your own life, you can observe how the mind does this kind of rapid sorting of people into people who are like me and not like me. You can observe this as you sit in a restaurant, as you walk down the street. And also you can observe how feelings of slight animosity or indifference tend to arise towards those who seem different to you.

Those who have different political or religious views. Maybe those who dress differently, have different skin color. Anyone who seems different to you in any way. What you can observe as the mind will often very quickly reduce another person to a kind of two dimensional figure, who's either in the in-group or in the out-group. In the human mind, the out-group are often judged, looked down on, ignored, dismissed, or even attacked.

Now we probably all know, right, how it feels to be judged, shunned, ignored, or even aggressed upon for being different. Most of us have been there, right. It's not good at all. So how can we start to transform this unconscious bias? So the first thing is really simply to acknowledge that they exist and to deliberately make an intention to become more mindful of them. So beginning to be attentive when the mind is sorting and judging people into like me, good and not like me, bad.

And if you notice this at all, deliberately practice then looking past your differences with the other. And instead recognizing your common humanity. Recognizing for instance, that actually this person is a lot like you. Just like you, they want to be happy. They don't want to suffer.

Just like you, they experience hurt and fear. And just like you, they want love and protection. As we look more deeply and see that we're more alike than we are different, the threat circuitry in the mind eases, we see past our minds conditioning and become more compassionate, wise and kind. So the invitation for today and ongoing is to be attentive to this opportunity, to transform unconscious bias. And on that note, a heartfelt thank you to you for your practice and difference that this makes in the world.

And inviting you now to settle in for today's meditation.