(The shooter involved in the Aurora theater shootings is not referred by name in this article.)

An act of violence occurred in Colorado on July 20, 2012 involving over 60 women, men and some children. The shooting of innocent people in a movie theater became world news and the media gave it the nomenclature, The Aurora Shootings. When an event occurs with such intensity and involves a large collective, it is beneficial for those who study consciousness to explore the dynamics surrounding the circumstances and delve into the patterns manifesting in our world. This leads to greater consciousness on the individual level, which contributes to greater consciousness within the collective.

Before we start, I want to discuss several communications I had with a few of my clients regarding an intuition I experienced having to do with a gathering of a dark, chaotic energy over Denver a few months before the Aurora Shootings. I believed this energy gained momentum around January, 2012. I emailed a friend describing the depth of darkness manifesting and believed that this energy would influence an individual to commit a heinous crime such as another Columbine shooting. Later, when the fires irrupted along the mountain range, I thought, that maybe, Mother Earth was attempting to dispel the darkness as the fires would burn away most of the energy and lessen its influence over the unsuspecting individual. Fire has similar characteristics as rage, which are, the unpredictability along with a great deal of intensity. Yet, Mother Earth’s attempt to dispel the darkness completely, had failed. The Aurora Shootings was not a premonition on my part, but derived from an understanding of unconscious darkness and years of Jungian study of the collective unconscious. When you do pattern work, it becomes easier to see life unfold in a series of patterns.

Looking at the Aurora Shootings dynamic from a Jungian perspective, a person can gain insight into the underpinnings of the collective darkness. Carl Jung spoke of an aspect of the collective unconscious as a pool of energy that develops when individuals disown dark aspects within their psyche. This disowned energy gathers according to similarity of patterns, remember the adage of ‘like attracts like’, this also applies here. For example, if individuals disown their power, then this disowned energy of the fear of powerlessness gathers and begins to influence an individual, who is readying him/her self to carry the collective manifestation of powerlessness. A person can identify a region’s unconscious aspects by looking at the generalizations or characterizations made of that area. For example, Washington D.C. is generalized as a community striving for power, Florida is characterized as an area settled by the retired elderly, and Chicago by it’s gangster morality, to name a few.

Denver and The Old West

Let us look at Denver where two mass shootings and one large hostage situation happened in the last 12 years. Denver is in The Old West, and The Old West is known for its lawlessness as well as the drive for gold and dreams of riches. Another aspect of historical Denver is it became one of the farthest places in America for settlers who were journeying west to fulfill their dreams. Also, one of the first major tragedies with similar characteristics of the school and theater shootings occurred near Boulder in the late 1700’s.

Boulder Falls, just north of Boulder, is an area where I meditated regularly for several years. One day while I trekked to my favorite place, my intuitive friend called me and asked where I was at that exact moment. She was picking up a great deal of sorrow and it overwhelmed her of the terror surrounding an incident in which an Indian village was massacred. Women and children were among the dead. The images flooding her mind were of men invading an unsuspecting village, chasing the villagers and shooting them with no discernment or emotion. I had no clue if this truly happened or if these images were the musings of an overly imaginative friend. As we continued to talk, I came upon a plaque that was a memorandum placed there for the hundreds of Arapahoe Indians who had been massacred in their village by the white man in a territorial dispute. Are you beginning to see the patterns of the darkness that lies within the area and the foundational roots these towns sprung up from? Innocent people, believing they are safe in their villages, schools, and community movie theaters, gunned down by individuals who are reminiscent of the gunslinger of the West.

An aspect of the collective unconscious energy that gathered in Denver appeared to contain an element of rage. The Columbine shooters were boys that felt alone, rejected, powerless and a failure in their school. (Information gathered from documentaries and Internet references). The Aurora shooter also had elements of feeling like a failure in his life pursuits and feelings of powerlessness to affect positive change in his life.

Different friends and family of these three shooters characterized the men as loners and being shy and quiet. When an individual’s fear (say of being powerless) is heightened and he or she cannot find resolution from their external world, such as experiencing a success in an area of interest, then that individual is susceptible to the influence of the collective disowned unconscious. An individual who desires some form of recognition and feels powerless to obtain that experience in a manner that society approves, then that desire can turn from recognition to receiving notoriety from the masses. The result is the same, everyone knows your name and fame comes your way. The act becomes associated with greatness.

As having lived in Denver and having worked as a therapist, a common theme of the people I met was the difficulty in achieving personal dreams. This was a well-known dynamic in the Aurora shooter’s case and a characteristic of the dark collective unconscious energy developing along the Colorado Rocky Mountain Range.

The Patterns of Batman and a Portrait of A Killer

Batman is a man driven by injustice in the world. He desires to use fear on those who prey on the fearful. He is also a man of wealth that was not earned but inherited. Some of his well-known quotes from the trilogy are:

“It’s not who I am underneath but what I do that defines me.

People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy. I can’t do this as Bruce Wayne. A man is just flesh and blood and can be ignored or destroyed. But as a symbol… as a symbol, I can be incorruptible, everlasting.”

I believe the Aurora Shooter became so overwhelmed by his insignificance and recent failures, as well as, a self-imposed pressure to be elevated among people that he became a willing and appropriate participant for the darkness forming in Colorado. The Aurora Shooter took on the persona of The Joker, Batman’s archenemy, and a character immortalized by Emmy-winning performance of Heath Ledger to kill off the hero, that he could never realize within himself.

The Aurora Shooter was born in December 1987. He witnessed the events and circumstances of terrorist acts of violence that impacted his conscious life. He was only 11 years old when the Columbine killings took place and became a world-wide news story. The events of 9/11, which set into motion the random acts of terrorist, occurred when he was 13. In his adolescent years, he lived in a society whose political leaders encourage and promote a form of paranoia, in which the Americans were called upon to be “on the alert” for “suspicious” individuals and codes were assigned to declare the level of daily threat…”Today, we are in code Yellow.” And the American people accepted this behavior from our government. We used violence to fight this unknown threat, and we perpetuated without cause and practiced world-wide violence against innocent citizens. What message are we sending to the susceptible psychics that qualify their own definition of the enemy?

The randomness of the killings and unknown victims of the shooting follow the pattern that have existed in the American culture that were enacted on native American Indians and within the slave culture. The Aurora Shooter entered a darkened theater, massively armed, and began firing into the seated audience. He did not know the people he was shooting. He could hardly see their faces. They existed for him only as targets for his weapons and a means to end his suffering of being a failure and an unknown. Similar to the Arapahoe massacres and every war battle enacted where innocent people were slaughtered, the victims are a means to an end.

How to Heal and Bring About Unity

These tragedies that have occurred in the Denver area have become part of the world collective consciousness. When events garner attention at the world level, then the dynamics surrounding the events are part of the world. To begin working on these from a consciousness level and to flush out the darkness of your own psyche, the task is to explore what are you reacting to when you first hear or read about the events. For example, do you connect to the victims terror of being trapped with a man who is shooting a gun and killing people. Can you feel that helplessness of the situation without having your ego defend against it with anger toward the shooter?

Heart-centering will allow you to be present with your own helplessness without defending, until compassion releases and transform your fear. When you defend against something, then you are contributing to the energy of the disowned collective unconsciousness and you have joined forces with the shooter. This is the unity that people do not like to hear. Heart centered compassion is a way to ensure that tragedies do not manifest themselves by someone carrying your darkness.