Once again humanity is faced with a heinous act of violence acted upon innocent victims, as in the case of the school mass shootings of children in Connecticut. Many are trying to understand and are grappling with how anyone could commit such a murderous crime and on innocent children. It is as if in some way, the understanding of the criminal mind would allow us to label, categorize or give reason to the unpredictable horror. Then, we can forget about the incident or manipulate the horror until we manage to once again restore sanity to that which can only be deemed insane.
There is a trend occurring and I am seeing it more and more in my practice. This trend is a person’s ability to escape facing the reality of life. We have developed dimensions in our minds, dimensions of alternate realities, whether it is through the use of drugs (both prescription and illicit), alcohol, video gaming, drama filled existences and yes, even meditation, that provide a means of escape. The greatest danger is the use of video games by children whose egos have not developed enough to distinguish fantasy from reality. Children do not understand that they are not the characters they take on and enact within the game. The games reinforce the striving for power through acts of violence. Then, to complicate the situation further, people, using video game violence, become desensitized to the violence over long periods of play. Our culture appears to have the goal of escaping the unhappy and challenging life, and instead of developing the character within, escapes to a reality where you are master or your universe.
The urge to escape is great as the challenges of a downward-turning economy, fear-based society, and fast-past culture and the effort to face the daily grind is enough to frighten even the most secure adult. For individuals who are on an inner-driven path of self-reflection and investigation, desire to see what is unseen and are motivated to move beyond fear-based living; need to remember to open their heart, sacrifice their reaching for power and be present in their vulnerability without the use of ego defense mechanisms. (See previous post on Heart Centered Awareness and the post on Violence). Ego defense also includes using the meditative techniques to obtain heighten spiritual awareness and dimensions, emotional states of love and the angelic realms, when the meditative approach is out of fear-based intentions. Many Eastern philosophies drive toward these enlightening results in a meditative practice, where I only see it as a method of escapism.
Heart-Centered Awareness is the portal to another state of consciousness that can provide the resource to allow a person to reside in reality with the current situation. Let’s face it and recognize the world is not an easy place to reside in. Heart-Centered Awareness opens a person into compassion, so that there is a grounded approach to the situation. For example, can you be present with the level of powerlessness that drives a person to take gun in hand (a reaching for power) and kill innocent children? There is a call for more conscious individuals who are advanced enough in their practice to be present with the depth of horrors that have occurred in Connecticut without the need to justify, rationalize or understand the reasoning behind the enactments, nor get caught in conspiracy theories and other world drama to distract from one’s own inner horror and their own participation in the collective responsibility of manifesting that horror.