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VIOLENCE IN AMERICA
The following was written upon the heels of the shooting of six young students at the University of California - Santa Barbara last week.
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A dark cloud hovers over the land. A cloud of unpredictable violence that breaks out as an impulse to act coming suddenly or more slowly and insidiously upon individuals, raising what may have existed in a previous moment as discontent and frustration with something external, to rage and the need to seek judgment upon others. These sudden outbursts of violence, of shooting and killing visited upon the unsuspecting, appear to be unpredictable during the days, weeks, and months when frustration, anger, and despair may have been mounting to the point of a breach of containment. It is often only following the suddenness of lashing out that the pattern of signs may be seen and registered in their full meaning, and sometimes not even then.
The world is dismayed by the attack upon innocence, especially by the loss of those so very young. Columbine, Virginia Tech, UC Santa Barbara, and many other names remain embedded in our hearts now as we wonder how to prevent this loss of life, this tragic upsurge of human betrayal. We do not know, and so we weep with those who mourn and grieve with those who have lost loved ones, and we seek measures of gun control that seem to be never quite enough.
What is it that is hovering over this land? It is the energy of darkness that crowds the mind, separating one's consciousness from the heart, from love, from one's own humanity. In that separation as it deepens, the internal justifications for committing acts of violence seem real, seem inevitable. The inner voice impelling toward action grows louder, and the voice of the heart is drowned out by it,the voice of compassion, the voice of love.
There is no clear designation of who shall be most vulnerable to such darkness, who shall be consumed by it. In fact, this cannot be known, since light exists within each one as a property of the soul, and so what will cause one to hold firm and another to give full reign to that which is opposed to light is often unknowable in advance. Yet, if we as parents, teachers, families, counselors, neighbors, communities could become more sensitive to energies and how they operate, not only to the words that individuals use, we might be able to better anticipate something before it reveals itself in action. If we could see the dark cloud or feel the emerging tension growing within the consciousness of one who would otherwise be deemed pleasant and agreeable, we might be able to seek counsel on their behalf, or help them rejoin the light within them.
This light is never gone. Not before, during, or after the commitment of acts of violence. It may be covered over so that the agent of such acts cannot feel it, but it is never gone. And what we, as caretakers of all who are lost must seek to do, is to help return to the light those who have gotten lost, to help return to the light those who cannot find the way themselves.
The path of compassion and of sensitivity that is based on the spiritual perception of light and darkness and on the emotional perception of right relationship to our hearts needs to grow stronger within us. We must, as upholders of the light within all, anticipate the darkness that may descend upon the few who are more vulnerable, to seek and find the place of help for them as they lose their own anchoring in light.
May such recognition come to this land and especially to those who have been deeply affected by actions of violence anywhere. May we learn to offer the help of spiritual knowledge and love in whatever ways we can so that we are no longer heartbroken by actions that we could not prevent, and grief-stricken by outcomes that devastate us. May we find the means within ourselves to care for the isolated, the forlorn, the alienated, the despairing, so that in our embrace of love the darkness has no foothold, and in our standing with them, they do not feel alone.
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