33 die
It's amazing how shocking something like this can be--and yet I'm still trapped in my own little world of polarity, my own narcissism, my own attachment to happiness and aversion of pain. There have already been waaaayyy to many reference to 9/11, so I apologize in advance. But there was a moment after 9/11 that a friend of mine said, "nothing will ever be the same again" and I remember thinking, "that's ridiculous". People will continue to have road rage, people will continue to be jealous, people will continue to wake up and drink coffee and go to work and make love and cry when they're overwhelmed. Is there an overall shift in conscioussness when such gross, public levels of tragedy happen--maybe? But for how long? Especially when in the midst of all of this, I'm still concerned about my own small world of pain and pleasure.Infinity is by definition infinite--and it's always there for us to tap into. Dip our pen into the well and write our one line in destiny. But most of the time we're lost in the play of duality--the world of maya--and all its commiserate pains and pleasures. The Divine Comedy. I wish that today I felt eviscerated because of what happened in Virginia. But I'm not. I placed myself in a position to be hurt--and I'm hurt. It's a very human thing to do. But in the face of such pain, the question will arise, is it human to take that pain and kill 33 people because of it? The tendency to de-humanize this young man is almost inevitable. None of us wants to identify such violence with humane behavior--with being human--and yet we continue to pay for a war that is killing hundreds of civilians every week, if not every day. We're bringing home men and women with no arms and legs while the press focus only on the 'low' death count.
What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to love? It certainly doesn't mean being a slave to the law of change, or karma. It means transcending. Doing what we ought to do, always elevating ourselves beyond our own selfish desires. Because when we don't live to this principal, we drown in a misery of our own making.
Who knows what motive they will ascribe to this young man's actions? And who knows to what extent it will be true or false? But as I look into my own heart of darkness, I see the seeds of misery that I planted. Yogi Bhajan says that we should not look for the good in ourselves, but rather the great. Be great. Be Excellent. Be to be.
So in the wake of such tragedy and in the light of my own personal shortcomings, I recognize that "God has made me the best he can; if he could have made me better he would have" and I will sew myself up and take the next right action and continue to open my heart so that that Infinity which is love and which is within each one of us can overcome this painful present moment.
posted by Sat Purkh Kaur Khalsa @ 2:26 PM
2 Comments:
I'm noticing that the news says there are 32 victims and 1 killer. Somehow, I think that even the killer is a victim - of pain, regret, ignorance, biological chemical imbalances, and most likely lack of love and attention.
May we all learn to love ourselves and those among us who are very hard to summon the feeling of love for.
Sat Nam!
Thank you for your comment. Since this post, it has come to light that he left a recorded message that had been mailed to a regional news outlet? I don't know the details. But just seeing the images brought to mind the idea of possession. I know this seems a strange segue from the original essay, but I've always rejected the idea of "satan" from my Christian upbringing--and the notion that there is such a thing as an evil spirit, especially one that could take over your mind and spirit.
However, I was reading in the Akhand Path yesterday morning and I saw a line to this effect: be careful lest the one who calls himself 'satan' overtake you and lead you astray. This is in the Siri Guru Granth Sahib!
I had to pause and reflect. My mother has always argued for the presence of an active evil spirit in the world and I've always brushed it off as nonsense. And yet, what was my own experience of mental illness if not a 'takeover' of a sort of my own negative mind, my own negative projection and then the positive mind took that and ran away with it.
So yes, the killer is definately a victim of mental illness, isolation, fantasy, and more. But he also died with a VERY heavy karma, so we must have compassion.
As for 'the one who calls himself satan' I'm still in the dark about that--don't even know why I brought it up actually. But it's always been a question in the human mind--the roots of good and evil along with the nature of free will. I suppose I have no answers to contribute to the centuries long dialogue, but I'm happy to call myself one among those who question.
Sat Nam!
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