Thoughts on the Tree of Life Massacre
I’d like to share with you my brief thoughts on the violence – up
to and including the October 27 Tree of Life synagogue massacre - that has been
swallowing us up whole, both as individuals and as a society.
We live in a vast universe, with a substance and intention that comes from a deeper reality than the material one we experience each day with our
minds and senses. That reality is called consciousness.
I believe consciousness is inherent in everything that
exists, as an all-pervading awareness that exists in everything. It exists
within everything, and everything exists within it.
Mind, matter, and space are all full of consciousness. If we were open to it, we would see universal consciousness as a higher
reality - apart and aside from race, skin pigmentation, religious philosophy,
political attitudes, gender, gender identity, age, and ability. This truth would give us a nobler way of looking at how we exist - as unified and the same, and
not separate – and as one mind, a limitless circuit that lives in everyone and
everything.
It becomes clearer to me all the time that there are disadvantages to a world view that doesn’t acknowledge this inherent
connection, that places us alone and separate in an arbitrary, unfeeling universe. With this view of separation, we feel alienated, lonely, depressed, and fearful of each other. Even if we don’t feel this in
ourselves, we see it all the time in the violence and malaise of others.
It’s easy to look outside ourselves for solutions –
stricter gun control, tighter security, swift and severe punishment - but not
so easy to look within. But it’s within where we must do the deep work. It’s within
where the solution to the problem lies. We must find it within ourselves to
sense the reality of our oneness, our connection to each other.
This work is beyond words, even beyond thought itself. The
core of our being is not something that can be spoken about, let alone thought
of. But it’s at our core where the changes must happen if we are to change the
world.
I regard events like the Squirrel Hill shootings as matters
of consciousness. Everything is a matter of consciousness. Life is derived from consciousness. The realities of our
world are derived from consciousness. Love, hope, compassion, wisdom, reconciliation,
and accord are derived from consciousness. Hate, violence, confusion, despair,
fear, and anger are derived from consciousness.
The most beautiful and profound moments of our lives are
the ones in which we sense our connection in this incomprehensible universe. We’ve
all had glimpses of it, in the love of another person, or an animal, or when communing with the natural world. Changing our understanding of consciousness from one of
separate and apart to one of unified and whole, in which we are never isolated
and helpless, never separate from each other, will change our story forever. Shalom.
Barbie xo
