Student Shooting Deaths – a meditation in a minor key

Student Shooting Deaths – a meditation in a minor key

There are certain logical ideas that follow from the Idea of Karma and Reincarnation. One is that the billions of human beings, that are in the Zone of the Earth, are all volunteers.

Yet, evil happens, so we need to find a place for it in the logos (logical) nature of existence. An older idea of predestination makes us face another aspect of the larger riddle. For example, did the Jews and the Russians and the Japanese – all the millions who were tortured and/or killed during World War Two – know this prior to “volunteering”?

Another aspect, besides what happened to the children and teachers, is that we too are infected.

If we add the nature of sleep, we might wonder what was seen or known in that “world”, by the higher I as it were. Does part of my spirit know what is coming during sleep?

Is the higher I not only aware of itself in that state of the little death, but also aware of the larger context/background – including the effects on others?

The key mystery, to my thinking, is the Nature of the Now. As each of us lives our lives, our capacity for choice – the existence of human freedom – can change from moment to moment, or the freedom is not real.

Make a picture of the globe of the earth. There is a life sphere, … go too far into space we die … go too deep into the earth, we also die. From the all surround everywhere/when, this life sphere is seen as filled with incredible light, … sparks of freedom making choices everywhere in the Now.

These choices can’t be seen or known until they are made and acted upon. The Mystery seems to roll the dice, and waits to see what’s next.

Karma and Reincarnation is the Promise that we continue after death, however unexpected, … and that Justice is real. An unexpected and unwanted crossing is initiated by the free choice of another, yet like Christ in the Pieita, She catches us, and holds us dear.

On the earth, sorrow and rage. The News emphasizes the inaccurate, to the exclusion of context, for example, … that the world appears to be full of unwanted, and often purposeless death – not just the school children died on that day. The Covid Mystery has made us even more sensitive to the fact that not only could we die, but we had little control about when, even though we all know that life ends, for everyone.

There is something unique about our age. Each age has its own flavor of course, yet what is worth noting for our present one? Choice. If we want it, then everyone wants it. As I have noted in other contexts, it is human freedom that is the Beast from the Abyss.

An important element of the logos nature is that there is order in the larger events we call history. We might do well to trust the Mystery with the Big Picture, especially if we create the true and the good, as that is within the reach of our own will.

If we consider our own lives, we know of birth and family and culture and language and “karmic” relationships. Opportunities for healing choices are part of the mystique of Karma and Reincarnation.

A helpful picture to me is to make an imagination of the globe of the earth, and attend to the fact the as the world turns, some people go to sleep and others wake up.

There is a moving band of sleep activity, with its secret relationship with the spirit (secret in the sense that we don’t remember what our spirit does during sleep), or as Steiner has put it: what is done to us by the spirit during “sleep”.

According to him impulses of will, as needed for the next day, are implanted in the soul. Somehow … the shooter still has to make the choice to fulfill their plan, with some degree of consciousness and intention.

Can the children know they are going to die before those choices are made? Does the Mystery know in advance?

Suppose that the Mystery does not know, until the choice is made. This seems required if we are to be truly free, and that there is no predestination.

Then there are the ideas that Steiner gave us about reading to the dead. Most folk don’t know these ideas, but of those that do, can we take a child, and read to them? What about the shooter? Do we read to him?

Also there is “forgiveness”. Do we – on the sidelines – forgive the shooter? A rough sea of choices for all of us.

As is usual, the shooting has led political leaders to making a show of sympathy, and promising to fix it. One of the quirks of this shooting is that the deaths took place in Texas, a week or two before the National Rifle Association has their usual annual glorification of gun ownership, also in Texas.

One final point, mostly overlooked now, although well known in the early days of school shootings. How many of these mostly young man were on antidepressants, which have as a side effect the impulse to homicide, and/or suicide.

Some years ago, I was following a savage set of actions, where a man in Florida was burying adolescent girls alive. He had finally been caught, and I had to be glad to not have had to live in such a tortured mind.

My own personal mob of inner conflicts is quite enough, thank you.