Mass Shootings in Schools

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Once again, the USA is reeling from another mass shooting of children and teachers in a school setting. People are enraged that nothing has been done by lawmakers to meaningfully reduce the slaughter and many feel hopeless that anything will be done given the power of the weapons industry in the United States and the value placed on the private ownership of guns in the US.

Now let us talk about the real problem. Fear! Fear is a cancer, a toxin, a contagious poison that justifies almost any action. Fear begets more of itself. The people doing the shooting are very fearful. Guns make them feel less fearful and if they can kill others then they can feel powerful and not so afraid. This may seem like a paradox because they often end up dead but these contradictions don’t compute with younger souls.

The more school shootings happen the more afraid everyone becomes. The more afraid everyone becomes the more shootings will happen because fear results in these events.

Younger souls by their nature are very fearful and very young souls are the perpetrators of these school shootings. An older soul would not think of committing mass murder with an automatic weapon. First of all, they are not fearful and second of all they have empathy, compassion, and know what love is. That just about ruins killing for any reason.

The enemy, then, is fear. We live in a culture that specializes in making people feel powerless and fearful. Then we sell them assault pornography in the form of violent movies and games that normalize killing as a viable way of feeling safer. How many killings does the average person witness through film violence and gaming by the time they are twenty years old? More than enough.

What is the source of the fear? Separation, disconnection, feeling isolated and alone. A person who feels part of, connected to family and community, is much less fearful although they can fear outsiders. Once they include outsiders in their feeling of being connected, when they see Spirit in everyone, they are no longer afraid of anyone and thus they are immune from wanting to kill.

We do not give children weapons for a reason. They are not mature enough to handle guns. But as a culture we use biological age to determine who is a child and who is an adult. We do not distinguish people by soul age and value sets. Many adults are child level souls who cannot be trusted with weapons. Many children are actually older souls who would never kill anyone. Until society recognizes this fact there is very little we can do externally that will prevent the kind of carnage that we see going on today. We are literally letting lonely isolated children have weapons to use freely as they wish.

That leaves us with the ultimate solution. Go within. All solutions that are externally based are doomed to failure in this new paradigm we are entering. We each begin to look directly at what our fears are. Even if not everyone is capable of doing this, and only some people do this, it will help us turn the corner and let go of our old paradigm. We see our fears objectively and neutrally without resistance, without denial, without running away. We see that our fears are nothing but projections. That we are never really afraid of what we see, sense, and experience because that is all illusion. We are afraid that we are not connected with Spirit and never will be. This is a terror beyond imagining but it is also an illusion. We hide it well through distraction. However, we allow fearful thoughts to dictate our lives and this is the condition in which we live. No fearful thoughts, no fears. It is a simple formula but true. Our campaign needs to be this. Eliminate fear by discovering we are connected and will never not be connected to Spirit. Eliminate everything that reinforces fear in our lives. Peacefulness results and peacefulness is contagious, even more than violence is contagious. We just need to find out.

A longer article on this subject will follow.


José Stevens


José Luis Stevens, PhD is the president and co-founder (with wife Lena) of Power Path Seminars, an international school and consulting firm dedicated to the study and application of shamanism and indigenous wisdom to business and everyday life. José completed a ten-year apprenticeship with a Huichol (Wixarika) Maracame (Huichol shaman) in the Sierras of Central Mexico. In addition, he is studying with Shipibo shamans in the Peruvian Amazon and with Paqos (shamans) in the Andes in Peru. In 1983 he completed his doctoral dissertation at the California Institute of Integral Studies focusing on the interface between shamanism and western psychological counseling. Since then, he has studied cross-cultural shamanism around the world to distill the core elements of shamanic healing and practice. He is the author of twenty books and numerous articles including Encounters With Power, Awaken The Inner Shaman, The Power Path, Secrets of Shamanism, Transforming Your Dragons and How To Pray The Shaman’s Way.

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You may make copies of this writing and distribute it in any media you wish, so long as you do not charge for it or alter it in any way. You must credit the author and include this entire copyright notice. While the text may be shared, no audio files, including lectures, music and/or sound meditations, may be posted on any site for any reason without written permission from the Power Path.

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