I have been deeply affected by the horrific tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut yesterday, where a lone gunman shot his way into an elementary school and killed 20 children and 6 adults, plus his mother and himself. An “expert” on Mass Murderers came onto the Today Show and said there was a pattern to this type of killing, dressing up in battle fatigues and using automatic weapons. The motive: revenge. In this case probably revenge against his mother and, by association, anyone that happened to be connected to her, in this case, at least in his own mind, a classroom of elementary school children.  God, the lives lost; the absolute horror of it all!

I will leave for others to deal with the issue of mixing alleged mental illness with automatic weapons–an obviously tragically dangerous combination.

But let’s explore this notion of “revenge.” Revenge against what? Or does it even matter? Revenge is a self-created notion; only the person does not realize it is self-created. That person thinks it’s real, that it’s reality. And when someone sees reality they act in response to that reality. In some cases, such as this one, the reality they see becomes so compelling, they feel it so powerfully they believe they have no choice but to act. The tragedy behind the tragedy is they have no clue that this reality they see, and their subsequent compelling feelings that led to these horrific actions, has anything to do with their own thinking. They just take reality as a given. They have no idea that they made it all up, that they have killed for an illusion. They thought they were killing because of a reality they had no choice but to act upon, and it turns out they were killing over a self-created illusion.

And that’s the biggest tragedy of all. Because if instead of reality they saw “my own creation of my use of my power of thought” which creates the thoughts of reality which creates the feelings which creates the actions, then none of this would have happened! Nobody was around to help this mass murderer (or any mass murderer, or any killer, or any violent person, or any abuser, or any criminal, or any abuser of drugs or alcohol, and I could go on and on) to call his “reality” into question, to help him see that we have this incredible gift of the power of thought that we can use in any way we want to create our lives, and how we use this gift can either create peace and love and a life guided by wisdom, or it can be used to create what this 21 year old created–and anything in between. And why was nobody around to help him see this? Because most of the world doesn’t know this; they are all seeing their own realities, out of which they think, feel and act. Because an understanding of The Three Principles of Universal Mind, Consciousness and Thought is still the best-kept secret in the field of mental health. Why? Because the mainstream doesn’t want to hear it (yet), because it is the opposite of how mainstream psychology tries to help people. So that is the tragedy behind the tragedy behind the tragedy. And we who understand the Three Principles haven’t yet understood how to help the mental health field see this.

Because that one thought that can call an entire reality into question is the thought that prevents the entire chain of dominoes from making what happened happen.

And I’m not saying that if a Three Principles Practitioner were working with this person that this potential mass murderer necessarily would have seen this. I’m saying that if he truly saw how what we’re calling “reality” is created and if he understood the difference between wisdom-thoughts and other thoughts and which are to be believed, trusted and followed, then this horrifying act would not have occurred. Or any of the rest of those violent crimes or abuses. No, I’m not saying we would necessarily have been able to help him see it, but at least he would have had a fighting chance, and the possibility that all those lives might not have been lost and all those families and school and community not torn apart–well, all I can say is, I wish we’d have had the chance.