(This piece was written on 12/22/2012, shortly after the Sandy Hook shooting. Given the recent anniversary of that event, I thought it timely to publish that commentary at this time.)

For a while, the Sandy Hook tragedy seemed to motivate our political leaders to take action. Congress began to discuss laws that would ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines, require background checks on all gun sales (incl. gun shows & internet purchases), and enhance mental health provisioning. These were all practical things that could have and should have been done. But they still addressed only the symptoms of a more deeply rooted problem in society: individual alienation or the dissociation of an individual from his/her role in and responsibility for the community. It isn’t just one man pulling the trigger and snuffing out scores of innocents. Many of us are falling victims to many forms of violence from road rage to muggings and to innumerable acts of discrimination and injustice. The perpetrators are us, trapped in our egos without real connection to the world around us. I’ve been mulling over the roots of this disassociation for over a year now. Why do so many of us in the West need to be shaken out of our ego-inspired isolation? We aren’t doomed at birth. Children naturally reach out to a world they assume is an extension of them. At an early age they discover the separation of subject and object, the initial sense of ego. But, for many, the evolution of ego (the accumulated memory of our responses to the world and their faux determination of who we imagine ourselves to be) does not necessarily result in an exaggerated sense of separateness. My best guess at an answer is that we are failing as a culture to incorporate true awareness in the hearts and minds of many of our children. If they are allowed to grow into adulthood without that illuminating experience of real participation in the world around them, then they are already handicapped and impeded from a reasonably normal human life. So how do we give them this experience? Interestingly, I was asked this very question recently by a young woman. My answer (humble though it may be) was that she should begin a daily regimen of meditation – either single-point or general awareness. I think that children naturally meditate when not hurried into action by adults. I’ve seen wonderment in their eyes. Too often we squash this natural, ecstatic arrest by defining the indefinable. We remove the mystery. But I’ve grown to recognize that it is only the imponderable that is substantial. I think this understanding opens us to the world and to each other. For we stand as equals before a universal consciousness and bear a responsibility to ourselves AND to each other to move toward that light.

The slaughter of innocents is inhuman. It reminds us that our humanity cannot be taken for granted. There is no drug that can cure what ails a disconnected ego. Although prescription drugs may help some who suffer from brain defects or serious psychological disorders, they aren’t a remedy for the general sickness of disassociation we too often find in our culture. Our evolution from this disassociation (mens insana), I believe, will be the result of a mass awakening. But the inspiration for that kind of awakening requires a less self-centered awareness that embraces our connectedness to the universe and to each other. We need a transformed society that nurtures outliers before they become deviants. We are, after all, agents of a higher consciousness. And that consciousness sits at the threshold of understanding and love.

Of course, these few thoughts don’t assuage the pain of Sandy Hook. Words alone cannot transform us as individuals or as a society. But they can point the way to change and give us hope for a better tomorrow.