why do mass shootings happen - Positively Focused

I’ve watched recently some videos of police as they face gunmen shooting up schools. Armed and doing their duty, they charge into these situations clear of dangers they face. And while those are brave acts, there’s a higher order of bravery I’d like to discuss: The bravery that looks like living one’s Charmed Life and what that looks like.

Sure, it’s one thing to charge into a building you know a gunman awaits. But is that really brave? Or is that responding to the what-is-ness of life? If we can create any reality we want, why not create a reality in which a person needn’t experience such things?

A while ago, I experienced something which showed me what real bravery looks like. What happened back then forever changed my life. Real bravery looks like living authentically. That means creating a life that looks nothing like what others are doing.

And the most honorable life is one that reflects the pure positive state of All That Is. A state of pure love for everyone and everything. There, a person must enjoy an experience of life that reflects that love back at the person. That’s what I learned a while back when I had the experience I’m about to share.

Anger personified

One day, I was out and about, enjoying life. I walked through downtown, greeting everyone I made eye-contact with with a twinkle in my eye and a smile. Meanwhile my positive focus emanated from me. I felt on top of the world.

I stopped to catch the lightrail and, while I waited, a young man came walking down the platform. It was obvious he was houseless. He walked with slumped shoulders, his eyes cast to the ground.

But something must have prompted him, because as he got near me, he looked up and caught my eye. I gave him a dose of positive energy and greeted him silently with my smile. What happened next was astounding.

“What you looking at faggot,” He said with hostility. “You wanna die today?”

When he said this, I felt no fear, no threat. I didn’t even have time to think about what he said. Immediately from my lips came a response that, even today, startles me. But what he said in response to that, startled me even more.

“You wanna die today?” he asked.

“Do you?” I asked in return and he turned his hard stare from me back to the ground. As he did so, without missing a beat, he said “Yes”.

Violence is a cry for help

At first, I couldn’t believe my response just as much as I couldn’t believe his. So surprised I was, I did a double-take. I wasn’t sure what just happened. Apparently, the young man wasn’t sure either, because as distance grew between us, he kept looking back towards me, a look of surprise in his own eyes.

I’ve said this many, many times. Rage, seething and violence are all cries for help. A person willing to wage violence on another does so out of their disconnection from their Broader Perspective. So disconnected are they, they see the world around them as frightening, threatening. It’s no wonder they feel the need to wage war against it.

The appropriate response to such people isn’t meeting them with violence. It is meeting them with understanding. Hopefully doing so well before violence becomes their last resort.

Abraham describing how no one connected to All That Is would ever resort to violence.

The trouble with our world today, if there is trouble, is so many of us live our lives so disconnected from All That Is that we perceive the world as scary, random and out of our control. When, in fact, our individual experience is 100 percent our creation.

Think I’m “victim blaming”? Read this.

And since all of us come into the world through people who came before us, it’s almost a given that we’ll adopt those people’s fears and insecurities as our own.

So real courage, real bravery isn’t about running into an active shooter situation to kill someone who themselves is so disconnected they kill others. Real courage is short circuiting the notions that make people think it’s necessary to arm themselves then shoot up a school in the first place.

The power of invincibility

Invincibility is another matter entirely. Invincibility looks like moving through the world knowing nothing in the world can harm us. Including houseless strangers, school shooters or any other violence.

Indeed, it’s knowing everything in the world reflects back to us our inner state of being. A chronic Positively Focused state reflects back to us only things that nurture and delight and surprise us. There, even a threatening houseless youth or armed attacker reveals who they really are: someone in pain. Someone harmless to us.

These days, I move through the world worried about no one. Instead I see the world and everyone in it as my creation. And the world indeed reflects that knowing to me, in the form of people who express kindness, love and warmth. Those with rage-full hearts can’t find me. Because I’m on a totally different vibrational level.

This is what the Charmed Life creates. In addition to a life one loves, it creates a world that reflects back to us the charmed state of being we nurture internally. Creating that life takes a while. Only because nearly all of us have adopted bogus beliefs from those through whom we came into the world.

And it is an act of courage to reach beyond those bogus beliefs. To reach for that state of being consistent with what we knew before coming into a body. The courage to go our own way, live authentically, then transform life from what others think it is, to what we want it to be.

It is to be the change we want to see in the world.

All beliefs create reality. It doesn’t matter if the belief is “true” or “false, “right” or “wrong”. In time, any belief will create reality consistent with it. Which explains the importance of positive focus.

So many examples prove this. It’s amazing so many continue thinking “you create your reality” is wishful thinking. When the world is awash in examples showing how people create their reality exactly this way. How? By focusing on a belief until the belief proves true.

One example sticks in my mind. It sticks for good reasons. One, because of the near-tragedy that could have ensued. And two, because the person involved, Edgar Maddison Welch, believed a preposterous story. A story which he believed so strongly, he acted as though it were true.

Because for him, it was true. Today, Welch regrets taking action on such preposterously false ideas. That didn’t help him though on December 4, 2016.

Pizza…and pedophiles

The idea involved politicians, pizza and a certain taboo. Someone concocted a now widely discredited conspiracy linking prominent democrats and restaurants with human trafficking and child sex. Just to reiterate: so many media outlets have discredited the story. Including Fox News.

Yet, the story quickly went viral. The owner of one restaurant falsely claimed to be involved said he and his employees were constantly threatened:

“From this insane, fabricated conspiracy theory, we’ve come under constant assault. I’ve done nothing for days but try to clean this up and protect my staff and friends from being terrorized.”

Again, not one aspect of the conspiracy proved true. And yet, many, many people acted as though they were true. In other words, their beliefs, amplified by several negative emotions, including frustration, insecurity and fear, didn’t allow them to see obvious evidence disproving the conspiracy.

Even false beliefs will occur as true. If the people think the belief long enough, frequently enough, evidence will quickly begin accumulating. The evidence could occur as wildly off base to others. But people thinking the beliefs will discredit the disproving evidence in favor of the [false] evidence. In time, the beliefs will draw so much “proof” the people’s behaviors will align with the beliefs. Then the belief, for practical purposes is “true” to the believer. Then those who get caught up in the created reality suffer tragedies. The belief becomes true for them too in experiential terms.

This is how tragedies happen. And this is how the near-disaster related to Pizzagate happened too. Which brings us back to Welch.

A near mass shooting

For Welch, 24, these false conspiracies were true. So much so, he felt he must act. So he left his home in North Carolina. He headed north to a restaurant purported to be part of the conspiracy. He brought an assault rifle with him. Planning to “investigate the conspiracy,” Welch fired three shots into the restaurant. Luckily, the bullets hit no one.

Later, when police arrested him, Welch saw himself as, in his own words, “…the potential hero of the story—a rescuer of children”, as told to the Skeptical Inquirer. While no one was hurt, the outcome could have been different.

Welch’s experience and so many more illustrate how any belief can become true. Even flawed ones. This explains why it’s so important that people understand how “thoughts become things,” as Abraham puts it.

In fact, a recent email from them makes this very clear:

It can go either way

What’s really great about situations like this is, if flawed premises can create “truth”, what about premises based on the how the Universe actually works?

I mean, if all beliefs will eventually prove true, then it seems it behooves people to focus on beliefs consistent with what they want to experience, right? That’s the premise of the Positively Focused approach. The Charmed Life, the life I write about here constantly, is nothing other than a premise based on how the Universe actually works.

That means, so long as one believes in accordance with how the Universe works and how it’s oriented, they can create any “truth” they like. And that means the world can contain ANY belief. Any belief held long enough will prove true. So why not make your truth something you’d prefer? Rather than a truth you’d not prefer?

That’s what I show my clients every week. How to create “truths” they want to experience. When those truths become overwhelming, then they experience their own version of the Charmed Life. From there, life gets really fun.

Life can go either way. I say, why not make it go the way you want?

Tag: why do mass shootings happen

What Real Bravery Actually Looks Like