Aurora: What would you want if it were your last supper?

If it were my last supper, I’d want…company!

My heart sank when I read of the news about the shootings in Aurora. Hauntingly, the word aurora refers to a natural light that is noticed most in the presence of darkness. As a metaphysicist, I take the liberty to infer meaning, let alone ascribe significance to such coincidences as part of the territory of my occupation. Yet, it seems apparent to me (and commented upon by Michael) that even if the name marking the location of this tragedy has no other bearing, it will forever be singed into my consciousness. Let us hope that from darkness we can see the light. 

Michael’s comments about the repercussions Aurora: this is what they had to say:

“People relate better when an identified person is attached to a happening. The emotional resonance to one of the dozen dead and 50 wounded gives our mind: a face, a name, and the reactions of loved ones to grab onto and ponder. It becomes a visceral reflection to the audience as they see someone ‘just like me’ in the picture; and it causes them speculate: ‘what if it were me?’ This event will rattle the thinking of people across the political spectrum.  Rights and realism will square off in a wrestling match pitting ‘what we have permission to do or have’ against whether those same permissions are ultimately self destructive. Nothing will be accomplished in the short run except a furtherance of the polarizing fears that both sides harbor. Yet, the contrast here is whether a fear points to a rational conclusion or is self reinforcing. The two diverge in this way: 1) One fear observes and concludes: “here is the thing (guns) that turns an anger issue for one into a deadly carnage for the many. Solution: get rid of that thing! Then there is the rationale of the compounding fear, opposing that solution: 2) we need more guns to stop the problem of (criminal) people who have guns.  Fight fire(power) with fire(power).

Fear on the physical plane is rooted in the perception of separateness. At this juncture the real distortion is not about victims and criminals, but rather that until an act is committed, their is only a victim that has not yet lashed out and perpetrated a criminal act.  In other words, the argument made be the compounding fear indicts in advance a human perpetrator, but ignores that a person unarmed, without a gun, having a similar temper tantrum might throw a few punches or stones before being subdued. Yet a massacre only takes place when heavy weaponry is available. Underscoring these events is an operational principle at work on the physical plane which we have noted since our earliest communications: that being, the Earth is a level 7 of 10 on the aggression scale. As such, the use of violence as a motivator for change is instinctively encoded into human psyche. The jolt of this event is completely consistent with that paradigmatic form of learning. Let it said again, it is this learning paradigm which is up for review and redesign.”

As mentioned in many articles by me and other Michael Channels, events like these typify a see-saw sway from the “me-first” mindset of the Young Soul Paradigm, to the “we are all in this together” consciousness of the Mature Soul paradigm.  Believe it or not, there is sort of a roundabout silver lining from the cloud hanging over the Aurora, Colorado shooting massacre. No, it has nothing to do with some bizarre or callous belief about souls and their karma. Instead, these unsuspecting people will, in the long run, join the ranks of other martyrs for the cause of sanity. From Columbine, the World Trade Center, and the members of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords fated gathering, they mark a crucial period of realization in human/American history. Whether human beings will recognize the sheer insanity of modern weaponry; since their main purpose is to kill each other!
The controversy surrounding this event has floated to the surface many of the rationale’s assigning blame.  In the consciousness community, I’ve heard the problem rested upon the media’s portrayal of violence (like Batman) and its conditioned effects upon the weak minded. Then there is the theme of an inexperienced and overwhelmed soul having multiple personalities. Over to those of a more fundamentalist Christian bent who cite this event as a result of growing evil that Satan brings to the world. Just as ominous, yet leaning on the other deity and smugly proclaiming that such incidents are proof that God is punishing the wicked. They further categorize and blame this wrath under the headings of: liberalism, gay marriage, abortion, multiculturalism, and even an attack on gun rights itself. Then they go onto extol the virtues of God’s justice as they froth at the mouth with glazed eyed fervor and syncopation. Wait! This just in, a bulletin from the New Testament revisionism department: Jesus always favored a Walther PPK pistol because he so admires James Bond. JC also noted how easily he could tuck it into the crack under his tunic. Watch out you Roman centurion dogs and you hypocritical liberal Pharacie curs! Christ is coming… and this time, he’s packing!

My humor seeks only to reveal something behind these events which keeps me from succumbing entirely to fear or hopelessness. We are at choice! Change happens with each moment though its appearance might be ever so slight as to seem invisible. Yet, we mark events with the stories we tell ourselves about them and file them away in our psyche attempting to make sense of them. But to examine our stories and hear them retold can reveal much to our own Self… how we chose to interpret those events and what we did to deal with them.

The story of these shootings will be cross-referenced in my mind in several overt ways. Yet the more personal and subtle associations, in noticing the mechanics of my own process, contain a far richer and more poignant output for my perusal when I am alert enough to notice. One such example related to these events happens to be the publication of a friends first novel, The Last Supper Catering Company. Its story line poses an interesting question: what food would you want to have if it were your last meal? It is marvelous and profound when such a huge existential consideration as dying is simplified down to what would you receive as your last earthly nourishment? Significance in a souffle? Profundity from french fried potatoes? Or transcendence in a t-bone steak? If those people could have actually known that they were eating their final meal would it have brought them the kind of pleasure and arouse in them the kind of sentiments which might make the transition of dying a revelation instead of a despair? It is difficult to imagine how during horror and the carnage happening in the theater anyone might experience even the briefest moment of release. Yet, my wish for those persons whose lives were taken and for their souls who gave them over in this event, to someday have knowledge that giving their lives was not just a senseless death but a stepping stone toward our collective advancement.

Pondering life and death daunts many into avoidance. Tragedy jolts us into that review. But facing death as a function of life, builds a bridge between the two states of being instructing us that they are continuous and, with a bit of luck, perhaps even enchanting. It is upon this sentiment, and as an aid for digesting the events of Aurora, that I present to you my review of The Last Supper Catering Company.