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What is going on in the world that we face yet another senseless tragedy?

It was just a couple of weeks ago when Aurora Colorado was faced with

shock due to a someone losing their mind and going on a killing spree.

Now senselessness has occurred in my backyard.  Oak Creek is about a half hour away.  I happened to be driving past the area right when the killings were occurring.  Driving a couple hours south to Illinois to visit my dad for his 72nd birthday, I had no idea another killing spree occurred so close to home until I came back to Wisconsin later in the evening.

This act of insanity was different than the one a few weeks ago.  This time a group was targeted for a hate crime they never committed.  The gunman with a 9/11 tattoo is assumed to have been trying to seek revenge against a group that had nothing to do with September 11th.   In his deluded mind with his unhealthy ego leading the charge, he believed the way to fight fear and hatred is with more fear and hatred, rather than love.

Upon first hearing the news, I felt sick to my stomach.  It is at times like these where I am sure you ask yourself, as I did, “what can I do?”  On some level, you and I know there is nothing that can be done to make up for the lives lost.  Yet, you yearn to make life right again.

One small, yet significant, way I believe we can do this is to put an end to the ways in which we go against our true selves.  Enough with the self-doubts and the notion of not mattering.  Enough of feeling trapped or overwhelmed by our emotions and fears.  Enough of buying into our smallness rather than our greatness.  These seemingly small acts of choosing our ego over our truth add up if not addressed from love.

Something I have never shared before was how very close I was to going down a dark hole that would have taken me away from being connected to reality.  At this point in my life, I didn’t know that love could exist in our negative feelings.  Being hard on myself became a part of some self-imposed uniform that I wore day in and out for years.  Living with that degree of unconscious self-hatred kept me on a constant emotional roller-coaster.  Then, when I had to face a personal disaster, my emotions took over and I saw myself spiraling downward further than I ever had before.  There was so much pain within me and nowhere for it left to go.

I still don’t know how to describe what happened to me in that darkness.  What I knew was that if I let myself go any further down that black, empty hole, I would have a really hard time ever getting back out.  Going any further meant crossing into another reality where I would no longer fully belong to the current one, which carried so much pain.  Something inside me knew that no matter how bad the pain was right now, I DID NOT want to cross that arbitrary boarder.  That line, I believe, is what takes a sane person and creates severe mental illness.  By an act of God, I did not cross it!

That’s when I think of the shooters in all these senseless crimes being committed.  When did they cross the line?  Could it have been stopped?

I don’t believe a person just wakes up one day insane.  It is the culmination of those small acts of choosing our ego over our true selves.   This is when the ego wins, when you start to believe your false self was the only way to have your needs met.  Of course this leads to depression and anxiety, which I too struggled with at one point.  If left unchecked, your hold on reality is gone.

Is it possible to stop the degree of insanity in our world?  I believe that is up to me and you.  Can we decide within our day to day living to choose our hearts over our egos?  Can we decide to choose love over fear?  Can we tell the difference between the two in all cases?

You’ve heard me say it over and over and yet here I am again saying that our current way of understanding our negative feelings turns us against ourselves.  The current understanding says we are wrong and bad.  The current understanding keeps us trapped and overwhelmed by negative feelings.  The current understanding keeps us fighting who we truly are.

Each day my ego challenges me.  This isn’t because I emotionally suffer any more.  This is what the ego does – challenges us to know more of our true selves so we can shine!

Sometimes my ego wins (being the tricky little sucker that it is!).  When it does, I am blessed to know how my negative emotions guide me back to my authentic self.  My negative feelings alarm me when even I thought I was acting from my highest self, my ego was actually on the frontline.  Then the feeling gives me detail as to what my fears were and how I am being guided to act instead.  In fact, it is because of my negative feelings that I am no longer on an emotional roller-coaster.

Where the insanity must cease is in how we treat our negative feelings like enemies.  Until more learn how their negative feelings are on their side, the madness isn’t going to stop.  The internal battles will continue.  And in some deeply despairing circumstances, those internal battles become external battles that we all experience in our hearts.

The lessons we can learn from the Sikh tragedy are numerous.  The small part I can teach about is the emotional current that runs through us all.  I do so because I am adamant that the insanity must end when it comes to the way feelings are addressed for each of us in our everyday moments.  Otherwise, our hearts will continue to break.

If you would like to learn how to stop feeling trapped or overwhelmed by your negative feelings and fears, here is more FREE training:

Training #1 (for any who missed it last week):

http://www.michellebersell.com/feel-kit/training1.html

Training #2:

http://www.michellebersell.com/feel-kit/training2.html

My  love and prayers go out to the Sikh community as well as family and friends of all whose lives were impacted from this tragedy or any tragedy, for that matter.

With Fierce Love to Ignite Positive Change Through Tragedy –