Oct 27, 2018
Last week, I tuned into CBS Morning News and the lead story was about active shooter training at an elementary school in Florida. The reporter was in the classroom of 4th grade students when the school was having an active shooter drill. The viewers got to witness first hand as the principal came over the intercom and stated “we are pretending that there is an active shooter in the school.” Pretending? That didn’t seem like the best choice of words. Then as the drill instructions continued the 9 - 10 year old children quickly, as CBS news reports “sprang into action, barricading the door to their classroom, lining up along a wall out of sight from the door and arming themselves with whatever items they could grab, including pencils, scissors and water bottles.”
After the drill was complete, when the reporter asked if they were scared during the drill, almost every hand went up.
These drills have become a normal part of life for many students in the United States.
Realizing that this is a “normal part of life” for school aged children and witnessing their robotic spring to action under the guise of making them safer even though the majority still admitted to being scared, spoke volumes to me about how our young children are influenced from the earliest of ages to live and act out of fear. I realized too, that schools are no longer bastions of safety and protection that they once were thought to be.
This week in the news we heard of the explosives mailed to twelve leading Democrats and other officials and leaders who have been critics of President Trump. Thankgfully, the individual thought to be behind the bombs has just been taken into custody and no one was hurt but could have been.
It is startling that someone was so manipulated by the rhetoric of political leaders, by their own bigotry and prejudice as to react in the most negative and potentially destructive ways as to take the time to plan, purchase the materials, make explosives and send them to those whom they disagree with, whom they see as the “other”, the “enemy”, the “problem” because certain leaders have always cast their critics in that light.
It is precisely because of reactions like this and the potential for more people to be so manipulated as to desire harm and destruction of those who disagree with them, who they’ve been told are the “other” that Spei Lumina came into being.
The goal of this podcast and of imaginal prayer is to take the negative effects of media and news, those effects that only stoke reactions and respond with meditation, prayer, imaginal prayer imaging Divine Light in the darkness of all that rhetoric. A practice done to illuminate in our mind that True Self the Divine has called us to be. The better self that we are. Or, as Henry Corbin described in his cosmology, “our angel out ahead” whom we will be reunited with someday and who leads us to our highest, illuminated, self.
In his book The Way Back to Paradise: Restoring the Balance Between Magic and Reason, the philosopher Joseph M. Felser, PH. D., discusses doppelgängers and how the universe sometimes works in such a synchronistic way as to give us a glimpse of our doppelgänger — not just the common understanding of the“double of a living person” but the fuller American Heritage Dictionary definition of “a ghostly double of a living person, especially one that haunts its fleshy counterpart” (Felser, Joseph The Way Back to Paradise, 51). Dr. Felser goes on to explain that sometimes we are presented a glimpse of our doppelgänger by the universe in ways that may not make sense at the time, but later as we reflect we become aware of that’s who we risk turning into if we continue along the present course, feeding our present reactions and not taking time to respond to the situations we are in. For some it might be seeing an obese version of themselves if they don’t change their diet, or exercise more. For others it might be seeing a glimpse of a bitter version of themselves if they do not change the current occupation they are in that they no longer find fulfilling and squashes their creative side. For others, it may be as simple as not taking time to be in nature and observing first hand the interconnectivity of all creation and not bothering to recycle, to pay attention to taking care of the earth, etc…
Felser’s Doppelgänger fits in well with Corbin’s “angel out ahead” cosmology when we put it into the perspective that our doppelgänger is who we risk becoming when we have lost touch with, lost sight of or no longer are in communion with our “angel out ahead”.
The current polarity facing our country between the right and the left, Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals is greatly fed by our reactions to the news we hear and our lack of taking the time to mindfully, prayerfully, purposely respond in a way that is part of the solution of the problem not further spewing of diversionary rhetoric on the situation.
For this episode, I would like to focus our imaginal prayer exercise on ourselves and our young who are in our life and how we might participate in the Anima Mundi — the soul of the world —safety net of protection, of hope, of love. Rather than risk giving more life and credence to the reactionary destructive energies of our cosmic doppelgänger may our imaginal prayer exercise help us foster and nurture a closer relationship with our “angel out ahead”. May it help us discover how to counteract the influences that encourage our young to live out of fear. May the Divine Light of God inspire within our consciousness, our mind, our imagination how to brightly go about spreading divine hope, divine love, divine light and further empower the Anima Mundi protecting our world, our cosmos.