Month: October 2021

Ch. 3: Thanks for Saving My Life

Sifting through the day’s mail revealed a giant envelope addressed to my nickname. The return address wasn’t familiar, but the name sure was. Holy shit with a side of shut the front door!

I tore open the envelope and came face-to-face with a glittery Santa Claus smoking a pipe. As I opened the card a sprinkle of glitter guided a lock of dark brown hair to the table. Removing a small school photo from the center crease of the card revealed a scribbled message: “thanks for saving my life.”

I glanced out the window to check for flying pigs. Negative. I considered calling Satan to find out if hell had frozen over. I was sure I’d be eaten by a bear before hearing from him again.

The residential return address suggested he’d been released from jail so I messaged him on AOL to see if he’d respond. He did. Although he had been released from jail, he wasn’t completely out of the woods, though he was forging a path. He no longer wanted to kill everyone; just a few fat cops in his town. He didn’t want to kill me anymore, either. Surprising, since I ratted him out for planning mass murder.

When we caught each other live he hit me with his best shot: “they locked me up because of you.”

“You don’t know who your real friends are until they send you to jail,” I joked, seriously.

The last time we talked, he told me he was going to shoot up his school the next day and asked me to publish his journal to keep his memory alive. I knew he wasn’t joking. He’d been talking about it since his freshman year.

After turning him in, I didn’t hear anything about his situation so I asked him to fill me in. “What the hell happened?”

“After you called the cops on me they pulled me out of class…” he paused. His train of thought derailed. “I told you to look for me in the news on Monday. Why’d you wait until Wednesday to say something?”

“I didn’t wait and I didn’t call the cops. I spoke with your principal on Sunday. He must have waited a few days.” I wondered why he even told me what he was planning in the first place.

“You got ahold of the principal? On a Sunday? What are you, a cop or something? I always wondered.”

“Nope. Definitely not a cop. Just someone with solid researching skills.”

“If you say so…”

“What happened after they pulled you out of class? Did you get arrested?”

“Yeah. They took me to a conference room… asked if I had any weapons on me. When I told them I had a hunting knife in my boot they practically knocked me over to get it. They asked if I had weapons at home and I told them about my shotgun and rifle. They said a concerned citizen tipped them off that I might want to hurt people. I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say anything.”

“How’d they find out what you were planning?” I wondered how honest he had been with the authorities.

“They didn’t get the whole story, well, not exactly. I admitted to fantasizing about shooting up the school, but said I never made any plans. I didn’t tell them about the bombs. I didn’t know they had a copy of our chats or I wouldn’t of told them anything. Those chats got me locked up for three months. You really thought I was serious?”

“Weren’t you?” He was selling denial and I wasn’t buying it.

“Yeah, well, maybe. I never know what I’m going to do until I get the urge to do it and then I just sort of act on impulse. Like Eric said, follow your fucking animal instincts.”

“Hmmm… three months, that seems short, considering…”

“Yeah, kinda. Three months was long enough for me to calm down a bit, though. Getting out of that school helped. Thanks for getting me expelled, by the way. That was the best thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

“You’re welcome? So, they found your guns, and you got out after three months?” Something didn’t add up. I knew what was in his bedroom. There’s no way they’d let him go after three months.

“I got lucky. The police never searched my house. I burned my diary and got rid of my explosives. If the cops found any of that I’d still be locked up. You could of given them so much shit to put me away for a long time. What if I got out of jail and did something worse like killed a bunch of innocent people at the mall or something?”

He had a point. He easily could have been released from jail only to go on a mass shooting spree somewhere else. However, at the time, I wasn’t concerned about what he might do after getting released from jail.

I thought about telling him the complete truth – that I didn’t turn him in to save other people’s lives – but felt a moral obligation not to admit that, so I was vague. “I made a judgment call that you’d get your shit together the way I did when I was your age. You’re a smart kid. You don’t belong in jail. Once they put you in the system it’s hard to get out. You’re one lucky motherfucker.”

He didn’t respond, so I changed the subject. “What was it like in jail?”

“Let’s just say it made me start thinking differently. I had nothing to do but stare at the walls and go to my counseling sessions. For a month straight all I thought about was finding you and killing you. Too bad you didn’t give me your address to send you my journal. If I had your address I could of sent somebody out.”

“Yeah, how did you get my address to send me that Christmas card, anyway?”

“Trade secrets. Can’t tell.”

“Fair enough. I’m sure it’s on the internet somewhere.”

“Maybe.”

“Hey, remember when we were talking about Columbine and you gave me a copy of Eric’s webpages? Reading the description of how he made his bombs and blew them up in the mountains gave me the inspiration to make my own explosives. But I didn’t tell the police you gave those documents to me.” His attempt to pass the buck was transparent.

“Did I give his webpages to you?” I knew I gave him those documents. I gave him every Columbine document I had, but didn’t want that on record. Besides, those documents were public record and all over the internet. Still, I played dumb.

“Yeah. When we first started talking. You sent me everything you had on Columbine. You gave me their home videos, too. Man, seeing them shooting their guns and walking around talking was like a tipping point for me. It was surreal. I thought you supported their actions. I wouldn’t of told you about my plans if I thought you were against what they did. It helped that you were using Eric’s screen name, too. It was hard not to spill my guts talking to my hero’s screen name. How’d you get it, anyway? I thought AOL suspended his account?”

“Trade secrets. Can’t tell.” I snickered at my computer screen.

“You sure you’re not a cop?”

“As sure as I can be, but I don’t expect you to believe me. Seeing as how we only know each other online, I could be lying to maintain my cover…”

“I guess that’s a risk I’ll have to take.”

He went dark for about ten minutes and when he came back, he got real.

“Before I started telling you shit I was already pushing myself more and more to do it, like, losing my mind intentionally, day after day, pushing myself to get ready to die and kill. Now I’m just waiting for the next person to set me off and that’s what sucks.”

When we first met, he told me he felt a burning rage that made him want to rip people apart with a knife since the age of three. I wasn’t surprised to learn that rage was still boiling over. Still, I suggested the possibility of a rageless future. “It’s not easy getting triggered all the time. At least you’re aware of it. Thankfully, anger fades over time.”

He wasn’t convinced. “See, my anger doesn’t fade. It’s always burning inside me even in this moment, but nobody’s stepping into my crosshairs yet. I’m naturally angry. I could snap at any moment.”

I didn’t know how to respond, so I was relieved when he didn’t give me the chance.

“Why’d you get interested in Columbine?” It was a question he’d never asked me before. “If you can’t tell me how you got Eric’s screen name, the least you can do is tell me why you even care about all this stuff in the first place.”

I wasn’t sure if I should tell him everything, but started typing to see what came out.

“You know how I ratted you out for planning to shoot up your school? I was caught with a similar plan back in junior high, several years before Columbine. I was 14. I was arrested and pushed through the system but they let me off the hook. I transferred schools after my freshman year to get a new start with kids I didn’t know. I wasn’t getting shit on as much until Columbine happened. Then it started all over again. I was “goth” so the administration flagged me as a potential shooter because I wore a long, black cloak. The principal told my teachers to keep an eye on me. Other students started calling me the “Trench Cloak Mafia.” They’d ask if I had a Tec-9 under my cape and when I was going to shoot them. I told them to wait and see. The desire to get revenge came back hard. Obviously, I didn’t go through with it, otherwise I wouldn’t be here talking to you…”

“How’d you turn your life around?” His question was sincere, but I wasn’t willing to return his sincerity.

“I’m not sure,” I dodged the question.

The truth was, at that point, I hadn’t turned my life around. I was still dancing across the line that divides personal responsibility from the belief that violence could be justified and even deserved.

My actions may have saved his life and the lives of others, but I didn’t deserve his gratitude. The only reason I turned him in was because I was afraid not to. I wasn’t concerned about the people he wanted to kill. I turned him in to protect myself and accidentally saved his life.

Click here to read Chapter 4: The Education of an Almost School Shooter

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Ch. 5: The Magicians Who Rewrote History

Autumn leaves dance in rhythmic spirals until they collide and hit the dirt. The sun’s golden rays shine like a prism between the leaves still hanging on. Despite our front row seats to nature’s show, he doesn’t seem to notice; he has other things on his mind.

He leans over me, grabs a switchblade from the glove box, and twirls it in the palm of his hand. A swastika carved into the handle makes me wonder how deep his WWII interest really goes.

We’re discussing society’s inability to understand the suffering that drives teenagers to commit suicide – or worse – murder their classmates.

“People find it difficult to relate to a pain they’ve never experienced,” he sighs. “Should they relate though? Yes, they should understand on some level. But, in a way it’s good most people can’t relate because that means they haven’t had to go through it, and that’s a good thing.”

He’s not talking about ordinary pain like the emotional rollercoaster of a bad break-up. He’s talking about the agony of enduring daily abuse at school that crushes your sense of self-worth and reduces you to a shell of a person, completely dead inside.

He knows this pain intimately. Four years prior, two of his friends committed suicide after killing twelve students and a teacher at Columbine High School. After the shooting, he was wrongly accused of helping plan the massacre and some accused him of being a “third shooter.” Though he wasn’t involved, he wasn’t surprised to learn his friends were responsible. He knew exactly why they did it. Everyone did. He experienced the same abuse that pushed them over the edge.

Although several years had passed, Columbine wasn’t over for him and it wasn’t the only storm he was battling. Eleven months after watching those autumn leaves dance, he would commit suicide and leave behind two young children. Although, at the time of our conversation, his youngest child wasn’t born yet and would still be in diapers at the time of his father’s death.

“I can relate,” he taps the steering wheel with the knife’s intricately carved handle, “and the memories of what happened to me at that damned school will remain with me for the rest of my life. I just hope my child’s life is better than mine. I hope she can never relate to the horrors that people like us have gone through.”

Leaning back in the driver’s seat, he sighs with a defeated smile. “So many people think they know what really happened at Columbine.” He shakes his head. “They’ve read reports, books, and articles written by people who didn’t go to Columbine – people who never bothered to interview any of us. I gave a couple interviews in the beginning, but when the official narrative changed, my experience no longer fit their agenda. They stopped airing my interviews and never contacted me again.”

I sigh in agreement with this great truth. He wasn’t the only student ignored by the journalists and authors chosen to deliver a new and improved “official” narrative to the world.

He continues:

“Most people are in denial and they will remain that way. They know the truth, but they refuse to face it.”

Denial is an understatement. About a week after the massacre he witnessed an entire nation rally behind an invented narrative dismissing the severity of abuse he and his friends (including the shooters) experienced firsthand.

Reporters and journalists began to “debunk” the “bullying myth,” a move that contradicted numerous student interviews describing daily abuse the shooters and their friends endured. Some students openly admitted to abusing the shooters on camera and in print. One student was quoted in a national publication saying the shooters deserved to be abused because they were “weird.”

He was bewildered when, out of nowhere, all previously reported incidents of abuse were dismissed, downplayed, and invalidated in favor of a new and final narrative: Eric Harris was a classic psychopath who wanted to kill everyone and didn’t care if he died trying; Dylan Klebold was suicidal and settled for a suicide-murder mission to escape his pain. Neither Eric nor Dylan were relentlessly bullied as previously reported. What little bullying they did experience was typical for any school. Bullying didn’t cause or contribute to the anger, rage, contempt, and suicidal ideation that led to the shootings, therefore bullying played no part in the massacre.

He watched helplessly as “experts” with fancy titles dismissed the truth like magicians with a wave of their hand. These are not the facts you are looking for. Nearly everyone bought it. Strangers across the world began to believe bullying played no role in the massacre because so-called experts said it didn’t.

Just like that, the multitude of firsthand accounts of severe abuse at Columbine – incidents that would get an adult arrested on felony charges – were reframed and swept under the rug.

The shooters didn’t have it that bad. Being called ‘faggot,’ loser,’ and ‘freak’ is just part of high school – the shooters should have just ignored it. Getting shoved into a locker isn’t a big deal; everyone gets slammed by an upperclassman at least once. Dylan got called ‘stretch’ in gym class, but they could have called him something worse. Students threw garbage at them and broke glass bottles at their feet, but it didn’t happen every day.

When someone falsely told the principal they brought drugs to school, it was just a harmless prank – surely the culprit didn’t know they’d be humiliated by getting searched. The jocks left threatening notes in their lockers, but who doesn’t get threatened in high school? Paper is harmless, nobody got hurt. Okay, so a student crossed the line by throwing a cup of fecal matter at them… and someone threw ketchup-covered tampons at them in the cafeteria, but it wasn’t the end of the world and it certainly wasn’t a good reason to kill people.

These constructed narratives made it sound like Eric and Dylan killed people because someone called them names. To reduce their motives to such simplicity is to miss the entire point. He knew, as did all of their friends, that the shooters were reacting to the fact that nobody did anything to stop the abuse. They saw a hopeless future where “adult” society, aka “the real world,” would only be an extension of high school. And it’s hard to say they were wrong about that.

The abuse was real. These new narratives were false. He knew the truth. How could he forget? He lived it every day. Although, with the exception of private conversations he didn’t put any effort into clearing the air. He wasn’t like that. He knew the impossibility of changing people’s minds. Let ‘em think what they want. They’re not looking for the truth.

If you wanted the truth, he’d give it to you. If you didn’t want the truth, that was your problem.

I knew firsthand how nonchalant he was about correcting people’s mistaken beliefs. We met when he offered to provide me with accurate information about the Trench Coat Mafia for my research website. He was casual about the offer, asking if I was interested in what he had to share, rather than telling me everything I published was wrong.

He stares out the front windshield rhythmically tapping his right palm on the side of the steering wheel.

“People who didn’t even go to Columbine convinced the majority of the world that bullying didn’t happen, and Eric and Dylan were just angry and depressed for no reason. What the hell do they think made them so angry in the first place?”

He sighs out of his nose, shaking his head. He gazes out the driver’s side window for several seconds lost in thought.

“Actually, they’re right. It wasn’t bullying. It was abuse. When people talk about bullying it makes you think of overturned lunch trays, food fights, and shoves in the hallway. Calling it “bullying” diminishes the level of abuse we all suffered. If I had gone to the police after someone threw that glass bottle at us, they wouldn’t call it bullying – they’d call it assault… a real crime.”

I nod silently in agreement.

“People want to believe it’s a perfect little world where the birds chirp and there is no pain or cruelty, and that is not reality,” he said. “Pain is necessary for life. It can’t end. However, the frequency of intentional pain will decrease as mankind and society evolve. At least one can hope.”

Although his words sounded hopeful, his whole being radiated defeat – absolute defeat. Like there was no way to win the battle the world had waged against him. He was a different person than he had been prior to the massacre. Apathy had crept into the cracks of his smile and stubble replaced his long, golden hair.

And now he’s gone.

Joseph Benjamin Stair committed suicide on September 13, 2007. He was twenty-seven years old. He left behind a wife, a sister and a brother, two small children, and a world that would have benefitted greatly from his wisdom.

Click here to read Chapter 6: Confessions of a Former Columbiner

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You Are the Wind

Billy: “so you’re basically telling me I should just go wherever the wind blows…?”

Sam: “You are the wind. You have no choice.”

When you know what you are, going with the flow isn’t disempowering. You are the flow. There is nothing else. Resistance is your prison. Realizing choicelessness is liberation.

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Heroes Always Wear the Morals of Villains

We love paying $12.50 to immerse ourselves in the story of a fearless hero who saves the world while wearing the morals of a villain. Sometimes heroes need to kill everyone in their path, commit theft, arson, treason, betray their friends and family, and desecrate an entire city in order to save innocent lives.

We celebrate Hollywood heroes regardless of their actions, so long as they’ve got sex appeal. And movies don’t do well unless the good guys win, so we know they’ll eventually get around to saving innocent people.

Destruction comes with the territory of being a hero. When you’re on a mission with the fate of the world at stake, it’s okay to demolish an entire city killing innocents including women and children. It’s an unfortunate “casualty of war,” as they like to say. And they’re right. The very thing that makes someone a hero is the destruction of oppression.

You can’t be a hero to a group of people without destroying their oppressors. You’ll never be seen as a hero if you try to have a conversation or “work things out.” Hero status is virtually guaranteed when you seek destructive revenge for perceived injustice relatable to others.

Kind of reminds me of Columbine.

Hundreds – perhaps thousands – of teenagers see Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as heroes.

In real life, we wouldn’t praise someone if they dropped a bomb on our house or executed our entire family in front of us. We wouldn’t give a damn who they were saving, and we certainly wouldn’t consider them a hero. But we’re willing to suspend those reactions in front of the big screen. Why?

Human beings are not-so-secretly fascinated with violence and destruction.

This sense of duty and mission is the reason military and spy movies are so captivating. It is in our nature to desire to feel important, to have a mission, break the rules and fly by the seat of our pants… to fail and then refine our tactics and up our game until we emerge as the victorious hero who saves the world.

But this isn’t just something kids do. This isn’t something mentally ill people do. This is something we all do.

Some of us do it by putting lives in actual danger, and some of us never take any risks at all, so we fork over $12.50 for a movie ticket every time we want to experience that adrenaline rush. We don’t want to get our hands dirty, so we let someone else do it for us; we live vicariously through characters on the big screen from the safety of our dilapidated, smelly theater seats.

Real risk is for other people. That’s why so many people see Eric and Dylan as heroes. They don’t have to get their hands dirty in order to feel like justice has been served.

Eric and Dylan took risks those people aren’t willing to take. They’re fulfilling their need to feel important by holding Eric and Dylan as heroes. They’re not willing to take the risk themselves. They’re not “there” yet. They aren’t entirely hopeless. They’re still hanging onto… something.

Risks are a requirement to play in this world.

By not taking any risks, you’re actually taking the biggest risk of all. The risk of living a mediocre life, never finding your joy and never truly living.

Dylan and Eric took the biggest risk of all. We call them cowards, but they were not cowards by any means. They faced death head-on, with no holds barred they planned and executed their own deaths. They saw it coming. They breathed it in with every inhalation. They counted down the number of meals they had left to eat on this planet. They were admittedly scared at times, but fear never stopped them.

Have you ever noticed that villains take more risks than heroes? And heroes only take risks when they wear the morals of a villain? Set aside good/bad, right/wrong and really look. It’s the villains who take the biggest risks with the biggest stakes.

I invite you to consider that perhaps we are the cowards, hiding behind our fear of death. And the reason we hate them so much is because we can’t face the way they unflinchingly embraced their own deaths.

They risked everything: their own lives, everyone else’s lives, their futures, their parents’ lives and reputation… they even risked the lives of their own friends in order to pursue their goal. Their mission mattered more than life itself.

We hate them because they gave their lives for their personal definition of freedom from oppression, yet we’re not willing to risk so much as being criticized to get what we want for our own lives.

I don’t think movies are to blame, I think movies show us what’s deeply hidden in our souls, fears, desires, and curiosities we’re too afraid to face. After all, who makes the movies? We make the movies. The big screen only shows what’s already in our hearts and minds.

Imagine if we pursued our positive dreams and goals with the same disregard for risk as Hollywood villains and school shooters have. Imagine if we were willing to die for the opportunity to pursue our big dream…

Instead, we hold back, sit on the couch, order a pizza and say, “eh, tomorrow’s another day…”

We all feel a drive to do something without anyone’s permission, to run freely through this world, without concern for anyone who may wish to stop us—and vanish through obstacles like a ghost walks through walls.

But something holds us back. Perhaps we’re not willing to risk being seen. Failure.

Maybe we’re all just winging it. Struggling and striving to keep up appearances, maintain an identity and survive.

Maybe we’re the cowards, hiding behind the fear of non-existence disguised as the fear of death. Maybe having the guts to do something with your life is a rare trait.

Maybe most people don’t feel any real urge to do anything at all until death is staring them in the face. Maybe most people only feel compelled to take action when nothing matters anymore… when suffering and death are an inevitable reality. At that point, there’s nothing left to lose. Why not put yourself out there?

Villains never wait to take inspired action.

Perhaps we can learn something from them.

Perhaps we can learn something from Eric and Dylan.

Regardless of their actions, they didn’t sit on the couch, gain 100 pounds eating potato chips while watching Netflix every night for twenty years, working the same boring job, complaining about the same boring people, posting the same boring shit on Facebook day in and day out.

What they did was wrong, but they’re no different than any Hollywood villain.

Think about that the next time you watch a movie and celebrate the destruction caused by the hero of the movie. Ask yourself, “why am I feeling excited to watch a virtual depiction of destruction and death, but real-life destruction and death is bothersome?”

This isn’t about Eric and Dylan.

This is about you.

What’s the difference between a destructive, yet celebrated Hollywood hero… and Eric and Dylan? Why is one celebrated while the other isn’t?

Why do we enjoy and celebrate the depiction of violence when it’s attributed to someone we’re told is a hero?

What happened to morality?

Anyone have a Cracker Jack box? Asking for a friend…

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Facts Exist Independently of Opinion

It’s important to recognize that facts exist independently of opinion.

A fact is “what’s so” and is supported by verifiable data, while an opinion is an interpretation of verifiable data.

For example, it’s a fact that many school shooters were bullied. It’s also a fact that school shooters are a statistical anomaly and account for less than 0.001% of all bullied kids.

The conclusion that bullying causes school shootings is an interpretation of the facts, and therefore an opinion. This doesn’t mean school shooters aren’t affected by bullying. And it doesn’t invalidate the effects of bullying. It simply means the premise that bullying causes school shootings isn’t factually correct.

On the other hand, anecdotal evidence (personal stories) suggest bullying plays a role in some, but not all incidents of school violence.

Both facts and anecdotal evidence (opinions) are equally important to share and discuss. However, distinguishing fact from opinion allows for a broader context in which to view an issue.

In the example above, the facts encourage us to zoom out to look at multiple factors, not just bullying. Because as long as some bullied kids never kill their classmates, bullying isn’t a cause – it is a factor. To be a cause, a factor must produce the same effect 100% of the time.

At the end of the day, there is only one cause for all incidents of school violence: choice.

The only factor that can be considered a cause is choice. That’s where the buck stops. Until the choice is made, all contributing factors are still in limbo, not yet classifiable as contributing factors. It is the choice to kill that turns a person’s life circumstances into contributing factors. While a portion of school shooters are bullied, the only common denominator in every school shooting is choice.

100% of all school shootings happen when a person chooses to kill their classmates. That choice is made when the shooter chooses to use contributing factors (like bullying) as an excuse to kill others.

Again, this doesn’t mean bullying doesn’t create the desperation some shooters feel that causes them to choose to kill. But let’s be honest here. Aside from tackling a shooter in the act, the only person who can stop a school shooter is… the person about to become a school shooter. They must make the choice not to kill.

“How can we stop bullying?” is a surface-level question that only facilitates intellectual conversation. Even when schools manage to stop bullying, that teaches kids to require, no – demand others to change their behavior so they can feel better. A world full of people who need others to change before they’ll take the high road is a dangerous world, indeed…

The deeper question – the question that can make a genuine impact – is, “what makes some people want to have the final word by killing and silencing others in response to feeling wronged?”

What character trait makes the majority of bullied kids (99.999%) not choose to kill other people in response to being treated poorly?

Perhaps we should identify that trait and focus on developing that trait in our youth.

Sure, we can and should change school culture and do our best to prevent bullying. But if that’s all we do, once those kids graduate, they’re more likely to become a workplace shooter when they become dissatisfied with the way they’re treated at work. Kids who depend on eradicating bullying in order to refrain from killing others are not healthy individuals and will be a ticking time bomb once they leave the comfort of a bully-free school.

The point is, it’s not fair to demand that other people change their behavior just so we can feel better. That might be the way the majority of the world operates, but it’s disempowering. When you refuse to take responsibility for your life and your feelings, and instead, demand that others change, you’ve lost your way. There will be no genuine happiness or pleasure in life for those who live this way.

Yes, kids need to stop bullying each other. And, they also need to learn how to take personal responsibility for their own lives when nobody else will step up. In the real world, only those who take responsibility for their life, regardless of their circumstances, will be free.

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School Shooters Are a Thorn in Everyone’s Side

School shooters are a thorn in everyone’s side. Devastating communities for decades, they’ve got the world on edge. Who’s next? Roll the dice. It can happen anywhere. Soon, parents will send their kids to school in designer flak jackets.

In the wake of each shooting, shattered communities want answers. Parents are investigated. Friends are questioned. And the world argues over the solution like a game of whack-a-mole:

We need to protect kids from violent media influences. No, the real solution is to eradicate bullies. Forget the bullies, we should outlaw semi-automatic firearms. That’s stupid; guns don’t kill people. Why don’t we stop giving kids psychotropic drugs and start arming teachers? Maybe these kids are just crazy and there’s nothing we can do.

In the midst of these arguments, the next school shooter silently gears up, enters a school, and starts shooting. More students and teachers die. Some say they never saw it coming; others say they should have known. The community deals with the aftermath. Wash, rinse, repeat.

The community deals with the aftermath. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Evan Ramsey. Luke Woodham. Michael Carneal. Mitchell Johnson. Andrew Golden. Kip Kinkel. Dylan Klebold. Eric Harris. Andy Williams. Elizabeth Bush. Jeff Weise. Erik Hainstock. Seung-Hui Cho. T.J. Lane. Kimveer Gill. Bastian Bosse. Adam Lanza. William Atchison. Nikolas Cruz. And on, and on, and on.

These tragedies are incomprehensible to the average person; well-meaning psychologists do their best to explain how rage, resent, depression, and deep-seated hatred can catalyze a desire for mass murder. Meanwhile, kids continue to die.

Explanations are insightful, but each new shooting highlights a grim reality: understanding school violence doesn’t prevent it.

We’re drowning in a sea of explanations, and based on results, those explanations haven’t made a difference. Explanations help us to make sense of tragedy in hindsight, but it’s not enough. We need strategies to help teenagers out of those dark spaces that lead to isolation, resentment, and revenge.

We’re drowning in a sea of explanations. The marketplace is saturated with this type of intellectual fodder. And, based on results, it hasn’t gotten us anywhere.

Individual circumstances vary, but each shooter’s motivation contains the same premise: they feel disconnected from society and sought revenge against those perceived responsible for their suffering, whether individuals or the whole world.

We don’t need another psychological autopsy of the latest school shooter. We don’t need another book retelling the story of Columbine. It’s time to curb the addiction to fictional reconstructions, theories, and psychoanalysis.

We need a story that demonstrates prevention in the real world; a story that proves school shooters can transform their lives before they pull the trigger; a story that demonstrates how anyone – including you – can be the catalyst for that change in someone else’s life.

We need a story that gives hope to teenagers (and adults) who are crumbling under the weight of a world they feel disconnected from. We need a story written by someone who has made the journey from destruction to liberation, someone who knows the terrain and all of its sticky traps.

We need a story that destroys the misperception that some kids are unreachable monsters; a story demonstrating that personal reality is malleable regardless of circumstance, proving that anyone can change when they have a burning desire to transform their life.

Such a story would be the first of its kind, and it happens to be the story you’re reading now.

///

I understand school violence in ways most people can’t fathom. At fourteen years old, I decided to pack years of rage into the barrel of a gun and unleash that rage at school.

Although I made the decision to do it, it never went beyond an idea. I didn’t have access to a gun. But that didn’t stop me from planning and threatening a suicide-murder mission in eighth grade. I wanted revenge more than my own life. It was 1995 – three years before Jonesboro, four years before Columbine, and twelve years before Virginia Tech.

When Columbine happened, I latched onto the tragedy as if it were my own. I submerged myself in the online culture of “Columbine Research.” I entered a world of obsession, crossing paths with everyone you can imagine, including soon-to-be school shooters.

For years I perceived the actions of others to be the cause of my rage. It made sense. People were excessively cruel to me every day of my life until I graduated high school. Being abused and harassed in school made me feel horrible. Obviously my suffering was caused by their actions.

The Awakening experience gave me an entirely different understanding.

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Beginning in 2000, a series of mystical events shifted my perception. In 2000, I began experiencing a powerful kundalini awakening. In 2012, it became intense. In 2016, I abandoned a cushy lifestyle to live in a cabin in the woods.

Today, I live an extraordinary life where miracles manifest around every corner. Although, it’s actually other people who use the term ‘miracle’ to describe the way my life unfolds. Calling something a miracle implies it was an unexpected event. I don’t experience life that way.

When I say my life is extraordinary, I don’t mean to imply that I’ve achieved some kind of status. Quite the opposite. Extraordinary, to me, means exactly that – extra ordinary. Ordinary with a side of ordinary; hold the pickles. Living inside the ordinariness of life is where I found the abiding contentment I spent decades pursuing through business ventures and countless spiritual pursuits.

I’ve reached a place of ease where the struggle to survive – physically and psychologically – has dissolved. Life is effortless – not because it’s convenient and comfortable, but because I’m no longer fighting against it. I’m not struggling to maintain an identity in the world. I have a deep connection with life, and a deep appreciation for simplicity. And life has a way of flowing without much input from me.

It’s hard to believe I was once consumed by suicidal, homicidal rage. Although, my transformation is proof that even the most destructive mindset can be healed.

Destruction was my path to liberation

Most people presume the Awakening experience will be positive, like lovers dancing in a field of flowers, blissed out and feeling “one” with the universe. That makes for a good greeting card, but it wasn’t my journey. I discovered Awakening to be a ruthlessly destructive process. While it was happening, I felt like I’d been skewered by the sword of failure held by an invisible hand that moved me around against my will.

I didn’t take the easy road, and I didn’t take the road less traveled. I continued straight ahead, forging a path through the thick of a dark and brambled forest; thorns piercing my body from every angle. I emerged exhausted and bloody, yet victorious. What I discovered destroyed the perception that abuse had caused my suffering.

A story about transformation, not motivation

My story will take you beyond motivation, into a space that provides answers from the perspective of the Awakened state – the top-down view. A perspective I didn’t have access to until I became committed to unraveling my inauthenticities. Once I tugged on the first thread, my life unraveled like a Weezer song.

Getting to this point wasn’t easy. I had to confront my worst fears and walk through them all. I had to let go of the one thing that provided me with comfort: my suffering. Not just suffering, but my suffering. I clung to it like a koala to a Eucalyptus tree. And when I realized nobody was going to pry it away, I had to do it myself.

I’m sharing my story because…

… right now, there are kids plotting murder under their parents’ noses. Their friends know something’s wrong, but don’t know how to intervene.

… right now, there are teenagers and adults sinking deeper into suicidal despair who don’t know how to get out of their downward spiral.

… right now, there are thousands of people whose lives will one day be ripped to shreds by a school shooting. Like all who came before, they’ll say, “He was such a nice kid. I never thought it would happen here.”

I’m sharing my story because the world is divided on the issue of school violence. And I’m committed to bridging this cavernous gap.

I’m sharing my story because right now, thousands of teenagers are suicidal because they feel irrelevant. And they need to know their life matters.

I’m sharing my story because freedom and joy are available to all, regardless of circumstance.

Most of all, I’m sharing my story to encourage parents to develop authentic connections with their kids, and to give teens the courage to have ruthless compassion for friends who may be on the edge.

And if you’re on the edge, I wrote this book as an invitation to take a few steps back, just for now.

No matter who you are, I’m committed that by the end of this book, you’ll see a bigger possibility for your life, and you’ll know that your life and your voice matter.

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You’re Sitting in the Back Seat

The belief that one ought to have goals to strive for is at the heart of suffering. Some spend their whole lives caught in a compulsory cycle of desperation to achieve something in life, as if the marvelous fact that they exist isn’t enough.

We live in a world of go-getting motivational marketers, pushing action on the world as their drug of choice.

Life is simple. Nothing needs to be done. Nothing is urgent.

Actions which change the fate of nations are indeed no different than no action at all.

We have the freedom to choose the context of our lives and create whatever meanings we wish. And those who choose stillness and silence for their lives are just as important as those who feed ten million starving people across the world. There is no importance or unimportance in either. They just are.

Striving for achievement is an illusion. It’s simply our identity attempting to reinforce itself through yet another channel. And we don’t notice because at our core we believe we ought to be doing something with our lives.

Freedom lies in the realization that you don’t need to achieve anything to be worthy of existing. Your task is to hold the space for experience. You’re not a doer, you’re a watcher. You just haven’t realized you’ve been given a fake, plastic steering wheel. You think you’re driving the car, when you’re actually sitting in the back seat…

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Go Back to Sleep

Everyone holds in high regard, those who “dream big,” “have goals,” and want to “achieve success” in some way. Our entire society is centered around this mindset.

I invite you to consider that this mindset creates and perpetuates the feeling of, “not enough.”

Who is to say that having dreams and goals is optimal, while living each day as it is, without a goal in sight is less than optimal?

We live in a society that pushes perpetual goal setting, and those with goals are identified as “intelligent,” “brilliant,” and “important.”

We encourage and support each other most when we’re chasing dreams outside of ourselves. Building businesses to feed people, earning college degrees, losing weight, making money, being a contribution to the world… those are admirable pursuits.

What about those who don’t do those things? They don’t get so much attention. Who encourages someone to do nothing?

Ask someone what their vision is for their future and if they tell you they have none, you might be quick to think they’re a loser.

What if pursuing goals is a sham? An illusion designed to keep you tied to the physical world to keep striving for more and more and more… to distract you from knowing the Truth.

What if you already are a contribution to the world just by existing?

What if you’re not a contribution to the world and that’s perfect?

What if there’s no such thing as being a contribution to the world because the world doesn’t need a contribution because it’s already the contribution itself?

What if just existing is all there is to do and goals and dreams are meaningless?

What if complete satisfaction begins where the desire to be more ends?

What would you have to give up to rest in such a complete place?

Who would you be if you had nothing left to pursue, no desires, and had no vested interest in the outcome of your own life or the world?

What if dropping your attachment to outcomes is the necessary ingredient to achieve lasting contentment?

Struggle, struggle, sleep, sleep. Open one eye – go back to sleep. Strive, strive, sleep. Open the other eye – go back to sleep.

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Throw the Baby Out with the Bath Water

Everyone says, “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.” And when the awakening process began, I wrestled with all these spiritual teachings, teachers, ideas, concepts, trying my damndest not to throw that baby out. But that baby had to go.

That’s the only way you’ll reach truth. Realize truth. You have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Drain the tub and let that baby spiral down into the great black hole of nothing forever.

Holding onto that baby when you drain the tub is like holding onto false beliefs while you stare truth in the face. You’ll never recognize truth while you’re holding that baby.

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You Cannot Escape the Matrix

“You want to escape the Matrix. Enlightenment is the truth of knowing you can’t. You only have two choices in life: you can play the game or not, play your part or not.

The moment you escape the Matrix, you become not you.

When you become not you, you aren’t playing the game… because you must be you to play the game.

When you aren’t you, theres no game. You disappear. Karma disappears. The idea of reincarnation disappears. Who is there to reincarnate?

You are the matrix. You cannot escape what you are.”

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