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.
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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.