With rave reviews and dazzling trailers, Black Panther promised to deliver the kind of action adventure I love, full of vivid, mind-blowing special effects and an epic tale of good versus evil. Perhaps there is a good reason it has broken records worldwide; the Marvel comic book adventure addressed, to my great surprise, a very interesting moral dilemma: at what point do you take action to right the wrongs of the world? And…..are we……One Tribe?

In searching for a way to address some of the momentous events in our country currently, my intuition told me to wait and see what wisdom would come through this highly acclaimed new film, something that would relate to momentous recent events and perhaps offer Clarity and Guidance. It did.

The school shooting in Florida stirred a primal rage for change, of that we can all agree. Recent statistics show that once every 60 hours a school is threatened. The reality of schools and their occupants being the target of vicious, violent outlets of fear, frustration and confusion, is now commonplace. In other words, it is now common in our country for children to be shot…by a peer…with a gun.

While the optics of that statement is indeed horrid, the thing I would like to call attention to is the energy beneath the surface. Would anyone disagree that the whole idea of “school shootings” has spread across the country, especially with the above mentioned statistic? How and why does an idea like that spread like an infection?

From a scientific perspective we all know that like energy attracts like energy. Indeed, it is not a stretch to understand how tormented souls out there do, or at least try to do, what they see other tormented souls do. So the idea of “get a gun/guns and plot to go shoot people at random in a school” is transmitted to others who apparently see it as a viable outlet for their own anger/fear/frustration when they see it in the media, but like the weather, media and technology are here to stay, for benefit or not. The metastatic energy of school shooting is obviously, one that is not.

Here is another that is not. I didn’t watch the whole speech by Wayne LaPierre, president of the NRA, but I did hear sound bites of his quotes. I also heard sound bites of people who attended the event where he spoke. What I heard were things like they don’t want you to have any rights, and they don’t want you to be safe, and they don’t want you to be free, succeed, etc. Aside from the group that prescribe to that sentiment, I think I would be hard pressed to find anyone who actually wants what they say “they” want: to take away their guns, their rights, their safety. I would also venture to say that the vast majority of “they” do not want to take anything away from anybody, except maybe an automatic assault rifle from a mentally unstable teenager. Why then, would Mr. LaPierre, and the followers who parrot him, say these things?

The following is a five minute interview with someone who was one of those followers from a rural family tradition of hunting and gun owning, a loyal NRA member, until….

https://one.npr.org/?sharedMediaId=588642998:588642999

…until he saw bullet holes in children. It was obviously a game-changing event in his life that gave him a different perspective. Is it a more accurate perspective? Is there an underlying, bigger picture, energetic perspective that perhaps we can all identify with?

In my blog post Me Too, why good people do bad things, I discussed an analogy regarding the Game of Life, suspending the idea of what is “real” (sitting in a theater) in order to make the most of the “movie experience” of our lives. In other words, in the “movie” version of what is happening now, it is all just the drama of life. Wonderful things as well as terrible things happen. People come and go, live and die. This experience between birth and death is rife with magic and turmoil, lest it would be a boring “movie.”

At the “movie” level, it works to buy into a victim/victimizer scenario. It’s low hanging fruit in the game of power through manipulation. In the World of Form it is eat or be eaten, the dance of dark and light. It is the shallow game of winners at the expense of losers and the accumulation money, fame and power. Playing the Game of Life from this perspective is like going to the movies and getting so into the movie that you forget you are in a theater. Indeed, being totally engrossed in the experience is the point!

But…how many of us have been there, done that already? How many of us would like to interject some “theater” perspective into the movie?

The World of Spirit “theater” perspective is the place of Reality where there are no “winners” or “losers”, there are only Beings who exist by being cut from the cloth of All That Is. “Divine Beings” are defined as all who emerged by way of birth, and will leave by way of death, back to where we originated from.  Where we originated from however, has no drama, and that my friends, is why we are here. Seriously, where else in the UNIVERSE could you experience what is happening in our world today?

School shootings are about as dramatic as it gets, and intensely painful, even from a distance for those of us who are empathic of our fellow American victims. And here we are, as a country, having this discussion about how we can prevent another such tragedy as the most recent event we just had in Florida. Could it possibly be that part of this horror of unnecessary death also includes the distorted illusion of fear-based money and power? Have we ever experienced in the history of the world the idea that money and power is more important than people? DUH! Of course we have.

This is the Game of Life, the World of Form experience, the “movie” we came here to participate in. So let’s stop for an intermission and go get some popcorn.

It’s just a movie. What’s Real is that we are in a theater. In other words, we are still in the World of Spirit while we are engaged in the riveting drama of the World of Form. We can still know who we are: Divine Beings, all of us exactly Equal in Value. While the movie glorifies the illusion that money, fame and power are all important, what we all know for sure in our hearts is that nothing is more important than…people, Divine Beings. There is not a soul in their right mind on the planet who would argue that money, fame and power, or anything else for that matter, is more important than people. That being said, what do we do about school shootings and how do we reconcile with the NRA who apparently, at least from my perspective, assert that “rights” are more important than people?

What is black panther energy? Strong, stealthy, fierce? Flexible, agile, cunning? In the movie, Black Panther, the only time there are actual black panthers is when the king does a vibranium induced vision quest meditation and his ancestors show up as black panthers in a tree. When one jumps down out of the tree he turns into his father, the previous king. Though it is never made very clear, the meaning beneath the deeply embedded black panther theme, it is subtly obvious that these beautiful powerful cats represent the fierce, majestic strength of the black people who are at once, from a place deep in the continent of where all race originated; but also exceedingly advanced and sophisticated with the help of the seemingly random event which bestowed their secretive community with the blessing of a super mineral from space.

From a spiritual perspective I found the symbology quite fascinating. The people, who in todays world, represent those who are oppressed; people of color are represented in the film at an elevated status, even within the world community. Their own internal struggles notwithstanding, the resulting issue emerges: do we keep living in isolated peacefulness or do we step out into the spot light and participate in the struggle of good versus evil in the world? If we do step out and take a stand, it will be because we know we are One Tribe, worth the effort, worth the sacrifice, worth the struggle grounded in the Principle of Doing Love.

As I write this on March 14, 2018, thousands, if not millions, of young people walked out of their schools to make a statement about school shootings and guns. I find it amazing how incredibly fierce and strong this segment of our community has shown they can be. Like a sleeping cat, they have awoken and pounced to the front of our Collective Consciousness for the sake of PEOPLE, Divine Beings. People are more important than that which divides us, more important than ideology that distorts with fear for the purpose of money and power. PEOPLE…come first. This, to me, is the message of the sleeping Panther that has been awakened in the form of the smartest bull shit detectors there are: teenagers.

In an incredible twist of irony, it turns out the namesake of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas was a powerful activist herself, fighting most especially for the poor, women and the environment. This is a wonderful article from Sojourners about the woman herself: https://sojo.net/articles/womencrushwednesday-marjory-stoneman-douglas-activist-and-namesake-movement

We have a Choice: at what point are “rights” more important than people? If the “rights” that are more important that what appears to the NRA crowd as acceptable collateral damage, blame can be placed elsewhere, why are they more important than peoples lives? Why is it that many other countries have managed to find an apparently workable balance of gun ownership vs. unnecessary gun deaths, the vast majority of the people of those countries agree with? If they have lost the “right” for an 18 year old to purchase an automatic assault weapon, does it matter to them as long as members of their society are still alive? If they can figure it out, why can’t we?

Because in the “movie”, the energy of being right, of power and money and stubborn, inflexible willfulness are loathe to relinquish their power to Humbleness, Willingness and, heaven forbid, Change. The Choice is an energy. One Energy lets you know you can Choose, the other makes you think you cannot. One Energy is Flexible and unattached, the other is dug in and attached to an identity.

We ARE One Tribe because from the World of Spirit, “theater” perspective, we are all, first and foremost, Divine Beings. We are here but for a snatch of time on a speck of dust. Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter what happens in the “movie” because it is just a movie. At some point we all get up and go home. What makes it a good movie though, is the Recognition of Light and Love that Shines Through against the contrast of darkness. That is what makes us all cheer and leave the movie hopeful and inspired. It connects us to the Real Reality, the theater, the World of Spirit, we never left.