How does anyone stay safe in this country anymore?

I wondered Thursday morning, upon seeing news of the Thousand Oaks shooting.

Thousand Oaks.  It’s a place where I’ve visited friends, to where I once considered moving. A quiet, polished, picture-perfect suburb tucked in the valley inland of the Santa Monica mountains, north of Los Angles. Needless to say, this one hit close to home.

Pittsburgh, Parkland, Las Vegas, Thousand Oaks…

The questions came at me. How do I stay safe? How do I keep my son safe? Is it time to move abroad? When will this stop? What can I do? How can I… ? And on and on…

I felt a rupture in my chest. A deep split in myself.

Stay safe. Stay calm. Stay safe. Stay calm.

I landed on the idea that I have to get politically active and fight for sensible gun control. But an inner voice said, government won’t act anytime soon.

How can I stay safe if I’m not safe? The questions kept coming. And yet I knew I must stop. Despair gave me little to root in.

I looked around my home and then out my window. I am safe, here and now, I told myself. No shooters anywhere in sight.

I took a deep breath. I could land in my breath. Only there, for now. Nowhere else.

Still, something had to be done.  I couldn’t stay inside, staring out my window forever.

Recently, foreign thoughts had infiltrated my psyche.  Thoughts of getting a gun. Thoughts of being the action movie hero, the James Bond, who in three shots took out the “bad guy.” Reality TV began blending with life, culminating in fantasy.

I knew better. To imagine being “the good guy with a gun” was more of an attempt to stay safe than a reality of being in the right place at the right time with the right training to shoot down “a bad guy with a gun.” If I was serious, I would need to train consistently, shoot weekly, maintain a firearm, and even then, I’d likely never come to this imagined moment.

At the same time, it sounded exciting. And yet, I believe that the “good guy with a gun argument” (The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.) is a self-constructed attempt by many men to reclaim purpose and meaning in a mundane, meaningless life in which many of us are pushing documents, answering emails, or punching holes on metal presses all day.

Recently at the mall, bars, and restaurants, I noticed myself keeping my eyes open for suspicious activity, just like the Active Shooter Trainer I brought into my business a few weeks ago, at the insistence of my employees.

“My wife knows I sit facing the door when we go out to eat,” he said, implying that a state of readiness is a state of responsible preparedness. I felt his vigilance. I also felt a man-boy playing an action game.

But back to the moment of anchoring into my breath. Just then, a good friend called me.  He said what I needed to hear – in speaking his own truth.

“If I stay in that realm of consciousness [of fear], I’m fucked,” he said

I felt myself fully exhale. He spoke the truth I had struggled to articulate.

Choosing my “realm of consciousness” is my real weapon against fear. Not months of James Bond-style training. Choosing my “realm of consciousness” means when fear comes up, I meet it, speak to it – Fear, what do you want?

The answer is always the same – Safety.

I know I am safe for now. But still, I choose to maintain a relaxed vigilance and keep my eyes open.  I know that any full guarantee of safety is an illusion. We are never safe. And only as safe as we choose to be.

Safety is a choice of inner consciousness. A saying no to fear mongering, of saying no to the illusion that a gun is the answer. Of saying yes to choosing your “realm of consciousness.” And simultaneously, of not using inner work to delude yourself from outer reality but instead to deepen into it.

And whether or not I buy a gun is to be determined…  but regardless, I will choose my “realm of consciousness” apart from any James Bond fantasy.

What about you?
How do you choose your realm of consciousness in stressful moments?
How do you not separate from yourself in times of fear?
How do you engage with hard emotions to strengthen you?

Take a moment. Think about it. Write down your answers.

This is self-relationship. Your true power.

Help me build a tribe of 10,000 passionate self-relationship warriors.

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