Whether by coincidence or some sort of grand design, I’ve spent the last ten years studying, documenting and sharing a technique called “EFT,” or simply, “Tapping.” A combination of Ancient Chinese Acupressure and modern psychology, tapping has proven
to be extraordinarily effective in dealing with trauma, PTSD, stress and many of the accompanying conditions from events such as this shooting. So on that fateful day, I said to myself, “As terrible as all of this is, there’s an opening here for real change.” After countless hours of consultations with experts around the world, in tapping, disaster relief, PTSD and more, a plan was in place.
Dr. Lori Leyden, a bright light in the world who has spent years working with genocide survivors in Rwanda, helping them heal their deepest wounds, landed just days after the tragedy. A team of over forty volunteers came together within the week to get trained in the technique, and help work with the population. And sure enough, within days, we started meeting with parents who had lost their precious children, teachers from the school, kids from the school, first-responders and more.
Our focus with each one of them was using this powerful technique to heal the trauma they had experienced, release the stress, and allow them to actually experience the grief they needed to feel. Unfortunately, all too often, when trauma is active in the mind and body, one doesn’t have an opportunity to truly experience grief, a deep, necessary and often beautiful emotion.
The work continues and I’m sure it will be that way for years to come, but I’m happy to report that within the midst of such horrible tragedy, the miracles and love that I’ve seen have been truly remarkable.
A mother who used to hit her children, finally acknowledging she needs to change, healing her deepest old wounds, and finding a new approach to parenting.
A first-responder, initially haunted by the memories of that day, healing, letting the memories go, and rededicating his life to a message of love and compassion.
A mother who lost her child that day, connecting with her other child and committing to healing that relationship on every level.
The community, supporting each other, embracing a message of love, of healing, and forgiveness.
I know nobody here in the community will ever forget that fateful day, but it’s my hope, my expectation, that each person here, and around the world, can take that tragedy and use it to remember to love more, to forgive, to heal. It’s only with that approach and that intention that we can create a world where this never happens again.
~Nick Ortner
A Visit with Grandfather
What we speak becomes the house we live in.
~Hafiz
I was born into an ancient wisdom tradition known as Toltec. My grandfather was an old nagual (shaman), and I worked hard all my youth to earn his respect.
As a teenager, I wanted to impress him with my opinions about everything I was learning in school. I told him my point of view about all the injustice in the world, about the violence and the conflict between good and evil. Grandfather listened patiently, which encouraged me to speak even more. Then I noticed a little smile on his face as he said, “Miguel, those are very good theories that you’ve learned, but everything you’ve told me is just a story. It doesn’t mean that it’s true.”
Of course I felt bad and tried to defend my point of view, but then grandfather started to talk. “Most people believe there’s a great conflict in the universe — a conflict between good and evil. Well, the conflict only exists in the human mind. It’s not true for the rest of nature. And the real conflict in our mind is between the truth and lies. Good and evil are the result of that conflict.
“Believing in the truth creates goodness, love, happiness. Believing in lies and defending those lies creates what you call evil. It creates all the injustice and violence, all the drama and suffering, not only in society, but also in the individual.”
Hmm... what grandfather said was logical, but I didn’t believe him. How could all the conflict and suffering in the world be the result of something so simple? Surely it must be more complicated than that.
“Miguel, all the drama in your personal life is the result of believing in lies. And the first lie you believe is I’m not good enough, I’m not perfect. Everyone is born perfect and will die perfect because only perfection exists. But if you believe you aren’t good enough, thy will be done because that is the power and magic of your faith. With that lie you begin to search for an image of perfection that you can never become. You search for love, for justice, for everything you believe you don’t have, not knowing that everything you are searching for is already inside you. Humanity is the way it is because collectively we believe in lies that come from thousands of years ago. We react to those lies with anger and violence, but they’re only lies.”
I was wondering how to know the truth when my grandfather said, “We can perceive truth with our feelings, but as soon as we try to describe it with words, we distort it, and it’s no longer truth. It’s our story.
“Imagine that Pablo Picasso painted a portrait of you. You say, ‘I don’t look like that,’ and Picasso says, ‘Of course you do. This is how I see you.’ For Picasso, it’s true; he is expressing what he perceives. Well, everyone is an artist — a storyteller with a unique point of view. We use words to make a portrait of everything we witness. We make up stories, and just like Picasso we distort the truth; but for us, it is the truth. When we understand this, we no longer try to impose our story on others or defend what we believe. As artists, we respect the right of all artists to create their own art.”
In that moment, my grandfather gave me the opportunity to become aware of all the lies we believe. Every time we judge ourselves, find ourselves guilty, and punish ourselves, it’s because we believe in lies. Every time we have a conflict with our parents, our children, or our beloved, it’s because we believe in lies, and they believe in them, too.
How many lies do you hear in your head? Who is judging, who is talking, who is the one with all the opinions? If you don’t enjoy your life, it’s because the voice in your head won’t allow you to enjoy it. I call it the voice of knowledge because it’s telling you everything you know, and that knowledge is contaminated with lies.
Well, if you follow two rules, the lies won’t survive your skepticism and will simply disappear. First, listen to your story, but don’t believe yourself because now you know your story is mostly fiction. Second, listen to others tell their story, but don’t believe them. Truth survives our skepticism, but lies only survive if we believe them.
Just being aware of the lies that exist makes us aware that truth also exists. And by cleaning up the lies we believe about ourselves, the lies we believe about everybody else will change. Only the truth will lead us back to love, and this is a big step toward healing the human mind.
~don Miguel Ruiz
Adapted from The Voice of Knowledge: A Practical Guide to Inner Peace.
Copyright © 2004 by Miguel Angel Ruiz and Janet Mills
Reprinted by Permission of Amber-Allen Publishing, Inc., San Rafael, California.
Authored by Frank Trujillo.
Copyright ©1990, ProTeach Publications. All rights reserved. (800) 233-3541
I Like Myself Now
Once you see a child’s self-image begin to improve, you will see significant gains in achievement areas, but even more important, you will see a child who is beginning to enjoy life more.
~Wayne Dyer
I had a great feeling of relief when I began to understand that a youngster needs more than just subject matter. I know mathematics well, and I teach it well. I used to think that was all I needed to do.
Now I teach children, not math. I accept the fact that I can only succeed partially with some of them.
When I don’t have to know all the answers, I seem to have more answers than when I tried to be the expert. The youngster who really made me understand this was Eddie. I asked him one day why he thought he was doing so much better tha
n last year. He gave meaning to my whole new orientation: “It’s because I like myself now when I’m with you,” he said.
~A teacher quoted by Everett Shostrum in Man, The Manipulator
All the Good Things
A kind word is like a spring day.
~Russian Proverb
He was in the third-grade class I taught at Saint Mary’s School in Morris, Minnesota. All 34 of my students were dear to me, but Mark Eklund was one in a million. Very neat in appearance, he had that happy-to-be-alive attitude that made even his occasional mischievousness delightful.
Mark also talked incessantly. I tried to remind him again and again that talking without permission was not acceptable. What impressed me so much, though, was the sincere response every time I had to correct him for misbehaving. “Thank you for correcting me, Sister!” I didn’t know what to make of it at first but before long I became accustomed to hearing it many times a day.
One morning my patience was growing thin when Mark talked once too often. I made a novice-teacher’s mistake. I looked at Mark and said, “If you say one more word, I am going to tape your mouth shut!”
It wasn’t 10 seconds later when Chuck blurted out, “Mark is talking again.” I hadn’t asked any of the students to help me watch Mark, but since I had stated the punishment in front of the class, I had to act on it.
I remember the scene as if it had occurred this morning. I walked to my desk, very deliberately opened the drawer and took out a roll of masking tape. Without saying a word, I proceeded to Mark’s desk, tore off two pieces of tape and made a big X with them over his mouth. I then returned to the front of the room.
As I glanced at Mark to see how he was doing, he winked at me. That did it! I started laughing. The entire class cheered as I walked back to Mark’s desk, removed the tape and shrugged my shoulders. His first words were, “Thank you for correcting me, Sister.”
At the end of the year I was asked to teach junior high math. The years flew by, and before I knew it Mark was in my classroom again. He was more handsome than ever and just as polite. Since he had to listen carefully to my instruction in the “new math,” he did not talk as much in ninth grade.
One Friday things just didn’t feel right. We had worked hard on a new concept all week, and I sensed that the students were growing frustrated with themselves — and edgy with one another. I had to stop this crankiness before it got out of hand. So I asked them to list the names of the other students in the room on two sheets of paper, leaving a space between each name. Then I told them to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates and write it down.
It took the remainder of the class period to finish the assignment, but as the students left the room, each one handed me their paper. Chuck smiled. Mark said, “Thank you for teaching me, Sister. Have a good weekend.”
That Saturday, I wrote down the name of each student on a separate sheet of paper, and I listed what everyone else had said about that individual. On Monday I gave each student his or her list. Some of them ran two pages. Before long, the entire class was smiling. “Really?” I heard whispered. “I never knew that meant anything to anyone!” “I didn’t know others liked me so much!”
No one ever mentioned those papers in class again. I never knew if they discussed them after class or with their parents, but it didn’t matter. The exercise had accomplished its purpose. The students were happy with themselves and one another again.
That group of students moved on. Several years later, after I had returned from a vacation, my parents met me at the airport. As we were driving home, Mother asked the usual questions about the trip: How the weather was, my experiences in general. There was a slight lull in the conversation.
Mother gave Dad a sideways glance and simply said, “Dad?”
My father cleared his throat. “The Eklunds called last night,” he began.
“Really?” I said. “I haven’t heard from them for several years. I wonder how Mark is.”
Dad responded quietly. “Mark was killed in Vietnam,” he said. “The funeral is tomorrow, and his parents would like it if you could attend.” To this day I can still point to the exact spot on I-494 where Dad told me about Mark.
I had never seen a serviceman in a military coffin before. Mark looked so handsome, so mature. All I could think at that moment was, Mark, I would give all the masking tape in the world if only you could talk to me.
The church was packed with Mark’s friends. Chuck’s sister sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Why did it have to rain on the day of the funeral? It was difficult enough at the graveside. The pastor said the usual prayers and the bugler played taps. One by one those who loved Mark took a last walk by the coffin and sprinkled it with holy water.
I was the last one to bless the coffin. As I stood there, one of the soldiers who had acted as a pallbearer came up to me. “Were you Mark’s math teacher?” he asked. I nodded as I continued to stare at the coffin. “Mark talked about you a lot,” he said.
After the funeral most of Mark’s former classmates headed to Chuck’s farmhouse for lunch. Mark’s mother and father were there, obviously waiting for me. “We want to show you something,” his father said, taking a wallet out of his pocket. “They found this on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might recognize it.”
Opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been taped, folded and refolded many times. I knew without looking that the papers were the ones on which I had listed all the good things each of Mark’s classmates had said about him. “Thank you so much for doing that,” Mark’s mother said. “As you can see, Mark treasured it.”
Mark’s classmates started to gather around us. Chuck smiled rather sheepishly and said, “I still have my list. It’s in the top drawer of my desk at home.” John’s wife said, “John asked me to put his in our wedding album.” “I have mine, too,” Marilyn said. “It’s in my diary.” Then Vicki, another classmate, reached into her pocketbook, took out her wallet and showed her worn and frazzled list to the group. “I carry this with me at all times,” Vicki said without batting an eyelash. “I think we all saved our lists.”
That’s when I finally sat down and cried. I cried for Mark and for all his friends who would never see him again.
~Helen P. Mrosla
You Are a Marvel
Children are one third of our population and all of our future.
~Select Panel for the Promotion of Child Health, 1981
Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again... And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France.
When will we also teach them what they are?
We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move.
You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then have another who is, like you, a marvel?
You must work — we must all work — to make the world worthy of its children.
~Pablo Casals
We Learn by Doing
I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma.
~Eartha Kitt
Not many years ago I began to play the cello. Most people would say that what I am doing is “learning to play” the cello. But these words carry into our minds the strange idea that there exist two very different processes: (1) learning to play the cello; and (2) playing the cello. They imply that I will do the first until I have completed it, at which point I will stop the first process and begin the second. In short, I will go on “learning to play” until I have “learned to play” and then I will begin to play. Of course, this is nonsense. There are not two processes, but one. We learn to do
something by doing it. There is no other way.
~John Holt
The Hand
A teacher takes a hand, opens a mind, and touches a heart.
~Author Unknown
A Thanksgiving Day editorial in the newspaper told of a schoolteacher who asked her class of first graders to draw a picture of something they were thankful for. She thought of how little these children from poor neighborhoods actually had to be thankful for. But she knew that most of them would draw pictures of turkeys or tables with food. The teacher was taken aback with the picture Douglas handed in — a simple childishly drawn hand.
But whose hand? The class was captivated by the abstract image. “I think it must be the hand of God that brings us food,” said one child. “A farmer,” said another, “because he grows the turkeys.” Finally when the others were at work, the teacher bent over Douglas’s desk and asked whose hand it was. “It’s your hand, Teacher,” he mumbled.
She recalled that frequently at recess she had taken Douglas, a scrubby forlorn child by the hand. She often did that with the children. But it meant so much to Douglas. Perhaps this was everyone’s Thanksgiving, not for the material things given to us but for the chance, in whatever small way, to give to others.
~Source Unknown
The Little Boy
Don’t expect anything original from an echo.
~Author Unknown
Once a little boy went to school.
He was quite a little boy.
And it was quite a big school.
But when the little boy
Found that he could go to his room