We, as are millions of people all over the world, have been in a state of shock, bewilderment and dismay, the depth of sadness, grief, and anger that anything this outrageous could ever happen. We, our nation, and the world are sharing a grief process that has such magnitude that it defies description.

Part of the grief process has to do with getting in touch with all of our feelings and to be able to share them with others. Anger is often a part of the grief process. We, as people who have worked in the death and dying and grief areas through Attitudinal Healing for over 25 years, feel that it is important to be aware of our anger and to share our feelings without attacking others with our anger. Grief is a process that for most of us takes time. It encompasses stages of denial, shock, anger, confusion, deep sadness, and more.

Sometimes some of us become attached to our anger and we want to retaliate immediately. We want to make other people hurt as we have been hurt. Perhaps the time during grief is not the time to make decisions for revenge and retaliation. Perhaps it is a time for a Spiritual Awakening where we call on a Loving God, a Higher Power, to help us find a creative solution to the injustice, anger and fear that many of us find ourselves in. It is not sign of weakness to be compassionate not only to the victims and their families of this calamity, but to all the people in the world who are suffering.

Is it not possible for us to have a gigantic heart full of compassion and love rather than a big stick that wants revenge? Is it possible that retaliation might not help the healing process of ourselves or the world, but might make it worse?

Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela did not bring hate, anger and retaliation for all the tragedy and deaths that had occurred to their people. Rather than concentrating on the problem, they concentrated on the solution by bringing the Power of God, a Higher Power, into the equation. They felt the power of Peace and Love and eventually Forgiveness to be fundamental to the healing process for all the pain and grief that had been endured.

We have one of the greatest of countries with more freedom than any country in the world. Yet we are not perfect, and perhaps part of the solution is to look at our nation's and our personal mistakes of the past, correct them, and forgive our past. Absolutely nothing justifies even the thought of the heinous crimes that have occurred. It is important for each of us to search and find the deeper root causes of these malicious manifestations of others hate and revenge. We must certainly track down these terrorists and stop them. While they must be brought to justice, will that end and solve the underlying problem? Hardly. Problems are not solved at the level of the problem. More violence does not solve violence. We must raise above the level of the problem to another level to find the solution. To find that solution we must go deeply inside and reach to the place where we connect with our Higher Power, by whatever name it is known to us. There and perhaps only there will we find our own connection to the problem as well as our connection to the solution.

Let's avoid the tendency to be myopic in our vision by failing to see possible larger pictures at hand. Events that change the course of our lives or the course of history are never simplistic. There are always multiple layers of lessons and learning and hopefully, transformation that emerge over time.

We each have the unique responsibility to honor all of our feelings, fears, anger, frustrations, and the like, so important to the healing process. Likewise, each of these areas are influenced by events at hand. We also have a spiritual responsibility to not let those emotions, our most powerful tool, be manipulated and used to foster agendas we do not endorse. It is imperative that while the current level of force, security, and lock down is vitally necessary, make no mistake that we are currently under complete government control, down to internet and phone communications. While this may well be necessary at this stage of the game for security reasons, it is imperative in a democracy that it also be time limited.

It is, hopefully, a time for prayers and asking for help to be a vehicle for bringing Light into a world that seems at the moment to be suffering from a darkness that we have never seen before. It is a time to ask for God's help to bring more love and compassion into the world through our own lives. It is a time to look at our own relationships and to heal those relationships, where we are still holding on to anger and rage. It is a time to be patient as we learn to find more creative and loving, rather than destructive, solutions to the difficult problems that we in the world face.

Let us join together and not get stuck in the anger and hate of who is the strongest. Let us instead get stuck in who is the most compassionate, the most caring, the most loving and the most peaceful. Let each of us take personal responsibility for exposing and healing our own thoughts, attitudes, and shadows. Let us join hands and step into the Light together, a transparent and, therefore, translucent reflection of each other. As each of us heals, the world heals with us.