"What is the proper response to someone who commits a crime?"
Winston: What is the proper response and action that should be taken after someone has committed a murder, a rape, molested a child, threatened another, threatens suicide? I know what the current response is: prison, punishment, incarceration in a mental hospital, hatred and vengeance toward the perpetrator and so on. What would the enlightened person do when faced with one of the individuals I described?
Jane:There seems to be two parts to your question. One is: What kind of response do we have to them personally? And two: What is our obligation to the well-being of others whom this person has harmed or might harm in the future? Do we try to control their behavior so they don't harm others or themselves?
About one's personal response: When a person attacks someone, it is because they believe themselves to be attacked, on some level, by that other person. This means they are in an emotionally triggered state, and are disconnected from present moment experience. They are not responding to what is actually happening outside themselves. Their attacking response is a part of their emotional defense system, not who they really are.
The enlightened person would be seeing the Divine in each soul and relating to that, rather than the person's emotional defense system.
About what action to take or not to take: No interaction happens in a vacuum, and so there is not a generalized response for every circumstance. We are always in dialog with the world around us. Your response depends on the particular relationship you are in with this person. And the particular relationship you are in depends on what level you are in dialog with life.
What you seem to be asking for is some systematic way of responding to people who behave in this way, which is how the world is generally set up. But there is no systematic way to respond in the real world, because the real world is accessed in the present moment, which means you have to always be in living dialog, according to what is happening in the moment, and what your path is in this moment.
Each of us is on our own path in life, and must learn to follow our own inner guidance. We are not responsible for what happens in the world. All we are responsible for is being true to what is on our path, which includes following our inner prompting, which connects us to the most conscious aspects of ourselves. This includes our relationships with those we come in contact with; and can be like an untangling of the illusions this human life is made up of, in which we feel at the mercy of people and other forces outside ourselves.
Each person has their own piece of the puzzle in any situation; their own role according to the particular perspective they have in the universe, and their own stage of development and evolution.
There is a defining of reality that the common world of humanity is relating on the basis of. In large part it defines a world of enemies, conflict and disempowerment. And the systems we have set up to control each other are based on this construct. But these systems only make sense from within a separated place of avoiding present moment experience. When you come into the present moment with another, you enter into a completely different experience of reality, where what is actually real turns out to be much more positive; and a way forward is always possible. The impossibilities only exist from an avoidance of the present moment.
© 2011 Jane Ilene Cohen
