This is an email that I sent to a friend. I'm posting it here verbatim because after I reread it I realized it's a good expression of things I need to say, and that maybe someone else who feels the way I do might get something from it.

It's not the TV that's the problem (I haven't been watching TV, actually), it's the what we as a nation are doing. Yes, there's always been pain and suffering and tragedy, as long as there has been life. Finding a way to cope with that is part of being alive. But right now, we are contributing to that pain and suffering. We're a part of it. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away, and doesn't make it not real.

I'm not crazy. I feel more clear headed than I have in a long time, in fact. It's just painful to be so aware. I can't turn away from it though. I feel that is the very least I can do, if nothing else, is to bear witness for these people we are harming. To be aware of the pain and suffering we are inflicting.

I've spoken often with you guys about my awareness expanding and how lately I've felt more real and more here than ever before. I've written extensively about it on my blog. Well, this is part of it. You don't get to be more aware of the joy, wonder, and awe of being alive, without also being more aware of the pain, and sorrow, and longing.

Is this not the true message of Christ, the one in whose name so many claim to do these things? To reach out and love everyone, to love your enemy as your neighbor... well, to love requires empathy. As Phil Dick tried to tell all of us in his books, empathy is what is special about human beings. Through empathy lies the path to liberation from this horrible cycle we are all in.

I spoke to you once about how I have moments where I feel that we are all one... when I look at another person and I am certain they I, and that person, are both just facets of the same Self, the consciousness that is the foundation of reality itself. If we could but truly understand what we are, we could no more harm another person than we could harm ourselves.

I don't know what to do. This cycle of hatred and destruction has been ongoing for as long as we have existed. I can't stop it. However, at the very least, I can see it, and try to understand it, and feel it in my heart. The very least I can do is understand that the people we are victimizing are real, living people, as I am. That this burning longing I feel within my self, so intense, so alive... is also within the people whose lives we are so callously taking. I can be a witness to the crime.

I know that's not a happy thing. However, it's a real thing. This is who I am, this is how I feel.