The Mirror of Osama bin Laden’s Death

On September 11th, 2001, we found ourselves united by a tragic event. Most of us mark this event by where we were when two commercial airliners flew into the World Trade Towers in New York City. I was standing in my parent’s dining room, watching with my Grandfather and mother. As we watched the towers fall one-by-one, we found ourselves in the realization that we were under attack. Then as the pentagon was hit and another plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field, we felt as though we were living in another world. I recall feeling like my head was spinning. I was having one of those out of body feelings where everything felt distorted. It all felt surreal.

9-11, as we call it, will forever be a part of our personal history, but more importantly a part of United States history. When we are long gone of this world, our children’s children will know about September 11th, 2001. It was and will always be a national tragedy because the affect it has had on the people of this nation is real. No one person feels 9-11 the same way, but the majority of us have feelings surrounding it. We lived it. If it wasn’t through the TV, then it was through the first responders, or survivors, or military personnel, or through watching the towers fall. We lived it. And many of us have visited ground zero, the hallowed grounds of where the towers once stood, and felt the moment even after the moment has long been gone into history.

This moment lives with us and on Sunday, May 1st, 2011 the mastermind of the September 11th attacks, Osama bin Laden, was finally found . He was living in suburban neighborhood in Pakistan. Most intelligence agents assumed he’d be hiding out in a cave somewhere, but he wasn’t. He was living right out in the open for 6 years before he was killed by United States Navy Seals.

President Obama gave a national address at 11:30pm that night. He let the nation know that bin Laden had been found and killed. Facebook and Twitter lit up like wild fire. Spontaneous celebrations in New York, DC, and other cities were seen. The nation found relief, but then there is another side to this story.

I can’t lie. I found myself happy that the terror reign of Osama bin Laden was over. Going back to the 1989, this man, Osama, started his terror network called al-Qaeda after the Russians withdrew from Afghanistan and they were done fighting them. Osama, with an affluent background as a Saudi had the money to fund his terror network.

Al-Qaeda is responsible for many terror attacks. Here’s a brief list:

• December 29, 1992 (first attack) Yemen bombing.
• February 1993 World Trade Center
•  March 1993 Bombay bombings
•  1994 Bojinka, Philippine Airlines Flight 434
• 1998 U.S.-embassy bombings
• October 12, 2000 USS Cole bombing
• September 11, 2001, attacks
• October 2002 Bali bombings
• November 2003 Istanbul attacks
• February 2004 Super Ferry 14 bombing
• March 11, 2004 Madrid train bombings
• May 2004 Khobar massacre
• July 7, 2005 London transport bombings
•  July 23, 2005 Sharm el-Sheikh attacks
• November 9, 2005 Amman hotel bombing
•  July 2006 Mumbai train bombings
• April 2007 Algiers bombings
• February 2008 Kandahar bombing
• June 2, 2008 Danish-embassy bombing
• Dec 4, 2008 Khost Intelligence Base Bombing
• June 2009 Little Rock recruiting office shooting
•  December 2009 Northwest Airlines Flight 253
• Dec 30, 2009 Khost Suicide Bomber
•  January 2010 Lakki Marwat suicide bombing
•  May 2010 attacks on Ahmadi mosques in Lahore
•  September 2010 Quetta bombing
•  October 2010 cargo plane bomb plot
•  August 2003 Imam Ali Mosque bombing
•  February 2004 Irbil bombings
•  March 2004 Iraq Ashura bombings
•  April 2004 Basra bombings
•  July 2005 Musayyib bombing
•  September 2005 Baghdad bombings
•  November 2005 Khanaqin bombings
•  April 2006 Buratha Mosque bombing
•  November 2006 Sadr City, Iraq bombings
•  February 2007 Baghdad market bombing
• March 2007 Tal Afar bombings
• April 2007 Baghdad Iraq bombings
• August 14, 2007 Yazidi community Iraq bombing
•  August 2009 Baghdad bombings
•  October 2009 Baghdad bombings
•  April 2010 Baghdad bombings
•  May 2010 Iraq attacks
•  January 2011 Iraq suicide attacks

This man is responsible for heinous crimes. His threats were to keep us all in fear waiting for the next attack. And even as his body decays at sea, I still hear the voices of others saying, “When will the retaliation come?” Even in death he still lives in the terror of the mind. The uncertainty of “what if’s?” and “what now’s?” This man lived terror so all he had to give was terror.

I hear many say that we should not celebrate death. Many people were disgusted at the celebrations. I didn’t find myself there and wondered why because I’m a spiritual person. I admire Gandhi and Martin Luther King. I write about love and light, and peace. So why was I not disturbed by the celebrations? It’s important to note that I wasn’t ecstatic either. I guess you could say that I was neutral with a smile on my face. I was happy for the nation. I felt the relief. I felt the energy of national pride and I knew Osama brought death to his own door. Who came to give it? In my eyes God because that’s what Osama wanted. He wanted death by the sword, but he doesn’t truly understand what it is he got because the other side isn’t what he imagined. There is a mirror he’s looking in and he can’t see his own reflection because his arrogance and denial shows him nothing.

Upon death, when we look into the mirror of truth or as it can also be referred to as “The Mirror of Life’s Truth” we have a few choice:

1. We look in the mirror and see ourselves as light. We see ourselves as radiating light reflecting off the mirror as it shines back at us. This happens when we are at peace, when we’re one with source, with God. We shine in truth because we have accepted and made peace with truth. In this stage, the light is so bright it shines out the mirror and we move through it, into the source for God.
2. We look in the mirror and see our human self with an aura of light. We still see ourselves, but this time we see our human selves with light radiating from us. It’s not quite bright enough to shine back at us from the mirror, but we see it. In this mirror we can still see ourselves because we accept truth, so we aren’t afraid to look at ourselves in the mirror. We see our human selves because in truth we’re not afraid to see our imperfections, which only exist in the human form so we look to grow. However, we still haven’t made peace and this is why we are not in full light. When we see the imperfections and accept them in conscious awareness, we merge with the mirror, becoming one and enter into a new cycle of life. The focus of this cycle becomes finding peace with our own selves in the next life.
3. We look in the mirror and see ourselves as someone/something else. This happens when we never knew ourselves. We never took the time to know our true identity. Because of this, we were unable to see our true nature so we developed a false identity and took it as our own. When we see this person in the mirror, we will know its not us because the mirror can only show truth. When we see this person or thing, we will see it as a lie. We will know it’s not real. It will require a long period of reflection, but over time we will see ourselves in the lie. When we do, we will be reborn with truth so we can begin to see ourselves as we are, not as we “think” we are in the next life.
4. We look in the mirror and see darkness. When we look in the mirror and see darkness, we see despair, emptiness, and a lack of a connection to the One. In this mirror we see the separation from life. We feel horrible in this mirror. It’s a mirror of suffering and delusion. We can’t see hope in this mirror because we’ve lost hope inside our own heart. We lost spirit. This mirror will draw us in because we can’t escape the emptiness that is the darkness we see. We will fall into this mirror and fall out the other side. The cycle of suffering will have us for what will feel like an eternal cycle, but it will end when the suffering we have ourselves in becomes greater than believing in the hope we once believed in again. Meaning, we will choose to give hope another try. When we do the mirror will be a life we are destined to live in hope for something better than what once was in our previous life.
5. We look in the mirror and see nothing. This mirror is the mirror of self denial. In this mirror we see nothing because nothing exists in this mirror. We have rejected life and given life a new name. The problem with this is that life can not be renamed. Life is of the Spirit and just is. We have chosen to believe we know all in the name of truth so when the mirror shows us truth we see nothing, because we already think we know what we should see. And reject anything that is not what we thought. This mirror is tricky because how can we free ourselves from our own denial in the after life? This requires illusion. There is no mirror and with nothing to look at, then nothing exists, not even life. At this stage, all that exists is nothing feeding on nothing trying to become something more because they have to be more then nothing, right? I ask a question because, remember, this is all an illusion. They (once we)will continue to feed on each other until the illusion is broken. The arrogance of the self deluding pride has to be broken down. This is suffering at its highest level, because self-denial causes the most suffering. Once they break free of the denial, they crawl toward the light only to find a tiny mirror. They look in the mirror and before their eyes the mirror widens as they see themselves again. It grows until it becomes big enough for them to fit through. They can’t wait to get out of there so they crawl through as soon as they can. And when they do, they find themselves in a life closely resembling their last, until they come back to the mirror and see something instead of nothing. Until this happens they will be caught in this karmic cycle of suffering over nothing.

Stage five is where Osama would find himself. His crimes where the crimes of a self deluded man who felt he was greater than justice, but justice is what we give to our selves by our own actions. I felt relief knowing what he had done for over two decades, but did someone shooting Osama in head bring me that relief? Or did my own thoughts on the situation bring them? I feel sick to my stomach just attempting to think about such a violent act as shooting someone, but I find peace at the thought of him being gone from this life. And likewise, I find sadness when I reflect on his afterlife because I know he brought it on himself. As for him being physically dead, I feel nothing because death is an illusion. And for how he died, I feel neutral because, again, he brought it on himself.

This was Osama’s life. He lived for terror and died by the hands of those he provoked into fear. Should we feel disgust for those who celebrate his death? No. We should understand them because on 9-11, we all were them. Some of us healed faster than others. But if we are to be honest with ourselves, we all wish terror away. Killing is not an answer for peace, but in order to get there we have to follow our collective life cycle and admit we were afraid and most of us still are afraid. How many of us think about a terror attack when we board a plane? Or feel uneasy when we see a group of Muslim men in full garb? Celebrating death is only a reminder to live in love. It’s the reflection in the mirror of our human nature. If you see it as disgusting then you reflect disgust, but if you see it in understanding and love, you reflect that love onto those who know nothing else than to celebrate death.

To reject or deny those who were celebrating Osama’s death, in essence is rejecting the love of our own reflection. I can’t reject them because the honest truth is that at one time I was them. And I’ve grown from it because I am escaping the fear. I understand the need to celebrate. I understand that celebration isn’t just about death, but about the freedom from fear. They just feel relief and put that relief on Osama’s death. But the truth is that Osama is a reminder of why violence and terror can never live, because it’s born out of a mirror of nothingness where life doesn’t exist because the illusion of self denial prevents it. They think they can terrorize the world into submission, but understand for them they offer nothing, so in the end there is nothing. But for us, for those who choose to grow, life will always be.

Remember this when you see something you disprove of, before you speak, before you do anything grab a mirror and look. Reflect on yourself and in it find compassion because in what you see is the truth of why you see it in the first place. All of us see in others something we need to accept within ourselves first.

Thank you for reading. God Bless us all!