What Is A Murderer’s Heart Made Of?

Some time ago, a film director friend showed me a video anonymously sent to him. It was of the execution of a murderer who had been found guilty and sentenced to the electric chair. Those images have left a strong impact on me ever since, not so much because of their grotesque and morbid nature but because of what they have shown me about our global society –and I include myself as part of the whole.

This was a murderer who premeditatedly went into a house and killed a whole family in cold blood, including two small children. Naturally, I don’t approve of such conduct for a moment, but I don’t want to dwell on an analysis of what that individual did or failed to do. There are hundreds of reports and studies on this subject from the psychiatric, psychological or sociological point of views.

Rather, the video impressed me, most of all, because the scenes in it enabled me to see into the nature of a society which, all over the world, “needs” to witness or “confirm” the death or the punishment of its criminals, because, according to the norms which we ourselves have laid down, it is the only way to redress the wrong done to the victims and pay off the “debt” of their deaths. It is a perfect example of the popular saying: “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” I ask myself: how is this possible? Now that we’ve reached the twenty-first century, the end of a great cycle of 26,000 years of geological history in which we have been preceded by who knows how many still undiscovered ancestral civilizations, how is it that the so-called “advanced” society we have become still spreads such hatred and anger everywhere without realizing that that is precisely the reason why such murderers exist? How is it that we do not understand that they are only a reflection of our own lack of love? Where does our heart lie when we wish for the death of a human being, even if he is a murderer? I would like to find a scientific study that might give me some clues to the conduct, not of the murderer, but of a society which is unable to replace the word “revenge” with forgiveness.

Our judgements of the “other” have reached such an extreme that we put a label on that kind of behaviour without even penetrating its depths. Do we really think we’ve been able to locate and explain its causes? I honestly think that the kind of individuals who may come to murder others in such a cold and calculating way do have a heart. It may be a resentful, abused and numbed one, but even so, it is a heart that could only be created out of love. What goes through the mind of a murderer in the moment of ending the life of another human being? Absolutely nothing, I think! Those kinds of persons, who have usually been diagnosed with “mental” problems, suffer from the same kind of problem as the society which produces them. The problem is that neither as a society, nor as individuals, are we willing to exchange control by the mind for control by the heart. When the heart becomes leader on the individual level, the change in us begins to show different results on the social levels. There is no doubt the rate of homicides and other crimes will exponentially fall as a result.

Thus, to make those crime rates fall, each of us needs to work on himself or herself. That is our contribution, in no other way will it succeed.

Where does a murderer come from? Surely from a home without love or with a sickly love, from parents who have not learned to love themselves. No one can tell us whether we are or are not fit to be parents. In many cases one becomes a parent just like that, because if others are, why not ourselves… But let’s face up to the fact that not all of us are fit for this task, which should be regarded as a sacred calling because the future of our world depends on our children. It is in our children that we deposit the legacy of our energy and if that has been a loveless energy, the only thing we bequeath are shadows that multiply the darkness.

Such lovelessness spreads like a weed because we allow it to happen. We are addicted to our personal dramas. We cannot help reproducing our sorrow and sadness, if you don’t want to believe it is so, why then is it that the t.v., the internet, books, films and songs endlessly mirror our anger and our hatred? Why not decide, from now on, to choose love as the seed which we plant? This seed of love is much more powerful than those weeds which grow everywhere, only there are not enough sowers willing to nourish, care for and propagate it in a way that would allow us to reach into the hearts of murderers to awaken and help them until they’re ready to heal. The heart of a murderer is the same heart that all of us have. It has the same capacity for loving as ours. Let us love first so that they may follow our example.

I leave you with the words of one of my great guides, who has inspired me to quote the following beautiful poem at the very moment when I am finishing this article…my wish is the same as that of all of us who, in whatever period, have regarded love as the only option:

“You bewilder us with your Grace, all evils transformed into Goodness.
You are the master Alchemist.
You Light the Fire of Love in Earth and Sky, in Heart and soul of every being.
Through your Loving, existence and non-existence Merge.
All opposites unite.
All that is profane becomes Sacred again.”
~ Rumi

Until next time and don’t forget to be love,