QiGong Prison Ministry

Google Map view of the Prisons

 

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An even better all access to all kinds of information, video, podcasts and technical articles on QiGong:

http://qigonginstitute.org/html/qigonghealth.php

Cuirous about QiGong... here ia brief description on the NIH page:

http://nccam.nih.gov/news/thismonth/april09.htm

Its been a long time since I taught outside of the prison. I have been invited by One House of Peace to offer a Monday evening QiGong class here in Sacramento. This class will integrate wisdom from both ancient and contemporary QiGong traditions. We will learn movements, visualizations and meditation practices to cultivate a profound sense harmony, as well as renewed health and vitality. Together we will apply QiGong healing techniques to personal, intra-personal, societal and global issues purposefully invoking global as well as personal peace. If you're in town and want to join me I'd love to practice with you.

It will be a 6 week series Monday evenings, February 2 - March 9 .... 6:10 pm – 7:30 pm, $72. you can come at 5:30 for the daily sit at the house if you wish. To Register: judy@onehouseofpeace.org or 916-921-2172

From the flyer: JUDY TRETHEWAY has been teaching QiGong in prisons, healthcare and recreational facilities since 1996. Currently she teaches 5-7 classes a week inside Folsom prison. This is the first opportunity “people on the streets” have had to study with her in years. She has an active spiritual direction practice and as served our community as a Hospice and Hospital Chaplain.

One House of Peace

1470 27th Avenue • Sacramento CA • 916.456.1795
www.onehouseofpeace.org

An Interview with Doug Booth in Seeds of Unfolding

Finding Freedom on the Inside
by Sally Sommer

Doug, how did you get started teaching meditation in the prisons?

I understood the teachings of the Buddha to be directed at the relief of suffering and I saw the prisons as places where suffering is at its worst, perhaps, and wondered if meditation would help. I had read books by Bo Lozoff, whose work in this area for the past 25 or 30 years has been very helpful to inmates. About four years ago I called up the assistant warden and program director of the Santa Fe Penitentiary, south facility, and asked him if he'd like to have a free meditation program. I called it "stress reduction/meditation" to make it more palatable to the mostly Christian administration. He said yes, so

http://www.seedsofunfolding.org/issues/xvuk/features.htm

 

 

There are two sayings that have been moving around me for a while. I’m not offering them up as Truth with a capital “T”. I would like to offer them up as a starting point to explore some ideas about spiritual transformation of the prison system and our roles as volunteers, and even more specifically, our coming together in this newly formed group.

You can’t imagine what you have not experienced.

You can’t solve a problem with the same consciousness that created it.

We have been pulled together by unseen forces; as individuals dedicated to quickening the Field of Love inside our jails and prisons.  As stars in a galaxy, we have been swirling around the same source field, living out our own unique way of manifesting Love’s desire to penetrate the walls and offer itself as a viable choice.

We have been called inside to help build an infrastructure of wisdom and experiences for those locked up to realize their potential and become catalysts for their own and the collective’s healing process. Inside, in our own groups, in our own ways, we bring forth the experiences that allow us each to imagine in a new way.

Now we are invited to bring our behind-the-walls experiences of this Field of Love’s potential outside; and invite them to fuel an imagination of a humanity that no longer needs to scapegoat and demonize its troubled brothers and sisters.  We are tending to the sprouting vision of our society’s evolution beyond the need for punishment.

We are a part of a consciousness that has come to know and deeply trust that there are no “others.”  We are expanding this awareness inside an institution reflecting a  different worldview. We have experienced the collective spiritual soul with these folks who have been cast out as demons.  We have imagined and witnessed the transformative potential made flesh inside the most barren of wombs.

Many people outside the walls are actively engaged in a new a paradigm, a consciousness actively working out of love rather than fear.  There are not so many who have had the experiences we have had from which to apply this new consciousness to the evolution of our criminal justice system. 

We have experienced, so we can imagine.
We are a part of the new consciousness needed
for the evolution of the criminal justice system.

We can release the criminal justice system from its old paradigm into a new vision.
We hold in our personal fields of awareness the energetic seeds for an evolutionary leap.   We hold the vision of seed becoming fruit. 
We are here today as the Field of Compassion cultivates its own becoming.
May we listen deeply and serve humbly.

I wander free, freely.
Engaging in the vitality of the forest, the dance floor, the garden.
Engaging the Qi, as I am inspired, as I choose, as I am chosen.
I have been chosen to engage with the Qi in a very special place.
A special place called Folsom Prison.

There those that I practice with, those that I teach have a way of living and viewing the world
as different from mine as Yin is to Yang.  (And then at times I find there is absolutely no difference at all.)

For all that my life is filled with creative vibrancy, theirs is filled the sterile and the mundane.
I live with people who love to experiment as they cook with fresh imaginative ingredients.
It is easy for me to eat as I choose organic vegetarian. The men inside must swallow the same o same o pre frozen meals bounteous in their cheap starches. No fresh veggies from the garden for them. 

I live with art and spaciousness, people I have chosen and love dearly. My friends inside might have chosen their cellmate, or maybe not.  Their “house” is tiny, sterile, harsh and hard with concrete or granite walls and the prerequisite bars.  The locks on the doors are on the outside, mine on the inside.

I get to love my family and play with my grandchildren, engaging with them spontaneously as my longing to connect picks up the phone.  Their families have to pay through the nose for collect calls

I wear what I want -- colors, styles of my choosing that compliment how I want to look in the world.  They must wear ill-fitting smocks of blue polyester with PRISONER printed loudly across the legs and backs.

This is all as prison is and who could expect differently? And today, my heart opens to the absence of the natural world in their lives.

When I wander in the forest I see them everywhere:  the young tree struggling to grow out of a rock; the multi-topped tree trying new ways when the old life was cut off; the piles of thinned out trees waiting to be burned; the valiant who survive anywhere, somehow, and the those who crowded life and have been cut down for it.

They are never far from my thoughts, for they are a piece of who I am, a piece of my consciousness.  We engage together in the fundamental stream of life force energy.  The vitality that under girds yin and yang, the yin and the yang harmonized, the new flow created when yin and yang play fruitfully together.  We have surfed together on the energy that carries us towards our highest potentials, danced with the pull of the moon, the stars and the sun; and drawn from roots of our humanness sustained by the grace of the earth. 

We fumble, we partake, we reject and we embrace.  Together we are moved and deliberately move into a field of awareness that sustains all life.  As we have these experiences, they shift who we are, they shift the nature of our physical energy, our psyche and our spiritual energies.

The consequences of our experiments can not be left at the door; can not be left inside the prison chapel; are not relegated to just our hours together on Wednesdays or Thursdays. 

For me the energy that sustains these men, sustains me, and that energy travels with me in the forest, garden or on the dance floor. It is fundamental, and as such I cannot shake it.  Many times I find myself gathered into their story when I should like to focus more clearly on what is at hand, my family, the forest, the weeds of the garden.  I used to shame myself for not being able to control my thoughts better. 

I am coming into an understanding now that because of the depths of our practicing together, especially the depths of intention that I hold for us to know and experience the universal vital nature of harmony; in that field of communion, where we move together deep inside the play of yin and yang, of prisoner and free volunteer; we have a binding, a sincerity of energetic connection that has become an integral part of how I experience life at a fundamental level. 

The colloquial way of saying this might be that “they have gotten in my blood, or under my skin.”  Not in a way that has to do with the specifics of who they are, although those with greater Te or sincerity, integrity play forward in my mind often. Not in a way that threatens my vow to the institution to avoid undue familiarity.

They are a part of the ground of my being now, inside any deep experience of communion I have away from the prison setting when I have invoked the holy within me and have surrendered to the holy around me and dissolved the distinction between the two.  Then, in that field of energy that grows the garden, melts an old tree into the ground, or inspires a composer to a great dance beat, I find myself at the ground of our beingness.  While we each may describe this place somewhat differently or take different paths there; it is the same vast field of primal source energy, balanced harmonized Qi, the source of life, the source of inspiration. And there they are, my traveling companions.

So now as I sit inside an old hollow stump of silver and char writing on the ridge top, I remember them, and I pray that the energetic field of consciousness that binds us will transfer this bounty of green, this beautiful map of the cycle of life in the forest, the howl of the wind and the strength of the sun, in some way to them.  Inside their depths, from the roots up…and when I practice with them next time, may this quality of knowing the field together, activate in not only the subtle realms, but also in the more conscious realms of our awareness.  Together may we explore the possibilities that extend both into our life paths and those that carry us no matter where we life or what label we have across our backs.

I was asked to write something for The Vital Force, the journal of the T'ai Chi Chih community about why I go inside.  Other blog posts from earlier years have sought to answer this same question. There is a piece of the mystery happening here that seems reluctant to be pinned down with words.  Is this difficulty, an indicator the authenticity of this call?  Perhaps, nevertheless it seems to serve me and others to keep trying.  Here is the latest attempt:

Often I am asked “Why do you go inside? Why is this so important to you?” I have answered many ways over the 10 years I have been answering this call. Silly or serious answers seem to scratch only the surface. A few weeks ago a student inside, of considerable integrity, asked, and the answer that stumbled out felt closer than I have come yet to putting words around this call and response, this “pull” and “push” that drives and sustains me as I offer 4-7 programs 2-3 days a week.

The men (or probably better said, the men’s souls) “pulled” me in. Jim Hecker (original inmate teacher) had been visualizing a class while practicing for a year before it was manifested. It didn’t take more than a simple invitation, and that “yes” was out of my mouth before my mind had a chance to ask any questions. Still, 10 years later, they still “pull” me inside.

When there is a deep sincere hunger, the Holy responds with food. I have been “pushed” by spiritual forces that have visited me in my dreams and humbled me with the honor of carrying healing love inside. My other life activities have played supporting roles to enable this call, nothing seems to get in the way.

Once inside the sanctuary of the chapels, the men’s sincerity pulls the teachings out of me; the moves, the words, the stillness always are fresh and vital. Once inside the patterns of movement and stillness, the love of the universe pushes through. I feel so very much in the middle of these two powerful currents of Qi: all that is seeking an opening to bring harmony inside this place defined by its lack of harmony; and, all the hunger for the harmony, from those who seek refuge from the label of PRISONER stamped upon their lives. Through grace I have a roll in the expressions of these powerful Qi flows. “May I stay grounded, sincere, and open to ever expanding flows,” is my prayer as I enter. I leave, spent and grateful, in awe of the magnitude of blessings I have received and witnessed while offering myself.

Here (inside the prison chapel teaching) I am who I am meant to be. Here, I open inviting the flowering of the love inside me that yearns to be expressed, shared, and released. Here, I am the gift god means us all to be to one another. Here, I have no doubts of the goodness inherent within each of us. Here, I am guided to see beyond betrayal, domination, posturing, and many other manifestations of fear humans inflict upon each other. Here, inside all the contrasts, my coming makes possible an expression of harmony, an alignment with the energy of love, an internal cultivation of peace, inside me, inside the men, inside the prison. Here, I have found my place in a community of souls eager to seek together and be called forth by the harmony.

Quaker author Parker J. Palmer wrote "Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you." It is a good thing to be acting out of the divine blueprint for my life. Yet many times over the years my sense of self importance, my pride in “going inside” and of being their spiritual teacher, the ugly savior energy and other such egoic efforts to capture the spirit’s flag have caused me much consternation, sent me on sabbaticals and into therapy. Over and over I have been returned, humbled, seeing a little more clearly, allowing my life to do what it intends to do with me: push and pull forth harmony, until the foundation of all life, becomes my life.

This blog has been quiet lately because I am taking another break form my prison work, this time for the birth of grandsons expected in April and May. Ive been at a Spiritual Directors International conference and am now retreating at a near friends home outside of Washington DC.  My meditations this morning inspired me to read some of Quaker Healer John Calvi's writings on his web site ( johncalvi.com) and what I found was a great recipe for folks like me, in times like now:

 

"Friends today are called to put out so many fires of injustice; cruelty, militarism and poverty; it may be that we haven’t been so busy since the days of King Charles and Cromwell.  If this is so, then Friends should be called to greater spiritual disciplines than ever before – spiritual disciplines because the crux of our faith is to listen for the Divine message and at upon it.  Listening and acting have become more difficult as the noise of the world from suffering and deceit has risen.

So, what disciplines should we attend to?  Perhaps these:

• enough silence, listening for the Divine, trying not to hear yourself
• enough rest and nurture to be clear vessels to receive Light
• enough stillness to feel our humility as fragile carriers of Light
• enough comfort to offer our best effort
• enough strength kept up for the long haul
• enough concentration to focus while listening
• enough love of life to see beauty while surrounded by pain"

from "A Call to Spiritual Discipline"  Friends Journal May 2007

Here are three poems from one of my students inside.  The first relates to the man he killed.  The second speaks for itself, and the third was one he wrote after one of the first spiritual circles we shared.  Sorry i am not allowed to share his name, but enjoy his poetry!

 Him

As the Spring time Ends,

and summer sets in,

i remember Him.

 

As I trace the lines in my hands,

from the ends to where they begin,

i remember Him.

 

As my heartbeat quickens,

and it's difficult to breathe in,

i remember Him.

 

As my eyes spill forth tears,

'Cause they're full  to the brim,

i remember him.

 

When i think of all the chances,

That I'll never have again,

I remember Him.

 

Now i know that life is precious,

and how to be a friend,

These things I would have never known

if I did't remember Him.

 *****

 

Inspiration

 

They are me, and I am them,

Another broken hearted, wounded man,

No matter what they say, or what they do,

It's a manifestation of what they're going through,

And its only to themselves that they can be true,

But they are me, and I am them,

Another struggling while wounded,

Broken hearted,

Man. 

 

 *****

 

Freedom Flight

 

Within this rust-coated birdcage

Populated by Eagles, Hawks, Falcons,

And the ones who wish to be seen as such;

Wings clipped, hooded, and jessed,

There are the select few

Who still yearn for the open sky.

Not fettered or encumbered with the weight

Of preoccupation with predatory pretense,

They instead would be content

To merely fly once more,

Feeling the wind slice through to their innermost parts.

they would forever forego meat

And only dine upon fruits

If allowed one final opportunity

To feel weightless,

The sun warming their back,

And the future as open, vast, and limitless

As the heavens that beckon them ... 

 

 

 

 

Funny how truths collide. In listening to one of my inside students last week speak about his difficulties with his work supervisor, I responded with a teaching that had a mere glimmer of a thread into a teaching I had once received.

He did not need to feel helpless. Nor did he need to turn to his habit of stoic resentments and stubborn justifications of his actions. He had some active, prayerful steps he could take. He could stay clean of resentments and judgments. He could activate his own connection with the spiritual support field. He could know deeply that they were both loved unconditionally by God.

Most importantly he could release, with his prayers and attitude, her (his supervisor’s) personal healing journey to the higher powers. Her work was her work. His work was his. They were bound together by the challenges of their relationship (the triggers and mirroring they were for each other); as well as the healing energy of God’s unconditional love and regard for them both. As his awareness was active in that larger energy of healing, it would support (without obligating) her participation in the same field. Invite the healing for himself. Invite the healing for her. Then watch for Grace, listen and follow.

Today, as I am combing my journals for poems, watching the rain fall quietly outside my window, I find the same teaching in my own journal. In 2005 I had been reading Walter Wink’s Powers that Be (p111). He wrote of how praying for your enemies submits them to a power greater than their oppression of you. This does not deny their power to enact injustice, but proclaims a greater overarching power of justice to which both sufferer and oppressor can turn to for inspiration, salvation and forgiveness. This style of prayer calls upon the “angel” of the oppressor to accountability of Divine Truth.

Then a few pages later on Valentines Day I wrote:  The key to freedom is meeting oppression with love.  Not escaping oppression by rejecting or fleeing, but engaging oppression with the dynamic of love.

In the prison system all kinds of us/them relationships exist. Staff, inmates, and guards see their lives and actions as negatively defined by those around them. Everyone suffers, everyone oppresses. Another way can open!

May all of the potential facets of this diamond in the rough learn how to pray for the light to shine through themselves and each other. For surely the potential is there for the friction to merely be the hands of the Holy chiseling out a diamond.

This inspiring story/testimonial from one of my inside students is posted here after being reviewed and approved, but must remain Anonymous.  English is this man's second language and I have left it as he wrote it.

    Hell on earth, an existing universe created by mankind and inside our mind.  Yet, some of us will find that there is peace and beauty where least expected.  A place many would not survive unless one learned the techniques of respect, kindness and self control.  With meditation, we can find enlightenment and maybe a little bit of Heaven here on earth -- in my case, prison.

    Before I met Judy Tretheway, our Qigong instructor, my life was a living hell.  I say this because I'm in a place many would call hell on earth ... a prolong nightmare wishing I would wake up from.   I walked among hardened criminals like myself at the high security New Folsom Prison.  Our daily monotonous life is similarly compared to a caged animal being lock-up in a small concrete cell with a slit of a window completely sealed airtight from the world outside. ... Only sunlight penetrates through the glass window, a teaser to remind us living inside of the freedom they have missed. 

    By the time we get our yard for good behavior, most of us walk around on eggshells all day like a ticking time bomb ready to explode at any minute.  Angry for being treated unfairly and being locked down for too long a period of time with nothing to do except wait ... and wait ... and wait some more for something to happen, or someone who would dare to challenge them.  I have seen and had more fights with other inmates than the normal person living in the street in their entire lives. 

    Hell was where I was living.  There was no meaning to life as I saw it in this God forsaken place. Walking in the valley of death is literally the term for it.  One will never know who or when something sharp will penetrate their body when their backs are turn.  Every minute and every second of everyday I have to put my guards up, assuming everything and everyone to be evil and dangerous to me.  Everywhere I go I have to watch my back fearing I will be devoured by evil ... until Judy came into our lives and introduces us fellow inmates the ancient techniques of QiGong and Tai Chi Chih. 

    After a few weeks of strenuous meditation practices, I felt extremely calm and at peace with myself.  There was something different in me like being reborn – similarly compare to the Christians being born again.  I've learned to accept my life as it is and that has opened my eyes to a whole new different view.  The way I walk and talk, the way I feel toward others, and the beauty I see in my surrounding left me at awe; like sweet candies, I couldn't get enough of it.  I hunger for more rhythms and new moves from Judy.  Whenever she shows up for our practices, everyone felt electrifying and full of energies at her presents. 

    In a loveless and uncaring place like this, we crave for her energy.  She brought peace into our lives in a place of violence ... a place of mistrust and paranoia.  Connecting us with the universe and finding the energy within.  Qi or Chi, as some of us call it, is in all of us.  It can be generated in the lower abdomen or the "Dan Tien", through QiGong or Tai Chi Chih moving meditations.  I know I have a lot more to learn from Judy – this wonderful woman who gave her devotions and patience with our clumsy, unbalance QiGong movements.

    On a sunny afternoon not too long ago, I was in the yard with fifty or so inmates.  As I got through exercising on the yard and was a bit exhausted and overheated in the hot sun,  I needed to find a shady area to relax and cool down.  Under the shadow of the light pole, I found myself sitting on the green grass with a narrow shade next to the chapel.  There are no trees, no kind of beauty that nature have to offer here at New Folsom, just the gentle breeze and the open blue skies.  Mankind's ugliness and cruelty have built this place we call hell to destroy our dignity, pride and have kept us from roaming God's beautiful earth.  Yet, as I sit there under the shade ... relax...eyes closed...feet cross... I took that perfect opportunity to meditate.  My personal believes with meditation of any kind is that it can cause healings within yourself and healing toward those we want to heal... It is like a prayer directly to God Himself – connecting with the universe.  My state of mind was calm and I thought about the QiGong movements Judy taught me.

    Imagining the movements flowing...slow and gentle...arms swaying gently like waves under the sea.  After about ten minutes of meditation, my whole body felt light as a feather like I was flying.  I can feel the Chi as strong as ever.  Everything around  me seem to look different like watching a black and white movie – only now in colors.  It all made perfect sense to me.  The ugly hellish place everyone came to know no longer existed through my eyes.  Not even the tall ugly concrete walls surrounding us could take away the wonderful feelings I had felt at that moment.  Where others see ugliness, I saw the beauty everywhere.  Even though I'm sitting in the prison ground and are surrounded with bad people, I felt it wasn't that horrible anymore.  I'm in a place most people would cringe at the thought of the word prison along, but there I was, sitting in the shade blissfully happy. 

    The tranquility I must have felt causes shock to others around me.  They were aghast to see something out of the ordinary, something they are not use to seeing in there banal life in here.  Others came to question me; some just stares quizzically like I'm some nut.  I can hear their criticism when they walked by.  People whom I knew and hang around with tried to shame me, or saying how insane I was sitting there meditating all by myself. Their ignorance had blinded their senses of caring and understanding toward others.  If the river flows one way, they all must go with the flow.  That is how it is in here, if someone acted differently, then they stand out and are ridicule by others.  I do understand why they reacted the way they do.  While I'm walking in the light, they are still surrounded by ugliness and darkness known to them as hell.  I'd tried explaining to them, but it was to no avail.  They do not see what I have seen.

    Paramahansa Yogananda once said, "Your eyes register only a limited degree of the creative vibration that makes up everything  in creation... Those persons who have perceptive eyes enjoy beauty everywhere."  I thought I was the only one who had felt this wonderful git until I read one of his quotes.  He made perfect sense where I had failed to explain.  I felt it, but I could not express it even in simple terms.

    Hell on earth ... does it really exist?  Of course it is.  Unless you have meditated, and believe in meditation, you will not understand what I'm telling you.  There is a calmness feeling when a person meditates.  It is known that when a person meditates, the chemicals in their body changes, their mood changes, and their reactions changes Hell on earth does exist, but only in the mind of those who think they are so.  We can all find heaven in a place we came know as hell.  Just look around and you shall find!  The hell I was living in sometimes creeps up behind my back, but now I know there is a cure to wade off that lifestyle.  At last I come to understand the meaning of life and the beauty God had created for me, and maybe for you too ... even in prison.

 

 

Am I teaching the men coping skills so then can "go with the flow" of all the violence dished out at them -- by their fellow prisoners, by the nature of their confinement, by themselves, by the institution, by society?

Am I teaching skills to roll over, expose your belly and take all the treading upon with an inner smile?

QiGong practices will provide tools to endure the harsh, violent dehumanizing time of incarceration.  QiGong connects with a bigger field of harmonized energy filled with potential.

QiGong shifts the human body, psyche and soul in overt and obvious ways as well as subtle and subversive ways. To bring your body into a state of harmony and balance has consequences that you may not choose deliberately.  Ripples vibrate flowing out from the center of awareness we cultivate, shifting our essence and relationships and surroundings.

I teach QiGong in prisons as a process essential to my personal journey.  As I learn to serve those who seem so different from me, I know them as essentially the same as me. The ability to be change, to be peace, and the motivation to change violent behaviors, institutions, traditions arise from an internal place. When we know personally the place where peace and change dance as brother and sister.

When the impulse to become an instrument of change, and instrument of peace, comes from that core connection with the root of all life – with moving stillness – it is emerges from a source much greater that the self – then our service rolls out on the flow of God’s love and reaches amazing places.

Revolutionary change, such as what is needed to turn the prison system and cycles of human violence and alienation inside out, will not come from anger or fear– even though anger at prison conditions and fear of violence is a natural response. It will come from insight into the nature of human violence by those who have been there, someone who can see the path out, because they have suffered inside the belly of the beast.

Someone like Victor Frankle who in watching his comrades in concentration camps loose their sense of purpose quickly die, while those who founds scraps of purpose, stayed alive in their souls, and could live off moldy crusts of bread.

Someone like Nelson Mandela who could lead a nation through tribunals of reconciliation because he knew, and yet could see beyond, the poison of human hatred that had held them captive for years.

One of the highest visions I hold is that my coming, and the tools of movements of balance that we share, will quicken (catalyze/nurture/stimulate) such leadership – and the comradeship and internal support essential for systematic change as well as personal change.

I trust that as we cultivate balance and harmony within the chapel, it does not begin and end with our class. There are thousand sparks of divined light in any prison – God flows on the human kindness that operates even clandestinely undercover.

The truest revolution is a revolution of the heart. The healthiest change is one that happens from within, organically seeking the greater potential we all have as our human birthright.

QiGong moves us into a state of fluid participation with universal energies of a greater wisdom, love and harmony than our own. As we move our various dimensions of being into harmony we emerge transformed.  This deeper level of participation with the life force that knows nothing of lockdowns, cell bars, guards and gates, and will carry us towards a time when prisons are a thing of the past.

For me Qigong is the divine flow of God’s grace manifesting in the here and now inside my very being.

When a group flows together we experience a very real place of communion and harmony.

Grace moving us together.

QiGong gives me a physical relationship with the spiritual.

I know myself as spirit incarnate;

I experience my movements being lead from within,

from the core essence, the inner light.

I learn and practice the alignment of my body and breath,

my emotions and mind, my past and future, my yin and yang …

I can stand in my truth, flowing between form and formlessness.

Encouraged by the men inside to stop being so shy about my poetry,  I promised I would get some of my prison related poems out of my journals...  Prison poems for blog 07.do

In taking out the prison poems, I got together acollection of Wandering in the Rubicon poems from my walking meditations in the Rubicon Canyon, Lake Tahoe...07 Rubicon poems 2.doc

And another group of poems from my travels in SE Asian and India Winter of 2007.  07 Travel poems 3.doc

I am drawn inside
Two, three times a week
Driving the distance
Wearing the right colors
Labeled, screened, alarmed

So many locks, so many gates, so little invitation
    And Yet
Way seems to open as I make my way
Beckoned into that core sanctuary
    Drab, gray, stripped of idols and altars.

Beckoned inside,
over and over again,
into the Holiness that is calling …

The Holiness that claims the unique beauty of us all.
The Holiness that weaves us together
trashing the labels
    of saint and sinner, of male and female, of teacher and student.

The Holiness that beckons us further inside,
    further inside,
        further inside,
            with each visit,
                each communion,
                each movement,
                each breath.

Beckons us further inside
the sanctuaries of our own core being-ness
inside the harmonized movement of our group chi
inside of who we think we are.

The Holiness that beckons each of us
    inside the walls and gates,
        inside the guards and attitudes,
            inside our personal stories

Beckons us into the boundless,
    boundary-less freedom,
into the sanctuary of our core spiritual being.

I’ll meet you there
    Ducat or not,
    Gate pass or not
    Lockdown or not
    Capricious guards or not
    Fog line or not

Penetrate the barriers
    beckon yourself inside.

Sometimes when I speak of going inside Folsom Prison, people on the outside have a hard time with the fact that I am moving, laughing, sharing and meditating with murderers, rapists, drug dealers and car thefts.  And also those who are in on parole technicalities and a few who have been falsely accused.  For the most part I do not know their crimes, (and they do not want me to know). Up until now it has been easier that way; easier for me to know each one as just as I find them that day in the chapel.  I don’t ask. It’s my business to teach meditation not to pry into their pasts.

Occasionally, their crime or sentence, directly or indirectly, arises during a conversation.  Or I have a chance to read something they have written which speaks about the road they have taken. One man, who I see quite regularly, has “lost count of how many people he killed.”  Whether this statement was for shock value or for real, I still don’t know.

Outsiders will ask, “How do they live with themselves?” 

Some of the men inside lock it away, or bury it all under a tale of self justification or self victimization.  Most keep silent, preferring not to speak of their past with people like me. Some learn to tell their story in different ways as they shift perspectives during the journey of their personal and spiritual transformation.

Two men have spoken directly with me about this over the 9 years I have been going inside. Their approach spoke of years of self reflection and healing, and as I have journeyed with them their actions have been in alignment with their words.

Their philosophy goes something like this: 

A life for a life.  My friend/enemy/victim/wife no longer has a life.  My actions took away his life from him and took him away from all his family and friends; it took away the contributions he would have made in the world.  That’s a permanent-no-going-back fact.  I am still alive.  I owe/dedicate/offer my life energy in return for the loss; it’s all I have to give and is still not enough.  I dedicate my life to service; however I can find the opportunities, right here in prison.  May I contribute to the worlds betterment times two – to honor him and to make honorable my own life.

Moments of beauty are precious inside the prison walls. 

One evening I heard tales of how shocking it was to come into the visiting room for the first time. Each of the two men I was listening to had stories of coming off right out of years of solitary confinement and suddenly finding themselves in the presence of women and children. Neither of then knew what to do; they literally went into shock and had to be helped to take the next steps to find their visiting families. 

Tears came to their eyes speaking of the happiness that comes with being present to children, watching them play, laugh and cry.  They sighed and spoke softly when telling of how it is to see all of the beautiful women.  "Women are all beautiful when you haven’t seen one for years."  "The energy is so different in the visiting room, so real, so full of variety."

One of the biggest heartaches of being locked up is not being able to contribute.  There is a long waiting list for the job of reading books for the blind and only a couple of positions available.  Chapel clerk jobs are coveted.  Most of the jobs available are full of down time; very few intail what we would call meaningful work. 

Finding meaning in your life, having purpose is fundamental; and a fundamental challenge for prisoners.  Two conversations recently brought forth examples to share.

One older man, who has always been a tinker and go-to, fix-it kind of guy, is now lost without his workbench.  His last job was fixing guitars so others could make music.  He knows that he will die here in prison because of some stupid mistakes (he did not elaborate) and he finds it such a waste not to be able to work, not to be able to fix things, not to be able to contribute.  “They can keep me here for the rest of my life if they need to,” he said, “just let me do something useful!”

Another recently was privileged to tend the Native American’s garden while they were on lockdown.  He was so full of joy and satisfaction when he spoke of the gift of being able to get his hands in the dirt and pull weeds, and to watch as birds came for the water, and the plants grew under his brief time of tending. He was getting hassled by other men and the guards for “going Native,” but found those easy to bear in exchange for the blessings of entering into the cycle of Nature for a tiny period of time.

The Sacramento Tree Foundation used to have a program where 1st and 2nd graders sprouted oak seedlings as a science project; and then the seedlings were cared for my inmates at Folsom until they were big enough to plant out in a park or school.  The project was canceled years ago.

The men I come in contact with are hungry for meaning in their lives.  There must be a way.