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Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Hell on Earth Penetrated
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.
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