We Are All Doing Time, Lifeletter 92

A dear friend of mine, whom I will call Janet, has been connecting with a man in Texas, whom I will call Daniel. Daniel is serving a life sentence in prison, as a result of a murder he committed when he was 15. He is now 46 years old.

Janet’s friendship and journey with Daniel has been immensely powerful and liberating for me to participate in. She has challenged him, encouraged him and deeply loved him. All sorts of small miracles have happened for Daniel since he first began connecting with Janet. I’m going to tell you about some of the latest. Maybe they are not really small at all.

Daniel was in some kind of group in his prison, where a couple of the men were at odds with each other, creating a lot of discord. One day, Daniel decided to intervene. He spoke to each one of the men on his own, and then encouraged them to come together and reconnect in a new way. His efforts worked―the two men dropped their animosity and desire to fight. Daniel had never done anything like this before. He didn’t even know that he could do something like this. His whole way of being in the world had not exactly been a peacemaker! When he spoke to Janet earlier on about how he desired to be seen in the world, he said he wanted to be feared and respected. And anyone in Daniel’s cell block who didn’t show him proper respect had to pay the price for that. Which was one reason that Daniel was still in prison―he had been refused parole many times, partly because of his aggression and hostility.

Shortly after his experience with the two men, Daniel approached a black man he knew, someone who was part of the whole Black Muslim group in the prison. Up until that moment, the hostility between Daniel and this man was very high. They barely tolerated each other’s existence. Daniel had strong racist beliefs and he expressed them out loud whenever he felt like it.

On this particular day, Daniel approached this man and said, “I’d like to talk to you.” The man looked surprised and quite suspicious. Daniel said to him, “I want to apologize to you for my attitude towards you, and for every single time that I have spoken behind your back, and called you a ‘nigger.’ I want you to know that this is not going to happen again. I don’t expect that we will ever be close friends, but I would like it if we could look each other in the eye when we pass, and know that we respect each other. If you accept my apology, and would like to shake on this, you can take my hand.”

The black man put his hand out and they shook. And then Daniel went and did the same thing with another black man in his cell block.

When Janet told me this story I said, “What is happening to this man? He willingly put himself into a situation that was very uncomfortable, without any guarantees about the outcome. That black man could have jumped on him! There seems to be something very powerful motivating him, much stronger than his fear of exposure and discomfort. I wonder how he would speak about what moved him to do this?”

Janet told me that Daniel said, “If there is something you know to do and you don’t do it, then you’re stuck.”

“Well sure,” I said, “lots of us well-educated white folk know that too, and we can sit around for years, avoiding what we know needs to be done. I see that a lot in my coaching work, and in my own life too. That’s why I am so interested in what David was valuing, that caused him to take that kind of risk.”

“He told me he did it for himself,” Janet said.

“Yes,” I said, “I believe that’s how it works. I would like to go down there to Texas and talk to Daniel and find out just what opened up inside him, over the last while. Here is a man who was conditioned from his childhood to hate and fear black people, and never to question his beliefs about them. He didn’t do months of inquiry, he didn’t sit and meditate for hours a day―he just woke up somehow, out of that whole mindset. How does that happen?”

After speaking with Janet, I remembered that Daniel went through a dark time in his life where he had to face the fact that he had been refused parole so many times, he might never get out of prison. Up until that time he had been hoping desperately that he would make parole next time. He lived many of his days immersed in fantasies of how it would be when he got out. Facing the truth that he might never get out was incredibly difficult for him. Around that time he developed a deep longing for some kind of relationship with God, with spirit, with his higher self. I think he started to feel that was the only way that he could face his life and begin to work with it.

He started talking to Janet a lot about this, and reading books. He also joined a meditation group and began practicing yoga. He was really liking these practices, even though he kept saying to Janet that he wasn’t feeling any kind of divine inspiration or connection. But he didn’t give up. I think at that point, going back to his old life was no longer an option.

The experiences he was longing for never came to him, and at the same time, something was shifting inside him. He started having some very good days. He was connecting with the people around him, coming out of his deep isolation and separation. He was hoping for some kind of God experience, but what came to him was something much less glamorous. I’d call it basic sanity, a clarity about the price we pay when ‘there is something we know to do and we don’t do it.’ Daniel was no longer willing to pay that price. His indifference to the consequences of his own thoughts, beliefs and actions melted away, and he was moved in some very new directions.

My question about this, since as Bo Lozoff puts it, “we’re all doing time” is this:

What’s the tipping point for you? What is it that allows you to remain indifferent for so long to your deeper, truer nature and how it wants to move in the world? And what is it that disrupts that indifference and pulls you forward, into a more courageous, open-hearted way of living?

Don’t you think that’s a question worth tackling, worth living with?

I offer deep gratitude to both Janet and Daniel. Their friendship is a bright mirror, shining light for all of us, into the dark places where we still think we can hide.

with love

Shayla