Day 19, Saturday, May 9, 2015

Today was the first day of my weekend training, sponsored by Janet Lindsay. Small group of 8 or 9 people, among them Jacqueline Bennett, who just got a grant to go into a prison and is going to conduct research on it so she is working with Tom Kelley and me to do so.

The theme of this training is something like Taking a Fresh Look at the Principles, so that’s what I set out to do. I borrowed a little from my Breaking Free of the Known retreat and a little from my Extended Professional Training and what came out really seemed to affect people. One woman in particular, after we focused on Deep Listening and set up an in-the-moment experience of it, had a moment where she realized she had just really listened to someone for the first time in her life and it felt like a different world. She had that stunned look about her, and I knew she would never be the same.

The letter from prison

What was really fortuitous was I received an email from Nancy Lopin this morning, who works in a prison in Boston. I was so moved by it that I had Janet read it to everyone first thing this morning when the training started, Here’s what it said:

Hi Jack,

Something sweet happened at prison this week and I want to share it with you.  The population is very low at the moment and for the past 2 weeks I did not have anyone in my women’s group.  My supervisor suggested I come in this week and go around with her to the various housing units and talk to some of the women and try to cook up some interest.

Picture this… we go into the first (of 3) units and sit down at a table in the rec. area to talk to the 3 women sitting there.  My supervisor introduces me and says I will give them a very brief description of my group.  I get out 2 or 3 sentences and one of the women says “this sounds like a book I read and I really liked it.  It talks about how people see things differently. Like someone might find this place awful and depressing and someone else might be fine with being here because they are learning a lot and getting a chance to change their life.”  I ask what the book is and she goes to her cell and comes back with your book “Somebody should have told us“.  She said that she actually copied down some parts of it so she could keep them.  This was a book I had loaned to someone in a previous group and thought it was “lost”.  I guess it had its own journey to make.  I told her she could borrow the book again if she wanted to and she gave it back to me for now.

OK, as if this is not enough, we get to the last of our 3 housing units, we find the woman we want to talk to and as soon as I get out one sentence, she starts to cry saying that God has sent this to her.  Meanwhile, my supervisor remembers the book and suggests we lend it to her right away!

One last thing, I have lent “Los Tres Principios” to several Spanish speaking inmates and they all liked it a lot.  One of my English speaking inmates asked me if I had a copy in English…

Gosh, thank you for that, Nancy. It just warms my heart.

Personal thought

I’m doing pretty okay again. Thank God for my understanding of the Principles. I’m not saying I’ll stay this way, but it never ceases to amaze me that the only way I can feel devastated about my loss is to think devastating thoughts. When I have different thoughts, such as, “I’ll be okay no matter what has happened,” I’m not feeling devastated. When I think thoughts of how blessed I was to be in the greatest relationship for 10 whole years, I feel grateful. Same relationship ending, different thoughts, different experiences. Which is the real one? Either all of them or none of them. I make it all up. There’s something soothing (and humbling) about that. But when I do feel devastated, I don’t want to deny myself that. That’s the experience at that time brought to me by my thinking, combined with consciousness. A lost relationship filled with that much love deserves that. I only don’t want to stay in a devastating experience for too long.

The wrong idea about the Principles

See, a lot of people get the wrong idea about the Principles. A fellow in the training told me he heard my webinar on Supermind, when I had admitted I was anxious about something, and he was part of the discussion group afterwards (after I’d left) and he told me someone had “taken me to task” for feeling anxious; implying that with my alleged understanding of the principles I should be peaceful and happy all the time (like he was). I wish he’d taken me to task when I was still on the webinar so I could have straightened him out.

The Three Principles are not prescriptive; they are descriptive. They simply describe how our experience of life is created. So long as I know my feelings of devastation are coming from me and not from my loss, I am safe, and my level of consciousness rises. So long as I know that my thinking can and will change and I am not stuck with how I’m feeling at that time, my level of consciousness rises.  So long as I know that beyond all of it deep inside my soul I am whole and complete and are pure peace of mind, pure love and wisdom, my level of consciousness rises. It happens on its own and more well-being comes. A lot of people get the wrong idea.

Later that night, Janet, Marcellus and I watched the movie Selma. The first time I had seen it I couldn’t stop crying I was so moved. That was my era, my time. While I wasn’t in Selma on that march, I was fully immersed in the civil rights movement. But it means all the more to know Modello was given the Martin Luther King Award by a man, Rev. Virgil Wood, who marched by his side. The plaque has an engraved picture of the two of them marching together. Seeing that movie makes it clear why that award means so much to me. Everyone must see it. Everyone.