Do you have the keys to your prison?

More than a decade ago, I attended a therapeutic skills workshop. The facilitator demonstrated a live session of how unconditional positive regard needs to show up in a session with a client. During the demonstration, a fellow therapist volunteered to be his client. In the demonstration, the client spoke only metaphorically - of being caught in a prison.

As the therapist explored the metaphor, it came out in bits and pieces that the client thinks he is trapped in a prison. On enquiring who had built the prison, the client revealed that he had built the prison. A prison made of his own thoughts and feelings.

The audience was surprised when the client revealed that the door was closed, he had locked himself in, and he had the key. The therapist then asked the client if he would like to open the prison door and come in.

Freedom is the state of being free. Conventionally, freedom indicates our political right to act, speak, and think without restraint, control, or interference.

Freedom is also about the ability to choose.

True freedom is when we know we make a choice every second of our lives - even inaction is a choice. Knowing and understanding that our choices have certain consequences, and many of them can be out of our control.

Inner freedom is true freedom when we are able to meet reality the way it is without resisting or giving up. It is about meeting our reality - outside and inside, the way it is, connecting with ourselves, understanding our needs, and making choices to meet those needs.

In the book, “Finding Freedom: How Death Row Broke And Opened My Heart”,  Jay Jarvis Masters narrates his experience of receiving an empowerment ceremony. The empowerment is a formal introduction to Vajrayana Buddhism. Jarvis, while on death row, practised meditation and studied Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche teachings for a year before deciding to become a Buddhist.

Jarvis sat across Rinpoche, with a glass wall in between, and received his empowerment from the Rinpoche. He describes his experience of empowerment.

When I read the chapter on empowerment, it made me sit up. I’ve had countless ruminations, such as, “This is hard; I can’t do it. Why can’t things be easier? Not everyone needs to deal with such things alone.”

As my practice has deepened and widened to include not just myself but others, too, I can see that everyone thinks their circumstances are challenging. I am slowly learning to let go of striving and thinking and let the mind be. My mind is too tight and springs back to thinking and striving, and I am learning to work with compassion for myself and countless others who are suffering, too.

The book Finding Freedom: How Death Row Broke and Opened My Heart came at just the right time for me. Reading it again reminded me that I have the keys to my prison. I can choose to stay in or walk out. I realized that there is no right choice here.

Staying in is not problematic. One does need safety, and sometimes, being in our cocoon offers that safety. At some point, it is good to get out, get some sun, see other people and try to be there in their suffering, too.

This book has been a powerful reminder and helped me recommit my practice.

We finished Jay Jarvis Masters's deep-dive series “Finding Freedom: How Death Row Broke and Opened My Heart.” He has also written a memoir, “That Bird Has My Wings: The Autobiography of an Innocent Man on Death Row.” I haven’t read this one yet, but I have added it to my “to-read” list.

If you enjoy reading memoirs of personal transformation, I’d love to know your favourite book you’d recommend to me.

And we finish this edition with a tiny story.

💌 Siri