Beyond The Wall

3-7-2006

Thank you for your beautiful letter and the kind words. Your letters always brighten my day.

You wrote, “I can look back and see the things I did that appeared to “ruin” my life and how they actually set me on a path of finding my life. It isn’t about wealth and acquisition – far from that. It’s about gaining soul knowledge and empathy, and compassion, and all the things that bring us into the force field of Love rather than isolation. Our fragmented selves become unified Beings. Ahhhh…how truly satisfying once we “get” it.”

I can certainly relate to that. I’ve done many things that were insensitive and thoughtless. When I think of the “me” I used to be, I hardly recognize him. It’s hard for me to even relate to that person today. It took all of that to bring me to where I am now, though, so I can give thanks for it all. I’m still blooming where I am planted, but I can now say “I’m the me I was looking for.”

Enclosed are two essays that consider the challenge of loving the difficult ones in our lives and the wisdom of giving. They’re not typed this time; they are “writ by hand.” You’ll have to hand it to me for doing this. I didn’t want to palm this off on a typist or point a finger at anyone. Also, I didn’t want to thumb my nose at anyone, either. Digit you ever read such ban puns? I’ll be darned to eternal PUNishment, I’m sure!

As you know, Ralphie (Tom’s cartoon dog) is always with me, and as I sit here on my bed writing this, I can look down and see two eyes looking up at me. It’s Ralphie. He says he has a message for you and me and he thinks he can best express it by putting it on a sign…

(cartoon picture of dog holding up sign and obviously dancing – sign reads :Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we’re here, we might as well dance!)

He (Ralphie) often tells bad puns and makes “smart remarks” but sometimes he comes up with a real gem. I think the little fella nailed it this time.

2-20-2006

As I sit here at a table in the dormitory, I can look down and see Ralphie looking back at me. He wants me to tell you and Steve a story…(Ralphie is Tom’s cartoon dog)

The driver of a huge tractor trailer lost control of his rig and plowed into an empty toll booth and smashed it to pieces. He climbed down from the wreckage and looked around.

Within a matter of minutes, another truck pulled up and unloaded a crew of workers. The men picked up each broken piece of the former tollbooth and spread some kind of creamy substance on it; then they began fitting the pieces together.

In less than a half hour, they had the entire tollbooth reconstructed and good as new.

“Astonishing!” the truck driver said to the crew chief. “What was that white stuff you used to put all of the pieces together?”   

The crew chief said, (are your ready for this??)… “Oh, that was tollgate booth paste.”

Woof.

That one was so bad I really hesitated to write it, but Ralphie insisted, and I didn’t want to let the little fellow down.

I have always had a dog, and now I have Ralphie. Since dogs are such wonderful examples of unconditional love, I think I’ll ask Ralphie what he believes our purpose here is all about, and I’ll ask him if he can explain it in just a few short sentences…

“Sure,” he replies, “here it is.”

1.     Love yourself

2.     Love whatever resembles you

3.     See resemblances everywhere and in everything.”

“Wow! Ralphie, that’s it. See love (God) everywhere. It’s so simple and, oh, how we humans like to complicate it.”

I have an article in the January issue of Science of Mind magazine and the March/April issue of Unity Magazine. The Unity article is “Gifts of Simplicity.” You already have this essay, but I’m enclosing a copy so you can see what they did with it. (very nice). I’m grateful that they would do this and I hope it will inspire the readers to share more of the simple gifts of the heart.

Writing continues to be my “escape” from this prison. During my silent, intimate early hours here in the dorm – even during the times when whole paragraphs go awry – I know, more clearly than at other moments, a divine presence at work. I recognize it when my hunches for syllables and sounds lead me to words I’m surprised are in my vocabulary. I recognize it at the end of a rough draft when, after letting it sit for a while, I read it and am shocked by its vitality.

The writing channels energy into my life so that, at the end of the piece, I’m more awake to the world and more responsive to myself than ever before.

As always, it’s such a joy to connect with you. We meet in that space beyond time and distance – that space where there is only One.

Article from Prosper Online Magazine

This article is not written by Tom, nor about him personally, but is about a new opportunity for prisoners that can help so many of the incarcerated find meaningful lives after. We know from reading Tom's letters that there is very little in the prison system that is geared towards making successes out of failures - just a parking space for a long sentence without much to help make the necessary change in life when the prison doors are opened.

Prison Entrepreneurs

Pros Work With Cons

By David M. Drucker

Former Northern California venture capitalist Catherine Rohr, on a mission to use her skills for the social good, has discovered a surprising pool of entrepreneurial talent in the last place most would ever think to look: prison.   
     Not long after a chance tour of a Texas prison which she admits she approached as a “zoo tour,” Rohr chucked her job as a San Francisco VC to found the Prison Entrepreneurship Program.
     The nonprofit corporation, using Fortune 500-type business executives as volunteer mentors, harnesses the entrepreneurial skills inmates had demonstrated while running the successful, albeit illegal, enterprises that landed them in prison and teaches them how to put those abilities to use running legitimate businesses.   
     The hope is to increase their chances of success once they get out of jail.   

Street Smart for Good   
“Prisoners usually don’t end up in prison because they’re lazy,” Rohr says. “They may not be the best educated; but talk about street smarts. They’re driven, passionate and very charming. All of these are traits they share with business executives.”   
     With husband Steven, Rohr recently moved to Houston where the first full-fledged franchise of PEP is now up and running. It operates strictly on private contributions not taxpayer dollars. The plan is to go national as quickly as fund-raising efforts allow.   
     PEP also has a formal partnership with California’s Prison Industry Authority, one of the few programs the state prison system has that teaches inmates practical skills they can use on the outside once released or paroled.   
     PIA General Manager Matt Powers is a former Sacramento deputy police chief. Powers says he knows firsthand the effects paroled prisoners have on local communities statewide (90 percent of paroled and released inmates return to the community from which they were arrested.) 
     Manufacturing everything from office furniture and supplies, to prescription eyeglasses, to the custom parts that outfit vehicles for the California Highway Patrol, PIA’s participating prisoners get the same kind of training offered at vocational schools on the outside, complete with professional certifications for service and manufacturing jobs in at least nine different industries.   
     At any given time, PIA employs around 6,000 prisoners at factories located in 22 prisons throughout the state. According to PIA officials, the program is funded solely by the approximately $150 million in revenue earned annually through the sale of products and services that cover around 65 separate industries. The PIA does not rely on any appropriations from the Legislature to function.   
     And because of pressure exerted by state lawmakers, PIA is in the process of making sure its prices are competitive with those of private companies, something that until recently was not always the case. PIA-employed inmates are paid 30 cents to 95 cents per hour, with court-ordered restitution payments deducted from their wages.   

Not Stuck in Folsom   
With state lawmakers’ new focus on reducing the heavy recidivism of parolees, PIA officials are looking forward to when PEP can begin teaching prisoners how to start businesses, possibly using the practical manufacturing and distribution skills they have learned at one of PIA’s multiple factories statewide as the basis for self-employment. Once PEP has raised the necessary funds, it will begin training future entrepreneurs incarcerated in San Quentin, with plans to expand to Folsom next.   
     If these former prisoners can find a job, they will be much less likely to commit new crimes and end up back in prison, which is why Powers feels so strongly about his work at PIA and why he partnered with PEP. 
     “I’d rather have these people be taxpayers, not tax consumers, when they get out,” Powers adds. 
     “I’m still learning how important the program is to me,” says Robert Aikens of Houston. Aikens spent 15 1/2 years in prison for armed robbery before getting out in July 2003. Soon after his release, he started REALS Landscaping, specializing in decorative shrubbery and stonework.   
     Without PEP, says Aikens, he wouldn’t know how to put his knowledge of landscaping to work in a revenue-generating business. The program taught him how to manage cash flow, adhere to the various state and federal tax laws and manage employees, which at present consist of himself, his wife and two kids when they’re not in school.   
     Aikens calls it “learning how to operate a business from the neck up.”   
     The benefits to prisoners are obvious (PEP works with low- and medium-security prisoners only, although some trainees are in prison for committing violent acts, including murder.) Each inmate is assigned a mentor, usually a highly successful entrepreneur or business executive. The mentors help prisoners write business plans and teach them how to run their proposed businesses. In some cases, the program even pitches enterprises dreamed up by newly released or paroled inmates to VCs for investment. 
     In most cases, says Rohr, it’s the first time anyone has ever provided positive encouragement and instruction to the individuals participating in PEP. Yet it’s often the volunteer executives who benefit just as much, if not more, from the program. Many of the manicured, white-collar executives can’t get enough of PEP.   

Macho Execs in Tears   
Though Rohr allows them to quit at any time no questions asked, she says the participating executives love going to prison and imparting their skill sets to the inmates. In some cases, they have been reduced to tears upon seeing their trainee progress and succeed, though Rohr is quick to point out that the program appeals to the macho nature of a successful executive, which she’s happy to take advantage of.   
     “This program is pretty addicting; (executives) love to come back,” Rohr says.   
     Mark Carr of Houston is CEO of Christian Brothers Auto Parts, a national chain of consumer auto-parts stores. In Aikens, his trainee, he sees someone similar to himself: a man without a formal education, but with street smarts and business sense, who needs someone with know-how to mold his raw talent.   
     Carr describes the prisoners in PEP as creative and brilliant men who have been using their skills for evil instead of good. His work as a mentor allows him to redirect that energy into something positive.   
     “I’m just a street-smart guy who knows how to add and subtract. I’m creative; I looked at a business that had a need and made it big,” he says. “When I speak to these guys, some are brilliant, they’re incredibly creative. Some of these guys are running 15 (drug dealers) on the street.”   
     Aikens describes Carr as someone who doesn’t want any credit: “He was actually really there for me in word and in deed.”

• Prison Entrepreneurship Program

The Roller Coaster

by Charles “Tom” Brown

Copyright 2006

Life’s journey sometimes seems like a ride on a roller coaster. In the inevitable rising and falling of the ride, the task is frequently one of letting go, of finding a gracious heart that honors the changes of life. This involves stepping out of the current of thoughts, letting go of “how it was and how it should be” or “how we should be”. Honoring the truth of these ups and downs and of letting go allows our experience of darkness and falling to be part of the greater whole.

There are certain truths we can learn only be descent, truths that bring humility and wholeness in surrender. Even these down times are part of the dance of life, though, and we can invite them to awaken us and to teach us compassion.

Let’s imagine that our ride has a steep incline to a great height. As soon as we get to a certain height, several people look down, see how far it is, and completely freeze. Their fear is so great they cannot move. All the way up the incline there are places where certain ones freeze. They have come up against their edge and they cannot go beyond it.

How does life become a process of becoming more fearless and flexible? Rather than think we have made a mistake, we can acknowledge the present moment and its teaching. We can soften and connect with our heart and engender a basic attitude of compassion for ourselves. Every moment is a moment of grace when we let go of the body of fear and just say to ourselves, “Ah, it’s OK.”

We cannot stay at the top of the incline, and we cannot anticipate the next curve, but we can find a balance in the ride. We find the balance when we discover the capacity of our heart to embrace all the ups and downs, to flow harmoniously with all things, to be amazed by the new day to come, the new moment, the mystery of just being alive.

If we meet the cycles of life with an embrace, wherever we are becomes holy ground, the seat of enlightenment.

The Relief of Not Knowing

by Charles “Tom” Brown

Copyright 2006

Having been a teacher’s aide in the Arizona prison system for a number of years, I have become accustomed to being asked a barrage of questions. Sometimes I have found myself, out of neglect, ignorance, or indifference, giving a trite answer to another inmae in crisis. Often it’s because I’ve not experienced what that one is going through, forgotten my own neediness when I was in a dilemma, or am unwilling or unable to invest the time to help another’s struggle.

Sometimes we feel safer and smarter when we reply quickly (or in error)rather than appear answerless. We have been so busy giving some sort of answer, right or wrong, we have forgotten how to be completely honest. We act as though being wrong is a terrible offense. “Ah, mistaken again.”

Our human tendency is to select comfort over vulnerability. However, life’s mysterious ways often force us to choose between being trite or admitting we’re lost. And as scary as admission can be, it’s liberating. What a relief it is, when we’re asked something beyond our experience or understanding, to be able to simply say, “I don’t know!” Isn’t it better to hand out the brightness of honesty than a dim platitude?

There is a natural pleasure when we speak with someone who doesn’t know everything, who is open-minded, eager to listen. There is a delightful presence, receptiveness, and humility in such a mind.

If we truly don’t know, if we keep ourselves open and free of concepts and ideas, we can approach each moment of our lives with freshness. We can see what is happening in the present moment without assumptions about the past or ideas about the future. Yes, it is scary to cut ourselves loose from our moorings this way, but it is the door to freedom.

Wisdom is not knowing, but being. The wise heart is not one that understands everything: it is the heart that can tolerate the truth of not knowing.

“Not knowing” is a declaration of independence from the pressure to have an opinion about every subject.

·       Let’s use it as a joyous affirmation of our oneness with the Great Mystery.

·       Let’s let go of the drive to have it all figured out.

·       Let’s empty our mind and lift our heart.

·       It’s fun to say it. Let’s try it: “I don’t know!”