Insights from the Women’s Prison
Posted by Anna Debenham, April 14, 2019
On Thursday in the medium security women’s prison, one of our participants said, “I have a letter I wrote to you. Can I read it?”. Of course I said yes. It’s one of the most beautiful letters I’ve ever received. It was quite long so I’m sharing the highlights.
My name is Jessica and I was as broken as they come. And the 3 Principles of the Mind helped to give me my life back even locked away in prison.
I thought I was a monster for most of my life, I am no longer so sure of that. For so long I lived in a state of fight or flight, always feeling sliced open, my insides ripped out scattered all over, leaving a shell of a woman. And the horror of it was watching myself from the outside in. Trapped and cocooned as everything I knew about myself got stripped away and demolished. It wasn’t just the loss of power of my body, but the loss of power over my mind. You are raped over and over in the deepest most hellish sense of the word. But I knew always deep down somehow I would be OK.
I waited, held on with everything I had. Then just like that there was a spark inside of that hollowed out woman. I now see a place they couldn’t touch. There’s more to me than I thought. There’s still something in me that no one and nothing could take away. They didn’t break me. I am strong. I am never going to go away again. I might have been lost for a while but I was never really gone. Who am I? I still don’t know. I am learning and that’s okay because I’m okay.
After 20 years of losing time, blanks in memories, night terrors and nightmares, fearing sleep each time I laid my head down. I threw myself away in drugs and ended up locked away in prison for 5 years. 2 hard years into that 5 years, the understanding of the principles found me and set me free. Memories and time lost for years have found its way back to me. My thoughts no longer scare me or keep me up at night.
All this from the explosive realization, some natural insight from within myself that caused me to stay upright and open my eyes. It was like coming alive after being dead and entombed in a coffin. I now have the understanding of the 3 simple principles: Mind, thought and consciousness. It was the framework to understanding my mind and finally quieting it.
It’s hard to say what makes the mind piece things together in a sudden lightening flash. The Understanding has helped me come to hold the human spirit/mind in the highest regard.
My thoughts are now like chasing butterflies. It’s just fun but you don’t always want to catch them. They can fly by in the wind. Like butterflies some are fragile and too delicate and you wouldn’t want to break its wings by catching it in the net. I learned I wasn’t as broken as I thought and it’s going to truly be ok.
The insight to life is in all of us. We just lose it sometimes. We get trapped in our own prison cocoon in our mind. It only took one thought for me and that changed everything.
