Recently I have watched a number of documentaries on American prisons. For no real reason at all. One in particular, "After Innocence" stuck with me. It focused on the incarceration of 7 individuals who had their convictions of guilty reversed after the implication of DNA testing. These cases were the first of which were demonstrated when DNA became available as a vital resource in determining whether a person was at the scene of the crime based on available evidence of human blood, semen, and/or hair. Always interested in the human condition of the day, it inspired me to reflect on the nature of freedom. Here were men, innocent of the crime they were accused, who had their freedom literally taken away from them. Some for as many as 30 years, would suddenly find themselves in a cell the size of a bathroom, living in complete accordance to the authority of a compact institution. One of the men upon his release after 20 years, had purchased a jeep with an open top so that he could experience the fresh open sky as much as possible. His enthusiasm in human interaction breathed passion, curiosity. He said  on the day of his release, the world was too loud for him and the air to clean. He couldn't handle it. It was overstimulating. The prison that these unfortunate men were sentenced to was a concrete one with walls and bars that can be tangibly felt, and this exonerated inmates words begin to express not only the release from that physical prison, but his spirit begins to describe the freedom from the invisible prison. The self created prison that can not be seen, only felt. When we enter the world in our initial primordial infant state, we grow into it. The world is a curiosity to be explored and we fall in love with it over and over in its discovery. But we grow afraid of it little by little at some early point. We give birth to a conscious, that has us trade our spontaneity and adventure for security. The boundless world suddenly has boundaries. Invisible walls are erected that we fail to see, that we have every excuse in the world not to climb. No climbing is necessary, we simply need to walk thru them. We become creatures of habit, and this becomes the habitat of our lives. No longer do we notice the sky above, the shape of trees… our passion for life becomes one of constant stimulation thru the dependence of the external drug of our choice. For many life is not much more than an obligation to survive. Others set goals, yet even in the achievement of these goals arriving from one point to its end, the path in between is seen as a hinderance and is passed off. And can you imagine, if suddenly without volition, your life had switched from whatever reality you find yourself in, to one of forced complete minimalism. All that you own, not only property, material possessions but titles as well were suddenly stripped from you. And your new existence was now an orange jumpsuit lent to you to cover your body, and your new home was a concrete cell. Perhaps from these visible bars would one see the invisible bars that exist behind it… The following drawing is an expression inspired by further reflection, and the words are the transcribed text in the piece. Enjoy that existence of yours my friends...
 

cell therapy, 8.5"x 11", ink on paper, 2014
oh how we get in the way of ourselves and we miss out. So often, what is available to us all the time. Right in front of us. Oh how we live our lives as if what is in front of us is a hinderance to get somewhere else. All the time. Always doing, always thinking, always planning, preparing… always missing. Missing what is in front of us, yet we fail to see it as if we didn't have eyes. We are labeled as human beings ironically, ironically because we have lost the ability of being. We unknowingly exist so uncomfortable in our minds, and it is mirrored in our body. In our postures, our body language, our use of language, our lack of presence in relationship to anyone or anything. We miss out. We have deserted the post of our being. We have deviated from the line drawn from the center of ourselves and tied to the the world. We have grown heavy in lifestyles of obligation, neuroses, and coping and have fallen off the tight rope. We have grown afraid of the nature of the world we live in.. we have grown afraid of our own nature.We wear masks of identity, and change these when the nature of reality and its impermanence forces our hand. We have grown to be dependent on the existence of others, dependent on their thoughts of who we are. Of what we should be, of how we should live. We have lost our self reliance natured in the independence of our individual being. The being that was given to us at birth. We have compromised its sacred integrity for security. For fear. For a living death. And yet, the beauty at the center of all of this is we can always return. To our being. It follows us till our grave like a shadow, even if we fail to see it at all. And like taking an antibiotic for an infection's cure, mediation is that resource that restores one's absent participation with being. With it's cultivation, it's function all the self created distractions are removed. So once can participate with reality directly again. Life is no longer experienced with hesitation, with prejudice, with conceptions, ideas, conditionally. Gone is all that. Life is experienced for all that it is , unconditionally, for all that it can , and ever will be. An intuitive experience of a present moment, occurring constantly. A life lived in being. In being a full participant. The path to the complete human experience.