As mentioned in the last blog post, I have watched a number of documentaries on prisons. This reflection was inspired by the film "Dhamma Brothers". It was about a prison in the south that for a brief period incorporated meditation into its reformation program. I found the interviews with the inmate participants to be profound,  completing a 10 day meditation program. One inmate described the intensity of the experience in how he had desperately wanted to escape dealing with himself, and how he had never really ever done so. How all the mind chatter, memories, repressions had come to the surface during the early stages of meditation, and how for the first time there was no choice but to confront it. The warden described the function of the meditation program in how convicts could always fool others in relation to the crime they had been found guilty of, but the one person they could not fool is themselves and how the meditation program established that structure of self confrontation. The following is further reflection into the nature of our freedom/imprisonment…. enjoy cell therapy 2, 8.5x 10", watercolor/ink on paper, 2014 “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.- blaise pascal. We are prisoners to ourselves. The selves that we create in whose ignorance we commit actions, and accumulate experience that brings us suffering and shame. We bury this deep within ourselves and cover it in appearances. We are so clever in how we convince ourselves, convince the world that we are ok, even 'successful', and even well. But underneath it all, we are afraid to look within ourselves and relate to the world from that place. Honesty. We are afraid that the world will reject us if it knew who we truly are. We are ashamed of ourselves in this way. Our liberty is access to infinite resources in distracting ourselves from never having to confront ourselves. We never have to sit quietly in a room alone. We fool ourselves in our thinking. We think we are safe, secure. We live with ideas that we are more, or less than what we really are. And we are always thinking we are correct in our thoughts. But if you ever want to test the validity to this belief system of self, sit in a quiet room by yourself. When the walls are empty, the sound is silent, there is nothing visual but a single flat color surrounding.. there is nothing available in the external to distract one from the nature of one's mind. The unaltered essence of one's being underneath all appearances… mental and physical. There is no longer anywhere to run, nowhere to hide. One has arrived at the ultimate confrontation that we spend much of our life avoiding. The nature of our being. The confrontation of ourselves and its vast deceptions. The root…