Chapter 1 - Maras Grasp

My mother was a deeply religious woman who devoted most of her married life to the vain attempt of instilling these same spiritual values into the mind and heart of my father. My father was not a bad or evil person, however, he saw himself as a "worldly" man whose main concern was supplying us with adequate material comforts. Occasionally, for my mothers sake (and to keep peace in the family) he would devote a little time to religion but it was easy to see that he was never really interested in spiritual matters.

I was raised in the Christian faith so I was given a proper set of moral guidelines to live by. When I was very young I was especially close to my mother. At the age of twelve my father felt that my childhood was over so he started taking me with him to his job sites to teach me to prepare to take my place in the working world. When I wasn"t at school, I was working with my father and I seriously began to resent him because I never had "free time." I often felt that I was nothing more than his personal slave but later on into my teens I was able to work at various jobs such as an underwater salvage diver, a carpenter and even a mechanic. My father gave all of these skills to me and I am now very grateful to him for what he taught me.

I do not propose to talk a great deal about my early years because I have already discussed some of these events in my second book, "The Search Within." I will say that I honestly felt myself to be a moral person while growing up. The Christian religion was forced on me and I deeply resented it because it seemed to me to be irrational and impractical. When I felt in need of spiritual help I did all the things that I had been taught but none of them helped me. After calling on god to assist me on numerous occasions without the slightest benefit or result I became deeply disillusioned with the whole Christian Church. I gave up on the idea of god and experimented with different spiritual practices but none of them provided the support I needed. None of them seemed real to me. I finally decided that I could rely on no one and nothing but myself.

I had left home and found a fairly good job working as a diver. The pay was pretty good but I felt trapped. There was a void in my life and nothing seemed to help anymore. I was deeply disillusioned. In the past I could find peace in the outdoors, camping and spending days alone in the deep woods just thinking about things.

I began to battle severe depression; my life seemed to be upside down somehow. The harder I tried to struggle against these feelings the worse they became. I no longer felt satisfaction in the things that used to make me happy. I was simply going through the motions of daily life and nothing was important to me anymore. It was one of the most miserable times of my life.

It became apparent to me that some kind of change was essential so I returned home, thinking that a change of scene would doubtless benefit me. My father got me a job with the same company he worked for so during the week my dad and I worked out of town and spent the weekends with the family.

After the first few months I began to make new friends and through my connections to them I met a young woman and we began dating. She was quite different from anyone else I had ever met before. The plain truth is that we were not good for each other. Instead of supporting each other and being stronger together, we shared similar weaknesses and the resulting combination was more than merely unfortunate: it was potentially disastrous.

I am not blaming anyone else for the mess that resulted. I could have turned away from an unsuitable relationship and I didn"t have to spend most of my free time with bad companions. I knew that I was on a collision course with tragedy and I simply didn"t care. The only people that I truly brought benefit to in this period of my life were the local breweries. I was very supportive of them!

Beer helped me to think of myself as a "tough guy" and my new girlfriend thoroughly approved of the change. If you could have met me a few years ago you probably would not have liked me; for that matter, I didn"t like myself very much either. Like most people labeled "criminals" my worst crimes have been committed against myself.

The problem with being a "tough guy" is that there is always someone bigger, faster and stronger than you are. Throughout most of human history men have devoted their lives to the mastery of various weapons in an attempt to improve their chances of survival against opponents who might have natural advantages due to size and strength. It was an American inventor named Colt who developed what came to be known as the "Great Equalizer." The average modern revolver has a trigger pull of two and one half pounds; this means that a ninety pound woman can kill a two hundred and fifty pound man quite easily, and still have four or five rounds left over for extra target opportunities. That"s progress!

Looking back with the advantage of hindsight I clearly see that drugs or alcohol truly change a persons character. While I was under the influence of alcohol my entire personality changed. People often separate drugs from alcohol by putting them into different categories, but this is nonsense. Alcohol is a depressant and quite possibly the nastiest drug ever discovered by human kind. It"s responsible for more disease, general sickness, and death than every other illegal drug, even when the numbers for all the other illicit drugs are combined together. Alcohol is more addictive than heroin and you can buy it legally all over the country as long as you have a few dollars in your jeans to pay for it. This is tragic for a lot of people, but there are also persons who can drink moderately over an entire lifetime and not have problems. I have no idea which category I fall into.

As a younger man the combination of beer and bad company led me to embark on a series of escapades that I considered merely rebellious, but that I now realize were stupidly criminal. All crime is basically stupid. Society exists so that human beings can flourish in safety. We band together for mutual protection against the hostilities of a planetary environment that can devour you if you make a single mistake.

I know this because I"ve spent time in the wilderness where one misstep can be the difference between life and death. So many of us live in cities now that we forget, or never learned how dangerous this planet really can be.

My first criminal act came as a result of my perceived need to be bigger and stronger than I was naturally. I decided to become "dangerous" so that people who had as little judgment as I did at the time would respect me.

I became "dangerous" by obtaining an arsenal of guns. Unfortunately I chose to acquire them by breaking into a store and stealing them. This was so easy to do that it stunned me. I felt that I had made an important discovery; I could take whatever I wanted with no consequences to myself.

This illusion was quickly shattered when I was arrested for the crime. I was placed on probation because I had no previous criminal background—this would have given many people the idea that personal reform was in order, but I had a great deal of pride and I became quite bitter at the way I was treated by the police authorities after I was released back into the community.

I honestly do not know if I would have attempted to change my life if I had been left alone, but I never had the chance to find out. I became one of the elements that must be "policed" from society for the good of us all.

One year later I was more knowledgeable about police behavior and very bitter. It was not a great surprise to me when heavily armed men dressed in blue surrounded my house. It did surprise me that after a brief interval, they packed up, returned to their vehicles and left. What did this mean? I was soon to discover that new charges had been filed against me and that the police had left that day because they decided that I wasn"t at home. I have no idea how they reached this conclusion. I suspect that they thought I would have shot at them if I had been present, although I have never shot or killed any human being.

I concluded that discretion was the better part of valor so I left the area, after thinking about it for a time I realized I did not want to spend my time running from this kind of trouble, so I turned myself in.

A few hours of "police hospitality" quickly convinced me that I had been over hasty in my judgment so I escaped. It was easy enough, but I couldn"t see spending the rest of my life running so I returned. Officially I was "recaptured."

I was sentenced to seven years in prison. The judge seemed to be telling me that I would be serving time not for what I had done, but for what I could possibly decide to do in the future.

I"ve been around law enforcement officers and criminals for some time now and to be honest, there isn"t much of a difference between them. Both groups practice violence, both groups tend to see things from only their own viewpoint, both groups are feared and disliked and both groups are immature. No honest citizen seeks the company of either group because they"re both feared for good reason. Socially they have much in common, probably because they spend so much time in each other"s company. While criminals as a class honestly feel that they make more money, they seem to ignore the fact that they spend time in prison, and that convicts earn pennies per day, which pulls them back into the same class as the average law enforcement officer.

It seems to me that people of even moderate intelligence would do well to avoid both occupations. There is a great deal of mental suffering involved for people who engage in either choice. Nobody in their right mind wants to live or work in a prison. Police officers also have the same kind of health problems that the criminal class has to endure. They both abuse drugs and alcohol, and law enforcement officers have the added risk of one of the highest suicide rates for any job.

This is the story about how I ended up serving time in prison. I"ve spent a lot of time thinking about this and I do not want to mislead you. Would the officers involved in this tell it to you differently? You betcha! The version I heard in court was wildly funny for it"s zany distortions, but maybe the men involved actually saw it that way.

As I said, police are very similar to criminals in many ways, they live in their own special world, however, there is one major difference; officers always seem to see themselves as heroes of their own personal movie scripts. They also write the reports that are considered "factual."

I broke the law and I deserve to be where I am. I don"t worry about justice much anymore because cause and effect is quite impartial and things always even out. I want you to understand who I am and where I come from so that the rest of this book makes sense to you. The other chapters deal with practicing Dharma while being in prison. Of course, there are many kinds of prisons. Someday soon I"ll be walking out of the door of my prison. I hope that you have the same good fortune.