I’m a Righteous Convict

I’m a righteous convict. I know I aint got nothin’ comin’. I do my AMs and PMs. I watch my back, don’t snitch, mind my own business, do my own time, front myself off, kiss the man’s ass, get respect, fight when I have to, stay strong. I got game. People know I don’t play.

I cut my peoples loose. Don’t get no pussy. Don’t watch TV. Don’t gamble. Don’t do smack. Don’t do crank. Don’t drink pruno.

Got two partners. They take a shank for me. I take one for them.

I go to chow. Dudes packing so much steel, if they put a magnet at the door they pull everyone out by the seat of they pants. People say prison food ain’t no good. There’s a CO up on the cat walk with a twelve gauge. Black dudes in one corner, White dudes in another, Northern Mexicans in another, Southern Mexicans in the other. You don’t know if a drunk Southerner be staggering into a Northerner table. You don’t know if the dude next to you have a epileptic fit. You don’t know if any minute you goin’ to have to hit the floor ‘cause the dude on the catwalk think he got to shoot to keep control. It be so loud you can’t hear yourself talk’ to the dude next to you. I block out the fear. I block out the noise. I block out the gun. I taste. I chew every bite. Prison food ain’t so bad. Not bad at all.

I said I ain’t got nothin’ coming. You got your little credit card, your Beamer, your TV, your woman, your music, your dope, your house, your movies, your ‘gourmet’ food, your team, your jewelry, your entertainment center, your little cruises, your stars, your politics, your power, your little fine tastes. Stuff. You got stuff.

You worship the store man. He say, “the stuff is everything. The stuff make you.” He say, “You can have this and you can have that but you can’t, you can’t have this.” The store man say, “the stuff is where its at.” He say, the stuff IS you. You got to defend the stuff.”

He stand at his little cash register. I know all I got to do is make it so he think he gonna lose his life. Don’t need no gun. Could be a can of baby powder, look like a bomb with wire tied around it. Long as he think his life is at stake. I stand in line. Next person, ching ching sixty-nine dollars, next, ching ching two hundred dollars. Then, I’m there. I say, “I want it all.” He say, “Take everything. Take the popcorn, take the TV, take the money, JUST DON’T TAKE MY LIFE.”

Now, when he say that, his premises are not intact. One minute before, the stuff was everything. The next minute it don’t mean nothin’. I watch his premises crumble right in front of me. If his premises was intact, he’d tell me to go fuck myself or, come at me across the counter, throw a left hook. He’d give his life for the stuff. Just like that, the stuff ain’t nothin’ now. Nothin’.

You got all this stuff and you still think you got somethin’ comin’. Your stuff ain’t shit. You ain’t nuthin’ but a junkie. You worse than a junkie. A junkie only want to get high and he know it. You want this and you want that and all you want is to get high but you don’t even know it.

You want it louder and bigger, and better, and more. Like I said before, the store man got your mind and that is your bind. And more, it ain’t enough no matter how much stuff, no matter what the volume, it gonna be rough. Take it from me, I said take it, because the hole in your soul can never be filled. It be on the bottom and you lookin’ at the top. You ain’t got nothin’comin’neither, do you hear? Do I have to say it louder? You ain’t got nothin’ comin.’ Nothin.’

The customary approach to friendship is to treat it as an end product. By this I mean that each of its participants relates to the other as if friendship is an entity already existing in space, external to the other, having met certain criteria in order to have been created. They belong Together. In this sense, belonging is determined by notions of Together Together, in turn, becomes defined by preconceived criteria such as reliability, support, sympathy, commonality of purpose, interests, and sentiment. Hence, belonging is a false unity, in that its participants have (often unwittingly) abstracted elements of similarity until friendship is seen as that which is common to each, a unity in multiplicity. A friend is thus a construction. What participants are or Why they are the way they are is foreground. Friendship is a noun.

Another way of seeing friendship is in the context of Belonging together. In this sense, together is defined by Belonging—i.e., the dynamic of relating, itself. Friendship in this sense is a process in creation in which each individual perpetually comes into being with the other. The participants share a bond of belonging. When we Belong together, relating changes our understanding of each other as we ourselves change. How participants are is foreground. This is multiplicity in unity that allows for difference. Friendship is a verb.

The former is bound by time and space, is a product contingent on causes external to itself, though deduced as a unity by its participants. The latter is a whole–timeless and placeless—and emerges out of a necessity that is intrinsic and experienced.

During the middle ages, the Black Plague was believed to be caused by demonic possession. The ‘cure,’ (exorcism), although logically related, was, as is known today, no cure at all. It was not until the nineteenth century, when an understanding of microbes as a cause of infection began to filter into scientific awareness that a “real” remedy began to be considered. It was another century that antibiotics came into use.

In modern society, it is generally held that belief in possession is a thing of the past or limited to bizarre cults. Yet a closer look might reveal that the demons are still with us. And, as we all know, demons have an uncanny ability to change form or render themselves invisible while continuing to exert their malevolence.

Alcohol abuse, in contemporary society, is one example of belief in possession. The demons have morphed into terms more socially acceptable to the beliefs of our scientific consciousness. The pattern is clear: The victim is overtaken by agents external to himself. What was referred to, in the past, as “spirits” or “demon rum” is now viewed as a “substance” that takes over the individual and destroys his or her life, or the victim is possessed by a ‘disease’ over which he has no control, or has bad genes that slipped from his parents into his body acting as agents that rob him of his freedom of choice or lead him down a path of continuous destruction. And the solutions follow a logical path: belief systems and rituals designed to gain control over these forces. Elaborate temples erected for retreat from or the exorcism of the demons. Cults, each offering self-esteem, safety and belonging to the victim who would otherwise be an outcast in exchange for his own autonomy and a lifetime attachment to repetitive ritual.

The demons’ work is insidious but most effective. Rituals continue, the victims’ beliefs assure that a ‘real’ cause will never be found condemning him to repeat the cycle often with the belief that he has conquered the demon which subtly changes shape but produces the same effects.

It is only when we experience our own thinking as primitive, like the plague afflicted people of the middle ages, that we will be able to notice the equivalent of “microbes” leading us to discover the “cure.”

One way of understanding the above is to see it as a polemic opposed to present-day alcohol treatment. Another way, however, is to bring into consideration a different way of seeing. In this case directing attention to barriers to understanding as a necessary first step to gaining knowledge of what really needs to be addressed in this and other relams of human endeavor.

She recounted that she had until recently bitten her nails her entire life (66) and had never been able to stop until recently when she ‘just stopped.’ She said, however, she had begun to notice a perpetual fiddling with her hands which was ceaseless and which she felt unable to stop. She spoke rapidly and her hand gestures mirrored her staccato delivery. She is quite likeable despite a tendency to take description as injury, insult, embarrassment or humiliation. She marshals her troops instantaneously to become combative, argumentative, righteous or to mobilize a devastating quipping tendency often dripping with sarcasm.

She entered into contact with me introducing her ’symptom’ but prefacing it with, “I know this might sound new age – I hate new age stuff – but I want to look at what this is about.” I asked her what ‘new age’ was. She said, “You know, airy fairy psychological stuff.” “I hate that stuff.”

I shared with her that what caught my attention was not her symptom but her manner of approaching it in which she was, apparently, automatically and unwittingly excluding an area of consideration, “New Age.” She reacted rapidly and said, “Well you know I’m not one of those crystal gazers and that ilk.” I fed back again that it appeared that she was, by asserting a certainty of who she was (was not) that she was dismissing (excluding) any information that might go contrary to her certainty. She reacted. She said, sarcastically, “So you believe in that stuff.” I said, whether I believe or not might be less significant than a knowledge of yourself excluding something. It so happens I don’t ‘believe’ in that stuff but I am willing to hold it simultaneously alongside my belief to the contrary without accepting or rejecting, without any sense of threat to my prevailing belief. In this way I am not susceptible to exclude something no matter how dissonant to what I think.

She said, “Well, Are you saying I am neurotic?” I replied that I hadn’t said she was neurotic but her asking had stimulated the creation of a line that she might try on with some of the members of the group. The line was, “If I weren’t dismissive, I wouldn’t be neurotic.” She frowned, paused, said. “OK,” and recited the line to several people then said, “You are wrong.” I pointed out that I wasn’t attempting to be right or wrong but asking her to try something on for herself. I shared that I observed what I imagined to be a frown and a pause before she entered into doing the exercise. Could she tell me what her experience was during that time. “I tried it out and it wasn’t true for me.” “So, I’d like to direct your attention to the possibility that you dismissed or excluded something and then ostensibly did the exercise. The result? What she had determined in the first place. She reacted, “So you’re telling me I got it wrong. Is there any way I can get anything right with you?” ” I wasn’t operating in a framework of wrong or right I was open to seeing what happened were she to do what I asked since I had no idea of what her ‘experience’ would be. However I did tell her she didn’t do what I asked as a matter of information. “What you did do, I imagine, was weigh the line in your head and then go through the motions, only to validate the preconception you had formed. Were you aware you didn’t do what I asked you to do? You certainly are entitled to do something else without being ‘wrong’ but it could be important for you to have the information reach you so you are making a more efficient choice and not confusing doing your own thing for doing something else. There was a pregnant silence of more than thirty seconds during which her hands were at rest and she reported after that something was ‘flickering’ but she couldn’t grasp it. She said, “I have to understand what I am doing before I do it and I didn’t understand the line. Isn’t that reasonable?” “Its reasonable,” I said, “but you might be dismissing (excluding) the possibility that doing something first – going into the unknown, the unfamiliar, the uncertain, possibly fearful place – might be necessary to gain the understanding you seek. You can’t get to the milk from the cheese.”

There was another lengthy silence, no fidgeting. “I want your help to see what I am doing.” She had softened, her eyes making relaxed contact. Her body was still. The room and the people in it were still. I said, “Surely,” Perhaps I’ll change the line a bit, but I want to remind you to disobey any impulse to consider its truth before you have done what I am suggesting while you bring your attention simultaneously to your experience. The line is, “I am neurotic when I am dismissing.” She made contact with each individual in the group. No longer reciting, being obedient or seeking “meaning,” trying to get it right, get “MY” point, or assert what was familiar to her but simultaneously perceiving ‘allowing in,” and the implications of excluding, she came to an understanding of truth – a unity of her own being. And with Truth she no longer felt the obsession with fiddling with her hands. What also simultaneously came into awareness was the knowledge that she was, obsessed, that she had felt no choice to do anything else but fiddle and be helpless to do anything else.

She now lost the desire to control her fiddling because the simultaneous awareness necessitated not fiddling effortlessly. She was the milk becoming the cheese. And with it was a recognition that her fiddling was not the problem. Dismissing and excluding was. And she was able to see this not in a context of a self that was lacking and should have known better or had gotten it wrong but as a complete self, her ‘completion’ a new capacity to allow.

There are four different types of consciousness:

1) Sleep
2) wakefulness
3) Trance and habit ( 98 % of the time)
4) Extra-dimensional, telepathic.

Most people seem to be aware of the first two but in a distorted way. They believe number three is something performed on the stage and number four doesn’t exist at all.

Seen by means of the usual habitual, quantitative manner it would appear logical that sleep is 33% and wakefulness is 66%. However in a holistic way, any one is 100 % when operating.

A desire for reassurance can be expressed in apparently opposite ways:

One can express self-doubt directly: “I’m unsure about what to say.”

One can (paradoxically) assert one’s self: ‘Surely you don’t mean to say ………………………

Of course one could simply be aware of his state and ask for reassurance. This is the riskiest of the three as it leaves open the option to the other to refuse.

The risk is only illusory, however, because a refusal immediately frees one up to seek what one needs somewhere else. Avoiding the risk can paradoxically keep one attached to a dry well.

He puts a coin in the machine, thinks, ‘Three lemons this time.’ They don’t come up. He puts a coin in the machine thinks again, ‘ Three lemons for sure this time.’ They don’t come up. He deposits his third coin, ‘it is inevitable, three lemons.’ He pulls the handle. THREE LEMONS! I knew three lemons would come up.’ The machine returns two coins. He inserts a fourth coin. Feeling like a winner, he is one out of pocket. He pulls the handle. He thinks, ‘Now I know I’m on a streak, three lemons.’ THREE LEMONS!. The machine returns two coins. He now has the same number of coins he started with. Ah, but now he has certainty, Truth. His excitement mounts. Unfalteringly confident, he makes the next pull. Three lemons do not come up. He deposits another coin now with unflappable certainty. Three lemons do not come up. He does this ten times. “THREE LEMONS!” The machine returns five coins this time with music, flashing lights, and the sound of coins clanking one by one, He is now five coins out of pocket. “I can’t loose,’ he thinks. In the end, he has no coins but much excitement and a belief that he is in control of what next. ‘I’ll never go broke, he thinks.’ Small price to pay.

Isn’t this the way most people form their identity and beliefs of how the world works? No machine necessary. Life is a one-armed bandit!

I spoke with a patient today who was close to psychically dead. He said, “I had a difficult ‘upbreaking,’ I mean upbringing.”

With one word, he described his past much better than I could ever imagine.

This post is not meant to be political but to reflect the workings of the mind.

I have read that George Bush is having difficulty shopping for a publisher for his memoirs. The reason given is that there wouldn’t be a market for them because he is the most unpopular president in recent history. However, if this project is not undertaken, I believe we would miss an opportunity to see into and understand not only his mind but learn how to avoid future potential disasters.

I don’t mean to say that Bush would have insight into his psychology directly, as a result of an introspective process. Rather, his narcissism and rationalizing tendencies will give us a stark picture of his deviance from consensual reality and his image of himself. Our country’s present circumstances will provide a background figure for the workings of his mind to be made visible, even to those who are not psychologically minded.

If I were his publisher, the only condition I would insist upon is that he must write and edit it himself, without the aid of a ghostwriter. I suspect, absent his charm and down-home accent on the written page, his incoherence would reveal itself not only to the minds of intellectuals or biased partisans but to ordinary people, who would wind up scratching their heads. This is where we might learn about the difference between the content of one’s thought and one’s process of thinking. After all, if one’s content grabs a listener’s bias or desire to hear certain things, the less obvious fact that the speaker is incoherent can seamlessly slip past undetected. Coherence of thought, however, is a necessary and much more important quality for a leader who is dealing with novel situations as a matter of course.

I imagine Mr. Bush would spend considerable time writing about character, and in particular, his own. He might even write about the historical events that forged his character. Here, again, could be a window into fixed patterns of response to changing environmental circumstances. I imagine Mr. Bush would find his consistent predictability and rigidity a virtue. When seen in the light of recent circumstances, who wouldn’t be able to benefit from his unashamed vision of himself as virtuous while the effects of his decisions are so fresh in our minds? It might even give us pause to assess these tendencies in ourselves.

This is the hidden gift he could bestow–a window into our own tendencies to think in similar ways. For his are human tendencies exaggerated to such an extent that he could make us visible to ourselves. Unlike Mr. Bush, some might learn from the one who can’t.

The neurotic has a creative thought and thinks he’s crazy. The Psychotic has a creative thought and thinks he’s sane. The artist has a creative thought and knows its reality.