FROM SOCIOPATH TO THE NOBLE PATH

​THE TRANSFORMATION OF A CAREER CRIMINAL: IF IT HAPPENED FOR HIM, IT CAN HAPPEN FOR YOU
“With the abundance of happiness that I have, getting high would interfere with my contact with my creator”

Astonishing words from a man society considers a sociopath. James H is a 34-year-old career criminal with a five page rap sheet. Since his first incarceration at age 18 to age 31 he had been home a total 13 ½ months. After he was released, he reoffended within six months, was released and lasted one month, then reoffended. After that incarceration  he was released and reoffended again after six months, was released and finally reoffended after only 8 days. His offenses include felony theft, burglary third, unauthorized use of a vehicle, resisting arrest, possession of heroin and loitering! He has now been out of prison for three years and no longer uses heroin.
         He says: “I want to protect the happiness I have. I have a good connection with my creator”
          How did he achieve this connection? Through meditation.  He was taught meditation through a prison program and I worked with him as well. His goal was to relieve stress. He says “at first I just focused on breathing to calm my nerves. I went through all the other steps to relieve stress as well.” These included tightening and relaxing his muscles in sequence from head to toe, focusing on a calm place such as the beach, and listening to music.
           He gravitated towards meditation for reasons he can’t explain. He did not see meditation as a spiritual exercise, nor was it taught to be one. He says: “It was very hard to meditate. I struggled with it. I started meditating for maybe a minute a day, or three minutes before giving up. It was very hard to get my mind clear. It’s very hard to be in the  present in prison, as I was always thinking of either my past or the future.”

OPENING THE CHANNEL TO HIS CREATOR

  I worked with him and encouraged him to meditate everyday even if it was just for three or five minutes. For him, I thought the best method was to simply focus on his breath. When thoughts intruded, he was just to note them as if an interested observer. “Oh, I’m thinking about the day I was arrested again”. And then to return to the breath.
After a solid month, he was meditating ten minutes a day. Soon it was fifteen minutes or sometimes he would just lose track of time and it could be ½ an hour.
          And then it happened! In the middle of a short ten-minute session, he suddenly found himself having a conversation with God. Like the children who have near death experiences, he just told me that it was “God” but couldn’t say any more than that. “I knew it was God because he was talking to me”, almost the same words a child told me about her near-death experience. I have noticed that children and non-religious adults who talk to God typically just say "it was God" without any further religious dogma or embellishment. They describe a loving presence that is otherwise hard to define.
             At first James sort of laughed about his perception he was talking to God and didn’t believe it was real. He felt funny about it, thinking he was just making it up. He explained that it wasn’t a dialogue, but more or less sensations. “Like hearing a truth that cannot be denied”, is how he described the experience of talking to God.

DRUG ADDICTION IS OFTEN NOT A DISEASE BUT A LEARNING DISORDER: A LACK OF BASIC SKILLS

       Nothing in James background prepared him for this experience. He was raised without any religious or spiritual beliefs by a woman who was 16 when she conceived him. She struggled with bipolar disorder and PTSD. His father was 60 and only briefly met his mom. He first met his father when he was 13 and spent a week with him, with no contact since. He dropped out of school long before high school. A drug addict for most of his life, he became addicted to heroin at age 22.
             He did not have any of the training in mental discipline or spirituality that most of us take for granted. He did not go on camping trips, or afterschool clubs, did chores, had household responsibilities or had hobbies he shared with his parents, so he never developed the mental discipline those types of experiences demand. He never achieved something and received praise. He never had the opportunity to actually work hard toward a goal. He missed out on all the teaching and development stages of child development, such as having to delay gratification, learn to share, or learning the complexities of social interactions.
             We don’t think of this baseline of knowledge and mental discipline that most of us have, as spiritual or mental training, but it is. It is immediately obvious to me when I meet those who had shattered childhoods as they lack the basic fundamentals of knowing how to navigate the complexities of adult life. Most of us have these skills ingrained in us throughout childhood and take them for granted and think everyone has them. Prison job training programs often overlook that many of the incarcerated don't have fundamental skills such as looking someone in the eye, having a firm handshake, or the ability to make the sort of reassuring small talk that can built bridges with a future employer.
            Furthermore, many adult drug addicts were addicts throughout the teen years. Developmentally those are the years we start to form our basic problem solving strategies for life. Drug addicts miss out on all that as their basic strategy is to simply get high. Many either drop out of high school or are not active in the high school social scene so again they miss out on all that is learned by attending clubs, playing sports, and being involved in school activities.
           There is no reason anyone can’t learn these skills, no matter how old they are. It is not helpful to feel sorry for them or overlook the fact that they lack certain basic skills. It is also not helpful to assume that they are sociopaths or criminals incapable of transformation.
            James quickly learned these skills once he was able to sit and think long enough to realize what his goals were and what he needed to achieve those goals.

FINDING THE RIGHT PATH

​Jame's transformation began when he started to have a conversation with God while meditating. He says: “At the time I was struggling with following the rules of prison and getting along with other inmates. I was ashamed of being in prison and living a life of failure. When I first heard God speak, he didn’t say any of the things I thought he would say. I didn’t hear that my life would ever be good or that I would ever be happy. I didn’t even hear “all is well”. Instead I heard “keep going, you are on the right path”.
         “The right path” he said to me with wonder. “I have been in prison most of my adult life. I have no friends and no skills and don’t know any other way of living than stealing to get money for drugs. The right path?”
         Yet the following day, when he meditated again, he started to see that everything was part of his path. “Meeting you Dr. Morse, was part of my path. Even negative people and horrible experiences are part of my path. Everything I have done has helped me to progress spiritually."  Specifically he was saying that being a drug addict and his criminal behavior was part of this path.  He accepted his past failures as stepping stones to his future. He asked God while meditating “should I study Buddhism?” He heard “yes”.
           “I have a glowing warm feeling in my heart. If you could package what I have and give it to someone, then they would take the steps I have taken to have it. I am genuinely happy. Sometimes I end my meditation laughing.”
          I taught James to remote view and he was excellent at it. He told me that remote viewing taught him that God is real. He immediately applied himself to learning the skills he needed to change his life on the outside. He completed his GED. He became confident in his social skills as he had a sense of self-worth. He entered the Green Tree program which is a comprehensive intensive program which immerses the inmates in learning everything they need to thrive on the outside, from social skills, to assessing their life story, to taking business classes, and doing regular chores with specific consequences for not doing them properly. Inmates in the Green Tree program often have to get up at 5 am to clean their cell and the cell block they are living in, followed by rigorous exercise programs. The men are not permitted to play basketball and watch TV all day but take a variety of classes designed to help them function on the outside.
           I spoke to James after he had been out for three years. He told me that he believed he opened a channel to God, and it kept speaking louder and louder to him until he had to change his life. “But it only speaks love” he said, “only encouragement, only making me aware that I was loved, no matter what I had done and suffered”. “I never want to use heroin again”.

AMERICAN HAS A MASS REINCARCERATION PROBLEM

James, by being drug free and out of prison for three years, already beat the odds. 75% of the ex-incarcerated return to prison nationally within three years. Drug rehab programs have perhaps a 10% success rate as most relapse within one year.
         Prison is a non-stop cesspool of screaming, anger, and hate. The men are simply warehoused without little job training, spiritual guidance, or opportunity to improve their characters. The young men I spoke with often told me they didn’t mind being in prison. “I get to be with my homies, play cards and basketball, and watch TV all day. The food's not too bad and we can wear pajamas all day. What’s not to like about prison?”
          The men we are locking up typically are not sociopaths or hardened criminals. I once asked an experienced prison guard what percentage of the men needed to be in prison, and he laughed and said “you mean, the real pieces of shit. Oh maybe 5 or 10%. The rest are no different than you and me.
          Contrary to the public perception that we are locking up murderers and rapists, we are mostly locking up men like James. They had horrific childhoods, have few practical skills or the mental discipline to function in society, and are often heroin addicts. The rest are veterans with PTSD, the undiagnosed mentally ill, alcoholics, meth addicts, and those who turned to crime as they see no other way to survive. Perhaps 5-10% are innocent, according to those who have looked at the problem including the LA Times, Mother Jones, The Innocent Project and the National Registry of Exonerations.
          And we just keep locking them up over and over again. America locks up more of its citizens than any other country in the world, including Communist China.  We spend billions of dollars locking up and warehousing men who could easily be productive citizens.
         It actually took very little for James to change his life. He meditated at most 30 minutes a day. He completed his GED and took a program that taught social skills, problem solving skills, basic business skills for ordinary citizens such as how to open a checking account and obtain credit and featured doing chores and being responsible for one’s actions. All the stuff he never learned from his teenage bipolar drug addicted mom and absent father.
         Most importantly, he developed a sense of self-worth. As he explains it, he opened a channel to his creator. If he did it, most men in prison can do it, given the opportunity. And so can you.