Re: Be the Change!

This is one of my personal experiences I had while in prison, it is about how a situation was transform by acting and reacting from my heart… 

One night I was on the phone talking to my son, and while I was talking I watched other men walk up to the entranceway to the restroom and there was another man sitting on the three-foot wall that went through the restroom. He was at the front of the entrance and when someone would walk up, the man sitting on the wall would look at him with a mean look on his face. When they saw his face they were afraid and would turn and walk away and not enter the restroom. The man on the wall was angry and he was a homosexual. He was the nicest man that there could be, but when he wanted to or when he wasn't feeling nice he was the meanest and baddest man in the unit. These men were so afraid that they would change their mind about going to the restroom.

When I got off the phone, I walked over and sat down beside this mad man, or this nice man who thought he was a mad man. He turned and looked at me and what a face! It looked like a pressure cooker that could explode at any time. I knew he was not a pressure cooker, so I said, “What's up, man?” He said, “I'm mad!” I saw through him and I said, “I know you are. What made you mad? Maybe I can help you.” He said, “They made me mad and I am going to whip them.” I said, “I'll help you. Who are they?” He said, “The guards.” I said, “Man, the guards…I know you can whip some guards and I can too, but, man, we will not win in the end, and I don't want to see you get hurt because you are too nice of a person and you don't deserve it. How did they make you mad?” And he went on with the story about how they made him mad. I told him I would not let the guards know they made me mad. I was trying to tell him in a nice way that the only way he could be mad was to feed the thought: “I am mad, they made me mad…” Then I just sat and listened to him, really listened to him. As he talked about it I could see the pressure being released. The next thing I knew the nice man was back and we were sitting there talking and laughing and smiling. We walked into the barracks and the other men did not know what to think about what had just happened.

What an experience this was for me. I was learning to see through people and see the real person. See anger for what it really is and not to accept things the way they appear unless it's what I want. In the New Testament it says “Judge not by appearances…” (John 7:24) Paul wrote “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind,” (2 Timothy 1:7) Now this man was full of fear, but I refused to see him as fear: instead I saw him as a loving being, and this is what got off the wall and walked away, leaving the fearful being sitting on the wall.

Most people will turn and run the other way when they see a man that is hurting or angry. The only man you will see going up to a mad man is another mad man. People run around talking about God, how God created everything, even the devil. How God has power over the devil and the devil cannot hurt you unless you allow him to, and then every time they think they see the devil, they run the other way. My question is, if a person really believes in God, can he run from the devil?

I think my problem was in believing that there was a devil and that the devil was real! I told myself that I believed in God and God was real, but really I didn't believe it-I was only talking about God. What has awakened me is that today I know God is real and the devil is not. Today I believe in God. God created man, the devil did not create man. It is man that creates the devil.

This man was hurting and needed help; he was in pain, his world was falling in on top of him. He needed somebody to listen to him and talk to him, somebody that knew how to reach out to help another. My part was mostly to be still and allow the reaction to come from inside. If we want to grow spiritually we have to start doing what we learn. Learning does not mean a thing unless you apply what you are learning to your everyday life. Practice what you preach; practice what you have learned. If a man goes to college for 10 years to learn to be a professional, he is not a professional until he opens an office and starts doing what he learned to do. Unless he practices what he has learned he will never become what he learned to be. Many people do this, go through college and get out and decide they don't want to do what they learned and they do something else. Many only do what they learned and never learn anything else-only what somebody else has learned. And some, like Lonnie, go on to learn more on their own and then share it with others that want to learn. Lonnie was the only man I met in prison who was really using love and sharing it, not just telling about it. He was doing to others what he wanted to be done to him. Lonnie was living a life different from the rest, but he never joined them; he kept on going his way. He taught people not to follow others but to follow your heart and you will know you are going in the right direction. This is what I did and am still doing.