The Process 0?Acceptance
BYSWAMI ANONYMOUS*
The other process that also really helped me get through
my situation was a workshop that I had done a year
and a half previously called Avatar. Avatar is a pro‑
gram about self‐discovery that studies beliefs and belief
systems, and how if you can manage to change your
. belief about something, it can actually change your
reality. Without going into it t o o much, I can say that I
learned and experienced so much from it. Mainly what
I learned, was how easily it was to p u t labels on things,
people, and experiences that would keep me separate. It
In the very beginning, the government officials told me
also helped me take a very broad outlook on my life in
I was looking at five years in prison, which mentally I
general and gave me the ability to take responsibility for 'l
began to prepare myself for. A week later (after they had
what came to me in my life.
made me o u t to be a big drug kingpin) because of the
So, in the beginning of my arrest and for months after
quantity of drugs that they were charging me with and
I did go through a lot of “why me?" And yet slowly,
because of the new mandatory minimum sentencing
slowly as I was able to witness more and was able to
laws, they told me that I was actually looking at 10to
take responsibility for finding myself in this situation, I
20 years in prison and a one million dollar fine. At that
began the process of acceptance.
point everything changed, and I told myself that there
was no way that I was going to do that kind of time.
A couple of incidents worth mentioning occurred about
From that moment on and for the n e x t few weeks I seri‑
10 months after my arrest and after they had moved
ously considered taking my life rather than go through
me to a prison in California; they helped change my
what I imagined to be a living hell.
perspective of being in prison. One incident was hav‑
More than 20 years have passed since I was arrested
and put in prison. The charge was conspiracy to dis‑
tribute Ecstasy, otherwise known as M D M A . This was
January 17, 1992 , and the case that they were charging
me with had occurred four years earlier. It is hard to
describe what it feels like to have your freedom taken
away, but let me just say that it is horrible, really hor‑
rible. Alongside this horrible feeling, comes fear: fear of
the unknown, fear for my safety and wellbeing.
It took the government three weeks from the time
that I was arrested to finally get me to N e w Orleans,
Louisiana, where the case was located. I kept hoping
that they would let me o u t on bail but there was no
such luck, asI was deemed a flight risk ‐ and rightly so
because given half a chance I would have been o u t of
there. When all was said and done I ended up serving
just over t w o years in prison and three years of proba‑
tion. Funnily enough in a way it was the probation that
was worse than the time inside, only because when you
are inside you are inside, and yet when you are outside
and still beholden to the government you are under the
constant threat of being put back inside.
There were t w o main ways that helped me deal and get
through this ordeal. One was what I had experienced
while being with Osho and with meditation, and that
was witnessing. I had been around those days in Pune
in 1988 and ’89 during Osho’s Zen discourses where
He would finish every evening with Gibberish and
silence and then us falling back as He would say to us
something like: Rush to the very center of your being
asif this was your last m o m e n t of life. Witness that you
are n o t the body, witness that you are n o t the mind,
witness that you are the Buddha, pure consciousness.
Experiencing this every evening for months on end had
a huge impact on me and was extremely helpful for me
in my period of incarceration.
ing been stood up by a close friend who had promised
to Visit me and then flaked n o t once or twice but three
times in a r o w for various reasons, the worst being
that she was hung over from partying t o o much and
couldn’t be bothered to make it. The second incident
was while talking long-distance to my girlfriend who
was in Japan and hearing a male voice in the back‑
ground, it dawned on me that she had someone else in
her life and hadn’t told me. That phone call and being
stood up for the third time happened on the same day,
a Sunday. I was in such a state of anger and hurt that
I went to the outside weight-lifting area where there
was a punching bag, and I w e n t at that bag with every
ounce of energy I had, and I kept punching and punch‑
ing till my knuckles were r a w and I was completely
spent. After that, something switched in me, and I
become very present and calm. I made a conscious
decision in that m o m e n t that I had to forget about my
previous life, that I had to forget about Pune and all my
friends and everything that wasn’t in my day-to-day
life. If someone wanted to write to me, great. If some‑
one wanted to visit me, also great, but I was n o t going
to ask or expect anything from anybody.
80 time passed by as it does, and it is interesting how
when you change your perspective your reality changes.
I would hear the n e w guys yelling on the phone super‑
stressed o u t as they were asking their w o m e n , "Where
were you last night?”
* Alhough the Viha Connection does not usually accept anonymous contributions, there are legal
implications of this article that make it an exception. ~Ed.
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