Inside Out: An MBA Grad's Story11 December 2005
George ended up in juvenile hall after spending six years taking speed and crystal [Meth-Amphetamines], “chasing bags” as he puts it. After quitting speed and crystal, he tried to maintain the high by any means possible- alcohol, marijuana, even freon and GHB. George eventually ended up in juvenile hall, after getting arrested for possession of firearms and narcotics. Inside the juvenile hall george was able to attend our program, and shortly after his release, we had a chance to interview him.
You can watch the docu-video, or read the transcript below.
Isaiah: How did your experiences in the juvenile hall yoga/meditation program affect you?
George: It gave me time to just center myself. It allowed me to express how I was feeling, and come to terms with what things cause me to do the things I do. It was just a cool experience.
Isaiah: It seems like your life before was a real quest for happiness, and it seems like that hasn’t really changed, but this program helped you put into perspective more how to find it.
George: Yeah that is what happened. It’s been such a growing experience. This program has helped me; actually not just the program, but also the fact that I can meditate about things has helped me to this day, right now. I got so much stuff I got to deal with [now] like probation. I got to pretty much catch up with the last three months of my life, plus however many years I was just fucked up on drugs. And all this just happened at once. I mean I really don’t have any tools to deal with life. The way I used to deal with life was either be angry and start beating people up, or just get high and lose my mind.
But I’m coming to grasp with my spiritual needs, what I need for myself and my own well being, and many of the things I learned and read really helped me to cope with a lot of the regret and repressed anger I had.
Isaiah: Can you describe how your life has changed since you learned yoga and meditation?
George: When I was thinking about happiness, back in the day, I was like, ‘yeah I have my friends, and they’ll be there to make me happy.’ I was expecting things to make me happy. If I bought this and this and this, or if I had this car, partying at this person’s house, and all this stuff, I would be happy. It’s kind of just sneaky. You can look at it as if it’s going to make you happy, and it might make you happy, but it sneaks up on you and comes back at you. It’s like your burning the candle at both ends, living your life so quick, for all these moments that you want. And it’s like when you don’t have these moments, you’re just so angry. Like at this point, I’m happy to be able to breathe, I’m happy to be able to come home and just see my mother and see my sister. I’m just happy for this present moment, right now. Happy to just be out of my cell, not having to ask people whether I can urinate or not. Right now I can cook myself food if I want, I can eat when I want, drink water when I want. There’s just a tremendous amount of freedom because of all the things I am capable of doing at this point in time.
Isaiah: So, what have you learned about meditation?
George: I wish that everybody could just let go of all these little notions, these biased notions of what meditation is all about, and just realize that meditation is not just a thing that you do, but actually what’s inside of it, what it’s capable of. To me the meditation and the practice was just a release, such a profound experience. At points when I was meditating, most the time, I even forgot that I was locked up. I forgot about all the things that were unimportant, and all the things that just made me feel bad in my life. Meditation got me to visualize all that there is to be grateful for.
I guess, in a way it’s one of the greatest drugs I ever done. Metaphorically speaking. And not just because of the high, but just the consistency of how I can use it. Like everyday, whenever something is angering me to the point where I want to revert back to how I used to be, I just sit back, breathe, visualize all the things that are really important, and figure that what I’m angry at is just total bullshit. Its not even significant compared to the whole broad scheme of things.
