Hello and welcome to another edition of Mindfulness Plus.

I'm your host Thomas McConkey. Thank you for downloading us today. So the last few weeks,

I've been talking about energy centers. And if you haven't heard

those episodes starting with the episode Money, Sex, Fame, Power, I recommend them. I'm going

to return to that topic next week. But, you know, as I was coming in to record today the day after the 4th of July,

I was struck to talk about something related to freedom, related to liberation.

So if you're listening outside of the United States, which many of you listeners are, I just invite you to keep an open heart and mind while I wax patriotic, but not so much in the sense of patriotic for the United States, but patriotic for the human race.

Yesterday, I was thinking about my brothers and sisters in the Utah State Prison.

For the last two and a half years, I've been a part of the Utah State Prison Buddhist Project

where different meditation groups in Salt Lake City primarily will go in and teach meditation, teach the Dharma to the prisoners there.

It's been a really impactful experience for me.

In fact, I remember the very first time I went in to the prison walking through four layers of barbed-wired fence,

the steely eyes of the camera on me, walking into this compound, just a harsh architecture.

And, you know, winding my way back into a small chapel and then a side room in a chapel,

just very plain. Some books on the walls, some very plain chairs, sitting down, waiting for

the prisoners to arrive. And, you know, before too long, the prisoners had shown up. We'd introduced

ourselves. I'd given a basic introduction to, you know, this practice of meditation, mindfulness.

And within not too long a time, it might have been 30 minutes, 45 minutes, I remember this sense within the group as though the walls had just flown apart.

And I remember distinctly having this sense that the freedom that I felt, and I imagine many in the room felt that evening, our first gathering, it wouldn't have been fundamentally different than standing on a mountaintop in Tibet.

And it struck me because of all the places I've ever practiced,

symbolically, metaphorically, literally,

practicing in a prison might just be the very opposite of liberation.

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