“When I finished studying a book, I would normally pass it along to Paradise, who never held back on giving me his point of view of what I gave him to read and today was no different. Walking in my cell, putting the gray chair over the toilet bowl to take a seat, Paradise announced, “I can’t accept all this law of attraction, God is love bull shit!”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s no way that I attracted this life sentence.”
“And yet you’re here with the life sentence,” I said, placing the red velvet material attached to the spine like a bookmarker between the pages of the Veda, a Hindu religious teaching, then stood up to refresh my coffee. “You want a cup?” I offered.
“No, I want to understand how you could accept this delusional theory,” he challenged.
“I honestly looked at my life, the way I thought and my actions. When I did that, it really wasn’t that hard to see,” I admitted while scooping a tablespoon of dark crystals from the yellow and brown bag of Kaffe instant coffee into my mug.
“Unconsciously or consciously, I would never choose this for myself.”
“Again Paradise, yet your here. But I had that same struggle when learning about life’s process and the laws of attraction. You want to know when it all started to make sense.”
“When?”
“Once I was honest with myself and took responsibility for my actions, instead of using the blame game as justification.”
Leaning back in the chair, interlocking his fingers behind his head he said, “So you don’t blame the rats on your case, the agent or the Judge that gave you 45 years?”
“No, I blame the lifestyle I choose to live and the way I used to think. I’ve learned the power of my thoughts.”
“With the laws of attraction and all your universal principals’ bull shit?”
“Yes, and I had to change my thoughts in order to change the conditions of my life.”
“But your life isn’t changed, your still here in prison, locked up with me.”
I turned on the hot water letting it run until the steam fogged up the bottom of the wall mirror, then filled my coffee mug half way and explained, “I’m at peace from creating an inner freedom that ultimately reflexes my outer conditions.”
“Please Eddie,” he said, with an underlying laugh quickly standing up to put the chair back next to the bed. “I know a better way to change my conditions right now.”
“How’s that?”
“By getting the hell away from you,” he said and walked out the cell door.”
Eddie K. Wright 