The views expressed in our content reflect individual perspectives and do not represent the authoritative views of the Baha'i Faith.
![Man Behind Bars](https://bahaiteachings.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/2013/09/Man-behind-bars-396-940x394.jpg)
In late 1969, I lived with my brother and his wife in Portland, Oregon, and spent my time smuggling marijuana and training as a boxer for my third professional fight.
![Vintage Boxing Gloves](https://bahaiteachings.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/2013/09/Boxing-Gloves-sm.jpg)
I pursued boxing because I wanted to be important. I could brag about sparring daily with boxers like Andy Kendall and Denny Moyer, and that made me important to myself.
But importance didn’t make me happy. I couldn’t put my finger on why, but I had become chronically unhappy. However, two individuals in my life made deep impressions on me because of their natural contentment: my brother and my crime partner.
One evening my brother invited me to attend church. He was happy and content. And yet, he was not trying to be important — just happy about life. But I declined his invitation.
After my brother and his wife left, I went outside. I can’t recall the details of how quickly the following occurred but a random tranquility came to me that I cannot put words to. I had never experienced this feeling. Suddenly, the most intense peace of mind I could imagine came upon me, for no reason.
It felt unexplainable and wonderful. But I suspected it would be gone when I woke up the next morning. So I wandered around the neighborhood in a weird state of bliss late into the night, looking for signs. I found a bible tract pasted to a phone booth. I studied it, looking for a personal message, but couldn’t find one.
The next morning the feeling had left me. I knew if I could have that feeling again, I would live my life any way God wanted. But first, I needed some confirmation that God existed. Then, if I knew God existed, naturally I could just live the way He would want me to live.
A few weeks a later, I lost my third fight by a decision. A week after that I stood in front of a judge along with my crime partner. The judge sentenced us both to federal prison for smuggling marijuana.
![Lompoc Prison](https://bahaiteachings.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/2013/09/Lompoc-Prison.jpg)
Waiting in an Arizona county jail for the Marshals to transport me to the big house at Lompoc, I spotted a book in a garbage can. I saw the words “Peace of Mind” on the torn cover. That book, smelly but intact, changed me.
Now I could read the exact description of how to find peace of mind. Never an academic person, I could only read if the subject spoke to me deeply — words, however important, just wouldn’t stick. But this book seemed different. I had never heard of Hermann Hesse, Krishnamurti, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Buddha, Plato, Socrates, Gurdjieff, Alan Watts, Mary Baker Eddy, Ouspensky and countless others, but for the next 14 months I buried myself in their words.
I simply tried to find the similarity between their search and mine — the search for themselves, or for God, or for truth or for whatever would bring back that feeling of inner tranquility I had once felt. One by one, I read and then tossed those authors aside, feeling an initial attraction dim when my intuition would reject them. I got a little light from each, but then the switch snapped off.
I was at war with myself and losing. I had such fierce anguish inside that I would scream into my pillow so the other convicts wouldn’t hear me. I wanted to know if there was a God! Where was that elusive feeling of tranquility and spiritual peace? I was vacant absolutely. The prison shrink was no help. No one would understand me about the feeling.
Then the feeling came again, in my cell. It came, I felt, as a direct response to me silencing my inclination to box again. I wanted to free myself from my strong attachment to boxing, to the self-importance it gave me. I had planned to train hard for those two years in prison, then leave prison to resume my boxing career. I struggled with it, but I did lose my boxing mentality by the time of my release.
So I didn’t know what to do to be somebody at that point. I was paroled to San Diego to live with relatives, who feared for me because I spent most of the time sitting on the back steps with my head in my hands, thinking, thinking. They worried that I was suicidal, but I wasn’t. I just didn’t know why I was alive and if there was a God. If there was a God, why couldn’t I know? Where was the feeling, after all? How could I find it and keep it?
In Part II – Is Art Worship?
Comments
Sign in or create an account
Continue with Facebookor