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Congratulations

Congratulations on release from prison - ways to adapt and manage your new life.

Congratulations! Yes, gentlemen, allow me to congratulate you because, if you got to this last page, I could positively assume that you have read, absorbed, and reflected on the preceding essays, stories, prayers, and maxims, right?

And, if for whatever reason, you have gotten to this point without having done so, I beg you to go back and do so.

Why?

Simply because I put my heart, soul, experience, knowledge, and best intentions behind this booklet to detract you from the foolish and negative mentality I once had and, thus, exclude you from making the same mistakes I have made and avoid the punishment of incarceration, you with me?

Now, I know that with all these new changes in law (Johnson, Beckles, Sanchez-Fernandez, Mathis, etc., etc.), many of you are about to go back to free society, so please, allow me to give you some very sound advice I inspired myself with from the Fair Shake Reentry packet, and it’s coming from the depths of my heart, therefore; please accept and reflect on them.

Going back home could be both exciting and intimidating!

Our attitude may be that is should be right back to normal resettling, resuming the same old routines, and getting back to our old relationships, not so?

Unfortunately, reality says different. As a matter of fact, reality says much more than just differently, so please consider the following:


The first thing I will advise is you to log on to www.fairshake.net and join the Fair Shake community.

If you’re still here and won’t leave for a little bit, you could always add outreach@fairshake.net and interact with this Fair Shake community.

You will be surprised on how much information and assistance that reentry resource center can provide you with, deal?

Second: mentally prepare yourself for the adjustment process. Be prepared for anything… sure enough, do not expect the negative.

Simply prepare yourself to act as positively as you can for the possibility of rejection, depression, anger, betrayal, and disappointment, and for things to be not as you may have expected them.

Third: give yourself a chance to ease into transition. Allow yourself the space and time needed to get used to your new environment.

Don’t worry if it takes you a little while to get used to certain things again. Just take the necessary time to reflect positively on your surroundings.

Fourth: understand that the familiar will seem different. You have changed, home has changed. People, places, and behaviors will now be seen from a new perspective.

Fifth: expect to do some catching up with wardrobe, certain trends, language, and much more.

Sixth: reserve judgments. Reserve all judgments of others, especially the negative ones.

Just as you’d prefer not being judged, do not do it and resist the impulse to make hasty decisions.

Seventh: prepare for mood swings. It may be possible to feel hype one moment and defeated the next. While that may be acceptable, keep your head up, a positive attitude, and a smile on your face.

Eighth: take time for reflection and self-scrutiny. Your most valid and valuable analysis of an event is more likely to take place after thinking carefully and clearly about it.

Consider your true values and determine how you can live within them.

Ninth: respond to inquiries thoughtfully, carefully, and truthfully.

Prepare to greet surprise questions with a calm, thoughtful, and sincere approach. If you find yourself being overly defensive or aggressive, take a deep breath, or two, and relax.

Tenth: other than the Fair Shake community, seek any support network.

Do not isolate yourself.

You are not alone and there are those who really want to help you succeed. Look and you shall find them.

Eleventh: become a volunteer. A great way to connect with your community, build references, and network with people and possibilities is to serve them.

Twelfth: notice how you could live and do without the vices here, keep up the stupendous job and continue doing your best when it comes to that.

Additionally, while preparing for the upcoming challenges, there is a possibility that you will have to prove yourself over, and over, and over… do so. People may make many assumptions about who you are now.

Do not worry about that, simply follow your conscience. People may be very different than when you left… make the necessary adaptations to relate to them. People may expect a lot from you… it’s okay, just do your best at all times.

The way you hoped things would be may be different from the way they are, but accepting and going with the flow that is in line with your values/principles and relaxing will be worth it.

Well, gentlemen, it has truly been a joy to know you and be able to impart and share with you a little bit of my experience/wisdom, and I pray to the Absolute the best of guidance and blessings for each and every one of you.

Thank you dearly for your time and attention and again, God bless!

Ernesto Cole

Bad Day – Mother’s Day

What it's really like for prison wives on Mother's Day, and any bad day. The powerless life of a prison wife when it hurts.

Greetings, gentlemen and women all around the world. As Mothers’ Day approaches and the thought of my precious mother along with the thought of my lovely with and beautiful mothers of my children, I could not help but to dedicate a heartfelt essay from an Expository writing I’ve had with me for many years, yet never disposed of it because of its very dear and extremely profound meaning.


Additionally, after witnessing via the phone and visitation many of my co-recluses disrespect and demean their women, I beg of you to take this exposition into dear account and give your women the true value and respect they truly deserve.

And, for those of you who have refused to do the aforementioned, keep up the good work because you will be rewarded in due time, if not already, deal?

Today is a bad day.

I wish I could say that I’ve never had one before, but bad days consume my life.

I have no escape from them.


Today is a day I wonder.

Where is the support for us sisters in the struggle? What a man asks a woman to wait for him while he’s in prison, does he realize what an incredible emotional sacrifice that is? Does he realize that, yes, we’re in the struggle too?


When I made this choice to do this bid with my man, I didn’t know that it would mean to consciously hand over the control and happiness of my life, not to my man, but to an institution. From the very beginning, my man told me I had the Power in the relationship? That I should take the lead because I was the one who was free.


How am I free?

What power do I have?

I buy my clothes according to what is acceptable for visits. At any time I can go where my heart desires, but my heart’s desire is trapped within that prison compound.

So where am I going?

I stalk the mailman and won’t leave the house until he comes; waiting for a white envelope with familiar handwriting that has taken the place of hugs and kisses. I check the phone several times a day to make sure it’s working, waiting to hear it ring and see unavailable appear on the caller ID, a sight that has taken the place of the sound of my doorbell or his car horn. I set my watch to the clocks in prison. I schedule my bedtime around COUNT.

No, I don’t have any power.

The phone company has the power. The mailman has the power. Corrlinks has the power. Father Time has the power. The prison and the guards, they have all the power. Today I feel helpless and out of control. Today is surely a bad day and yes, I am struggling too…


Today, like most bad days that pass, I see a little bit of my life that has slipped away; another memory not made, another dream that hasn’t come true.

One more day my family is separated.

One more day I am without a real home. I am so often standing in the line between sanity and insanity.

I have to keep telling myself, “he’s real, this is real, our love is real, and the end will come.”

Today when he called I had to fight the urge to beg him to come home.

“Please come home, if you really loved me, you would find a way.”

Today I blame him for keeping us apart.

Today I am so very angry with him.

Today is definitely a bad day and yes, I am struggling too…

A good day can turn bad in the blink of an eye, a tick of the clock, or a beat of my heart. I am on an emotional roller coaster that changes its course without warning or consideration for my mental state.

It never asks my permission… attacks of depression, despair, confusion and frustrations hit me and consume me from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head and every crevice of my body in between. Some days I just want to curl up in bed and sleep. Sleep the years away. Some bad days I can’t even sleep or even eat.


Sometimes I even have to make my heart beat and lungs take in oxygen. Suicide is never a thought, but dying of loneliness is always, a possibility. Today I have no answers that make sense for the thousands of questions running through my head. My mind is cluttered with doubts and confusion and this makes my heart heavy with guilt and shame.

How can I question the only real joy in my life? There are so many people who are lonely, without love and passion in their lives, so as difficult as this ordeal is; I know that what he and I share is the most precious of all gifts.


But today I can’t remember all the unconditional love, support, and non-judgment that my man has bestowed upon me. Today I can’t remember all that. My man is the only one who truly understands and accepts me, the good and the bad…

Today, I can’t remember all the passion that my man has brought out of me. Today I can’t remember that the sound of his voice can bring me to orgasm. Today I can’t remember that he plays no games, tells no lies, and wears our love like a badge of honor.

Today is obviously a bad day and yes, I am struggling too… while I wouldn’t change one second, erase one tear, or forget one heartache, I can truly understand why any woman would choose not to wait. The reality is that I am in prison too… I am also doing this time and the only thing I am guilty of is loving my man.

For ever one of us that stands by our men, that can endure the bad days and savor the good, there are many that can’t.

Many just don’t even try. To the men whose women choose to move on, I feel your pain but, you must always remember that there are always two sides to every story.

Your women might not always tell what’s in their hearts, but if you listen hard enough you can hear them. You can hear their confusion and fear pleading with you to understand, to forgive, to accept and to remember…

Not every woman is strong enough to endure the bad days the struggle brings!


To all of you men who know, have, or has had a woman in your life, please communicate with them and wish them a Happy and Blessed Mothers’ Day for eternity and beyond, deal?


Thank you dearly and many, many blessings.

Ernesto Cole

Every Place Can Be a Holy Place

Mahatma Ghandi - Life in prison - learning solitude, spirituality, meditation through time alone with God.

We are behind walls in prison. For awhile, we are being punished for our actions. However, we should understand that the place where we are living right now could be made into a perfect place. We came here with all our sins and faults, but when we leave we could be free of all our faults. We could be pure.

In India, there are holy rivers and it is said that if you take a bath in them you become free of sins. In the same way your jail could also be a holy place.

You must have heard of Mahatma Ghandi — who after being militant and then fighting against injustice and for freedom, was put in prison. There he learned the teachings of peace and nonviolence, and came out of prison as a great being who freed India without using weapons.

There was another great leader called Lokmanya Tilak who was imprisoned for writing articles and “instigating” people against the government to “break” the law, and to disturb the “peace.” He was sentenced to a year and a half of rigorous imprisonment and came out a much more enlightened and greater force to be contended with.

The Great Yogi Aurobindo became enlightened practicing yoga, reading the Bhagavad Gita (one of the most sacred yoga scriptures), and meditating while being in total solitary confinement when he was in jail. The composer Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna, was an incarnation of God, and he was born in prison before having to be smuggled out and not be killed by the ruling leaders at the time.

And let us not forget the great Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela — who served over two decades in prison while refusing to be released with the condition of compromising his principles and determination.

Therefore, in order to practice spiritual pursuits, people often look for a place that appears like a prison, a place where nobody comes and where nobody will bother them. However, they don’t call themselves prisoners. They call themselves lovers of solitude. If we think very carefully, we will realize that by leading us to prison, God has given us an opportunity to think of ourselves and to remember Him.

In prison, we can lead a disciplined life. We get our food on time. We go to bed on time. We get our clothes on time. And even while living in jail, we can pursue spiritual practice. We can meditate—we can think of our inner self. Hence, let’s not belittle a jail, and make the best of it.

Everything depends on our attitude. If we change our attitude toward a place, then no matter where we are, that place could become heaven for us. If we have full faith in God, then every place, every moment, and every event of our life will begin to feel sublime.

What prison are you living in? What is the value of solitude? What is your attitude? Story on God's goodness - Wisdom from within by Ernesto Cole.
Please contemplate this next story.

Once there was a great prime minister in India who had this kind of understanding. If a parent said to him, “My son has died,” he would say, “Good. Whatever God does is for the best.”

If a woman said to him, “My husband died,” he would say, “Good. Whatever God does is for the best.”

People reacted violently against him. They thought he was crazy and were constantly hatching plots to remove him from power.

One day the king was being shaved by his barber and happened to doze off. While cutting the king’s nails, the barber accidentally cut off the tip of his finger. The prime minister’s enemies thought that this was a wonderful opportunity to teach him a lesson.

They rushed to him and said, “Prime minister, the barber has cut off the king’s finger.”

The prime minister said, “Good. Whatever God does is for the best.”

The prime minister’s enemies went to the king and told him what the prime minister had said. The king called the prime minister into his presence and said, “You fool. You have been eating my food and living on my money, and now you have the nerve to say that it’s a good thing my finger was cut off?” He ordered his men to put the prime minister in jail and give him only dry bread to eat. “Now you’ll see whether what God does is for the best,” he said.

The prime minister sat locked up in his cell and calmly remembered God’s name. He wasn’t upset, and when people would go to visit him and ask him, “How are you?” he would say, “Very good. God has put me here and it is good for me.”

A few days later, the king went off to the forest to hunt. On his way he met a gang of bandits whose leader was a worshiper of the goddess, Kali. The bandit leader needed to sacrifice an important person to the goddess, so he kidnapped the king and dragged him to the temple as a sacrificial offering.

The bandits examined the king thoroughly to see if his body was whole, because only one whose body is perfect can be sacrificed to the goddess. As they examined him, they noticed that the tip of his finger was cut and said, “His body is impure. He is not worthy of the goddess.”

So the king was released. Immediately he realized that if his finger had not been cut he would have lost his head. He remembered what the prime minister had said, “Whatever God does is for the best,” and recognized he had been right.

The king returned to his capital and had the prime minister released from his cell. When the prime minister came before him, he told him what had happened and then asked, “It was good for me that my finger was cut, but was it good for you to have been locked inside this cell, living on dry crumbs?”

The prime minister replied, “Your majesty, if you had not locked me in this cell, I would have gone hunting with you, and the bandits would have grabbed me. They released you because your finger was cut, but they would have sacrificed me because my body is whole. Whatever God does is for the best.”

God's will is best - how to trust in God - is His will truly the best for us?

If that could be our attitude in prison, then prison would be like heaven, not like hell. Our experience of the world depends on our understanding. Because of our narrow understanding, we must be experiencing a lot of pain, but we should realize that it is not only we who are experiencing this pain. We may think that only we are prisoners, but other people are also prisoners. We are in a small prison, but others are in the big prison outside. When will they be released?

All these people are bound by their own narrow understanding and by the noose of their Karma — the consequences of what they’ve done.

A wealthy person is bound by the noose of his wealth. A poor person is bound by the noose of his poverty. An office holder is bound by the pride of his office. A great leader is bound by the noose of his own leadership. And a person in authority is bound by the noose of his own authority.

Everyone who lives in this world is a prisoner.

What about the policeman and guards who are here with us? Of course, they don’t think that they are prisoners, but what do they experience?

What about the jailer who has power over us? Is he happy? We are all in the same place.

So let’s change our understanding. Think that you are a yogi and that you are pursuing your sadhana (inner peace) in this particular place and at this particular moment. Immediately you will experience great joy.

We may have made many mistakes. Because we are between these walls, we remember them. People who are outside also make mistakes, but since they don’t consider themselves prisoners, they forget them.

The difference lies in our understanding. Our entire mental condition is based on understanding that we are prisoners. And because of that understanding, painful thoughts arise and we keep burning within. If we change our understanding, we will be free in a minute. If we develop love for God, then even while living in a prison we could be like a priest.

Become absorbed in the thought of Consciousness — the thought of God, just as you are now absorbed in the thought of being a prisoner. Sit quietly with great peace. Try to know yourself and waves of joy will arise inside you. Experience Consciousness above you, below you, behind you.

Inside there is great divinity. Just as a person absorbed in deep sleep does not experience pleasures or pain—only great peace, so, one who is absorbed in meditation does not experience the pleasures or pain of the outer world. He experiences only the bliss of heaven.

It is with great respect and great love that I welcome you all with my heart. I don’t say this out of sympathy with you because you are in jail. I say this with understanding that God who is in me is also in you. If you direct your attention within, you will discover Him and be transformed.

Ernesto Cole

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