> <i>4. Journal The greatest gift I gave to myself while in solitary confinement was the gift of journaling. I poured my heart and soul into my notepads. I wrote about all the experiences, life choices, and traumas that led me to prison. I was lovingly honest with myself. I talked about all the things I had stuffed deep down inside, and it was the most liberating experience I had</i><p>There is a Hindu practice that is similar called Vasana Daha Tantra. "Vasana" meaning imprints, "Daha" to burn, and "Tantra" meaning method - i.e. "the method to burn away imprints". The method is the same as the author has outlined above, except that when you're done you "burn the papers in an inauspicious fire".<p>I have personally found the act of burning the papers very liberating, because much of cathartic writing I would never want anyone else to see - somethings just need to be written without any discrimination or self censoring, and knowing that it will be burned really aids to release it all.<p>There are more dimensions to this practice however I'm sure even from a secular perspective it would be helpful, as Shaka explains.
The author, Shaka Senghor, is slightly famous and has been involved with e.g. the MIT Media Lab, so for some background on his original trial, imprisonment and release that the linked article doesn’t provide, refer to his Wikipedia article [0].<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaka_Senghor" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaka_Senghor</a>
Why do numbers always get removed from titles here? I think <i>four years</i> in solitary gives a significantly different vibe than this editorialized version.
Solitary was better than getting the shit beat out of me when my ex-wife's law partner dropped by the Polk County Iowa jail on 10 March 2020 - dropped my name to a drug dealer - and was viciously attacked hours later.<p>Read lots of great Sci-Fi, both Niven and Game of Thrones. Lots of category theory - for "security" reasons they banned software engineering books.<p>Iowa is corrupt AF. <a href="https://chadbrewbaker.substack.com/p/good-trouble-in-little-chi-town" rel="nofollow">https://chadbrewbaker.substack.com/p/good-trouble-in-little-...</a>
How is 4 CONSECUTIVE years of solitary isolation not "cruel and unusual"? I'm not asking rhetorically, or to start some kind of debate or discussion about the state of incarceration in the US. I am literally asking on what legal basis those who have fought such things (I assume that they have) have lost those cases.
> What I learned in the two years to follow was that I was trying to control something I had no control over, and I suffered as a result. In my third year, I began to journal. I discovered that my thoughts and my actions were the only two things I could control. It was a pivotal moment in my life. I went from being a victim of my circumstances to being a master of my destiny.<p>Almost every book and teaching mostly comes down to this. Whether is Viktor Frankl or good old CBT. I actually read a very good passage about this in a book called Hapiness Trap<p>- Choose anything you are aware of: a sight, sound, smell, taste, sensation, thought, feeling, movement, body part, material object—literally anything.<p>- Focus on that thing and observe it as if you were a curious scientist.<p>- As you’re observing it, notice who’s doing the observing.<p>- That’s all there is to it.<p>- In that moment, when you observe the observing, you are the observing self.<p>- So the moment you realise what is happening—that you’re fusing with stories or believing that you are the documentary—you can instantly step back and observe.<p>- Then all you need to do is notice that you’re observing and in that moment, there is the real you.
While I disagree with solitary confinement I also disagree with a murderer reinventing himself as some sort of guru and getting a diversity department job at MIT<p>This man talks about the stigma of being a felon as being unfair when he took someone's life<p>I would equate his confinement with torture. However I don't think we should reward him for suffering through a punishment he granted himself.<p>When a person like this gets ted talks and photoshoots I think we've gone too far. The man has used his crime to turn himself into a brand