'Real Flowers Of This Painful World,' Compassion Manifest For All Beings, Spirituality Forged Through Practical Application: A Conversation With Chris Barbera

Pulled from the Archives of Unraveling Religion, this September 2009 episode recorded at the studio in the Home of The Future, Chris and Joel speak of the Erie County Holding Center Federal Investigation Findings of Human and Constitutional Rights abuses which open the talk to the practical responses from ancient and spiritual foundations and teachings to point the way and address to the conditions and actions that violated human and constitutional rights that were recorded and documented in the Federal Findings and Report.

Erie County Holding Center under Federal investigation, and Chris discusses the response from the Erie County Holding Center Leadership, 'consider the source' inferring that because the investigation addresses human and constitutional rights abuses of inmates and prisoners, there should be no concern, dehumanizing the reality that inmates and prisoners are human beings.

Chris and Joel expand the talk to Native Teachings and how labels and stereotypes dehumanize Native People concealing the deep wisdom and sanctity of Native People, the embodied connection with ecology and Nature, spirituality and honoring relations.

Regarding County Jails and Holding Center, some of the voices coming out of the Holding Center, what the experiences taught people who were/are prisoners and inmates:

• wisdom born out of suffering
• suffering is part of our world
• suffering has helped created the greatest teachers of the world
• making wisdom out of the suffering of the conditions of the Erie County Holding Center

Chris and Joel discuss incorporating meditation and ancient teachings applied not only to inmate and prisoners but also those as advocates and activists for the prison system.

The talk turns toward insights regarding the practical way of understanding projections of the mind toward others (e.g., inmates) as one's own dark aspect (e.g., Prison Leadership).

Also discussed, William Blake's Poison Tree:

'I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.'

Supermax Prisons seek to deepen isolation techniques for inmates:

• 'what is that really about?'
• how is that considered ethical treatment of human beings
• how does that contribute to the rehabilitation and restoration of people in prison
• Siddhartha Gautama, 'ignorance is the main cause of human suffering.'
• we create our own (human) experiencemuch of our choices are based on unconscious aspects of our human experience
• 'Cause and Effect' (i.e., Karma) is not (another) Law, but rather it is Reality Expressed, a practical expression of the Unity of Existence.

'Be Still and Know that I am God:'

• what does that mean and how can it be applied to healing our prisons and prisoners
• karma is also 'work' (i.e., another interpretation)
• 'you want to know my faith, look at my works'
• if you want Justice in this world, find injustice and address it
• spirituality as practical, a practical solution (i.e., spirituality is practical when applied with care)
• when religion becomes a superstition, too abstract, or metaphysical, people lose genuine connection with God

Joel asks Chris what he hopes to see for a vision of the future

• Community Action, call to action
• Legal Route, class action law suit
• Awareness

Joel and Chris close the talk referencing the Ba'al Shem Tov ('everything you see is a teaching for Divine Service to God') and Native American Teachings of animal spirit and animal totem.

Biography of Chris Barbera:

Chris Barbera has lived in the backs of empty churches and intentional communities and worked on various social justi...