Using LSD to escape from prison (video)

Wisdom Quarterly; Gabriel London (defriest.com), Amy Goodman (democracynow.org)(DemocracyNow.org) See Minute 37:13 for LSD episode and its unintended consequences.

Democracy Now! investigates the shocking case of Mark DeFriest, known as the "Houdini of Florida prisons" because he has tried to escape 13 times -- seven of them successfully. In 1979, DeFriest’s father died and left him a set of tools. He picked them up before they were probated. The teenager was arrested for stealing and sentenced to four years in prison. [The U.S. does not torture, for we are a land of law and order.] Thirty-four years later he is still there, having spent 27 of those years in solitary. [The U.S. does torture, but we call ourselves a land of law and order.] DeFriest spent much of it in the notorious “X Wing” of Florida State Prison (FSP), where he went for many years without seeing the Sun. DN! is joined by Gabriel London, director of the new film about the case, "The Life and Mind of Mark DeFriest." More

Unindicted white collar meditator

If drugs fail to gain one one's freedom, might there be another way to escape the insanity, to escape to reality? What if it were possible to overcome the distractions -- external and internal -- and successfully meditate? All meditation is an intention in the right direction, but it is not all equally effective or ultimately successful. It matters what we do, what we intend, what we practice. "A pure heart," it is said in the opening verses of the Dhammapada ("Dharma Imprint/Path"), "brings happiness in its trail like our shadow that never departs" even when it seems not to be there. "An defiled heart," on the other hand, "brings suffering like the cart dragging behind the draught ox." Just to focus on the breathing taking place at this moment, not "thinking about" it but simply aware of it so fully that discursive thinking wanes and one is living directly in this moment, even if this moment seems from a distance to be unpleasant, is a great start. What do most of us instead? We look for substances and activities to blot out blissful reality, allow our mind/hearts to spin in the insanity we assume to be real, and yearn for more powerful hallucinogens, narcotics, sleeping pills, and forms of liquid and inhalable ignorance. Wouldn't it be so much better to Escape to Reality?