What's past Jersey?

This is excerpt #3 from, "Believer, Beware: First-Person Dispatches from the Margins of Faith".



Seth has been visiting with Jeffrey twice a week for several months. Jeffrey is in the Juvenile Detention Facility in the South Bronx. Seth is trying to teach Jeffrey and the rest of the class to meditate. Jeffrey sits in the back and rarely says anything. He appears completely disinterested. Seth asks, "What it's done for you?"

It turns out that Jeffrey meditates every day in his room. Seth is taken aback.

"...every night I go into my room and I read for a while. Then I turn out the light and do the breathing stuff you taught us. In, out, in, out. Fifteen, twenty minutes. Then I do my prayers and go to sleep...There's this place I can get alone in my room. I get into the zone...It's like duhhhh. You know what I mean... I can have everything I want in there, total freedom. It is real strong, like I was...well you know, like at peace."

"..but they don't let me stay in there. The staff kicks out...All day long we got to sit out here on this unit. It f... sucks...I can't be happy out here. All this noise. The TV is blaring all the time...And people always coming up and bothering you...No peace, man. No way I can be in the zone out here.."

Seth says, "That's why it's called a practice. Inside your room you got it, man. And that's great, keep it up, (but it) isn't about finding a place and escaping, that's too easy. The real training is, can you do it anywhere, anytime...the peace is within you, Jeffrey, not within your room."

Seth tells him that he used to live in the quiet woods and meditation was easy. When he came to New York it was tough, but "I didn't put my head under a pillow.."

Jeffrey wants to know if the forest is in Jersey. Seth says, "It's way past Jersey." Jeffrey asks, "What's past Jersey?"

Peter


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