Freedom—an inside job.

The men in our Board of Parole preparedness course at San Quentin are collectively serving a sentence of 509 years. There are eight of them. I’d invite you to do the math, but I know it doesn’t add up. A few have fixed sentences: 75 years, or 40 years. The rest fall within ranges like “25 to life.” They call themselves “Lifers.” I call them courageous. 

Sunrise from Point San Quentin, Richmond San Rafeal Bridge

Another man, a Type Seven, is doing 305 years to life. He said his sentence was “justifiable.” The irony is uncomfortable because Sevens are the ones who come to teach the rest of us about freedom. It’s not because Sevens are fun; they are, I’m married to one, but that’s not what freedom means when it comes to the Enneagram. It’s one thing for the justice system to condemn someone to life; it’s quite another when we do that to ourselves. Personality is a distortion of what’s essentially right in us. Our Seven has forgotten something essential about himself—sometimes we have to learn the hard way that freedom is an inside job. 

The Enneagram is a system of self-empowerment. It shows us precisely where we give our power away—and why. There is no shortage of accountability in the class. The men in blue are somber, remorseful, and forthcoming. To get a seat in the room, everyone completed our foundational course twice, that’s 48 hours of Enneagram self-awareness training. From the get-go, we ask everyone what my therapist, Leanne, once asked me: “Are you willing to take 100 percent emotional responsibility for yourself?” 

It struck me as an audacious question when she asked it years ago. At the time, I thought, C’mon, I’m paying you! Instead, I just forced a tight smile. “Of course, I’m willing,” I replied, while my ego strutted around in my head, muttering. Then Leanne handed me a piece of paper explaining what emotional responsibility actually meant, and asked me to sign it.

That gave me pause.

I break it down for my clients, and in prison, the same way my therapist broke it down for me. Our thoughts just come. Alan Watts said, " We can’t control our thoughts any more than we can control the beating of our own hearts.” I was glad she couldn’t hear my thoughts that day. The thoughts we pay attention to make us feel some kind of way. Thoughts we keep thinking become beliefs that make us want to DO things. All of this is within our control and, therefore, our responsibility. I could see where she was going.

And, I didn’t like it.  

My therapist knew things I didn’t, and she was also a Type Seven. She said things like, “I can’t make you mad. Only you can make you mad.” I didn’t think I wanted as much responsibility as she was willing to give me, but I did want more freedom, and she knew it. I work with Type One, The Idealist. Ones come to teach the rest of us about what’s fair. In my head, I’d already adjudicated a whole case against my mother and my husband, complete with a list of offenses they’d committed. Like our Seven, I felt justified. Leanne didn’t let me get away with any of that. I’m not about to let anyone else get away with it, either; we know too much. 

At EPP, we know that we’re all in a prison of our own making. We also know that first, there is a prison made for us in childhood—one that no one chose. The prison in our minds is the only life sentence we can undo for ourselves, but not by ourselves. I feel like a detective who wants to go back and understand: What happened to you? Moreover, I want him to connect those dots to pinpoint where he first gave up his right to be truly free—inside of himself.

We all take a breath—the weight of their impossibly long sentences pools in the room. I allow myself to feel impacted, oddly grateful that I have not become desensitized to hearing of the horrific things people can do to others and to themselves. Then, as best I can, I let go of all my feelings and make room for another kind of energy to come in. I think of all of the EPP Ambassadors who have gone before him, who continue to inspire and grow me and my vision: freeing people from the prisons of our minds.