Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Do you know anyone who has been to prison? The closest I came to knowing anyone who could have gone to prison is my ex-husband, an oncology nurse. He is a man with three college degrees and someone who professed to be a practicing Buddhist. He could have gone to prison, if I had chosen to press criminal charges for his attempts at stealing my identity and engaging in criminal activities on the internet.
If you want to read a shocking story, take a look at my book –
Direct Hit! How Facebook Destroyed My Marriage and How I Healed. According to the US Government Bureau of Census and Statistics, one out of every 142 Americans is actually in prison. Prison, from all accounts, is not a fun place, and many people end up in prison because they lie.
Thousands of years ago when Moses brought down the tablets of stone from Mount Sinai, ?Thou Shalt Not Lie? was not one of the 10 commandments. In my opinion, telling the truth is a big commandment. If you want a graphic description of a life of lies, deceit, deception, and gobs of money, take a look at the new Martin Scorsese movie The Wolf of Wall Street.
The wolf is the true story of high-roller, Jordan Belfort who duped thousands of people out of their life-savings through pump-and-dump, shady stock deals on Wall Street during the 1990?s. The scenes of debauchery, exorbitant wealth, drugs, parties, women, yachts, and millions of dollars in black suitcases changing hands are mind-bogging. The F-bomb is dropped at least 600 times during the movie, and this film is not for the faint of heart. While witnessing the over-the-top excesses, one keeps repeating the phrase ?and this actually happened.? Yes, it did, and true to the law of karma, Belfort ends up in prison because he was dishonest.
We often think of prison as being a place we will never visit and hopefully never be sent. But the prison that we all inhabit is actually in our own mind. The prison of negative thinking, the prison of the mind that keeps ruminating and machinating about the same old stuff, the same old conversations, the same old regrets and what ifs of the past. Yes, these two types of prison are very different, but we all live in a metaphysical prison. Maybe it is time for us to break out of our self-imposed jail and move into truthful living where we are positive, courteous, and live by the golden rule.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/30/a-real-life-wolf-of-wall-street-reunion/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0