A Prisoner's Wisdom: Transcending the Ego

A Prisoner’s Wisdom

Transcending the Ego

IAN MCTAVISH

Copyright © 2009, 2012 Ian McTavish

Unless otherwise notes, all Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-4497-4299-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-4298-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-4300-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012904526

WestBow Press rev. date: 04/16/2012

Contents

Prologue

Mistakes Are a Part of Life

Chapter One

The Sentence

Chapter Two

Perspective

Chapter Three

Bon Voyage

Chapter Four

Prison

Chapter Five

I May Be in Prison, But Prison Isn’t in Me

Chapter Six

Do Your Own Jail

Chapter Seven

The Transfer

Chapter Eight

The Test

Chapter Nine

The Ladies

Chapter Ten

Do It Hard Boulevard

Chapter Eleven

Inward Validation

Chapter Twelve

Clarity

Chapter Thirteen

A Beautiful Mind

Chapter Fourteen

Promiscuity

The Pleasure and the Pain

Chapter Fifteen

A Course in Cognitive Skills

Chapter Sixteen

The Drug Dealer

Chapter Seventeen

I Am the Thinker of the Thought

Chapter Eighteen

Affirmations

Chapter Nineteen

The Superpower of Visualization

Chapter Twenty

The Superpower of Reading

Chapter Twenty-One

My Thoughts on Religion

Chapter Twenty-Two

If There Is a God, Then Is There an Evil or a Devil?

Chapter Twenty-Three

To Hell with Them Church Folk

Chapter Twenty-Four

Getting Out and Getting On!

Chapter Twenty-Five

The Last Day

Appendix A

My Favorite Affirmations

Appendix B

Australian Prison Slang

Sources and References

If the book we are reading does not wake us up as with a fist hammering the skull, then why do we read it?

Franz Kafka

The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the good tidings unto the meek, he hath sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of prisons to them that are bound.

(Isaih 61 vs 1)

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I would like to thank God for blessing me with the wisdom I needed to complete this book. There were many times when I questioned myself, wondering why I was awake until 2:00 a.m. writing. But the spirit compelled me to continue writing, and I did it detached from the outcome. In other words, I don’t care if this book is a success or a failure. I felt called to write it, regardless of outcome. If it has the power to change just one person’s life, then writing it was worth it.

A special thanks to my dad, Ian (senior), and my mum, Rose. They have always encouraged me in whatever endeavor in life I embark on. If I believed that I could build a spaceship that could take me to Mars and back and decided to build it in my backyard, then my parents would have supported me and told me that I could do it. For the spiritual upbringing that they blessed me with, I am forever grateful. (Train a child up in the ways of the Lord, and when he is old, he shall not depart.)

To my sister Kathleen, thanks for all your encouragement and help with this project.

Also thanks to Sean, Bev, Max, and all my nieces and nephews.

To Robin, Carl, and Simon, my best mates for life, thanks for all your support.

To Robin, for your encouraging words upon reading my completed manuscript.

To Simon, for all your IT skills.

To Tanya, thanks for your editing and your gift of criticism; it came in handy.

And last but not least, to my fiancée, Melissa.

You knew when to encourage me; you believe in me!

You always support me in whatever crazy project I decide to jump into.

Those famous words, Are you writing tonight? made this book possible.

I am looking forward to the future with you by my side and enjoying the now.

I have much to be grateful for with so many good people in my life.

God bless!

Introduction

I never, ever thought that I would ever come to prison in my lifetime.

But thinking back about sixteen years ago, I recall myself telling a friend that I would really hate it if I ever went to prison. I said this because we were queuing up for lunch at a trades college filled with males doing apprenticeships and industry studies. There wasn’t a female in sight, and we all wore the same blue overalls and uniforms. It must have reminded me of a prison movie that I’d probably seen, because what made me say these words, "I would hate to ever go to prison," I will never know.

So here I sit in my cell. As I write this introduction, I’m remembering a story about a man named Job, written in ancient Hebrew text, who said, "The thing I feared to happen to me has come upon me!"

At age thirty-one, I was sentenced to serve two years in prison. And despite what anyone else may say, I think any amount of jail time is a long time. As such, my plan of action was not to incur myself any more time; I hoped to do what time I needed and then be paroled. That meant no fighting unless it were purely in self-defense, no acting out with arrogant pride, and most importantly, I would not allow myself to just waste the time away.

As I walk along the corridors of this prison, I see inmates wasting a lot of their time in front of the TV or on a game cube hour after hour, day after day. There isn’t anything wrong with that in small doses, though I do wish that they could turn their tragedy into triumph by using their jail time for self-development.

To turn an obstacle to one’s advantage is a great step toward victory.

—French proverb

Carpe diem means Seize the day. I decided never to waste a day in prison and came across this timely quote to assist my journey:

"This is the beginning of a new day. I can waste it or use it for good. But what I do today is important because I am exchanging a day in my life for it.

When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever, leaving something in its place that I have traded for it.

I want it to be gain and not loss, good and not evil, success and not failure, in order that I shall never regret the price that I have paid for it."

—Dr. Hartsell Wilson

I sincerely want to encourage anyone who reads this book to take action now. If you want to change your life, start now! If you wait around for all the perfect conditions to be aligned before you do something, you will never do anything! Even if you are in prison, stop making excuses! Don’t even look for them—and start now!

Change your life! Quit the drug addiction, find a new passion, imagine life without limiting yourself, dare to dream, and don’t allow the absence of recourses to stop you, even if you have no money. Dreaming is free, and no one can tax or charge you to dream.

If you are tired of your life and the way that it has been panning out for the last few years (or possibly decades), then start to change it! Even if it means giving yourself a personality overhaul. Don’t be afraid to change. Don’t think that it’s weak to change. Change is power. Changing for the better adds value to yourself.

It takes a man or woman of courage to acknowledge that he or she has been behaving ignorantly and doing the same things for years and getting the same old results. It has been said that Insanity is a man doing the same thing and expecting different results!

So if you want a better life, better relationships, and better circumstances, then start by changing yourself. It begins with you!

They must often change who would be constant in happiness and wisdom.

—Confucius

We must always change, renew, and rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden!

—Goethe

Perhaps you have been hoping to start a new career because the one you’re in just isn’t your passion. Well, I would like to encourage you to get out of your comfort zone and change what you’re not happy with.

I’ve heard it said that There is no greater prison than being trapped for years in a job that you can’t stand. If the job you don’t like serves a purpose as a stepping-stone in your life, then it’s okay to roll up your sleeves and get on with it. But in essence, I believe that one should follow his or her bliss.

You don’t have to change the world, but you can change your corner of the world.

Aldous Huxley said it perfectly:

There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self!

So be bold! Be brave! And know that fortune follows the brave!

Whatever you can do or dream, you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!

—Goethe

The crime is not failure. The crime is not to give triumph a chance!

—Anonymous

The following chapters of this book will contain a significant amount of Australian prison slang as Appendix B at the back of this book. I would strongly recommend that the reader familiarize themselves with these slangs in order to better understand the story.

Prologue

Mistakes Are a Part of Life

Originally I wanted to remove the crime that I committed from the opening chapters of this book and slot it in somewhere toward the middle or the end. This was so that you, the reader, could remain nonjudgmental and keep your soul and spirit open as you read the contents of these pages. In the many times that I have reread about my crime and actions while editing this book, I have always become disarrayed. Nevertheless, here it is!

When I originally wrote this book, I kept in the use of profanities throughout the book and detailed the violence so as to retell the events with exact authenticity; however, due to advice from the publishers and editors, I have decided to remove the swearing.

Before I start, I would also like to send out my sincere apologies to the victim, his family, and anyone involved that this story may affect. I strongly believe that telling this story will help multitudes of people around the world in overcoming their egos. I believe that this book will be a catalyst in reforming the masses of men who fill our prisons and those searching for answers on how to change, forgive, and remove violence and other malice from their lives.

You will be strengthened in truth.

Sometimes in life someone may do something so out of character that it shocks all those around him or her. Your thoughts can manifest into reality quicker than you realize, especially when you couple them with strong emotion. That is exactly what happened to me as I spent weeks on end in an unfamiliar headspace entertaining negative thoughts and frolicking in the emotion it gave birth to.

Weeks went by, and I continued to mull over how I was going to pay a visit to my ex-wife’s brother and then eventually his best friend. How I was going to beat them both up real good for having the cheek to come to my house like a couple of heroes, telling me to pack my stuff and leave after a heated argument with my then wife.

The argument was over who would get to stay in our current home and who would move out to our investment property.

I wasn’t as enlightened then as I am now about attachments to material possessions, so who got what was a big issue to my narrow mind at the time. When I stubbornly decided that I wasn’t going to move out from our current home and settle for the cheaper property, my ex-wife became highly emotional. When I raised my voice, it was no comfort to her, so she invited her whole family over and got them involved in our dispute.

To make a long story short, it ended with me leaving our home against my will, with just a suitcase in my hand and feeling emasculated by her whole family.

My ex-wife’s brother had brought a mate along as the heavy, or at least that was my interpretation at the time. Things might have been different if my ego wasn’t so big. But when my ex-wife’s brother kept taunting me with some false accusations, I made him number one on my hit list.

A week later, with resentment still fresh in my spirit, I showed up on a Saturday afternoon at his workplace, a car accessories store in the southern suburbs of Perth. My plan was to walk in