*from Joe Wolfe:*

It was 1974 and I was twenty-four years of age at the time. My own history up to that point was one like so many stories of a young street thug, growing up in a working class Chicago neighborhood, discouraged and disillusioned by the mediocrity and grind of what life had to offer. That there had to be something better was always a predominating
thought. So \'better\' for me, was the excitement and the radical
camaraderie of our little clique of thugs, always plotting, always
stealing, always looking for that thrill. So when those activities
resulted in my first arrests, confinement in juvenile punishment
facilities and finally in a ten year prison sentence,( the big time), I
was brought to a juncture. I would crash and burn. Previously embraced
justifications for my anti-social behavior would soon be shattered and
all of the glamour of the life of a criminal would cease to contain even
a trace of validity. The underlying conviction that there had to be
something better still remained but now (after the experience I\'ll
describe below) that something would take on an entirely new and
remarkable definition.

So at twenty-four and while wallowing in the misery of prison life this
is what occurred that would lead to forever changing the way I would
perceive the world:

The real Me...The I...The Essence of Who and Where I AM emerged for just
a few short minutes one summer afternoon after an entire sleepless night
of worry and immense fear over the possibility that I might be killed
the following day. For the first time in many years I turned to the God
I perceived and I prayed for deliverance. I begged and prayed for many
hours with fever and intensity never before offered. \'He\'
answered...\'He\' delivered me. And for a few brief moments \'He\'
lifted Me from the body and embraced Me as a loving Father does His Son
and assured Me once again, that I would be all right.

While the body lay on the prison cell cot below, the awareness of \"I\"
expanded to include every molecule of air around Me... every feature,
the sunlight that streamed through the barred window, the trees and
grass outside, the room itself...everything was Me. A crescendo of
\'sound\' accompanied the experience that completely absorbed all sound
on earth and played as every instrument in every orchestra all over the
world, in perfect harmony. This experience launched my search for the
miraculous.

Now, many years later, and after much search, many books, and after the
message of Forgiveness as gently prescribed in A Course in Miracles, I
came to realize that the \'person\' who searched would never find the
answers. That person, a product of the same thought system that created
him, would seek and never find because he was simply in the way. His
beliefs, his concepts and ascribed personage blocked the very awareness
of that which he sought. He had to get out of his own way first. He had
to surrender his own image of who he thought he was before any Real
knowledge could enter. The little self had to be first seen for what it
really was, then sacrificed (for lack of a better word) to make room for
something much bigger.

The Law of Forgiveness would lend him the means to do just that. In
Forgiveness, the little self would fade into the oblivion from which it
came and what would emerge is what was there all along. That Essence of
the Real Self, that \"I\" and that assurance that everything would be
alright. And from that Essence a Power uncommon in this perceived world
would accompany it and everything would change for the better, forever.

Today, almost every day this writer visits the local post office to
deliver copies of the original edition of A Course in Miracles \[donated
by Course in Miracles Society\] along with an easy to comprehend
introduction to The Course as made available through the text version of
Gary R. Renard’s The End of Reincarnation to lists of prisoners who have
expressed the desire to learn more about the Course. With the text
version is a brief essay describing what is referred to as The Five
Signs, five mystical experiences during this life which began at the age
of three and culminated with the experience described above. This
experience led to adopting a practical application of the spiritual
discipline taught in A Course in Miracles.

With the help of people like Jon Mundy and his Miracles Magazine, Regina
Dawn Akers and her The Holy Spirit’s Interpretation of the New
Testament, Gary R. Renard and Tami Simon, (The End of Reincarnation) and
Dov Fishman of The One Mind Foundation and Acim Gather, as well as
Beverly Hutchenson, Marrianne Williamson, Robert Perry, and those
friends who assist with postage donations, and especially Course In
Miracles Society, a new wave of compassion is spreading throughout the
populations of prisons all over the country.

For many of these prisoners, long forgotten by family or friends, this
new avenue of communication brings welcome relief and a gentle, warm and
loving response to their cry for help. It brings Hope where apathy,
despair and grief make their home. It delivers Love where blame, guilt
and punishment saturate the atmosphere. It brings the possibility of the
Peace of God to a ‘place’ where the egos appetite for misery, pain and
hopelessness can now move aside to welcome a glimmer of Light.

May the Love, Light and Peace of God be experienced by them, and with
every second feel another moment spent in His Endless Embrace.

Joe Wolfe, Spirit Light Outreach

For more information, please go to: [
*http://www.spiritlightoutreach.org/*][1]



[1]: http://www.spiritlightoutreach.org/