They Are Writing a Book About My Work. I Found Out in Prison.

Nicole Daedone has been in federal custody for fifteen months. This is new writing from inside — a chapter of Ride or Fly, the book she is still writing there. Names and identifying details have been changed.

Rigpa. Primordial awareness. Like my Lama says “the good, the bad and the ugly” all at once, always and forever entwined. The bad and the ugly are an acquired taste but all intoxicants are: the bitter brews, the black coffee, the pilsner, the ayahuasca vine. I once asked a world-class cyclist how he did it. “I eat pain for breakfast.”

And yet it’s a rare breed that makes it into Padmasambhava’s cave. Scrappy and disheveled. Pain strips all artifice. For those who want only to know — pure gold. For those who seek for good, those who can and do and must look the part — an embarrassment. It leaves you a laughing madwoman laughing at what only those who know can understand.

I sit in my blue chair, iffy on whether or not it is contraband. I keep my bad back bottom bunk pass at hand just in case one of the most rigid officers comes back here with a bone to pick. Rach, a whir of light, moves toward the aisle, a white envelope in hand.

“They sent the transcript,” she says. She looks my way to ensure I know which transcript: “of the religious freedom conference,” of which, with the top religious scholars in the world, we were the topic. Four presenters. The first presenting on our case, apparently one of the biggest religious freedom cases in history; another on the dangers of our opponents in the case, those who have shifted the climate of the law in what is called a victim-centered approach — the notion that people can be brainwashed long ago debunked.

But making a revival with the teacup generation, raised to believe fragility is a kind of virtue, breaking at the first real adversity. Diametrically opposed to my worldview and the fundamental paradigm of Buddhist thought.

Interesting and affirming. But not new to me at this point. The antibodies of those who ascribe to something more than government aid (things like divine aid and personal accountability) are coming out like white blood cells.

The rigpa moment, though, lies in the other two presenters, one pursuing my personal biography and the other presenting my work in the context of a new spirituality. Verified. Validated.

This never would have happened had the worst-case scenario, this place, this case, not happened. A life’s work persecuted, held up as sinister by the prosecutors. Left to die in ignominy. Resurrected by the only force that could, a force that would use what was meant to go against us in our favor. It used all of their force to move the stone and became, as a result, the only proof of concept worthy of a work: it could re-emerge after death, more pure.

“They are putting a book together. The best scholars. 14 chapters, each is an essay on your work.” Rach says.

I marvel at the elegance. The woman I’ve been forged into in here can look the moment in the eye. There is a right joy unlike any other, uncut with any fillers of “me.”

I was 27 on LSD tripping my eyelids off in a realm not unlike this. The definition of ecstasy, that which transcends duality, was described by the psychedelics pioneer Terence McKenna as “a complex emotion containing elements of joy, fear, terror, triumph, surrender, and empathy.” That is the world of the shaman. The vein I seek for. After a week of drug-dazed exhaustion, torn asunder, on the rack, pulled in every direction — and this time these waves were relentless, too much — but granted a deeper knowing that likely no human on the planet would affirm, I knew that was my path: immersion. A voice. The voice I would listen for. The voice asked, knowing that we both knew, even here, beaten down, the prizefighter’s face swollen up, that I would not stop. I would make it Home. I would tell others.

“Would you invite others to this path?” the voice asked.

A defiant “No. Never.” We both knew that I was lying. That night, beyond reprieve, I was shown the movie of the future. My future. The honor of what I was being asked to do. To usher in. What it was that, in me, would not go down, that which animates, gives life to.

It was not pretty. It was not the propaganda film of the mind. It did not sell or seduce. It presented a sober and difficult-beyond-comprehension life. But in the end, I got the jewel to the destination. Which is why 25 years later when my Lama gave me the Tibetan name Gyaltsen Tsemo, which he translated for me as the jewel in the victory crown, I knew he was the next expression of benevolent aid on my path. And there it had been affirmed: I could endure what was to come.

The presentation I read from the transcript marked the check boxes in that story. Confirmation that things are moving along as they should. As Tina says “don’t pay no mind to your accommodations, you got an appointment in heaven.” I don’t pay a lot of mind to my present circumstances and “What it means” or “What people think.” The undercurrent is flowing just fine. In fact, it makes it an honor to be here.

I’m restless in that way. Agitated until, as we say in my tradition, “the finger gets on the spot.” And there is a spot. My therapist feared that I was wrongly enamored with my Lama. I laughed. That? Romance and such? That’s child’s play. I want my seat. And my seat is not beneath a man, nor is it bestowed by a man, but it is the result of the flow of devotion that comes in connection to one who would not blow out from the voltage. All of it can flow and from that I live in the resultant light.

While infinitely grateful and charmed by the form of him, it is as another dream showed me. I stood at a threshold. The deity of Vajrayogini beckoned. He was there in the doorway and I looked at him as if to say “I have to keep going.” He beamed warmly. He holds the door for me like a true gentleman. Every door.

Ride or Fly is the book Nicole Daedone is writing from inside a federal women’s prison. Subscribe and the chapters reach you as they’re written.

Her first book, Jailbirds in Flight, covers her first six months at MDC Brooklyn: jailbirdsinflight.com