The Ocean Inside Me is a spiritual memoir about healing racial trauma as a person of color incarcerated in an almost all white prison. Amidst harsh conditions and blatant racism, R.G. Shore learned to meditate by going into his body, befriending his shadow, and learning to sit with the traumas held by his younger self.
In The Ocean Inside Me, R.G. Shore learned to love and accept the cause of his deepest pain, his brown body. His prison radio became the conduit by which he transcended the limitations of prison. The static white noise helped transform a world of concrete and injustice into a world where he could connect to nature and find healing through the element of water. His embodied spiritual journey eventually led him to studying law where he advocated for the very men who oppressed him.
The Ocean Inside Me is a spiritual memoir about healing racial trauma as a person of color incarcerated in an almost all white prison. Amidst harsh conditions and blatant racism, R.G. Shore learned to meditate by going into his body, befriending his shadow, and learning to sit with the traumas held by his younger self.
In The Ocean Inside Me, R.G. Shore learned to love and accept the cause of his deepest pain, his brown body. His prison radio became the conduit by which he transcended the limitations of prison. The static white noise helped transform a world of concrete and injustice into a world where he could connect to nature and find healing through the element of water. His embodied spiritual journey eventually led him to studying law where he advocated for the very men who oppressed him.
Chapter One
Radio Static
I turn my radio up. Thereās a little dial on the side that changes the frequency. I slide my thumb up against the dial and, beneath the hissing sound of static, I make out a faint country song. But itās not what I want to listen to; I want the white noise. I slide the dial on the radio again until I hear the static come in like thunder. I have some old headphones plugged into my radio. I put my headphones over my shaggy hair, which I have tied up into a man bun. I put a navy-blue beanie over my headphones to help press the buds into my ears. Now, all I hear is white noise. I turn up the volume to the second dial, just below the first. I turn it all the way up, and a cool blast of static noise enters my eardrum. I am on my way inward.
My eyes are closed as I listen to the white noise growing louder. Itās not jarring but soothing. The static begins to take shape, like a waterfall. Each wave of sound hits the base of my eardrum, thrumming itself into existence. I am standing in this waterfall made completely of noise. I am soaked in sound, but my skin is dry. I let the sound take me to where I need to go, deeper into thought, and deeper into my body, away from all these angry men.
The static from my radio drowns all the sounds out in the dorm. Their vulgarity and cacophony begin to mellow beneath the bursting radio static. Like falling on a slick patch of ice, the faces around me begin to blur; their details begin to thin. The racist thrum of chitchat fades quickly beneath the sound of my handheld radio. Before pulling my beanie completely over my eyes, I have one last thought: these arenāt men, these are just boys in menās bodies.
I breathe in with the sound and I exhale with it too. Soon the waterfall of white noise morphs into rain pounding on the roof of some house. I am transported somewhere else within me. The scene is idyllic: a log cabin with a tin roof and smoke billowing from the chimney. I stand outside underneath the porch, listening to the pounding of rain against metal. I see the drops as they fall onto the metal above me. They are heavy, but each drop lulls me deeper into a primal rhythm created by some hum within me. My eyes are heavy, but I am awake. The pounding of rain on metal soon transforms into an ocean. Within moments, I am swallowed by a peaceful sea with its waves roaring above me.
I am faintly aware that this is still just a radio and that I am still here, wearing cheap headphones, lying on this bunk, which is not my bed. The static white noise coming through my headphones is now an ocean of waves crashing on large rocks, and I am looking up at them from underneath the water. Itās loud above me but calm where I am. I can breathe under this water ā this is not a nightmare of me drowning: this is a meditation.
I have found that meditation guides me into an unknown that Iād normally not go into. It leads me to the parts of my body that need discovering. But self-discovery is not an excuse to separate myself from all the people who donāt look like me, or think like me; self-discovery, in fact, is the only thing thatāll lead me to understand those people on a much deeper level. By going into the wounds of myself, I enter a much deeper pain that holds all other wounds.
Everything is weightless and dark blue down here. Everything is at peace. My limbs float loosely with the water. I hear the breath within my body tell me to become the ocean, to go deeper. So, I do. I start to sink into myself, in a tunneling-out kind of way, like a miner trapped in coal, but Iām digging to the center of this mountain ā itās the only true way out.
The white noise from my radio continues to grow, undulating in my ears like calm waves on an ocean. My breaths are long now, maybe minutes. As I inhale, I hear the sound of my breath coming into my body. My inhale begins to amalgamate with the static playing through my headphones. I can feel my breath alkalizing now, the oxygen levels in my brain continuing to rise.
I envision an energy moving upward from the base of my spine with my breath. The energy rises from my Muladhara, or root chakra, up into the frontal lobe of my brain. I squeeze tightly, and the energy bursts into my pineal gland. My vision begins to fill my body with a warmth unfamiliar to this institution. The light within me grows brighter, and I start to make out an image, almost as if Iām peering into my memory, but itās not a memory at all. It feels like itās happening in real time. The scene is blurry around the edges but clear at the center, like a fish-eye lens.
Suddenly, I see my thirteen-year-old self sitting at a table in the school cafeteria with my friends. Though surrounded, heās completely alone. Heās making them all laugh. He does a good job at that; heās a lifelong entertainer. Heās funny and his eyes are large. His middle-school body ā gangly and unearthed ā matches his humor. His Brown skin looks odd in a sea of White. He has the body of a boy born in the southeastern part of the world, but his thoughts and his views are formed by that of the West. He uses his own awkward body to drive the butt of the joke home. His friends laugh, but heās still lonely. You can see it on his face, and he doesnāt want anyone to notice it.
All of a sudden, my thirteen-year-old self sees me. This is not A Christmas Carol. He can see me, and he knows Iām watching him. He stares at me for some time before he says the strangest thing: āWho are you?ā
He doesnāt recognize me. Iām him, but seventeen years older, and still, he has no idea who I am. Is he really asking who I am? Why doesnāt he know me?
Suddenly, I hear the ocean again, the sound of the white noise from my handheld radio growing louder. Then there is a whisper, a very gentle whisper amidst the burgeoning static.
I hear the voice pronounce clearly: Wu Wei.
This prison is packed full. You couldnāt fit another pickle in this jar if you wanted to. Bunks are less than two feet apart. Thereās no space and certainly no privacy. Because thereās no physical room in here, thereās no room for emotion either. The men canāt cry because thereās nowhere to go. At night, men pull their beanies over their eyes. I imagine thatās when they cry. I canāt cry in here because thereās no space to cry. Instead, I just pull my beanie over my eyes because it helps me move inward. When I cover my eyes, I can pretend like Iām not here. I know that I am, but it helps me to get where I need to go, which is out of my thoughts and into my body.
Itās always so loud and busy in here. My radio and meditation save me from the murder of noise above me. Iām in a prison of five hundred very angry, very misunderstood men. Most of them look like bears without fur, peppered with stick-and-poke tattoos of swastikas, racist jargon, and malappropriated American flags (which often only have thirteen stars). Many of the men here have holes in their arms and holes in their teeth ā blackened from extreme meth use. And the teeth that they do have are crooked, yellow, and jagged, and smell of tar and tobacco. Physique can be a paradox in here: men spend hours on the yard getting swole, only to go back to their bunks to veg out on soups (Ramen) and junk food. Thereās no blaming them, though, because prison food is shit.
Thereās a sweatiness about the men in here too. Their facial hair is often unkempt and greasy, and their voices are often flustered. Years of trauma and abuse have caused many of the men in here to feel paranoid and victimized. Itās always everybody elseās fault and never their own. I think thereās a sweatiness that comes with being defensive.
The men who have been down (in prison) the longest are often overweight and stale. Inmates call them dump trucks. They remind me of seals on the coast that lie in the sun on the docks. These kinds of men donāt have to go anywhere to make their moves. They have the younger ones come to them. Theyāve been down so long they no longer care if they spill Cheeto crumbs on their beds because they know, every Monday, theyāll get new sheets. Some of the old-timers are too lazy to get up at all; I watch them wipe the cheese from their fingers on their pillowcases ā snacks for later, maybe? Itās not a judgment but an observation. Prison teaches men to not care ā certainly not about others but also not about themselves either. Itās fast-food living. You donāt shit where you eat, unless itās prison, because everywhere is shit.
I feel like Iām āa million days and a wake-up to the gate,ā which is prison jargon for how much time I have left before Iām free. It feels like I have an infinite amount of time to find out why Iām so wounded and to discover the healing Iāve long yearned for. The thing is, people on the outside donāt want people like us to heal ā thatās why they put us in here in the first place. We are outta-sight-outta-mind kind of people. The thing about prison is itās a place that can quickly destroy you ā mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Prison can also lead you to a healing that even free men donāt often find, but youāve got to be willing to do the work, which is the hardest part. And itās damn near impossible to try to heal the trauma when youāre living in a place that serves it up twice as fast. Healing trauma in prison is like a recovering alcoholic trying to get sober at Oktoberfest, but it doesnāt mean I shouldnāt try.
Besides sleep, my radio is the only escape I get from the men around me. Itās their snoring that reminds me theyāre human; I guess even White supremacists need to sleep. The dorm constantly smells of anger and fear. I can taste it in my mouth. Things are always tense. This place feels like a stadium full of fans who have just lost a home game. Thereās nowhere to go in here. I am stuck on this bunk. I canāt go outward, so I have learned to go inward ā into my body, into my skin, into my muscles. My breath, and the static from my radio, guide me here.
The words are clear, even through all the static and radio waves:
Wu Wei.
What is it?
I know Iāve heard that term before. I canāt place it. But I know Iāve heard it. Iām not ready to leave this meditation yet. Itās too important. Besides, whatās waiting for me at the surface is far more destructive than whatās down here. I want to stay down here, down in this safe ocean. I want to go back into myself and visit my thirteen-year-old self and ask him more questions, but I can feel myself starting to float back up into the prison. I can feel my thoughts tearing me away from the meditation. Iām now focused on the voice and not the inner stillness of the ocean around me.
Wu Wei.
What does it mean? Where have I heard that term before?
Breathing usually settles the busyness of my thoughts, but not this time. Instead, I find myself racing through my mind, fiddling through each memory like a thumb through an index file trying to figure out where Iāve heard the term before. Wu Wei. Is it from Merton? Is it from Zhuangzi? Buddhism? Daoism? I earned my bachelor's degree in religious studies, so my mind naturally goes there ā to all the books Iāve read, all the terms I spent thousands of hours memorizing.
I rapidly list authors ā Thomas Merton, D.T Suzuki, and Thich Naht Hanh ā but there are so many terms and so many names, and now I feel flustered. I just want to stay down here in this meditation, but I canāt. My restless thoughts wonāt let me. My body and mind are at war with each other, and my body is rapidly losing. My mind wonāt let go of the question:
What is Wu Wei?
I can feel my hands begin to shift. Tempted by my mind to throw in the towel, I feel my hands reach up to pull my headphones off and admit defeat, but suddenly the answer comes to me like lightning. I am not sure how, but it comes surging in just at the right time, washing over me like tidal waves of energy:
Wu Wei: non-doing.
I remember now. The name comes sizzling in my brain like bacon in a hot pan: Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism. Lao Tzu, the legendary author to whom the writings of Tao Te Ching are attributed.
Wu Wei is a term that might be easily misinterpreted as ādo nothing,ā but itās actually more about non-doing. Wu Wei isnāt permission from Lao Tzu not to act; it isnāt an excuse to be lazy. (Formidably, an excuse that many Americans would love to have.) I remember in college my professor explaining Wu Wei to the lecture hall. I remember some frat-looking guy shouting out from atop the auditorium, āDo nothing? Does that mean I donāt have to write my research paper?ā And I remember my professorās response, āWu Wei, manā¦. it meansā¦. you werenāt going to write it anywayā¦ Bro,ā to which the class laughed.
Wu Wei: non-doing. I remember nowā¦ but why here? Why the subtle whisper deep down in the ocean of my meditation?
It doesnāt matter, though, because now that Iāve recalled the term, my brain can relax. I sink beneath the water again. I can be at peace. My body has won. I feel the muscles in my jaw loosen. I take a deep, meditative breath, and Iām back beneath the waves.
I set my intention. This time itās simple: Just be here, just be here and listen. Listen to this ocean, listen to what it has to tell you.
And so, I sit.
What feels like hours down here is merely minutes up there, but thatās okay because I like it down here. So, I take my own advice, and I listen.
This is what the ocean says to me:
Wu Wei is not about doing, but itās not about not-doing either. Itās about noticing what is. You cannot see what doing is, or what non-doing is, if you arenāt first noticing.
Notice everything, even if itās painful.
Prison is a place that can take the ānoticingā away from you. It is a place that is all mind and no body, but your body is where the healing takes place. You canāt force healing. It doesnāt matter how strong you think your mind is; you must be willing to forfeit trying and move into letting go.
It is really about allowing and not forcing something to happen. Wu Wei is entering into a river and swimming with the current, not against it. Itās funny: our whole lives we enter the river and face the wrong direction. No wonder our bodies are so exhausted and beat up by the end of things. We get in the water, and we look upriver. What if we were to turn around? What if we were to let go of trying to swim against the current, and instead, just flow with it? The doing can only happen through the subtle art of allowing it to be done to us. The doing only happens when we let go of trying to ādo itā our own way. When we swim with the water, we become a part of it. This is Wu Wei.
Growing up, I did a lot of art. I was always a good artist, but the times I was a great artist were in the moments when I allowed the art to guide me, when I allowed the art to use my hand to put to paper what had always been there. Wu Wei is us participating with the Universe at this essential level. It is a ātapping intoā and a ābecomingā without the use of force, without the use of trying. Regardless of outcome, we are called to participate in this kind of allowing.
This Universal energy is the natural way of things, I think. Wu Wei is the Universeās default setting, but we often forget and try to create our own path forward. The Universe speaks a different kind of language than we do. Itās not that the Universe has stopped speaking to us. Rather, it is we who have stopped listening to her. Weāve reached a point in time where most of us have forgotten her language entirely. Weāve forgotten what she sounds like, and weāve forgotten how to interpret the signs that have always been there. When we stop and still ourselves, just for a moment, we can hear the faint language again ā like hearing a song softly sung through a wall. Wu Wei reminds us to listen to the gentle melody. In art, the entire canvas is important, both the positive and negative spaces. In Wu Wei, both the positive and negative space in our lives are equally important.
In prison, however, it feels like there is only negative space. There are no trees inside the fence of the prison, only outside. There is very little access to the earth here. The men have been gathered like chickens in a coop, our feathers constantly prodded and poked by the harshness of our reality. No, prison is not an easy place to come to terms with Wu Wei because it requires us to be present to ourselves in a place where nobody wants to be present to anything. It requires us to be present to what is. Even though I am not a fan of what is ā certainly not in this place ā I know this current āisnessā is where I am right now, so I have to try.
That is what meditation can do to you though. It can take you all the way in and then tell you to be still and listen. In meditation, you learn to create a safe space for yourself, and while prison is never safe, you learn to work with what youāve got. When I started listening to the white noise of the radio, the first thought I had was, āThis sounds like water.ā So that was the safe space I created for myself. The space is always available, you just need to be willing to create it first and then go to it often. The water is not the space itself, but a tool to get me where I need to go. You must feel safe: that is key. And you must be able to return to that same place.
The voice makes me wonder what Iāve been pushing for. When I first came to prison, I could feel the resistance in me. I could feel a force within me that wanted to push against the reality of what was. I was a man looking upriver. I wanted any kind of control over my life, and I didnāt have it. I felt myself constantly pushing against what was happening to me, instead of allowing it to just happen. I was looking for an outcome that didnāt exist. Men in prison constantly look for outcomes that just donāt exist. Itās all pain, but meditation teaches me that weāre supposed to let the pain happen too.
I remember when I first came to prison, I was so scared and lonely that I just wanted some kind of connection, any kind of connection. It didnāt take long to realize that connection with wolves is no kind of connection at all. Itās true there is no honor among thieves and you are the company you keep. So, I learned not to keep any kind of company.
I learned quickly thereās no real kindness in here. I learned that if someone is trying to be kind to you, it means they want something. In prison, kindness equals debt, and the interest on that debt is steep. One of the first tips I got in prison was to never owe anyone anything. So, I learned to be lonely with myself, which can often feel more painful.
I couldnāt find connection with anyone or anything. I felt like that same kid in the cafeteria. I remember trying to get people to write to me. I had a friend sign me up for a pen pal site online, but I never got a single letter. No matter what I did, I kept pushing up against what was. There seemed to be no luck getting through to the Universe. Then my meditations began to subtly remind me to let go of what wasnāt working and open myself up to the spaciousness of what was working.
Now, that spiritual voice comes in like a soft rain. Wu Wei reminds me that I can only hear this voice when I quiet myself and create a space to listen. Still, how am I supposed to create space to be still in a place like this?
I can feel myself moving around in this ocean. Iām looking for a way into the peace, but I canāt seem to find it. The white noise can only help so much. I begin to hear faint voices, but they arenāt angelic and they arenāt coming from down in this sea. They are coming from up above in the prison.
I can hear two of the inmates arguing by my bunk. One of them owes the other money.
āYou said Monday, bitch. Itās Monday.ā
āThe fuck you just say?ā
They are inches from my face. Though my eyes are closed, I can see their anger. It rises off their skin like heat waves.
No matter what I do, I can never get away. Why wonāt they just leave me alone? Why canāt I get a minute of silence?
I can feel my restlessness poking at me from within. I can feel the anger wafting back in. I turn the volume dial up on the radio, but itās already as far up as it can go. Thereās a sense of panic, and I can feel the old patterns within me come to life. I want to throw my radio. I want to tear my headphones from my ears and blame the White God in the sky that probably doesnāt exist. I try to picture the river ā that river of stillness. These thoughts and patterns are a version of me looking upriver. What if I turn around and just go with the water instead? What if there was a way to invite the space?
Then the old thought pattern comes creeping back in:
Why am I constantly surrounded by the busyness of this shit?
These men canāt ever just sit still with their thoughts, and men who canāt sit still cause unrest for everybody else. Thereās no point.
Besides, Iām just one small Brown body in here. What can I do? My body is already working overtime trying to protect me, to keep me safe.
To say there is no space would be an understatement. To say there is opportunity for a person like me to create space in a place like this is an absurdity.
But thenā¦ I hear the voice again:
Wu Wei.
I pause and inhale deeply. This time, I let the water guide me.
I invite Wu Wei.
This ocean is my protector, and this time, I give myself permission to trust it.
As I inhale deeper, I allow the oxygen to stay in my body. I hold it a bit longer than normal. It begins to feel like ice freezing all my hot, steaming anger. I picture radiance, and I imagine an answer coming to me.
Wu Wei.
Suddenly, I realize the truth. The space I am looking for is already here. The physical space doesnāt exist in prison (of course it doesnāt!), but the spiritual space is always available for me. My breath can lead me there. Thatās what this ocean is.
āWho are you?ā I hear my thirteen-year-old self ask again.
He doesnāt know me, but he can. I can get to him. I know that I can. This space will guide me to him. This space is the only way in, and though I find myself stuck in this place without any room to breathe, I have somehow found my breath. My portable radio, a cheap piece of plastic from the early ā90s, has become my gatekeeper.
I know that I canāt escape the crowds of busy White men who wander around searching for meaning in all the wrong places. I canāt turn off their noise, but I can sink beneath it. I can find meaning within my own body. I can be still in a world of noise.
I feel my hands loosening their grip on my radio. This ocean is not something Iāve made up. This ocean is very real; I am this ocean. I am the space that I need, and my Brown body holds enough space for me to be okay. My Brown body has navigated me through unsurmountable racism here, and incessant noise. I am learning to allow it.
Wu Wei is helping me allow what is. My breath is teaching me to go all the way into my body and to let go of everything else.
I think I can see the point now: meditation is an artform that can help me reawaken the noticing. The noticing in turn will lead to allowing, and allowing always leads to seeing. Meditation in prison is teaching me to go in ā all the way into the body of who I was and into body of who I am.
I slide the volume dial back down on my radio, and I smile because I see the irony now. Through the static and white noise of my radio, in this White racist prison, Iām beginning to understand the power of my own Brown body.
Meditation
Wu Wei invites us to participate in the ancient art form of stillness. It is a reminder to allow what is, which is not an easy task. Stillness and presence are quintessential truths that have become lost amid the busy patterns of our modern society. No, it is not cool or trendy to be still. Nevertheless, that is our task!
It will be an easy temptation to want to learn how to drop into the deeper meditations first ā into the visual meditations within your own body ā and avoid the simpler, more humdrum tasks required by the mindfulness of Wu Wei. I assure you, that will come, but not yet. Just as a skilled carpenter learns about the wood first before ever shaping it, so, too, must we learn to sit with our bodies ā bodies needing to be held first, then understood, and later formed.
The how-to will come, but not yet. We must first learn stillness. We must first understand the shore we are on before we can set sail and arrive on another. People spend their whole lives learning to allow what is. This essentially is what enlightenment is: Being, itself.
The action of meditation is our yes response to the Universeās timeless questions to humanity: āAre you willing to be present in a world that consistently indulges in future anxieties and past failures? In a world raging in movement, are you willing to be still?ā
Before stillness, Great loss
Before you can learn how to be still, you must first ask yourself, āWhy am I not still already?ā
From your very birth, there has been something wrestling within you, a subtle hinting, a beckoning whisper. This wrestling hints at a longing deep within your bones, but you canāt quite put your finger on it. Thatās okay, this is the journey, dear friends.
Often, our bodies are not still yet because we know there is something else within us that stirs us into curiosity and question. We suffer from spiritual FOMO (fear of missing out). In our fear, we surround ourselves with anything we possibly can to convince ourselves weāre doing it right. We fear ourselves into success, which is one of the greatest spiritual placebos that exists. Contrarily, stillness begins by letting go of the idea that we need to get it right in the first place. We call this experience failure, and failure is the great loss that we all must face.
Wu Wei, or allowing what is to be, comes only after great loss, not before. Without great loss, we are still stuck in the ego ā a self that assumes it is the center of its own Universe. Trust me, there is no stillness there.
The ego can be described as having the following characteristics: needing to get things right, needing the approval of others, pointing out the faults of everyone else, self-identifying through achievements and accomplishments, black and white thinking (also referred to as dualistic thinking), feeling as though failure is not an option, believing that hedonism and materials are not separate from who we are, and living out of and acting from a fear-based energy.
Does this sound familiar?
In short, the ego is the smaller version of ourselves, which maintains the notion that we are separate from everyone else and everything else in the Universe. The ego maintains a posture that it should have some type of control or power over everything else around it. It is in this separateness that the ego thrives; its very life force depends upon its ability to compare itself to everything else around it.
As people, we are not so good at identifying the ego. At first, we are not even aware that our ego exists. A great loss must occur for us to glimpse outside of the small world we've always known. The discovery of something larger than ourselves is the beginning of the death of our ego. This death can take the form of anything that gets us outside of our small self. It might be a divorce, the loss of a parent, spouse, or child, a traumatizing car accident, being fired from a prominent position, declaring bankruptcy, losing a home to a fire or foreclosure, or ā in my case ā going to prison. More often than not, the death of our small selves comes in the form of the one thing weāre most afraid of.
This death creates a small movement within us which shifts the dynamic of our thinking, and eventually, we land on a shore that asks us to let go of our thinking entirely. We begin to walk along a new sand, and with each step, we realize more and more that we were never the thing we always thought we were (the ego). Then afterwards, maybe, just maybe, we start to awe at the notion that we are a part of something much larger ā the great unfolding. Prison, of course, was the beginning of my small death. It was the catalyst ā the brick removed that caused the whole building to fall in on itself. My insight into Wu Wei could not have come to me in the way it did without experiencing the small death first.
A simple exercise to start
To start, I want to offer one simple question, and please, be easy with yourself.
Start by sitting in silence for five minutes. Then, when you are ready, I want you to ask yourself one question:
What am I most afraid of?
Be honest with yourself.
At first, it might be spiders or the dark. It might be a fear of public speaking, driving, or ghosts. But sit with it a while and be wholly honest with yourself.
What am I afraid of?
The truth is, our deepest fears come to us in the form of great loss, and it is through this great loss that we come to stillness. This is the only way to truly begin to know ourselves.
For now, be open to the possibility that what you are most afraid of wonāt actually hurt you. In fact, it might be the one thing that heals you in the end.
The Ocean Inside Me: A Spiritual Memoir on Healing Racial Trauma by R.G. Shore is a touching, well-written book that documents one man's time in prison. Shore's physical space isn't the only thing trapping him, he's lived a life full of injustices of all kinds and he takes these issues with him in the frightening and dangerous world of prison.
Shore is an avid meditator and sprinkled throughout his work are chapters and scenes that dive into his meditative visions. These visions are surreal and yet beautiful as he interacts with a teenage version of himself and succumbs to the beauty and mysteries of nature.
Most interesting to me is Shore's honest and forthcoming take on prison life. He documents the disparities and injustices that continue even after incarceration, but even amidst all of this is hope. The author's journey from a quiet prisoner who keeps to himself to one that becomes a paralegal and helps many of his fellow inmates is truly inspiring.
The Ocean Inside Me: A Spiritual Memoir on Healing Racial Trauma is, at its center, a reflection of Shore's experience as a Brown man living in a White world. His writing on religion is particularly interesting (if not very surprising). It's a shame that a religion based on love let him down to the extent it did. As an adoptee from India growing up in the Pacific Northwest, Shore's life was never one that was easy, which likely primed him to endure and ultimately succeed in prison (the one detail, Shore's exact reason for incarceration, is never mentioned).
Shore graciously offers readers meditation prompts at the end of almost every chapter, a nice touch for a man who found so much solace and comfort in the practice. By the epilogue I found myself rooting for and wishing nothing but the best for Shore, a man who's life has been anything but easy but is determined to lead with compassion for the remainder of his days.