Locked behind bars for the fourth time, for grievous bodily harm among other crimes, author and international public speaker James Carré-Rice knew that if something didn’t change soon then he would definitely lose his life one way or another.
That was back at the start of the 1980s when James, then only 22, had already spent the better part of eight years at her majesty’s displeasure and was a veteran of the brutal borstal system.
While giving the appearance of a tough, street-smart delinquent who solved his problems fist-first, away from the other inmates and prison guards he wondered desperately how he’d become as mentally locked into a certain type of person as physically incarcerated.
Growing up in Liverpool, he’d had the promise of a bright future, excelling at school and in sports, but there seemed to be something inside him that was actively hostile to his own wellbeing; something that fed off all the fears and doubts as he slowly self-destructed.
The break-through moment for James came thanks to overhearing a conversation about a prison that offered help to the inmates. After speaking with a prison doctor and psychiatrist, James was transferred to HM Prison Grendon – then and now the UK’s only therapeutic prison.
In gruelling group-therapy sessions, the mental walls that James had unwittingly built around himself were systematically torn down. But it was only after one particularly intense role-play session, where he was literally told to crawl across the floor after facing off a barrage of verbal assaults without resorting to violence, that he came to understand the source of his troubles, and the right way to deal with them.
What he first learned at Grendon, and which he has spent the many years since refining and developing into a powerful system of self-transformation accessible by all, is that the biggest obstacle to our own happiness and success is, when you think about it, actually ourselves.
According to James, it is our negative thoughts – those tiny nagging voices that tells you that you can’t hope to achieve something, or are not even worthy enough to try – that become, if unchecked, a parasite that drains our potential away.
The constant self-doubt, self-hatred and self-centredness may operate below the consciousness and unless exposed and confronted will craft a false identity that restricts and constricts the individual.
James call this negatively-charged persona a ‘robot’, and it was only after he recognised and dismantled the robot that he was able to reclaim an authentic existence, and tap into a deeper universal reservoir of energy.
As the reader learns, the author has used this knowledge to remarkable effect. Upon his release from prison he enrolled at college, learned to drive and gained meaningful employment, married and started a family. He then moved to America for five years where he oversaw a radical overhaul of the Youth Court system in New York – something which no doubt saved many other young people from a life of crime.
Since then he has helped thousands of convicts in the UK and USA, as well as law-abiding citizens, to make lasting, positive changes and find new beginnings free from the mental hang-ups that held them back for so long.
Both autobiography and self-help guide rolled into one, and drawing upon the teachings of such authorities as Karl Jung and Eckhart Tolle while being very much its own thing, Another Kind of Knowing is an excellent motivational resource that highlights the personal injustice system we can become trapped in, and how to gain parole.
Another Kind of Knowing is out now priced £7.99 from Amazon UK.
