As so often happens, some of my most profound revelations originate in the most insignificant things—that is, if I listen to that gentle voice of intuition and wisdom.

One of the good aspects of prison life—and there are many—is that I have time for meditation and quietude. While I lay on my bunk in reflective thought, a buzzing fly circled two inches above my head and landed on the screen of my open window. Since I had no desire to be bothered by the nasty little pestilence, I reached up and slid the glass window closed, trapping the bugger. Good, you won’t be bothering me again—ever. I figured on picking his carcass off the sill a couple of hours later.

Closing my eyes, I slid back into quiet reverie. Then, a strange thing happened. Those intuitive pangs of gentle prodding began to rise up, and in a voice less-than-a-whisper I heard, There’s something to be learned from that fly.

Right, I thought. Is this some kind of a joke?

Open your window, and see what you can learn, the whisper prompted softly.

I debated at great length with myself over the anticipated demise of my tiny nemesis. Is all life sacred? I pondered. What could a fly possibly teach me?

Nevertheless, my intuition remained insistent—open your window.

Then it occurred to me, this was an opportunity. If God chided me through my intuition, then contrary to anything I could imagine, that winged annoyance would teach me something. If not, I was simply more delusional than usual.

Watching the trapped little irritant march back and forth across the screen in what appeared to be a minor panic, I realized I got some perverse pleasure from its dilemma. The fly certainly realized its predicament. It knew that all it could do was run up and down, back and forth, frantically looking for a way out. And some dark insect-phobic part of me enjoyed that.

Not really expecting to gain much enlightenment from a housefly, I slid the window open. At that point, the irritant was free to annoy me to its heart’s content. But an odd thing happened. Instead of taking off to begin paying my karmic debt back, the fly with its miniature brain could not fathom the change in its circumstances. Free to go about its fly business, it perceived that it remained trapped. The dimwit made no effort to fulfill its real destiny, which I’m sure was to bother me.

Then I realized, that was my lesson. Frantically running back and forth right before my eyes, the fly remained trapped because it thought it was trapped. The fly didn’t have a clue to the liberation that existed. Then, I knew that I too am barely able to perceive my true freedom. A freedom offered through the spiritual portal of salvation that God has opened for me. Neither Satan nor my addiction have any power to keep me bound or chained any longer. My true emancipation is complete; all I need do is comprehend it fully.

That was it—that was my revelation. How many of us remain trapped in our addictions because of our perceptions? Well, like so many things, we have a choice. We can choose to be a son or daughter of the Eternal Light, or we can be the fly.