One day as she and Findlay were pedaling their bikes across the expansive grounds, Audley remembered Angus’ admonition and asked Findlay about prisons of the mind.

"Oh, yes," Findlay replied. "Prison is a state of mind. And that’s what our work is here at PSR: human liberation."

At his suggestion they got off and walked the bikes so they could talk better.

"Most of our guests come from the prison of poverty, a state of want and need. Some of them come from the prison of plenty, where they were given everything they needed and so had never developed empathy for those who go hungry or have to work for a car or a pair of shoes. Prisons of knowledge can make you feel intellectually superior, while prisons of ignorance trap all mankind. Racism, sexism, nationalism -- these are all prisons of the mind and they’re not unique to penal institutions. Even on the Outside, there are prisoners of greed who can't be happy with enough but must always have more. There are sick, addictive personalities who can never get enough alcohol or drugs or sex or food; all these cravings for external substances are to alleviate the prison of dissociation."

"I suppose you could even be imprisoned by good stuff," she thought aloud.

"Oh, yes!" he agreed. "Good ideas, for example. We can become imprisoned by our own concepts, perceptions or ambitions!"

"Or relationships," Audley suggested.

"Absolutely. So, you see, there's no reason to fear a place like PSR. This is a declared rehabilitation center; it's apparent that the prison exists. Consider all those seemingly successful and normal people outside who are busy influencing each other with their own individual prison mentality."

She thought of Sylvia's prison of Jennifer and Brad's prison of Sam.

"But I think the darkest prison is the prison of fear," Dr. Findlay said. "Fear is a crime committed by men the world over. Many of the things these men here have done was caused by fear of failure, fear of not being accepted."

"Women, too, have prisons of fear," she acknowledged.

"Of course! Fear of rejection, fear of abandonment."

That was the diagnosis her father had recently given her.

"But the worst of the fears," he concluded, "is the fear of love. That fear denies us the ability to accept our vulnerability and to trust life. It steals from us the joy of doing for others."

No wonder Angus had asked her to discuss prisons of the mind! Findlay was talking about Lanon's reason for being here and, more to the point, her own most insidious innermost fears.

"These days everyone wants to qualify his or her love," Findlay went on. "They say, 'I'll love you IF .... I'll give this much IF .... I'll trust you BUT .... And it turns out to be not love at all, but some kind of bartering. Even worse than that, it's some kind of cowardice."

"You admit that it takes courage to love," she said, looking for someone to justify her fear of loving.

"Love IS courage," he said. "Without love there is no courage, no trust, no faith, no belief, no life. Without love there is nothing. Without love you are imprisoned."

"Would you consider love as the ability to know fulfillment and anticipation at the same time?"

"Of course. It's accepting this moment for all it's worth, and expecting the next moment to be as good or even better."

She said, "I have a friend who says that he feels imprisoned on Urth."

"He is, in a way. We're all imprisoned here in our mortality, in our bodies. Obviously we couldn't live this life without being confined in our skin, but even with the limitations of our existence here, there is freedom if we know our individual prison well enough to make it sacred.

"How do we do that?" she asked.

"Through love. Love of life, love of others. Dress up life, feed it, play it some music, associate it with others, and when the time comes to leave this one behind, you will know you have at least lived a life that was made safe and free by loving."