1A Cooked Lesson #2: The Fall

 

Part One. The Power of Denial During the Fall or Descent Phase 

One. Examples of Denial

 

1. A woman sees gradual warning signs that her boyfriend is jealous and controlling, but she denies it and before she knows it, she is in the chapel about to give her vows, what will be for her a prison sentence of unbearable hell: physical beatings and psychological abuse.
2. A man is a major drug dealer but minimizes the harm of his actions by telling everyone he is not a drug user, a gang-banger, or a killer. He’s just a “business man.”
3. A man slowly gains 50 pounds over five years and doesn’t realize he looks like the Pillsbury Dough Boy.
4. A man cheats on his girlfriend, convinces her that he did not cheat and has a hard time “forgiving” his girlfriend for questioning his fidelity.
5. An El Camino student hangs out with college dropout buddies who never really grew up. Their lives center on “having a good time,” which is the usual fare of male bonding, bragging about their endless series of immature relationships, gossiping about their latest exploits, etc. This student can’t acknowledge that his “buddies” are emotional retards distracting him from his more important goals, such as succeeding in college. Even more disturbing, he fails to admit that his “buddies” are haters who want him to fail because crabs always pinch the top crab straddling the bucket and pull the crab back in before it can escape.

 

Two. The Causes of Denial

 

1. When you lie to yourself enough times, you begin to believe that your lie is a truth. This is the beginning of insanity.
2. When your whole life becomes a collection of lies that you’ve convinced yourself are truths, you are walking around Planet Earth with your head up your butt.
3. Denial is also brought upon by the gradual worsening of a situation. You acclimate to gradual developments so that you don’t see what is happening to you or your don’t want to see it.
4. Acclimation allows you to adapt to an extreme situation so that is doesn’t seem extreme to you. Making $100,000 a month in easy money isn’t normal to us, but it was normal to Jeff Henderson during his drug dealing days. In other words, craziness becomes the “new normal.”
5. Denial is caused by the ego, which says, “These things can’t be happening because of me. I’m essentially a good person. I don’t deserve this.” Such is Jeff Henderson’s position during his initial arrest and imprisonment.
6. When the ego embraces denial to escape personal accountability, the result is nihilism, the death of morals and meaning. In other words, “you don’t give a damn about anything.” That’s nihilism. See page 110 in which Jeff Henderson says he doesn’t care about anything. He doesn’t want to get his life together. He just wants to lift weights and “kick it” with his homies. That’s nihilism.

 

Part Two. What forces contributed to Jeff Henderson’s life of crime?

 

1. His grandfather taught him to steal. See page 14 in which his grandfather steals coins from laundry machines. And he steals sweets from the bakeries. Jeff rationalizes his grandfather’s stealing by seeing him as a Robin Hood figure who steals from the rich to give to the poor.
2. He is hard-wired to take in order to feed his appetites: His own family call him, when he’s only a child, “Bad Ass Jeffrey.” He even calls himself a kleptomania, a person with a compulsion to steal. As a small child, he repeats the mantra: “I gotta get mine.” See page 15. This hardwiring speaks to his immense drive and ambition. Too bad as a child he misdirected those energies.
3. He is physically hungry all the time and learns to steal money to buy food.
4. When his mother catches him stealing from her, she beats and lectures him, but to no effect. He actually IMPROVES at being a liar and a thief because he doesn’t want his mom to catch him. See page 16.
5. As he gets older, his appetites extend beyond Jack in the Box. He wants the big-ticket items. See page 16.
6. Jeff has not real father support because his father was spiritually maimed by Jeff’s grandfather. See page 18. The grandfather never loved Jeffrey’s father. As a result, Jeffrey received no moral guidance from his father.
7. By age thirteen, Jeff is an accomplished thief. Success breeds success even if what you’re doing is wrong. See page 19.
8. At sixteen while living in North Long Beach, he hones his crime skills by joining a petty gang. See page 20.
9. Jeff doesn’t see any real consequences to his crimes. For example, when the cops arrest him for stealing a bike, he only gets six months’ probation, a slap on the wrist. See page 22. (Jeff moves to San Diego after being stabbed in the Cerritos Mall. See page 24)
10. In San Diego, Jeff meets his gang mentor, T-Row, who glorifies gang life and plants deeper seeds of temptation for bling and glory.

 

Part Three. Why is Jeff so drawn to T-Row?

 

1. T-Row gets lots of women on page 28
2. T-Row, or just T, is insouciant or “smooth” on page 28
3. T has sartorial bling
4. T is a father substitute on page 29
5. T provides Jeff with “homie love” on page 30.
6. T gives Jeff privilege and self-esteem by allowing Jeff to be T’s sycophant or toady or lackey. 29
7. Hanging with T gives Jeff “street creds.” See 32.
8. Pecuniary reciprocity. See page 32 in which Jeff stashes T’s product but steals and sells a bit for himself.
9. “T has a PhD in game” on page 32. Jeff could learn from his “professor.”
10. Jeff doesn’t know any better so he worships T, who is the embodiment of raw power divorced from morality.
11. T allows Jeff to betray him (stealing the hydraulics) on page 34 and 35. Why? Because T is betraying Jeff even more. If Jeff gets caught with the product stashed in his place, he could do serious penitentiary time.

 

Part Four. Write down the name of someone you know who experienced the Fall and Redemption and give a short explanation of their Redemption Journey in a paragraph.