For the past 5 years I've worked with parolees. Once a week, trying to help them regain control of their lives. In parallel, I was going deep into mysticism, philosophy, ancient teachings, on my own time, for my own reasons.
I expected those two worlds to touch eventually, just not this plainly: almost every man and woman I sat with was suffering from the same root cause the old teachings kept pointing at. Not bad luck, not bad choices even, but a lack of understanding of his own mind.