Kenny Johnson

Kenny’s essential teachings are not based in any one tradition but all of them. Once you step in to the unconditional sacred space of love, all things make sense and there is not any need to be aligned to any religion or sect. You are able to see that love is everyone’s basic nature. You see this in the animals, in the children, in the plant life and stars. This ever present and all giving love is inexhaustible and able to take care of all our needs. It is your closest companion that can not and will not leave you.

Kenny Johnson devoted his life to crime, beginning in his early teens and served over twenty years in various city, county, state, and federal prisons. During his early years in prison, he spent most of his time participating in all sorts of religious and substance abuse groups. Hopefully, in one of these groups he would hear the magic words that would release him from the grip of his inner and outer prisons. It was his inner desire for freedom that led him and a band of truth-seekers to a meeting in the prison chapel.

Antoinette Varner, his spiritual teacher answered his most pressing question. “It is my understanding that we have to wait until we die before we can receive God’s Grace. Is that so?” She replied, “Kenny, God’s Grace is here now! Kenny you think you are a convict, you think you are your name, you think you are a black man. Kenny you are none of these things.”

Instantly he knew he would never be a thief again. But how do you re-enter the world outside without resorting to old weaknesses? How would he survive and how would it be possible to maintain his newly found experience of grace?

“This ever present Grace supports me in each moment now.”

Paroled from prison in 1997 and successfully discharged from supervision, Kenny now resides in California. He visits inmates at the San Quentin Prison, and around the world. Kenny has founded This Sacred Space a non-profit corporation dedicated to sharing the timeless message that real freedom resides within each one of us.

“If there is anything worth serving, it’s this love. If there is anything worth being, it’s this love. If there is anything worth talking about it’s this love. If there is anything of real value it’s this love”. – Kenny Johnson