When All Else Fails

So there it is -- it is Erev Rosh HaShanah, the eve of the Jewish New Year and unlike any other time, the idea of going to schul and immersing myself wholeheartedly in the psalms and prayers of the evening seems not only natural, but necessary on a scale never experienced before. I was one of those types who went to the synagogue for the occassional family event such as a bar mitzvah or maybe a wedding. Devotion and worship in any organized way were such foreign ideas and distant ideals. There were no voices in my head, there were no visions or psychotic episodes. The only thoughts I had were that if I do not do something about my degraded spiritual estate, the rest of me would soon follow going over the edge. Faith is never something you can explain. You cannot quantify it. You either have it or you do not. Having faith seemed like something I had acquired somewhere along the way and had placed in my wallet alongside the condom; they were there for unexpected emergencies. I never thought much about faith unless somebody asked me if I believed in God. I was not an atheist and not an agnostic, but I certainly was a fair-weather acolyte. As long as life was good and the beer was cold, as long as the music played and the women danced into my bed, I believed. It was easy and took no effort. When all my sins [and I use the term to denote all the negative, ugly and selfish crap I engendered] started to actually build up like the plaque on my neglected teeth, the faith was nowhere to be found. It had passed out from all the alcohol or had become burnt-out from all the partying ... most likely both. This night, however, the faith must have opened its eyes and croaked in a hoarse whisper that it was still hanging on, albeit decrepit and badly frazzled. But it was stirring. Without much thinking or contemplating, with no analyzing or extrapolating, it was absolutley clear that this was my opportunity to come away from the brink of what was certain serious mental illness and worse: complete surrender to the fear of those hardships in life that mold strong and supple character. It just made sense to me that this was the time and the place to approach the One I had come to believe was inapproachable. For the first time in my life, I wanted, really wanted, to stand before my Creator and speak every word of every benediction, blessing, petition, psalm, supplication, and thanksgiving. Not because I wanted to please God or mollify some ancient, vengeful diety but because I wanted to flush out the garbage and stink that was filling my heart. I wanted to clean and ream all the filth and scum that had accumulated there and replace it with new, clean cloth with brand new fittings and gaskets. It was raining heavy that night, and I was not at all unhappy about it walking to the temple wearing my plastic poncho from Target™ and thinking about how simple the solution was, and how ironic that I had not thought of it sooner. All the usual metaphors and analogies about cleansing waters were there, too. Never in my life was I so eager to actually go and spend time with my family whom I had always kept at an arm's distance and be in a place I avoided like anything else that connoted responsibility and identity and committment. But there it was, plain as anything. Let go of the past and let go of the adolescent posturing. It had done me no good after about my 18^th birthday, and who knows, maybe my parents and family knew something I didn't.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

It has been over a month since my last entry, and I am somewhat ashamed that I have not followed up on the recent postings. I have been thinking about what is best to say here, and how I want to say it. I am still sure that I want to share the journey I am on, the path toward spiritual fulfillment and away from the rage and anger that has stunted me all these years. But I am getting away from the initial mission that has brought me here.

I previously said that my desire to change my life came at the start of the Jewish New Year. For many years, what seemed like sincere communication and communion with the Creator could be done while lying down in bed, after the day’s work was done or undone. I remember many a night ‘praying’ to God for this or that, but mainly asking for what seemed to be available: wisdom, strength, peace, etc. Praying for other people was not a foreign idea but it was so many times not a naturally occurring theme for me. Maybe it was selfishness and no doubt it was a debilitating sense of self-absorption that made me think only of myself, and of my miserable lot. With the passing of time, and the ever-thickening coat of dust, dirt and debris that were my failures, fears and frustrations came the inevitable realization that not only were my ‘prayers’ not being answered [as I would have wanted] but I was falling into a pit where I felt I could not even talk to God anymore, much less ask Him for help. In a nutshell, I had run out of ways to approach Him, I had lost all sense of direction toward satisfying worship. All the years of running around doing only what I wanted and when I wanted, not to mention not doing anything I found disagreeable had caught up to me. I was spiritually bankrupt and emotionally crippled. The emptiness and sense of futility I was mired in was absolutely destroying me and the sensation of careening out of control was becoming more and more actual fact. I had decided I was beaten in this game of life, and started behaving as such. People could not talk to me without me getting impatient, rude, cynical or just plain mean. My best friends stopped inviting me to be with them. One close to me labeled me a mal-content. I suppose my turn to the dark side was complete. All I needed now was to hurt someone physically, as the result of an explosion of rage, which I admit I was sometimes looking for.

Everyone of us goes through the usual ups and downs. Life is a struggle. Many otherwise healthy and normal people sometimes have thoughts of suicide, if only fleetingly. I was becoming more and more convinced that suicide was an option. Certainly, I knew that suicide is, as the cliché goes, the last brave act of a coward. Thoughts about driving my car into an oncoming 18-wheeler or crashing my car in a high-speed wreck were commonplace. The attraction of peace in death was becoming very strong. I cannot say that I would have done such a thing, because I have always been aware that the pain and devastation it would inflict on friends and family would be catastrophic and monstrous. I also believed that I would have Hell to pay, literally, for such an act – I could not imagine standing before my Creator and attempting to justify destroying the gift He gave me.

All this was coming to head just as Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year was upon us.

The Plot Thickens

Well, I’ve pretty much revealed enough early background information to more or less illustrate the genesis of my departure from the clan. The idea is not to write the back-story and go into such detail and give the impression that I am leading up to some climax. On the contrary, I would like to get to the core of why I am writing this all down and that is, ultimately, to relate to you the almost seamless and non-miraculous transition accomplished, if that term can be used, and to share the lively and lovely spiritual charge I receive while clearing my path back to my roots. No doubt in the course of these missives I will probably speak of times and events that were dark and desperate and as well talk of the sincerely happy times – as is the nature of life.

No doubt, most people travel through the fog of depression and low spirits as well as enjoy the light of really great moments. It would be wrong of me to say that my low points were more painful than someone else’s because all suffering, and joy for that matter, is relative. We really only know what we ourselves are going through emotionally, physically and spiritually. Suffice it to say I searched high and low for answers and even turned to Christian theology in the form of a very un-orthodox embrace of Jesus starting in my college years more than twenty years ago. And when I was introduced to a very bizarre tome that goes by the name of The Urantia Book, I was sure I was on my way to salvation and that everything was going to be just the way I wanted things to be. And who knows, maybe they might have been had I not been carrying around so much anger, hostility and arrogant pride. If you want an honest accounting, it could only be those negative traits that kept me from living life happily and contentedly.

It was certainly anger that got me fired from my last two jobs in Mexico City – that coupled with an unhealthy involvement in drugs and alcohol. It was pride and arrogance that made me walk out of several jobs recently held here in the USA excepting the ones that ended due to either bankruptcy or lack of working capital. Which brings me to this past summer: me in massive credit card debt, living without any privacy in the home of my father [please don’t misinterpret this, as their generosity and support has been overwhelming], without any romance or relationship, and surrounded by friends who were either light-years ahead of me in their professional and family lives or they were just as traumatized and degraded as I was.

Fuck.

Long, hard thinking and analyzing was not revealing any nuggets of unrealized wisdom, so maybe thinking and analyzing was a waste of time. Maybe all that contemplating and dwelling was part of the problem and just plain counter-productive. It was clear that more than anything else I was going through what to me truly seemed a profound spiritual crisis. And I do not say this smugly or with any sense of pretense. None whatsoever. I have known genuine joy and an uplifted heart. I have lived through moments that I thought were the ultimate high when I returned to Mexico in 1992, when in 1996 I fell in love with a girl named Mariana, and when the band I played with opened for one of Latin America’s most successful rock bands to a roaring crowd of several tens of thousands, when my cousin and I went to San Francisco to launch his website in 2000. I knew what it was like to be on the mountain peak. Now, it was clear, I was at the bottom of the ocean. But, why was this happening?

I do not believe in bad luck or being born under a bad sign. I believe we are the sum of our decisions. I believe you am what you is, period. It occurred to me that one of the common threads running through my life was this idea that I really did not need anyone or anything. Even when I mouthed pious platitudes regarding God and His nature, and how righteous I must be among the nations because I embraced the ideal, I was still a self-absorbed narcissist. As much as I thought I was above the foibles of lesser mortals in that I thought I had an inside track to The TRVTH®, in all honesty it was always and only about me. Even this blog is about me and that is ironic, I guess. But all of that may have been forgiven and maybe even taken lightly if it were not for the ugly anger and rage I was possessed with. It is true: anger is like stone hurled into a hornet's nest.

In The Begining

Earlier, I expressed some thoughts about my motives and desires for the path I now walk. Although to post a complete history of my doings and misdeeds is somewhat beyond the scope of this post [eventually, I will relate events in my life according to the relevancy of the post] I suppose I can begin this missive by going back in time to when I was a small boy of about six years.

My father had just built a home, where I am now, and in the summer of 1965 we all moved in. That summer was not extraordinary in any way, save for the fact that I was making new friends in a new neighborhood and getting used to living on the edge of a large, wooded area with hiking paths and all sorts of spectacular places for kids to run around. At this time, when I would think about something as abstract as the future and what I wanted to be as a grown-up, I was sure I would follow in the footsteps of my father and become either a physician or scientist of some sort. There was also the fascination with airplanes and I would sometimes dream of becoming a pilot. The summer went by, and before I knew it, the school year began and I found myself in the first grade. School was never a problem and I loved anything new – friends, places, and activities. For all intents and purposes, I was a good student and my teachers had no problems with me that were not normal in an active, happy six-year-old. Then came my first conflict with my family and with my roots.

My mother and father came from very different backgrounds. Neither one of them came from a religious nor orthodox Jewish upbringing, although my father says that his home was kosher and that his grandparents were somewhat observant of Shabbos. My mother grew up in Mexico, the daughter of a Catholic convert to Judaism [my grandmother] and an immigrant from Poland [her father]. Her childhood was not that different from my father’s in that she was exposed to Judaism and actually had more of a Jewish education than did my dad. But my grandfather was more of a secular man who in the New World dove right in to the possibilities for an improved standard of living. Had he not felt that his Judaism was important enough, he probably never would have asked my grandmother to convert. In my home we had non-kosher foods, even pork and seafood; it just seemed natural and normal that our diet was like everyone else’s … that I knew.

My mother informed my older sister and I that we’d be attending a Hebrew school three times per week, twice after finishing the day at regular school classes. My sister had no problem with this. I, on the other hand, was not thrilled. Not because it was Hebrew school, but because it was more work and it just seemed to me unfair and too much of an imposition. I wanted my life to be like all the other kids’, I wanted to come home, watch TV and play sports and just not have to be ordered around. It is reasonable to think that I had some rebellious tendencies and some resentments but I suppose it was always my nature to take matters very personally and feel that everything that did not go my way was evidence of a conspiracy or of some nefarious plot to rob me of my independence. So, going to this after-hours Hebrew school twice during the week and early on Sundays was just another imposition it seemed to me. I believe this is when I started to drift away from any meaningful relationship with Judaism and it marked the beginning of what would be a constant battle of wills between my parents and myself. That battle had raged for decades and I consciously and sub-consciously did everything I could to distance myself from the world I was born into.

What's In It For Me?

One of the things that concerns me and I would imagine family members who want to be of aid and comfort is why the change and why in this direction? I am reminded of an old saying: there are no atheists in foxholes. This is something that bears keeping in mind, as it has in the past haunted me when things in my life were not going well [read: the way I wanted]. It is also reminiscent of Samuel Johnson's indictment that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels. How many times I tried to approach deity with personal proposals, deals and demands, hoping that my pleas, prayers and supplications would be heard and answered ... sometimes the answer was a resounding "No!" Was this because I was being selfish? {yes}. Was this because I asked without a sincere heart? {sometimes} Well what was going on?

Over the years, as I chased dreams and fantasies, as I looked everywhere for my slice of heaven as either a rock musician, a newspaper columnist or as a salesman, there was basically only one thing that interested me and that was, well, me. Just myself. I was concerned only with how things affected me and how could I come out ahead. From the day I had my first job up until a few weeks ago, it always seemed that the grass was always greener on the other side. I went from job to job, career to career, opportunity to opportunity with basically one thought in mind: how much more money will I make per hour or per year? I knew very well how to work hard [up to a point] but I never knew how to work smart. It was more important to have few a dollars in my pocket so that I could feel like a bigshot and spend my money on frivolous things. I did not start taking my money seriously until lately. The point is that I never went in a straight line but always zig-zagged my way through. For example, when I was in college and my folks suggested taking an internship or something similar at a media organization in order to get my foot in the door, I casually dismissed that notion because there was no money to be earned, no immediate gratification. God forbid I should think about the future.

Well, the future is here, and it is right on time. And to my horror and terror, I am caught with my pants around my ankles. Okay, what is the point here, you ask. The point is this: A very dear friend of mine whom I will refer to as Wave once told me that the definition of insanity is when you do the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. And that is what I was doing. I saw that I was losing my sanity. This is not hyperbole and this is not an exaggeration. I knew I was disintegrating and the anger I was carrying around for decades was consuming me. All I wanted was to end going further into madness and not to be a dead soul with nothing but anger in my life. So that is what is in it for me. Re-integrate my spirit. Heal my heart and soul. Release myself from anger and the hold of what Judaism calls the Yetza Harah it is the dark-side, if you will. So far, I have only glimpsed the light and I have only a had a brief taste of liberty, but I know for sure that I am heading in the right direction.

Coming Home

Many have told me or asked me to start blogging, as I've written [professionally] in the past for an English-language daily in a foreign land. Up until now, I was not sure I had anything to say, but I think I am now ready to speak my mind, share some thoughts and insights and just be the writer everyone thinks I am and I pretend to be. Nice run-on sentence there, no? Anyway. So here we are.

The first post is entitled "Coming Home" because it is exactly what I have done both literally and figuratively. I returned to the US of A not long ago, and very lately have returned to another home I had left long ago -- about 40 years ago -- and only now, in my middle years do I understand better what I have done and not done with my life. Without being coy and without talking in circles, I have come to the realization that I cannot do everything [maybe anything] by myself. We all need help and we all need an anchor, IMHO.

I would sound pretentious and phony to say that I had an epiphany like Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. What has happened, in essence, is that I decided I must return to my roots. My roots are Judaism. It became very clear that much of my life was spent running away from who I am and where I come from. This led of course, to a lot of going nowhere, with all the accompanying strife, misery and insecurity. True, many people get along just fine in life being agnostic, atheistic or plain unaffiliated. They lead productive and successful lives and I am happy for them. But I am not other people. For too many years I rejected what I always knew in my heart was right and good [for me] if for no other reason than to proclaim my independance from authority be it parental, ecclesiastic, or whatever. 5766 is the Jewish New Year celebrated last month. I decided it was finally time my life started its long turn around to recovery, discovery and dare I dream: hope, joy and contentment.