Wednesday, April 29, 2015

WHAT WAS I LOOKING FOR"


Raised in a Jewish family born just after WWII. My mother was always in anxiety about family. But family never brought her any peace of mind or joy. The relatives were always angry with each other and would take turns not speaking to each other for years. Even my mother's own relationship with her mother ended when her mother passed away at sixty four and neither her nor my mother had tried to speak to each other in two years.

I grew up hearing all the horrible stories about both my mother and father's childhoods. Broken homes, fighting arguing, child abuse, neglect....So at an early age I decided there must be something more. Family certainly wasn't going to bring me happiness, love and joy. My  parents certainly hadn't had that experience. And yet they pinned all their hopes on my brother and myself that somehow we would be able to find happiness, love and joy in family?

I began searching. But where do I look? Who do I ask? Does anyone know anything that can help me?

My friends were Catholic. We had a lot of carefree days of childhood play. I loved them. When adolescence arrived those days were gone. Now we saw all sorts of differences that separated us. Where we were free to enjoy and appreciate each other's company we now hated each other and saw only flaws and reasons to reject.

School offered no solution. The only question they seemed to be able to address was, "What occupation do want to pursue to earn your way in life?" But I needed to know what was the purpose of life? If family was not my motivation for earning my way in life, what was my motivation?

The Jewish community at that time was very small where I lived. Ten families. I went to the makeshift temple faithfully every Saturday morning. Walking or riding my bicycle several miles. There were only two or three very old men davening (rocking back and forth and chanting prayers to themselves barely audible) and one old man who was senile who would come up close to me and try to touch my private parts.

Someone must "know something. It can't be all ignorance.

I began to read. Sometimes eight books at a time. Nietzsche, Sartre, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, but the classics, Socrates, Aristotle and Plato seemed to say something that I faintly resonated with. The Greek mythology opened another door. Reincarnation, generational curses, demigods...
I was getting closer. I absorbed myself in mathematics finding some shelter for my mind in the predictability of the science. If this then always that. 1+1=2. It provided some stability. Here were facts and laws and rules that always held true in a world I was finding increasingly unstable. (That would change when later in college I took a course in abstract algebra with an Indian professor who pointed out that all integers are generated from a set of (0,1) where 0 and 1 cannot be defined. So much for stability. Given my fragile mental and emotional state it's good thing I didn't try to study theoretical physics.)

Off to college. Surely I will find real knowledge now. I approached my Greek language professor after class one day. It was a private girls' college in Boston. He was from Ethiopia and spoke so nicely. His voice was beautiful and seemed to be refined, peaceful and intelligent. I waited until the students left the room and approached him at his desk. I remember how he had long fingers, piano player's fingers, folded together resting before him on his desk.

I asked him, "I am so confused. Do you know anything that can help me? Is there a purpose to life? Is there a goal"

He thought for a long minute.... and replied very sincerely and honestly, "You know, I have a good job here, tenure, a nice house, a beautiful wife and children, and I ask myself that same question. And because I do not know the answer, I become so depressed I sometimes want to commit suicide."

I appreciated his straightforwardness. By his manner and appearance I had thought he really knew something. Now I knew it was all show. Not just him but all the so-called successful pwople. It was all show.

Just in time for the hippie revolution and anti-Vietnam protests and that great "gift from God" LSD and it's little brother marijuana... pot,.. ganja...

The message music... Moody blues, Beatles, Doors, Rolling Stones, Dylan, Jefferson Airplane..."Don't you want somebody to love?"

Along with the mythology books and the classics I had also read during high school a pornographic books that my class mates had been buzzing about. It was a very sensually descriptive novel about an illicit connection. This was in the 60's and the sexual revolution was just starting. So throw that into the mix.

Talk about the gates to the lower planets opening wide.

I was determined to find answers. I was not going to leave any stone unturned. Someone somewhere must know something. And if no one does then I will search inside myself for answers. LSD offered a pathway into consciousness. It did help to get rid of the constant chatter in my mind that played like a broken record. It just dissolved it all, hence "acid." There I was in the present like it was a completely fresh and new moment each moment. All the "shoulds" and shouldn'ts" and "what abouts" were gone. There was life all around me and I was part of it. I was free in the sense that my mind no longer considered unnecessary restrictions and judgements that hampered my awareness, and only considered what was needed to grow and connect with the life around me. I could now discern the difference between spirit and matter at least somewhat and I was enthusiastic to keep going.

But without the drugs I didn't have access. And it was worse having experienced something "mystical" and then back down into "reality" I became extremely depressed. The conversation with my professor haunted me."Because I don't know the answer sometimes I want to commit suicide" I made some feeble attempts. Hanging, cutting wrists, pills, drowning... but then it seemed to me that this was becoming more of a meditation than any real attempts. I was trying to get rid of the body but didn't want to die. I ended up a raving lunatic. Not actually raving, since  I took a vow of silence. I took a vow not to speak until I got some answers. I held the question in my heart. "What is going on?"

That landed me in the state mental institution. I was able to keep my vow of silence and added a Zen Koan, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" This was where I got what I needed for the next step.

I finally had some people I could actually relate to. There were two Jesus's and Buddha. A devil gambler complete with very red face playing poker all day, a woman who said rosary all day long, a few lesbians, and some hookers. The staff wore white.

I noticed that the people there would take a shoe off, bang it on a window and scream and yell. Sometimes they would break the window. It was a very popular thing to do and totally accepted since this was the nut house. Even the color of the walls was conducive to mental insanity. They were that eerie bluegreen color that suggested ghosts and spirits were lurking in every dark corner with heavy steel doors with the small wired-mesh-reinforced window eye level that would clang locked-shut with an echo.

This was my chance to break a window and scream and yell have it be totally normal and accepted even lauded by the other patients. I took off my sneaker and began. A nurse I  had never seen before stopped me. (You can't break a window with a sneaker anyway) Told me to follow her and she led me into the nurses' conference room. Patients never went there. There was a long conference table. She stood at one end leaning on the table and staring at me as I sat at the other end looking to the side to avoid her, slightly bent over holding the sneaker.

She said (and these words still sound and resound in my heart even today), "There is nothing wrong with you. You just don't have any faith in God."

That was it. Message received. That was all she said. And "God, God, God.." began to vibrate in my heart. I had never seen her before and I never saw her again.

If there was a God I was going to find him. I was released a few days later with a full scholarship to study psychology at the University which I didn't pursue. It wasn't long after that I found the Hare Krishna movement, Srila Prabhupada and the disciples.

So what now 44 years later of practicing devotional service? Did I go through all
of that just so that I could have a happy life with family and money and position in society?