Four years ago, I had what most people would call a nervous breakdown mixed with a little psychosis. I was having a tough time in my life and I wasn’t sleeping and I was smoking too much weed and I snapped. From that point on, my whole perspective on life changed.
I can’t say that my life has been “charmed.” My childhood was uneventful, other than the fact that my mother and father were hard working, strict parents. They were not the warmest parents, but they made sure they lived an honest life and did the best they could for us.
I got married when I was 23 and had two kids by the age of 27. My first husband was a nice guy, but expected me to be the typical housewife and mother; you know, the kind that listens and does what she is expected, such as making sure the house is presentable, preparing meals, doing laundry, babysitting and holding down a job. I thought I was that kind of housewife and mother and tried to live up to that definition. After all, wasn’t that how a “good” housewife and mother should be?
It didn’t take long to discover that no matter what I did, it wasn’t good enough for my family. I tried, but I couldn’t completely satisfy my husband, although he wasn’t at all concerned with the fact that maybe he wasn’t completely satisfying me. Unfortunately, I was not concerned with that fact either. On the contrary, my only concern was that I was not doing enough to satisfy him. Towards the end of our marriage, he told me he didn’t know if he ever loved me and we divorced in 2002. The story is obviously more complicated than that, but that is not what this book is about.
In 2003, I got remarried to my current husband, Eyal. Eyal does not have a bad intentioned bone in his body, but a couple of years into the marriage, I had to once again face the fact that my husband was not going to take care of me. I had to take care of my husband. Eyal lost his job and I was the only one working for a while. At the time, I was an office manager in a small accounting firm in Brooklyn. I had a second job teaching aerobics. My husband and I, his 25 year old brother and my two kids lived in a very, and I mean very, small apartment together and I felt like I was the only one doing anything for our future. I tried to make the best of it, but eventually all I could do was come home after work, try and straighten up the house after the mess my husband, his brother and their friends made while I was at work, roll up into a fetal position and go to sleep. My brother-in-law came to New York to sell jewelry that his mother made in Israel, but the only place he could sell the jewelry was on the weekends in the NYC street fairs. I don’t know if he made money or not, but whatever money was made did not go towards rent. Everyone else (except my children) was playing around and smoking weed. Eventually I started to smoke weed with them. I tried to make sure my kids didn’t catch me, but sure enough they caught me. They insisted that I let them move in with their father. They are living with my ex until this day.
At this point, my kids have moved out, my ex-husband is on one side telling me what a disgraceful mother I am and that the kids cannot live with me. My new husband is not bringing money into the house and leaving that part up to me. I am the only one working and paying bills and cleaning up after everyone’s crap – everyday. Here I go again. Why am I working so hard and getting absolutely no appreciation from anyone? Why is this happening to me?
I am also Jewish which was, and is, a major influence in my life. I attended Yeshiva Day School and Yeshiva High School and even lived in Israel for a year following graduation. At the conclusion of that year, I moved to Brooklyn, NY, the home of all my Israeli friends. As you can see, my life just about revolved around my religion, with Judaism as the foundation of my education and experiences. Even my father, who converted from Jehovah’s Witness to Judaism, made sure that Judaism was the prevalent source of our understandings of the world. My parents were not, themselves, observant, but they raised us to be religious. Although, my brother and my sister are not affiliated with Judaism at all, I maintained a dedicated spirit to my religion and when I moved to Brooklyn became what is called “modern orthodox.” I adhered to the basic Jewish rituals (or mitzvoth), but I still did a few things here and there that “orthodox” Jews might disapprove of.
The Jewish thing, the housewife thing and the mother thing eventually got to me. For what and for whom am I doing all of this? I am getting absolutely nothing in return. Why am I even trying? Where is G-d when I need him? I am trying so hard and I devote a lot of energy to G-d’s requirements, so why am I not seeing results? Why do I have to wait for “heaven” to have good in my life? What if “heaven” sucks? How do I know I want “heaven”? Maybe “hell” is better. At one point, I even started feeling slightly suicidal because once I started hammering these questions into my head, I felt like there was and would never be answers to these mysteries of the world. If no one knows the answers then why am I here?
These questions and other commonly asked questions would not stop running through my mind. At work, I could no longer concentrate and my boss started noticing a change in me. Once I started smoking weed, I started getting some answers, but not the way most people want to receive answers.
After about two to three months of heavy weed smoking and reflecting on my sorry life, I eventually could not sleep. What once started out as mere questions became an overwhelming presence over me. The questions would not stop coming. I needed answers and there were none. How was I going to have peace of mind if I could not find answers. Before long, I snapped.
The combination of not sleeping and smoking weed heavily took me out of a physical state of mind to a new spiritual state of mind. This was not in my control. I don’t want to speak about the details, because they are slightly foggy and I don’t want to misrepresent my experience, but my experience told me that I had some sort of spiritual epiphany. My husband was there throughout the entire experience and he was very scared that I would not pop out of the psychosis that I was under. My thoughts and actions were pretty crazy, but I said things and heard things in my head that I had never heard before. Where was this information coming from? I truly believed that I was receiving insight to my questions. I still believe that is what I received.
It is hard for me to convince anyone that my experience is true. My husband, who witnessed my behavior, is adamant that I was not possessed by a spirit that was providing answers to me, but simply momentarily crazy because I didn’t sleep for a long time. I can understand his view because before this happened to me I did not believe in anything other than what most people call “reality.”
Reality, according to most of the world, is completely based in physicality. Our “reality” is that in order to be successful in life, you have to have some sort of skill or occupation and be very good at it. “Reality” is that if you don’t do something for yourself, G-d is not going to help you. “Reality” is if you are a bad mother you are no good. “Reality” is if you are not physically attractive or don’t try to appear physically attractive, you are not worthy of love. “Reality” is that those with money are the ones with power. “Reality” is that if you work hard, you will reap the rewards. “Reality” is that if you are a good mother, your children will be good kids. “Reality” is that if you treat your husband well, he will not cheat on you. “Reality” means war is necessary to rid the world of “evil.”
I could go on. All of the “realities” that I have listed are ones that are believed by a lot of people on this planet, including myself. Correction, these are realities that I used to believe in. I have since discovered that “reality” exists only in the eyes of the beholder. In other words, your “reality” is what you make it to be.
Soon after I got out of the hospital, I started reading books I had never read on Kabbalah, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam and other esoteric philosophies. It didn’t take long to notice a familiar theme running through the lines of each book, within every different form of religion and/or belief system. I felt confirmed that what I was ranting about while I was “crazy” was really answers to my questions (for lack of a better explanation). The answers that I received came to me through a voice (or thoughts) in my head that was distinctly separate from my regular voice (or thoughts). The essential message that I received from this voice (or thoughts) while I was “crazy” was that everything that we believe to be “reality” is nothing more than an illusion.
This sounds scary when you first hear it, but it is actually freeing once you start to understand and apply the concept to your life. As soon as we can accept that nothing is really “real,” we can start creating our own reality. After all, we do live in the physical world and we do need some rules to follow, otherwise we might end up damaging the beautiful world that we live in.
So that is what I did. I created my own rules of “reality.” These rules revolve around the long-term goal of surrounding myself with peace, happiness and love. If a thought or an action does not work towards the goal of peace or happiness or love, according to my own rules, I must try not to think that thought or do that action. Simple right? Wrong. It is very hard in the beginning to dedicate yourself to your goals, especially when those goals are very different than what you are accustomed to.
By writing this book, I was hoping to be able to take the chaos of my thoughts and create order out of them, hopefully enough to clearly illustrate that everyone is part of an eternal process that I (and many others) call evolution. When we discuss evolution, we immediately have opinions about it. Evolution somehow became a controversial subject. If you believe in evolution, you don’t believe in G-d and if you don’t believe in evolution you are basically an idiot that doesn’t know anything about the history of our planet and its inhabitants. I want to try, as hard as it might be, to change your mind either way. Evolution, in my opinion, is a spiritual process as opposed to a physical process and G-d is closely involved with this process. If you don’t realize that this process exists, it is because evolution has been represented inaccurately to you and you have decided to accept this distorted interpretation.
Another concept I would like to alter in those that it has the greatest hold on is the concept of G-d. From here on I will be referring to what most of us call G-d, as the Life Force of the Universe. I felt attaching a descriptive name to G-d, opens up the mind to a bigger concept of G-d. Limiting the Life Force of the Universe to a king in the sky that wants us to be good boys and girls, otherwise we may have to deal with his wrath, may actually hinder our personal evolution.
My goal is to open your mind and perhaps help you to say “maybe.” I am not looking for anyone to adopt my ideas as their own, I am only hoping that those who limit their beliefs to archaic concepts that have not been developed past just a thought, are able to finally admit that MAYBE there is a much bigger picture here that we just don’t understand, and that we certainly cannot conclusively say something is or isn’t a certain way. I believe with full faith that only the Life Force of the Universe knows anything for certain; that’s why we have to have faith in It.
I truly believe that this simple philosophy has the potential to alter everyone’s perspective in some sort of prolific way that won’t be understood until you experience what it feels like to be certain that you just don’t know.
This declaration is just one of many that I am comfortable stating with a sense of certitude. Although, I am a firm believer in the fact that insisting that any personal belief is undoubtedly universally true is foolish, I do believe that certain personal articles of faith are integral to a quality life.
When you finally realize that you can decide to change your reality by simply thinking positively, your life will change for the better. And on the other side of the coin, when you realize the situations in your life that are not the way you would have liked them to be are and were never in your control, and that you have no choice but to depend on the Universe for your happiness, you’ll discover a new freedom.
According to my “reality” the only world that has a chance of surviving is the one that relies completely on the Universe. The Universe sustains the things that need it. If you need the Universe and treat the Universe and everything in the Universe with respect, it can and will sustain you, and (here’s the kicker) with no effort on your part.
In the following chapters, I am going to attempt to illustrate how reality is relative to each person based on their situation, acquaintances, family and place in history. Every version of reality has exactly the opposite version somewhere in time. Throughout the course of this book, I will try to emphasize that understanding and accepting opposite versions of your own beliefs helps you to better listen to your gut feelings, even if your gut is telling you something that other people may not approve of. When you are comfortable in your own skin, you can more easily accept differences in others and are free to embrace your own differences and love yourself for your unique qualities. How? Once you know that anyone can have any opinion they want, that means you can too.
All of this information has been written before by so many unbelievable authors, but I always found a slightly different nuance from one book to another, even if the subject was exactly the same. I realized that even though the writers were writing about the same exact thing, their individual perspectives opened my mind to a new specific understanding of myself. In other words, one sentence in a book that hits you in the right place can be the exact thing you needed to hear at exactly the right time that made enough sense to you that something all of the sudden clicks. That is the “click” everyone who has written a book on this subject hopes for. It takes the slightest switch inside the brain and once you find it and turn on this switch, you can begin this journey called “life.” Further, although you may turn it on and off (and believe me, you will – a lot), at least you know it’s there – or at least, you are a little more convinced. That is the place I want to take you. I cannot do the work for you, but I can try to convince you that life is not black and white. But I mean to convince you.
Gray is going to be your new favorite color.