Sidi Has Long Since Died. Why Should I CARE?

 

Through  marriage, I'd Accidentally Played A
 Role In Bringing Sidi to America...Oops!

1.) Well,  I care because up until now, nobody has written a history of Sheik Jamal's interactions with Western disciples from the perspective of a former disciple .   

2.) I've avoided the project because I was unable to work up the courage to tell my story when so many members of my family were still involved.  I worried they might reject me.

At the same time, it troubled my conscience that so much confusion up to and including ACTUAL EVIL was spread by Sidi in America, MY country!

Beginning with the earliest days in Jerusalem when he soothingly told me that the Journey I would take with him to Allah would surpass ANYTHING I had ever experienced before.  This was during the Moment when I took the 'Bayat' or 'Pledge' into his order.   He played on my greed for AMAZING Spiritual Experiences.

It reached a crescendo years later when he criss-crossed America,  reaching so many ears, emptying so many pocketbooks, and breaking so many OTHER confused people's hearts with patently FALSE versions of Spiritual Marriages which were nothing more than PARLOR GAMES for him but were seriously DAMAGING emotional crimes against the victims.

Of which I, and my somehow still-believing Ex-Partner, Aisha, were only one of the first to be coupled in this manner.

3.) Oh yes, and another constraining factor was that I wasn't clear about how 'clean' my intentions were.

However badly I felt Aisha may have treated me, I hoped that we were still ultimately on the same team regarding our children--even if she didn't feel the same way about me.  

I didn't want this piece to devolve into a rant against her.

On the other hand, wasn't she, in fact, still perpetuating the myth that Sidi was some sort of exalted God-man?  And hence, continuing to set the same traps, over and over again, for new generations of people to fall into?

I did feel felt I took on a disproportionate measure of the blame for the failure of my marriage-- which I would today recognize as a 'cult marriage' --  and which was instigated by Sidi very quickly after I became a murid (disciple) of the Sheik.  

Too quickly, it turned out, for either she or I to know what we were getting into.

And I wanted to stop BLAMING MYSELF for ultimately being UNABLE TO COPE with the demands my new partner made upon me.

Sidi's Grave

Because I, like many of the people who were casually paired-off by Sheik Jamal, was hardly prepared for the challenges of marrying someone I barely knew.  Who, like myself at the time, was  almost guaranteed to have 'issues' coping with 'ordinary' life as we found it in the West.

Otherwise, why would we have SOUGHT the religious offerrings of sages from other lands?

And because the marriage I was given ended up being TOTALLY focused on Sidi and Sufism.  To such an extent that any other ambition in my married life, in particular studying/participating in other faith traditions, or to become a 'two-income' family was foreclosed to me.

EVERYTHING in my personal and married life came to be focused on Sidi and his fuqara (following/group of the poor). 

It was NOT a marriage of EQUALS, either. At least insofar as Sufism was concerned.

I married a VERY COMMITTED, senior student of Sidi's.  Who, I think, could not make up her own mind about whether she really wanted to be in a marriage or not.

Part of her would have prefered to have been a nun.   She spoke of it sometimes. She named her daughter after a famous Caholic nun, Teresa.

She often dressed as would a nun, with little concern for  her personal attractiveness. Instead, her dress seemed designed to discourage male attention. She even named her daughter after a famous Catholic nun, Theresa.

But Islam does not generally allow monasticism, so Sidi married her off.  To me. 

Perhaps not so much for my personal attributes but because I just happenned to 'be at the right place and at the right time'.

Interestingly, she did ultimately become something of a 'solitary' in the religious sense--after her 14-year marriage to me and a quick, romantic 'fling' with another Sufi during the final months of her marriage to me and beyond.  She has remained single for 30 years.  I remarried. Though my second wife passed away from early-onset Alzheimer's in 2014.

Aisha and I began our married life in Walnut Creek in Northern California in 1980, but when some minor 'rebellion' problems arose with her daughter, Teresa, the only solution she could think of was to shut down our home and return to Sidi's house/zawiyya in Jerusalem.

Which we did. Even though she was pregnant with our coupleship's first child.

There, her giving birth to our son on The Mount of Olives in a charity hospital made for a colorful story later, but it was a terrifying ordeal for me in realtime--with Aisha very jaundiced and diagnosed with Tyfoid Fever and Typhus and myself having no inkling of where we would make our future home.

After that, at her insistence, we tried living in England, where many of our  'Brother and Sisters' from Sidi's order  lived.

Though I ultimately prevailed upon her to move back to California so I could earn us a living, she was rarely a 'happy camper'.

The arrival of a second child and a succession of more-and-more-beautiful homes did little to quell her restless need for something different.

I had never considered that maybe it was ME and/or my relative indifference to Sidi's 'Mission' that was failing to satify her.

And I made matters worse by succuming to an ever-worsening case of alcoholism and a secretive, debauched double life.

Finally, a number of factors, inclucing the SHOCKINGLY PUBLIC appearance of a new man in HER life, who initially had moved into our house with my permission--co-incided and she requested a divorce.

For years, I blamed myself and my wayward ways for the breakup.  I don't think she did anything to discourage that convenient and all-too-obvious explaination. 

Until I began to question how gleefully happy she appeared to be once she was 'cleared for take off'. And how few any remaining pysical momentos of our 'Love Affair' of  the past 14 years together had generated. Not one, actually.

Though I felt, and STILL FEEL, there HAD been love, I felt we hadn't the tools nor the willingness to seek out the coupleship's salvation, as we might have done had Aisha not been so utterly committed to Sheik Jamal.

The love that did materialize was drowned out by our conflicting desires for satisfactions outside the marriage.  Mine?  Mine were the usual, stupid suspects.

Hers were hard to discern.  My guess is that she wanted to be Sidi's wife. Or daughter. After the divorce, she took his last name as hers.  But her psychology was complicated and she didn't like to talk about it much.

In fact, I would argue that the fervency of her committment to Sidi's teachings was directly propotional to her repudiation of her own personal story.

Even as her many-years partner, I hardly heard more than the barest outlines of it.

FINALLY,  I realized the RESPONSIBILITY FOR EVERYTHING was more with the so-called Spiritual Guide who we had both trusted enough to relinquish the responsibility for making our own choices to.

Sidi was the author of our marriage, not either of us!

He had NO IDEA if we were compatible.

IN FACT, he may have judged that EVEN IF WE WEREN'T, our marriage would result in our attempt to compensate for that fact through SUPER-ALLEGIANCE TO THE RELIGION!

I never found out.  Like countless others, I got the raw end of Sidi's 'Arranged Spiritual Marriage'.  And when the time came when it was undone, I was voiceless as to the unorthodox, un-Islamic, sexual improprieties Sidi had utilized to accomplish it.

Improprieties I felt too embarassed to share. Until now.

Yes, Sidi is Gone. 

But in this world there still exist con-men, False Guides, that will use religion and the promises of some Spiritual Paradise to gain one's confidence.

This is something few people understand.  I didn't.

I didn't understand how someone who OUTWARDLY could make a thoroughly beliveable presentation of a sincere Holy Man could be greedy, sexually-promiscuous snake in private.

How and when did the transformation from Sheik to Snake occur?  I don't know. 

I don't know if it matters, either.

Not as much as does the fact that where there is one such snake, there will be more.  

And that the old wisdom that, "When something seems too good to be true, it probably is".

That Sidi's methodology was thorougly cultic can hardly be doubted at this point. Though just in case it isn't, I've included plenty of examples.

Let the Buyer Beware!

'Cultic' Mistakes Seekers Make!

(This Chapter is Under Development and Experiencing a Lot of Flux. Stay Tuned!)

 1. Mistaking Allegiance to the Guide, Books, or Practices as the end goal of spiritual growth/enlightenment, rather than using them as 'tools' to reach God.

2. Undergoing humiliating practices as a method for 'ego-destruction'.  The Ego should fall away naturally over time.  The attempt to hasten its departure too abruptly can lead to self-hatred and shame rather than relief.

3. Cutting off contact with 'the outside world'. While periods of isolation/retreat can be extremely useful for calming and intensifying the mind, in a cultic contact it can build a dependence on an 'in-group'.  A spiritual practice should also have the goal of lessening suffering in 'the world' whenever possible.

MISTAKING A CHANGE OF COSTUME FOR INNER CHANGE

It's typical of cults to place a good deal of emphasis in changing names, costumes, dietary habits, etc.  To build a 'separate world' even within lives led within the mainstream culture.

In the beginning, perhaps in the days and weeks after 'initiation,' a seeker is likely to believe the apparenent changes are part of a major interior, spiritual change.

In a cult there is typically little emphasis put on 'working thru' one's past.  It is often suggested that the past doesn't matter, since one has already 'transcended' the earlier, troublesome identity.

In this respect, the Cult is like a Drug.  It gives the illusion of transcending one's pain or guilty past.  Yet, ironically, it prevents skillfully approaching and lovingly releasing a painful past thru compassion, mindfulness, and forgiveness.

Here's a short version of how 'conversion' or, if you like, 'cultism' works.  If you have found a source of ABSOLUTELY UNQUESTIONABLY BELIEF in some Person, Saint, Messenger, or Book, or God, then for the most part, your SPIRITUAL QUEST is OVER!!

Of course, you most likely don't consider yourself PEFECT in your faith and your actions.  But you no longer have any questions as to the Source.  The EXTERNAL Source.

Thereafter, your past never has to come up again, because you have been one of the FEW who have come to recognize the Supreme Truth, or had that recognition delivered to you.