 |
| The Author & Family, circa 1985 |
In the summer of 1979, I was 27 and on the last leg of a solo journey across Italy, Greece, and Israel/Palestine.
My path randomly crossed that of a Palestinian Sufi Guide, Sidi Sheik Muhammad al-Jamal al-Rifai, at his family's apartment complex on the Mount of Olives, Jerusalem.
I moved into the zawiya* attached to his house with other Westerners and began studying there full-time.
Within a few days and with his encouragement, I was initiated into his fuqara** taking him as my Spiritual Guide or Sheikh.
A few days later, Sidi began a high-pressure campaign to marry me to a Canadian disciple staying in his zawiya—a woman I barely knew and certainly did not love.
We hesitatingly did get married shortly thereafter.
14 years later, during Sidi's first visit to America, that woman, whom I shall call Aisha--(everybody gets a pseudonym here)--met another man more interested in following Sidi's teachings than I was.
Whether it was that man's worshipful attention (he was a damnable, latter-day Rasputin, in my eyes), Aisha's excitement about Sidi's First American Tour (Woo-hoo!), or my own alcoholic spiral (probably a combination of all three), she decided she wanted a change.
Even though we had 2 young children.
She divorced me and seemingly substituted the New Guy as an 'alternative father' to our 11-year-old son.
Rather than re-assuming her maiden name, Aisha quixotically changed her last name to 'Al-Jamal,' which was the same as Sidi's. 
It was a completely unprecedented and, as I saw it, sadly delusional act.
Similar to suddenly naming oneself "Mrs. Elvis Presley" in hopes that a few gullible people might accept that obvious fiction as reality!
Or perhaps as her homage to some long-ago backstage encounter she'd had with 'The King' before He found His Priscilla!
She also entered ' Al-Jamal' on our children's school enrollment forms, which became my children's last name by default.
Aisha did not seem concerned that changing OUR children's last name without the consent of their father was not her right. She was, and still is, a hard-headed, determined individual thoroughly convinced she had the right to do anything she wanted to do with 'her' children.
She excluded and minimized me and my continued loving interest in the children in many similar instances.
She had trouble with power sharing. With EVERYBODY - not just me.
But ESPECIALLY with me!
Gradually, she let go of her end of the visitation agreement, especially her portion of the rather- demanding degree of transportation required.
And she didn't insist that the children spend the required time with me if they didn't want to.
She wore me down over time. I became mostly a 'Disneyland Dad!'
Admittedly, I still had my own self-destructive addictions to deal with during the same period, which didn't help me make the wisest choices.
In the aftermath of the divorce, I pursued both sobriety and a second long-term marriage, mainly with success on both accounts. I'm grateful for that.
My son, Ibrahim, fell prey to tremendous anxiety after his parents' separation, but his mother and I were too caught up in our own problems and our issues with each other to be able to creatively and co-operatively help him.
He ended up with conflicted loyalties and long-term personal issues. As well as rampant addiction issues which, hopefully are on the road to mending.
Sidi's cult gave me what I DIDN'T want - marriage to a TOTAL STRANGER...for an unknown purpose, and
TOOK AWAY what I DID WANT- my life with my CHILDREN!!
Still today, Aisha relentlessly dedicates herself to propagating Sidi's teachings and refuses to communicate with me on mundane matters.
As well as on life-and-death concerns.
'My way or the Highway,' much?
 |
| Our 'Ex-House' in West Marin |
She was free to voice any negative opinions she may have had about me, and I could not answer them.
What I DID hear led me to believe she had a LOT of NEGATIVE OPINIONS.
She did, however, graciously consent to accept child support from me, and far in excess of the court-mandated amount.
And receive the alimony I gave her, unbidden, and up until the last child turned 18 - FAR BEYOND the usual 2-3 years.
To her credit, she evidently turned the creation and publication of Sidi's books into a successful business.
But Allah knows best!
All this because we put Sheik al-Jamal in charge of the most important decision of our lives: whom we should marry!
He had promised us a future relationship with the God and the World that would be more beautiful and fulfilling than anything we had ever experienced!
Well, maybe she received that. I'm still waiting.
I recall sitting in the Menlo Park Baptist Church before high school, during my Evangelical Christian phase.
I had been told, and I believed, that all I needed to do to experience God directly was to SINCERELY turn my life and will over to Jesus as my personal savior.
I truly believed I was ready to do that, and I did try to do it. But God's response was...zilch.
WHY hadn't it worked?
Many years and several attempted 'surrenders' later, I tried it again, one last time, in the company of Sidi Sheik Muhammad.
.png) |
| I wanted to Blast Off to a Higher Dimension! |
Once again came the big moment, where I surrendered my life. This time, I got a new name, 'Yunus,' and a new partner and stepdaughter.
But no perceived Blast-Off to some inconceivably magnificent Heavenly PARADISE was in store! Nope.
My life up to then wasn't really THAT BAD - just unfocused, lonely, and seemingly headed into the ditch of substance and sex addictions.
Perhaps my obsession with finding a Blinding White Light Escape was just another addiction. A 'religious addiction'.
Or perhaps a mistaken assumption that a mystical experience and life was analogous to the psychedelic experiences my friends and I had been having.
A walk through Paradise that was full of Love, Wisdom, and Inconceivable Beauty and was ABSOLUTELY SAFE!
Maybe DRUGS hinted that the spiritual states of the Mystics were just as VIVID and easily obtained.
Like me, I believed that Aisha truly wanted to give up control of her own life in the best sense of wanting to turn it over to SERVE God.
I still think that impulse is a good thing.
As I later came to realize, however, Aisha's domineering willpower, Narcissism, or whatever-other personal history had seemingly survived her attempted surrender.
Aisha could direct me to make choices I never would have made for myself - like pulling up my roots in Northern California and joining her in a life of a spiritual vagabond abroad.
First, in Jerusalem, where Ibrahim was born in a poor, unsanitary charity hospital devoid of many of the usual accouterments of modern medicine, including appropriate infant formula.
Where she suffered for days without the opportunity to wash up after the childbirth!
The journey continued with a tentative move to the UK with our newborn - where we delusionally hoped financial support would magically appear.
(However, we had no official status and no idea what work I could find in a country with 14% unemployment).
At first, I thought there was some 'inner spiritual reason' for these and many similar theatrical changes Aisha proposed throughout our married life.
And, as Aisha helpfully suggested, I assumed the problem was mainly that I didn't trust 'Allah enough'. There's a classic hadith (saying) about this:
.png)
After months of somber, solitary 'commuting' across the Atlantic to stay in my parents' house and continue my work in the U.S., she eventually relented and allowed us to return to America.
I discovered, too late, that I was a raging co-dependent willing to do almost ANYTHING to stay in a marriage that should have ended much sooner- had we had the foresight to forego getting pregnant for a few more years, first.
But that would have violated the 'Twin Flame' Magical Marriage scenario Sidi had arranged for us. So, on with the babies!
Yet the undeniable reality was that we got married because our Spiritual Guide told us to, not because either of us really wanted it or especially felt the 'love' part yet.
And finally, our marriage came undone.
We might have tried consciously working on the marriage—perhaps in therapy.
I had already begun therapy with the hope of staunching my overwhelming addictions.
Aisha hated the idea of therapy.
More than likely, I thought, she was too SCARED to go into therapy.
And Sidi was skeptical, if not outright dismissive, of psychotherapy. His attitude was medieval. He thought it was a scam!
Pretty funny, eh? Considering...
Sidi kept trying to pound Westerners into the same hole the Easterners had been pounded into. And for centuries.
Addiction, to him, was a moral problem.
Some people are just human magnets.
Sidi was one, and my wife Aisha was another. If you could get past her baleful exterior and ask her how to find God, she'd light up and become your new best friend!
Other people were drawn to her because of her reassuring, honey-tongued, and dewey-eyed descriptions of the future 'spiritual walking' her listeners could have once they took Sidi's Sufi path.
 |
| People Were Drawn to Her Idyllic Spiritual Promises |
She caused people to come, though not many decided to stay.
It was still a daunting and ultimately unnecessary choice for most.
I remember one fellow who burst out of a meeting with her in our home in tears, saying, "But I thought you loved me!"
I didn't know what to make of that. He COULDN'T have been expecting a love affair with her with me sitting in the next room, could he?
No, likely he had just seen through the disconnect between her promises of the Deep Secret Love Sidi talked about and her own stifled, damaged, and manipulative persona.
But I hadn't. I thought her constant irritability and unhappiness were my fault. It took me years to realize that she had no more of a clue about living a spiritual life in the world than I did.
She always sought new 'Beloveds' to feed her own 'conversion addiction.' It really is a THING some people have.
'New' converts CONFIRM one's own prior choices. They stroke the 'Converter's' ego. They get to feel, for a short period of time, anyway, that they REALLY DID make the right choice allinging themselves with their 'Group of Choice'.
This gives one's life meaning, although it leads to a false division of society into distinct camps of 'prospects' and 'irrelevant'.
Ultimately, Aisha overrode Sidi's authority and refused his order to stay in our marriage.
It made me wonder why one should have a Spiritual Master at ALL if you aren't going to listen to him in the most critical of moments?
And Sidi seemed to let anybody do anything they wanted. Himself included.
A decade after Sidi's death, Aisha still follows in his ghostly footsteps, trolling for new 'brothers and sisters' to share her dream of a coming spiritual awakening.
Even though Sidi's first and only zawiya in the West was burned to the ground in a California wildfire.
https://suficommunities.org/community-connections/the-land-at-pope-valley-ca/
Co-incidence? Maybe.
And he and his ambivalent Shadhilliya co-sheik Nur-i-deen Durkee died and left no Successor(s) to any silsila** they represented.
Co-incidence? We think NOT!
Although I consider Aisha to have been victimized by Sidi, she lacked the ability or desire to reject him as I did.
This is a predictable feature of cult membership - when EVERYBODY you know is involved in it, it's very difficult to break away and lose contact with your loved ones.
In a way, Aisha ultimately resolved this conflict for me by rejecting me.
Ironically, while I'm grateful for that now, when it went down, it was so chaotic and painful.
And I wish, well, what's the point...?
Telling the story of it may affect her life and/or the lives of others. I regret any unnecessary pain that may be caused.
But I'm also tired of feeling like I owe Aisha my silence. I don't owe her anything!
I'm fully paid up. More than paid up!
Yet, she is STILL the mother of my children. I am very grateful for the beautiful children we made and raised together.
Though I have NO CONFIDENCE that Sidi's pushing us into marriage had any kind of Divine Instigation, the marriage itself did 'keep me busy'.
It gave me a purpose and a beautiful stepdaughter. I had LOTS to do!!
And until the 'Spiritual Vagabonds' phase began, it helped me totally forget about my 'old self' and its problems.
It scares me to imagine what Aisha's life must look like from the inside out.
IMHO, she made a few bad choices, and rather than look like a fool and admit them, she doubled down on her mistakes.
Some part of me still wants to save her from herself. I would be a good person to help her. This may be my own co-dependence to think that way.
Of course, we're not there yet.
It would be a miracle if we could ever calmly speak to each other again as human beings instead of stupid Archetypal Opponents.
Or, if we could reminisce about our mutual children over an album of photos or a showing of home videos.
Like what everybody ELSE gets to do!
How can somebody devote their entire LIFE to religion and not know how to be civil to her children's dad, who worked to see them grow up and flourish as much as she did?
We can learn to live with the inevitable pain of life. I hope.
According to the Buddha, I've learned that while 'pain' is inevitable, 'suffering' is optional.
But first, we have to be stable human beings. Part of that means being in a balanced peer group, family, religion, etc.
I walked away from Sidi without much in the way of Words of Wisdom to remember. However, one of his brief asides stuck with me.
.png) |
| According to Sidi, Westerners Didn't Reach Out to their Community for Help in Trouble. |
It concerned how many troubled, lonely people Sidi saw in America.
He said the difference between Americans and Arabs was that when an American was deeply troubled, he or she turned inward and sought to hide from the World.
(This is true. We're all so BUSY trying to look SUCCESSFUL and UNIQUE that we're ashamed to admit we have needs and sorrows!)
On the other hand, when an Arab had such a problem, he would run out into the street YELLING, "I'm in PAIN, I'm in PAIN!!"
Fully expecting others to come to his aid.
I was unprepared for the lifelong upheavals that followed me through my casual meeting with and subsequent affection for Sidi Sheik Muhammad.
Was he, in the end, just another fallen cult leader in a robe who ended up fleecing his followers and having sex with whatever women would agree to it?
Ick.
On the other hand, sometimes more than one thing can be true, and people are not always reducible to caricatures.
"Man is born to Sorrow, as the Sparks Fly Up." (Job 5:7)
I had to stop letting someone else run my spiritual life, such as it was.
The first step for me through it all was Alcoholics Anonymous, which deserves a whole blog itself. But suffice it to say, "It works!"
It gave me an entrance to an entirely new way to deal with the inevitable challenges in life, based on PERSONAL EXPERIENCE rather than JUST a set of obligatory beliefs demanded by a 'revealed' God in the Sky.
I've also reconnected with my earlier identity as a Buddhist, albeit a rather lazy one.
I attend a wonderful church based on 'Unconditional Love' most Sundays out of respect for my family history and my resonance with Jesus' life as the Savior/Bodhisattva of the West!
As Ram Dass once said about apparently-contradictory religions and religious figures, "I believe that it's ALL TRUE, and if it's NOT, then that's IT'S PROBLEM!!"
Perhaps we already know everything we need to know- we just need to be constantly reminded of it!
I used to frequently yearn for things I could never have, such as the experience of being a meaningful co-parent throughout a child's life, from infancy to adulthood.
No longer. I am happy to say I'm MOSTLY OVER wishing for a better past.
All anyone will ever have is the present. The missing 'thing' we imagine will make us 'happy,' which usually doesn't—or not for long —if we obtain it.
Donald Trump still needs to be president for the third time, win the Nobel Prize, and be on Mt. Rushmore.
Sadly, virtually all of our daily reality is our dreary mental recollection of the past or future, positive or negative.
Don't believe it? Close your eyes and count backward from 10. Pay close attention. How far do you get before your mind starts to wander? I'm guessing '7', maybe '5' if you meditate already.
See what I mean? We are utterly OUT of CONTROL of our OWN minds. It's ridiculous!
Time to stop feeling bad about ourselves and cultivate our ESCAPE from our HARSH monkey minds!
"Everything comes from the Mind Alone." -- Dharma Master Hsuan Hua
No matter how much our perceived daily reality conforms with or disagrees with our plans or desires, we always have the option of Acceptance.
It's not always easy to live in this moment. Like everything worth having, it takes practice.
For me, Buddhism represents the most comprehensive guide to finding the tranquility inherent in our human lives.
Mostly by simplifying, stilling the mind, practicing morality, and associating with the right people.
And the only 'belief' required is the simple belief that it will work.
There are many friends along the way willing to help, too. More than I expected.
The penultimate human experience resembles more like 'waking up' to what has always been true.
 |
| Don't Mistake The Sign to the Truth AS the Truth! |
Rather than trying to impose an acceptance of the narrative of any given religion, Book or Prophet as the Ultimate Truth.
Religion ideally provides the best of both worlds—sufficient 'signage' to keep one from veering off the path and ample 'openness' to enable the individual to encounter 'the Truth' as something unique.
However, as I have learned through experience, I need to take my latest, 'final' verdict on the 'ultimate spiritual experience' with a grain of salt.
Still, should anybody ask me, I would beg them,
1.) Don't hand your life over to a Spiritual Guide!
Unless you are absolutely SURE you need one and have first thoroughly tested him or her
--hopefully for a few years first.
2.) SEEK HELP at the first sign of potential addiction. Fantastic, free support is available through 12-step programs like AA or Refuge Recovery, a Buddhist-oriented program I work with.
You may save yourself a lifetime of regret for the degrading things you will inevitably do during your active addiction. And/or an early death from the physical consequences of substance addiction.
3.) Don't get married without love.
Unless you agree with that model in a traditional, arranged marriage culture.
In both scenarios, marriage should enhance a happy life rather than serve as a desperate escape from an unhappy one!
Otherwise, you may end up as Aisha and I appear to each other today--The Worst Mistake we ever made!
Peace be With You!
++++++++++++
As you read this blog, please tap 'Older Entries' to maintain the temporal continuity. Please visit the 'Glossary' at the back if you are unclear about the Arabic terms.
* Zawiya - Place of Sufi study
** Fuqara- Sufi Group or Lineage
*** Silsila -"Chain" of inherited or otherwise personally imparted authority over a given line of Sheikhs.
.png)
