Inconsistentcy

Time makes fools of us all, so they say. Who are they and why do they say are questions for another time. I'm being facetious I don't know why exactly but it sounded like a good place to start. I awoke this morning to frost on my window, winter is fast approaching. And with winter signaling its impending arrival, I couldn't help but this about, what? I don't know I thought something might come to me as I was writing that sentence but alas no. But I will not let a topic or lack thereof deter me from my musing this morning.

Yom Kippur approaches, and I've been thinking about atonement and forgiveness not surprisingly. After spending Rosh Hashannah in Monsey, I've had a lot swirling though my head. Monsey the scene of my brief but tumultuous dance with yeshiva round two. Being back there helped me find clarity. It wasn't an easy holiday for me, I felt the weight of it intensely. And I had to escape it wasn't pretty. But life isn't always pretty we at times have to make hard decisions about what is right verses what is comfortable. And those are often the hardest types of decisions. And I was thinking about my year of yeshiva and about my life now, scarcely a month after I got home and how much life has changed and continues to change. Being back at the scene of the crime so to speak, gave me clarity as to why I left in the first place. It comes down to this yeshiva poisoned my brain. I got stuck into one way of thinking, and that scares me. I needed to break free, I had to be honest it was driving me insane. It wasn't healthy for me it made me feel unbalanced. I'm not trying to be dramatic just honest.

I've been reading a wonderful book Gonzo Judaism, its a fascinating read for anyone on a spiritual journey. And while this isn't meant as a book review it did help me find clarity on the yeshiva mentality that I find toxic to my soul. Its the idea of counting mitzvahs as if this one or that one is somehow more important then the other. Its the idea of a one way religion. Whereby one abandons critical analysis and becomes a sponge. It's not a simple idea either. It's nuanced and subtle. But over time as one becomes so immersed in Torah one believes oneself to be doing critical analysis when really all your doing is turning your mind into a sponge. I can do this and I can't to that. Why? Because this commentator brings down this point from this source which agrees with what this other Rabbi brought down from that source and so on. It's deceptive it disguises itself as being critical when all its really doing it working with information that works off of the same set of rules. And so it becomes circular, which is not to say well reasoned. It obviously works within its limited guidelines and rules. But it is none the less limited. And it's not a space I'm comfortable in. It makes sense to me but not for me and thats why I needed to get out, its why I did get out and its why I eventually need to get back in on my own terms. No one else's.

And so now I've been living in exile outside of a community that for better and for worse I am now a part of. I can't and don't want to ever go back to those beautiful but ultimately worthless and inconsistent philosophies of existentialism, secularism, etc. The more time I spend away from a Torah community the more I feel connected to it, the more time I have to see again for the first time what I saw in it. It's contradictory and inconsistent. But maybe thats just it, nothing is ever as consistent as we would like it to be. It is only our decisions that can be consistent. We have the ability to always be consistent with ourselves and thats what matters. All this other stuff. The things that come at us those are the inconsistencies they test our conviction with our own idea of truth. They can set us against ourselves. And they will until we start getting honest with ourselves and then we can't be touched. That's what I'm trying to work on right now, everything else is nonsense.