Allan

In the coming world, they will not ask me: “Why were you not Moses?” or “Why were you not Abraham?”. They will ask, “Why were you not Zusha?”

Rabbi Zusha of Hanipol, 1718–1800

Allan Spira grew up in Sydney, Australia but has lived in Canberra throughout his adult life. He runs an architectural practice and participates in a weekly practical philosophy group. His wife – Robyn – and him have three children, and he’s my cousin (though I think of him more as an uncle). These are Allan’s written reflections on his family story, his experience with spiritual teachings, the benefits of engaging in psychotherapy, and what it means to live a good life.

We’re born, we do stuff, and we die. I’ve never been too interested in the dying part of that story but why we are born, and what we do with our lives has always been a preoccupation.

As a child, I had an uneventful life growing up in a sheltered Jewish household in Sydney in the 1960s. My parents and what remained of our extended family had survived the Holocaust, tried to resurrect their lives in Israel – where I was born – and ultimately found their enduring refuge in Australia. Like for so many refugees, raising family and providing financial security became their overriding goal. My job was to keep out of trouble, get good grades, become a respected professional, marry and have Jewish children. But, despite being comfortable and deriving all the material benefits of my parents’ hard work, these formative years were not as carefree as they appeared. Looking back, I have no doubt that the legacy of my family’s wartime suffering had left its indelible imprint, and questions of purpose, destiny, and an underlying fear of emptiness – of a meaningless life – had taken root in my restless mind.

Adolescence and young adulthood offered many distractions. I tried (but was never much good at) many sports, had varying casual jobs while studying architecture, lived in group houses, enjoyed the beachside lifestyle, dabbled in alternative religions, joined environmental protests, and tried not to upset my parents too much. After university, I also made a pilgrimage to Europe and Israel to reconnect with my family history – to walk the streets of Kosice in Slovakia where my parents and grandparents had lived; to stand at the railway platform in Auschwitz where my mother last saw her mother being taken away to the gas chamber; and to arrive by boat in Haifa, where I’d been born, and imagine the very different life I could’ve been living had my parents not emigrated to Australia.

Canberra was my “get-out-of-Sydney” ticket. I’d been dumped by a girlfriend and had a friend and a job to come to, and I’ve never regretted leaving. It was in my first group house in Canberra that I met my wife, Robyn, a budding art student. It was an exciting and liberating time. We forged our lives together through shared living, new friendships, road trips, community activism, growing food, and a mutual appetite for self-improvement and spirituality. Robyn also enriched my life through her love of art, dance, music, and gardening. Despite my mother’s antipathy to Robyn’s non-Jewishness, we eventually bought a house, got married and started our family.

It wasn’t until my immersion in what I’d describe as a pseudo-spiritual cult in my late 30s, together with Robyn, that my swirl of ideas began to clarify and gave me an understanding that the meaning I’d so restlessly been seeking had more to do with who I am rather than what I do; that within each of us is a secure and unchanging reality, an inherent knowing, and that this essential “beingness” is the same in each of us. It was to this universal Self that we each had to surrender.

This was the fundamental message, based on ancient Hindu wisdom, that was taught in the school, which Robyn and I became responsible for managing in Canberra for around 25 years. It was an incredibly busy time, raising three kids, running an architectural practice, and organising a very full school program, as well as our daily “spiritual practices” which set a rigid framework around our lives. There was little time to sustain relationships with “non-school” friends and we’d often miss family occasions, having been persuaded that our “spiritual duty” always took precedence over our worldly lives.

Looking back, it’s hard to appreciate how naive and susceptible we were to the charismatic charms of the school’s founders who ran the school like dictators. Their teaching had much to offer and did provide us with much-needed direction but needn’t have become the cultish, all-consuming, spiritual bootcamp that it did.

Nevertheless, we did establish warm friendships within the school “family” and, despite our unceremonious departure from the school (almost ten years ago), we’ve maintained close ties, particularly with a core of 15 former students, with whom we meet each week to read and discuss an eclectic range of spiritual/philosophical/psychological material and practice mindfulness meditation. We call ourselves the Cracked Pots (from this Buddhist parable) and regard ourselves as a practical philosophy group, selecting reading material which acts as a platform for self-enquiry and offers guidance on living a good and true life. We endeavour to anchor our discussions around our personal experience.

Spiritual teaching can be wonderfully uplifting but its sustained benefit can only come through an understanding of how these teachings translate into our lived experience and this is the benefit of group discussion. For example, the knowledge that “I am”, that my existence is independent of my attachments (to my job, my body, my possessions, and all the other attributes of my ego) is wonderfully evident to me as I sit in meditation or jog through a nature reserve, but how this knowledge plays out in my everyday life is the only practical measure of my understanding. It’s the difference between learning something and really understanding it.

We’re currently reading from The Five Invitations by Frank Ostaseski, in which he conveys the lessons he has learned from caring for the dying (he ran a hospice in California) and offers them as guides for living a life of integrity. Last week we discussed his second invitation to “welcome everything, push away nothing” and probed the difference between acceptance and resignation. Other writings we have shared include those by Tara Brach, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Eckhart Tolle, Anthony De Mello and the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, George Gurdjieff and Ramana Maharshi.

Recently, I’ve taken an interest in Hugh Mackay, a social researcher and psychologist, who rephrases the perennial question “who am I?” to “who are we?”. It may sound like a glib distinction, but it does tweak the lens through which we can understand how to live our best lives. The shift provides relief from what can be a very introspective and self-absorbing journey. In his latest book, The Kindness Revolution, he speaks about the connectedness we inherently experience when we express our love, through acts of kindness, to one another. At such times, it feels as though we and “they” are one. Their suffering is ours and in helping them we help ourselves. It’s a wonderful realization that we need never feel alone because we can’t truly be separate from one another.

In the ten years since leaving the school, I’ve come to a softer, more relaxed understanding of myself, my relationships, and human nature more generally. Previously, it was all about making conscientious efforts to be my “true self” and slaying the ego-self. It was a strenuous, exhausting business! Now, I accept that we are like a double-yoked egg; one yoke is our essential nature (call it “I”) and the other is our acquired nature (call it “me”). And whilst I’m aware of these two aspects of myself being in constant tension, they’re no longer at war with each other.

More recent events have led to further soul-searching. My ageing mother’s descent into paranoia, Alzheimer’s and eventual death was significant although not unexpected, but the totally unforeseen discovery that I had a serious coronary condition really jolted my complacency. I’ve since brought forward my retirement plans and been seeing a psychologist to help me deal with this period of adjustment. His application of Schema Therapy has been quite revealing, identifying some of the core behaviour patterns, such as “approval seeking” and “unrelenting standards” which have shaped my character. While this is a work in progress, I’ve certainly become convinced that therapy is just as critical to my ongoing quest to be the best version of myself that I can be. Our psychological programming can’t simply be transcended through meditation and mindfulness practices.

So, now in my late 60s, can I say that I’m any better equipped to live the life that remains ahead of me, or any closer to discovering the purpose of my existence, or am I just as unsure as ever? Perhaps I’m no more certain about the answer but less concerned about the questions and more at ease with just being myself, even when that “self” is not as reliably consistent, predictable, or “spiritually” evolved as was once my aim.

To conclude I’d like to share a story about a great Chassidic master from the 1700s. When Rabbi Zusha was on his deathbed, his students found him in uncontrollable tears. They tried to comfort him by telling him that he was as wise as Moses and as kind as Abraham, so he was sure to be judged positively in Heaven. He replied, “In the coming world, they will not ask me: “Why were you not Moses?” or “Why were you not Abraham?”. They will ask, “Why were you not Zusha?””