Late night reflections

I've found that the best times for things such as writing or tapping into a creative flow have come late at night. I don't know what it is, perhaps it's the fact that after a long day, your brain is tired and open to reveal anything. Maybe there's something different about the nature of the atmosphere or how the Earth interacts with the Moon. Eitherway, when it's late at night and you have a song that you can't get enough set on repeat in your itunes, it's fairly easy to write freely and openly about anything. I'm sitting here in my room, my laptop camped out on my desk in front of all my Judaica books; books on bitachon (trust in G-d), prayer, a Chumash (Five books of Moses), my worn out siddur, a copy of "Lessons in Tanya"- all works that I've accumulated overtime, collections of concepts and teachings that I've come to identify myself with and by over the past year and a half. It's a time like now (1:41 in the morning Eastern-standard time to be precise) that these things come to pass before my mind, yet if I were to say that these were only resigned to late-night ponderings I would be doing a disservice to these past five weeks.

This coming Sunday I will, G-d willing, be flying out of JFK airport to head back to Israel for another six months. The first six months was a time filled with learning, living, growing, self-discovery & improvement, traveling- all things that any good cinematic "spiritual journey" would be inadequate without. One incredible lesson I've learned in my "spiritual journey" is that the idea of there being a "spiritual journey" is slightly ridiculous, a result of the seperation between the physical and spiritual, ordinary and supernatural, as opposed to the seamless narrative of holistic life. So you mean to tell me that anything in your life that isn't part of the "spiritual journey" is just, well....not spiritual? The mere concept of a "spiritual journey" taking place in our lives is almost, in a sense, self-indulgant. Our entire lives we are on the journey, so why don't we just call it for what it is: life?

People spend so much time trying to live their life as if they're living out of a suitcase, like you've caught them smack dab in the middle of the road. Just live life! No need to romanticize it or compare it against your favorite indie movie like "Garden State" or "Eternal Sunshine". It's like the person who goes on a vacation yet experienced the entire trip through the view of a camera. Did they really see the sunsets over the Himalayas? The brilliantly colored tapestries of tropical flowers in Hawaii? Did they take part in the mid-day cafe conversation or were they merely taking mental notes on it so that their future self could have a custom-made bank of memories to pull from on a depressing night spent alone? Who am I to talk though, I do this all the time, I still recognize the existence of the "spiritual journey" in my life, but why? Eh, just some late night ramblings I suppose. Or not.