Snowy mountains loomed in the distance as my hands gently maneuvered my steering wheel through the twists and turns of the New York State Thruway. Bluegrass music sang through my car speakers as higher and higher we climbed, through the Bronx and Westchester, headed to the small town of Wallkill, New York. The passenger seat next to me was empty save for a box of tissues, a handbag, three apples and six pink roses. I sang along in my fake country accent as I raced past weighing stations and rest stops and quiet forests, my voice the only one I could hear for miles and miles.

…

I was raised with a singular belief system, a set of rules and regulations handed to me by my parents, reinforced by strict church-going, religion classes, choir practice and other ways of internalizing the Catholic way of life. As a young child, I found the security and stability of that belief system extremely comforting. The Mass never changed and neither did the instructions for How To Live A Proper Life. I always knew what to expect, what was expected of me, and I simply and easily stepped into the pattern that was laid out for me.

As a child, this worked extremely well. I was respectful, polite, loving, and most importantly, happy. I spent summers at Vacation Bible School, Tuesday afternoons in religion class and I met some of my very best friends singing in the choir. I loved the Church—loved the tradition, loved all the Bible stories, and above all, loved the sense of community it gave me.

I am unable to pinpoint the exact moment where Catholicism stopped working for me. An ex-boyfriend of mine found this answer to be completely unacceptable.

“There had to be SOMETHING! There had to be ONE BIG EVENT where you just stopped believing and walked away!”

Actually, no. First off, I never necessarily stopped believing nor have I officially walked away. Secondly, it just…well. It stopped working for me.

The older I got, the more restless and unhappy I became. Things that used to be positive, like the unwavering steadfastness of the Catholic Church, became negative. The traditions I had come to know and love were overshadowed by the fact that the thing about the Church never changing is that, uh, THE CHURCH NEVER CHANGES. The laws and rules that made sense to me as a child seemed archaic and outdated to me as an adult. I took issue with the pro-life movement, I took issue with the beliefs about gay people, I realized that I could drink a glass of wine and have a good romp in the hay and be a BETTER person, not worse. (If by better, of course,  you mean drunk and slutty.)

Growing up, the Church had helped mold me into a model child—sensitive to others, respectful, obedient. As an adult, the results were less appealing and far less useful. Turns out, I was also extremely judgmental. I was fearful. I was full of guilt, unforgiving of myself and others. I was ignorant. I was not able to question anything or form an opinion about how I felt about a certain topic because I was never encouraged to do so, I was simply fed the appropriate answer. When the appropriate answers started to seem false to me, I was left feeling helpless, unsure of what to do.

These revelations happened over a period of time as I peeled back layers and layers of indoctrination, of suffering and guilt and judging everyone else who was not like me. Psychotherapy helped me immensely with this discovery and self-evaluation but it was also very painful. I felt lied to, betrayed, misled and as a result, I got angry. So. Angry.

I was mad at myself sometimes, sad and embarrassed about the way I had treated others in the past. But mostly, I was mad at the someone who “did this to me”, as if it was manipulative and done out of cruelty. I placed the fault 100% on my mother’s shoulders, since she was the disciplinarian in the household and the one who made all the decisions regarding church, behavior and punishment. And so, week after week, sitting with my therapist, I cried until I couldn’t breathe, almost picked up a candy bowl and threw it at the wall. I wanted to sit and seethe forever because it felt good, because I felt validated, because I had someone to blame.

Around this time, my boss handed me a birthday gift. It was a free semester to the School of Practical Philosophy. On the first day of class, we talked about wisdom and what it means to be wise. The tutor instructed us “Not to accept or reject any teaching here, but simply try it and see if it works for you.” I remember thinking “HOLY SHIT, THEY CANNOT BE SERIOUS!?”

They were.

Keeping in mind the actions of the wise, on my walk to the subway that night, someone pushed in front of me to get the train and for the first time in years, I breathed, relaxed and resisted the knee-jerk reaction to get angry. On the second day of class, we talked about negative feelings and how useless they really are. During the week, when I felt myself on the brink of jealousy or rage or bitterness, I reminded myself that the “fruit of negative feelings is endless ignorance and suffering.” I paused. And breathed. And let the negativity go.

The weeks turned into semesters, each 12-week period consisting of dialogue and exploration on a theme. I made it through the introductory course, Happiness, Love, Mindfulness and am currently in the middle of Freedom. Every week, the class shares personal experiences. We talk about our attachment to things, our expectations, the judgments we have about the people we know and love. We talk about how to open up the channels of love between people, how to unblock ourselves and let go of bad habits, how to stay present and not get caught up in the future or the past.

Because the root of the teaching at the School is about being present, during the fifth week of the fifth semester, we are given the option to participate in meditation. There is a formal initiation ceremony that takes places at the School’s estate in Wallkill, New York and that is how I found myself jamming out to country music on a mild winter Sunday. I printed out directions, gathered up my gifts, stuck a straw in a carton of orange juice and pressed down on the gas.

…

The trip upstate had the potential to be more than a little sad. As I headed toward the Tapanzee Bridge, I passed quite a few landmarks that reminded me of a past relationship—hiking and kayaking and grocery shopping in Westchester. It was hard, especially since it’s not a trip I make often. After the first few pangs of OW THAT SHIT HURTS, I realized that I had a choice. I could sit there and reminisce and feel sorry for myself, or I could take action.

Forget that action involved turning up Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” and screaming it at the top of my lungs. Forget that some college kids passed me in their minivan and pointed and laughed because I was, uh, dancing. Sort of. SHUT UP. The point is: I made the WISE choice to forget the past, focus on the present and live my life in the NOW. It was then that I spotted the sign that said BUFFALO : 388 MILES and then I promptly forgot about the present and starting reminiscing about road trips to college with Tom WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

I arrived at the School of Practical Philosophy’s property in Wallkill, right on time. NO. I actually was forty minutes early after having made only ONE slight small turn. I was ridiculously pleased with myself considering that the property is in the middle of nowhere, in the back roads of Guam and also, that I get lost EVERYWHERE. I actually left about ten hours earlier than I needed to, JUST IN CASE. When I arrived, I was the only one there and wondered aloud, “Where’s everyone else?”

“In the water,” someone said. “They listened to their GPS in the car and drove into the pond.”

WOW. Do you realize how amazing it is that I drove BY MYSELF and showed up EARLY and that everyone else drove straight into a pond? Come on, man. This stuff has to be working for me because the person who drove headfirst into a body of water? Let’s face it, that person is usually me.

The School’s main building is in Manhattan, on the Upper East Side, where I attend class weekly. However, they also own an amazing piece of property upstate where the initiation was being held. It was formerly the Borden Ranch, of dairy farmer fame. I seemed to be the only person in class who had never heard of Borden dairy.

“No? Come on, Laura! Borden Dairy Farms?”

“Nope.”

“COME ON! You know them! Borden! You know! Elsie the cow!?”

“Elsie the…no. Just. No, I have no idea.”

“YES YOU DO! THEY ARE A TOTALLY FAMOUS DAIRY FARMER!”

“Uh. I’m from Long Island.”

So, everyone but me seemed REALLY EXCITED by this and I couldn’t help but feel that I was lost in an episode of Scooby Doo.

Take off that mask! Let’s find out who he REALLY is! Why, it’s old man Withers from the Borden Dairy Ranch!

Nonetheless, I was excited to get out of the city and hang out in an old mansion that was built in the 1920’s, resting on a SUPER FAMOUS DAIRY FARM THAT I HAD NEVER HEARD OF, LET’S GO GET ‘EM, SCOOBY!

The house exceeded my expectations. I could smell the fire burning in the fireplace before I walked in the door and though it was covered with snow, I could make out the fields to my left and right, eagerly waiting for spring to dry them off. I was met at the door by a lovely woman who took my coat and offered me a cup of chamomile tea. It was then that I declared that I was never leaving and that if this was indeed a cult, as some of my classmates had speculated, I was for sure going to drink the Kool-aid, just hand it over now because this is the most peaceful, wonderful, perfect place to die.

The ceremony took place shortly after I arrived. A man called my name and helped me remove my shoes. I followed him upstairs, my bare feet silent on beautiful old green carpets. I presented my gifts to the initiator—six flowers that represented beauty, three pieces of fruit to symbolize the potential for growth and a white handkerchief that represented purity. A blessing was said in sanskrit and I was given a mantra, the mantra that is given to all students of the school.

I was led to yet another room where I sat in silence with another woman for fifteen minutes while we both meditated together. The time flew by quicker than I expected as I sat with my mantra, allowing the thoughts to gently leave my head. The wind howled against the house and the muted voices from downstairs occasionally drifted in and out and up. I felt light when I was finished, I felt alert, I felt free.

I joined my classmates downstairs and talked for awhile, laughing and sharing and feeling incredibly at ease. Some of them had had major reservations about the initiation to meditation, though the School does not require it or force it upon anyone. One particularly fearful classmate asked me when I came back downstairs if I had been drugged.

“Yes,” I solemnly replied. “I also have a large tattoo on my forehead and was given an assignment to blow up some government buildings when I get back to the city. Why, is that weird or something?”

It was interesting to me, when talking to classmates before the initiation, that I had felt no such caution. We discussed the ceremony in class, we discussed the benefits of meditation, we were told to make up our own minds and I eagerly jumped at the chance. I wonder if my Catholic upbringing has something to do with that—breaking of the bread, washing of the feet, my mother speaking in tongues. In actuality, the sanskrit ceremony of initiation to meditation struck me as far less bizarre than most of the Catholic rituals I participated in when I was younger.

I hugged everyone goodbye and got back in the car to drive further north to New Paltz to meet my sister for dinner. My car meandered through the back roads as I drove in silence, focusing on the beauty of the barren trees, of the farmhouses and quiet country roads. My personal spiritual growth seemed very apparent to me in those moments, clear as the snowy mountaintops in the distance.

I truly believed then, that people have their own ways of finding their spiritual way. To meditate or to not meditate. To go to church or to not go to church. To linger in the past, to worry about the future or the decision to let it all go and live in the present. There is no One Way of going and lots of the problems I ran into as a young adult were because I believed that there was, that everyone was wrong and I was right. Now, I see that the seemingly narrow path to enlightenment and to God and to feeling spiritually connected with one another is actually very wide and is made up of side roads and bike paths, melting snow and cobblestones, twists and turns and hills and valleys.

As I drove to meet my sister, I also realized something else. I realized that my mother and father did the best that they could under the circumstances they were given. I realized that the passionate way I feel about the School is the same passionate way my mother feels about the Catholic Church. She did not teach me about it out of ignorance or cruelty. She didn’t manipulate me as a child as some form of bizarre abuse. She shared with me the thing that she loved the most in the hopes that one day, I would love it too.

There is no blame in that. There is no need for crying or throwing candy bowls or You Should Have or Why Did You? She came from love and in love there is no room for faulting, pointing fingers, tearful regrets. Her belief system works for her and so that is what she passed onto me.

And I have to say, so much of it still lives within me. I love the Church. I love the lessons of the New Testament—we often discuss Jesus’ words in philosophy class and study the wisdom in them. I love the songs the most, the psalms, the hymns. I do love so much of it.

But I also love to meditate. (Okay, fine. I did it twice so far. I LOVED BOTH TIMES.) I love to go to philosophy, I love my classmates, I love believing that everyone should be happy and everyone should be loved, that guilt and fear are useless and that it is my right to be full of consciousness and bliss. I love believing that we are connected, that I am to first and foremost have compassion for other humans, that I am to let go of my ego and serve others.

Headed back on the highway towards the city, I thought of Sundays spent at church. I thought of my past relationships too and the lessons I have learned from every single one. Mostly, I thought of my mother. And how good it felt to take a breath and let the negativity go. I consciously took each piece out of my brain, one by one, strands of anger, resentment, guilt and blame. They flew out of my ear, out of my car window as I turned my attention to the road ahead, to the bridges I would soon cross, to the city lights in the distance and I vowed to approach everything with forgiveness, with gratitude, with Thank you so much for giving me this life because in the end, the only thing that matters is that you know how much I love you.