Bridging the Esoteric to the Jewish People

Bridging the Esoteric to the Jewish People

Uta Gabay

I feel the urge towards bridging between the esoteric community and the Jewish people. I would even say it is a karmic duty of the esoteric community to help clean up the huge glamor around the Jewish situation.

To assemble contributions from today's esoteric thinkers on the subject seems to me of great value. I think it is a dire necessity to formulate an organized and balanced esoteric voice on the Jewish subject.

If true healing is to occur, this process demands of all of us more than just an intellectual effort. My hope is that on this website we, the contributors and the readers, will be able to move beyond fixed positions of pro and contra into a true sharing which may facilitate a deeper and more comprehensive understanding than each of us on our own would be able to achieve.

This requires mental flexibility, an open heart and the courage to stand in the middle of the bridge, not at one end of it, at least temporarily. It is the arduous challenge to have a fresh look at all pro and anti in ourselves, at our very identification. That would mean to look at our own identification as "Bailey people" and/or as Jews; to engage in self-reflection and dare to see our home from the other's perspective; to dare look at where we are not so different from those on the other side of the bridge. I have talked about this in my presentations at the University of the Seven Rays conferences.

A while ago I was accused of converting Jews to "esoteric Christianity". I properly defended myself as propagating universal spirituality and not Christianity. After this person has stopped talking to me, I have allowed myself to look at the Bailey material through his eyes which brought me to the painful realization that AAB's books are written in Christian-compatible language, by a Christian transmitter and mainly for Christians. (It is amazing how obvious this fact is now and how hidden it was for so long from my awareness.)

So, being in Israel, I need to come to terms with the fact that what I teach comes from a Christian background. That's not an easy thing to get straight and stand behind here in Jerusalem.

This I can only harmlessly do when I am ready to also see and say that AAB is not the all-inclusive, all-comprehensive, universal-spiritual teaching which I had thought it to be. I and for our purpose we all have to see and say clearly that every dispensation of the Ageless Wisdom is colored by the time and place of its emergence, AAB being no exception.

If we can start out on this premise, we have made a first step towards real dialog. We and what we represent are not infallible. The Bailey material is not The Truth. It is A Truth, an extraordinarily comprehensive one, but still partial and it has its blind spots and its blank areas and its faults. When humanity will be perfect we will have perfect teachings. If we want others to see their faults, we need to see and acknowledge our own first.

In terms of anti-Semitism in the Bailey material, we need to differentiate between those truths which may be difficult to hear and that which is colored by the world view of the day and of the geographical angle. If we are ready to relativize/contextualize the Bailey dispensation of the Ageless Wisdom, healing is enabled. Likewise, if we are ready to relativize/contextualize the Jewish dispensation of the Ageless Wisdom, healing is enabled.

So I am ready to stand up and be counted in this bridging project between Jew and non-Jew, as one who endeavors to stand on the middle of the bridge, learning to loosen my identification and look both ways with a piercing eye and an embracing heart, learning together with my brothers on the left and on the right to free ourselves from our prison of identification. Ready to "look for the Libran middle way" with you and anyone else joining this project.

Due to a strong focus on outer service and less on the contemplative side this month, this group letter is more of an update than an exploration into an aspect of universal spirituality.

After having shared with you last month our "creative challenges" in starting our public work, I would like to update you on our recent public New Moon meeting.

According to plan, I held the leash more tightly in my hands during the meeting. We started relatively on time, which is not self-evident in the Middle East. We kept to the pre-determined timeline. I led a short meditation at the beginning, to focus the group energy. Then Efrat Tennenbaum, my colleague and senior lecturer on Jewish wisdom, gave us an overview of the various streams in Judaism, zooming in on what she calls "the Fourth Stream" or "Secular Judaism". This stream started in the 80's, after Rabin's assassination. It is a kind of cultural Judaism. We learnt that a growing number of people become interested in Jewish studies for the benefit of getting to know its wisdom and creativity rather than in order to enter a religious experience. The emphasis is not, as in the other streams of Judaism, to keep the mitzvoth, the 613 laws, in order to be a good Jew. The Israelis of the 2nd and 3rd generation experience a gap in their understanding of their roots. They are told that they are the people of the bible and they find themselves in the Promised Land, but what actually connects between the times of the bible and present day Israel is less clear to them. They feel the need to fill in this gap in order to deepen their understanding of their history and make sense of it in the context of modern life.

Out of this more intellectual need for knowledge developed a new approach to ritual and community life. The old symbols and holidays are explored in the light of modern life and are given new meaning. Customs which are not in line anymore with modern understanding and values are changed and adapted. The universal message of Judaism is sought and lived. For example the concept of "Tikun Olam", which actually translates into World Service, is emphasized and practiced. The scope of this Tikun Olam is global rather than confined to the Jewish world. The word for secular in Hebrew is very similar to the word for window. Efrat used this play with words to emphasize the fact that this stream is on the one hand busy with the Jewish roots and at the same time opens a window to the rest of the world.

Now we feel ready to venture into less known ground. Our next New Moon meeting will be held at the Jerusalem Inter-Cultural Center, a respected public venue and we will have a Muslim speaker, Mr. Dajani. He is a Palestinian university professor who has started a political party emphasizing the Middle Ground. He grounds his democratic and humanitarian views on the Koran. He paints a vision of Unity in Diversity in the Holy Land.

With a Muslim speaker and Muslim attendance we will have two added factors to juggle: the need to provide a solution for the language difference. In the absence of enough resources for simultaneous translation this is a logistic problem which makes the meetings longer and taxes the participants' patience. The other factor is the fact that Muslims in general are not comfortable with meditation; they are not used to closing their eyes in public and they are concerned about meditation being against their religion's law.

So, on the one hand we are deliberating about a suitable structure for these meetings in order to build a more solid form, and on the other, each speaker and the community they represent will need to be accommodated in a unique way. I guess that's part of learning Unity in Diversity… :-)

Parallel to this outreach and some meditation classes in the community, also the activities in our School have started. Several courses are running already, and some more activities are being planned for the near future.

Among the courses is my year-course on the Seven Rays. We have a group of 6 students. They have all had at least 2 years of meditation training in Hechal, and it is a pleasure for me to delve into the depths of self-exploration with them.

I have also started a beginners' meditation class, with 8 students. I am making an experiment in this class: for more than 10 years we have taught the meditation in a gradual way, starting with relaxation and grounding and going through the mental, emotional and then etheric functions of the human being; parallel to this exploration of the personality we gradually introduced the spiritual aspect of the human being in an experiential way.

All this was done almost exclusively by guided meditations, in the course of one academic year. Here I am starting out on a more mental note, familiarizing the students first with a theoretical overview and then leading them in meditation to explore the new concepts from the inside. And as a third element there is also now more group discussion than in the previous setup. The first class went very well, there was a strong group field. I based the class on the sentence: "All is energy, on various levels of density". It is quite a stretch for newcomers to embrace a complete overview of the human constitution, with all the new concepts involved. It remains to be seen how this course will develop. We have 3 men in this group, I think this is the first time with such a high ratio!

Enough for this month. I hope we all made the best of the Libran interlude and are ready for the renewed drama as we enter Scorpio.

In the course of putting together this website, we as a group of Jews and non-Jews have manifested very quickly a little sample of exactly what we want to help solve: the world reflects to the Jews that they are the problem and the Jews defend themselves and reflect back that the world doesn't see right and blames them unjustly. The non-Jewish group members elucidated upon the "Jewish problem" and the Jewish contributors took on the defense of the Jews and the examination of where the esoteric teachings and their interpretations were not correct or fair.

We used this group situation for learning the difference between a ping pong of opinions between the two "camps", and heart sharing, which makes for bridge building.

I want to offer a few thoughts about heart sharing:

In my years in Israel I have held both pro and con view points alternately; until I realized that the truth is not in this. There is no one uniform Jewish oppressor and there are no 100 million deadly enemies. To make things black or white is rather my own need for a safe and clear reference point with which to identify and on which to build my truth. However, the truth is more complex than just deciding who is right and who is wrong.

So now I am working on leaving behind all views which make one side the right one and the other side the wrong one. It needs courage and patience to do this. Once I relinquish any agenda, I am really open to listen and see something new.

Of course, in theory, straight facts are something sobering and healing. If there were one clear-cut truth that we just have to pursue long enough and then it will emerge for everyone to see – wow, that would solve the problem.

I think that our longing for this clear-cut black and white truth and our consequent intellectual elaborations often become in the long run part of the problem.

Today's Jewish condition sits on layers upon layers of chains of cause and effect. Each possible view point is right potentially, with more than enough outer manifestations to prove it. It all depends on the angle from which one views this intricate past. I believe the role that our background plus education play in our particular understanding of the Truth is greater than we would like to think. A great help is to work together with trusted coworkers of different racial backgrounds. This is an eye-opening experience, confronting us with the conditioning of our own racial or lineage mind. (And I don't think that non-Jews are necessarily doing better here, maybe their conditioning is a bit subtler.)

In the absence of absolute truth I place hope in the effort to refrain from looking for the one culprit. It is natural that we try, through observing the outer appearance, to learn something about the inner quality and causality; we try to trace the way from the stereotype to the archetype, but until we have made it all the way up to archetypal vision, we must stay humble in realizing that we are not equipped to objectively judge any one of the outer events or series of events by itself.

Archetypal or buddhic vision involves a balance and synthesis of Truth and Love, head and mind, 1st Ray and 2nd Ray. Mental factual effort alone does not get us there.

Only from a space of Love Truth can be perceived. Only in a space of Love Truth can be shared and heard. So the effort towards truth must always be reciprocated by an effort of love. The more we love, the more do we have the mandate to speak our truth. Without this, our efforts towards truth become part of the problem.

To get into the trap of pointing out each other's faults is a waste of energy. We end up defending ourselves which limits us to the personality angle.

In my experience the most fruitful discussion happens when each becomes the spokesperson for their own faults. When this is adhered to by all participants, then synergy is built. It makes for compassionate listening and creates a safe space. It fosters the very difficult and very vital process of self-reflection, which produces the taking of responsibility.

Yes, to hold Israel and the Jews accountable for their deeds; but first to be ready to acknowledge our own shadow side. Being sure not to ask of Israel or a Jew what we don't ask of ourselves. We, Jews and non-Jews alike, can only succeed not to be drawn into the anti-semitism vortex, if we do our work of the heart – to relinquish all judgmentalism and blaming within ourselves, all thoughts of fault-finding.

For the sake of the success of our website, may we learn to balance our efforts towards the truth with the needed efforts of the heart.

Mantra of Love
In the center of all love, I stand.
From that center, I, the soul, will outward move.
From that center, I, the one who serves, will work.
May the love of the Divine Self be shed abroad,
in my heart, through my group, and throughout the world.

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On Jewishness and Non-Jewishness

Uta Gabay

The demarcation line between Jews and non-Jews seems more distinct than most other demarcation lines between peoples. This is fundamental to the whole Jewish issue. I find it healing to see that on the individual level Jewishness is often less clear-cut than one would expect.

For me personally, Jewishness is not a black and white issue at all; my inner reaction to being called Jewish is always a bit of a surprise - I don't really feel that Jewish, I lack the racial and the religious background. My conversion ceremony many years ago holds for me the significance of a contract with the Jewish people, grounding myself within them, for service purposes. My children are Jewish. Yet this is not the first or foremost identity factor for me. I have a Jewish identity and I have a non-Jewish identity. This is much like me being an Israeli citizen, but also having German citizenship. For me it is a good place to be in the middle, to be a bridging agent rather than all out or all in. So to be called Jewish is fine, but it is only part of the truth. To be called non-Jewish is not less true.

Standing thus consciously at the midway point (not easy!!) is part of my contribution to help us humans stretch our boundaries beyond this separative demarcation line between Jew and non-Jew.

When my Muslim friend and colleague from Australia visited me in Jerusalem, I could see the healing power of the conscious and heart-felt holding of the midway point. She is a student of the Wisdom, her parents are from Lebanon. Being with me in the Jewish part of the city, she experienced like an identity shift into feeling Jewish; Hebrew and Jewish ceremonies felt very natural; and then going over the checkpoint and being with her Muslim brothers and sisters, experiencing the joy of the common background and language. The important point here is the ability to go beyond lineage mind, in an adventurous joy of trying out different identities. This leads to a gentle yet powerful dissipation of the importance attached to fixed forms of identity.

Shalom Salaam.

Comment by JD:

The labels related to Jewish and non-Jewish seem both undesirable and necessary at the same time! Perhaps what we really feel is that we shouldn't need them, yet the theme is intimate to the subject we're trying to address and DK explicitly used the "Jewish" label over and over. I'm guessing that our readers will find the labels illuminating if we use them in the right way. Uta's comments below are very valuable, in fact perhaps the some of these comments themselves could be integrated into an introduction that demonstrates this aspect of what we're trying to express.

The thing is this--when ever anyone says I'm an X, then there is the tendency to be limited and blinded by that X. Ultimately, we all must learn that we are not the racial forms into which we're born, nor the religions, nor the educational "crammings" to which we are subjected. We are not even "esoteric students of DK's works;" all these are steps and experiences on as cosmic path toward the Infinite. We must learn to hold our physical, emotional, and intellectual identifications lightly, using them as fields of service without becoming "lost" in them.

The phenomenon of identification is one of the most fundamental problems of humanity. It is a fixated sense of identification which underlies separativeness and ultimately violence. It is worthwhile to think this through.

Identification is an instinct we share with the higher developed animals. Every duck when it is born attaches itself to the first thing that moves in its surrounding. This is usually its mother, but even if not, the duck will still go after it. By the same instinct, the human baby is totally identified with its mother. With growing awareness this sense of identification or oneness expands. We identify with our family, our tribe, our village or neighborhood, our football team, religion, state. This is an instinctual automatic reaction. It is one aspect of building a self, an identity.

A sense of identity is built by a continuous process of first identifying with someone or something, and then separating one's self from it. The child, after having been totally merged with his or her mother, starts at around age 2, to experience their first separation, their first sense of ego, when they say for the first time: NO! I don't want. This separation process is reaching a peak in puberty, when the teenager is establishing his or her psychological self or ego.

Through the long process of identifying with and dis-identifying from our surroundings, the human being develops the ability to be self conscious. The establishing of an ego is a necessary station in human evolution. Whoever does not develop a healthy ego, will have difficulty to be who they are in the world.

Ego becomes a problem when the human consciousness becomes so fixated in any one form of identification that it cannot continue to expand and to include wider portions of the whole picture.
When this happens, the greatest problem is that usually there is no awareness that this is so. We think that our way to view the world, our angle, is the one right angle and how do the others not see it, something must be wrong with them.

This fixation of identification is the result of either ignorance or trauma. The more trauma or threat a person or group encounters, the tighter and more exclusive becomes the identification with the known form. A person contracts into survival mode, adopting rigid rules, closing themselves, out of fear, to new ideas, new people, new behaviors.

In a group, a nation or a religion, the same mechanics work. When the members of a group hold tightly onto their beliefs and values, to the exclusion of the rest of the world, we call them fundamentalists; they identify so much with their particular form or "box" that they lose all ability to include in their awareness the wider context, intellectually and on the level of relationships. If such persons are not doing a deliberate effort, they remain in their "box" for the rest of their life.

When this narrow view expresses itself also on the physical plane in the form of narrowly defined exclusive customs and possessions and ultimately land claims, it inevitably leads to separativeness with all the negative feelings related to it like competition, demonization etc., which, when not taken care of, harden into enmity and violence.

It is through the process of education, through inner healing and through getting to know other "boxes" that the human being learns to recognize the limitedness and temporariness of his or her identification. Seeing other cultures, meeting people with different backgrounds, learning about the beauty of another religion can make us aware of our own limited lens of seeing reality.

One of the most powerful liberators from the prison of the narrow identification with the personal ego or any "group-box" is Love. When we are exposed to "the Other" in significant ways which include Love, we can come to a deep appreciation that there are other ways to be in the world, which are just as legitimate as our own. Love is the great unifier.

The other, complementing liberator from a narrow identification is the experience of a higher, more inclusive sense of Self (with a capital S), which in religious and esoteric language is called the soul. Introspection or meditation is the way to this experience.

Identification with self and with the wider context is an eternal human balancing act. Both the development of the sense of self and the sense of belonging to a larger whole are a continuous complementing learning, ever deepening and expanding. In this process our Selfhood is infinitized and our infinity is personalized or real-ized.

When every group, nation and religion will learn this balance between the I-consciousness and the We-consciousness, World Peace is achieved. To recognize our identifications and keep them light, supple, flexible, is an effort well-invested towards this goal.