| Bridging
the Esoteric to the Jewish People 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.
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. 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.) Back
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. 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. 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. 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. Mantra
of Love
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. 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.
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. 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. 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. 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. 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. |