ENSLAVEMENT OF THE FALSE SELF
Transforming Fear Into Compassion
Richard Forer is a former AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) member with ultra-Orthodox relatives living in Israel. He is the author of Breakthrough: Transforming Fear Into Compassion - A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine Conflict, which is available at Amazon.
Recently, he was a member of an Inter Faith Peace Builders delegation that visited the Gaza Strip from November 5 to November 11, 2012. To invite Richard for speaking engagements, book signings or interviews, please contact him at rich_forer@yahoo.com. His website is www.richardforer.com
My first question is related to the very
origins of your life and how the “indoctrination” took place. What do you
remember from your childhood that began shaping your mind and identity in a
clear dualistic way? What role did the collective unconscious of the Jewish
people play?
Rich Forer: Children are more receptive than adults, more
innocent. As children, we take on the beliefs of our parents and teachers, our
collective of ethnic and/or religious groups, and our society. Although much of
our learning is taught to us directly, many of the ideas we incorporate are
taught to us indirectly. For example, we absorb beliefs that are expressed,
subtly or not so subtly, through feeling, especially the feelings of our
parents or other caregivers. Just as we unconsciously model our speech and
physical patterns on these caregivers, our view of the world is likewise
influenced by these models. We begin to develop an internal logic, a way of
seeing the world that is influenced by the people and institutions around us.
This logic has a quality that is unique to
each individual. It also has a quality that is unique to the society or
collective each individual grows up in. For example, when I was a kid I
attended Sunday school. I remember seeing, probably in my first-grade
classroom, photographs of David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann. Ben-Gurion was
Israel’s first Prime Minister and Weizmann its first President.
At that time, about nine years after the
end of the Holocaust, the atrocities perpetrated upon the Jewish people were
very present in the minds of Jews. Most of the Jewish adults I knew had
relatives or friends who were killed in the Holocaust. I absorbed their ideas,
their knowledge of the terrible suffering of the Jewish people, their horror
that human beings are capable of such acts of hatred. When I would look at the
photographs of these great men, who had created the one safe haven for the
Jewish people, I saw men who wanted to protect and save life, not men who
wanted to destroy it. These were the leaders of our people and they were making
sure that another Holocaust would never again happen.
Along with this thinking, this way of
interpreting the information that I, a kid, had available, there seamlessly
arose the view that Jews would never do to others the shocking things that
Adolf Hitler and others had done to Jews. After all, it never occurred to me
to want to do such things. And the Jews I knew were basically caring people, so
it obviously had never occurred to them to do such things. They were
ipso facto incapable of committing such crimes. What they were capable
of was planting millions of trees and turning an arid desert into a land of
milk and honey.
With a childlike faith in the goodness of
my people, it was a natural progression in thinking to presume that the
non-Jewish world, much of which had remained silent while Jews were being
murdered, was different than the Jewish world.
In other words, for some inexplicable
reason, or perhaps because we were special, Jews were more humane than
non-Jews. When I looked at Israel, it was obvious that Jewish soldiers were
merely defending their land from the irrational hatred of those who, like
Hitler, wanted to harm us.
Our internal logic colors the way we see
the world. It leads us to interpret the world in ways that reinforce our mind’s
conception of reality. The logic of my youth continued basically intact into my
adult life. So, when I heard that Israeli soldiers had killed children and
other civilians, I automatically responded with skepticism if not outright
denial. My “logical” mind explained what really must have occurred, which is
that these children and civilians were killed because Hamas or Hezbollah,
whoever the enemy was, embedded their soldiers within civilian populations.
Children were killed not because of Israeli bullets but because these
organizations were so filled with hatred they were willing to sacrifice their
own children in order to murder Jews.
This is how the unexamined mind projects
its content onto the world and creates the way the world is constituted.
Yago: During your
childhood and adolescence you were indoctrinated to see the world as an enemy
to the Jewish people. The horrors of the Holocaust and the pain-body
(collective trauma) of the Jewish people were passed on, consciously and
subconsciously, from generation to generation. You mention in your book and you
just indicated that all your life you had an unexamined belief system that
operated and guided you at the subconscious level. How do you describe that?
Rich: Every human being is born into a particular society
and is given a name and told who he or she is. In these and other ways, each of
us assumes the matrix of an identity. In my case, I was told I was a Jew and an
American, this is my family and this is my history. These labels, which in
truth are only concepts and beliefs, delineated
the boundaries of my worldview. My thinking developed along a spectrum from
idealism – Jews are good and their leaders honorable – to cynicism – others are
neither good nor honorable. I had in fact created a gulf between myself and
others, and I was extremely reluctant to question my worldview. The belief that
Jews are more humane than other people, that Jewish people would never
willfully harm other people became the limit of my ability to see clearly. This
was the boundary created by my unquestioning acceptance of the conditioning of
my youth.
This was also a boundary on my ability to
feel. The fear and horror I felt when I read about non-Jewish victims of
atrocities could not compare to the fear and horror I felt when I read about
Jewish victims. I was so identified with being a Jew, that I couldn’t really
put myself in the shoes of non-Jews. This selective sympathy had become so
habitual that it seemed perfectly natural and justified.
I am convinced that the great majority of
those who defend Israel are in the same position I was in. When they learn that
hundreds of Gazan children are being killed by Israeli bombs, their reaction is
nowhere near as agitated as when they learn that even a single Jew was killed
by a Hamas bomb.
The root of the limit on the ability to
see clearly and feel fully is one’s presumed identity. Whether I am a Jew, a
Christian, a Muslim, an Israeli, a Palestinian or American, whatever I may be,
my identity is the lens through which I perceive the world.
I say “presumed identity” because the
conventional worldview in which we identify ourselves as separate and limited
individuals is just a presumption. It is not the truth of our existence. It is
more like an idea that is so axiomatic it is never questioned. But it has the
same limitation as any other idea. It has nothing to do with knowing who we
are. One of the realizations that arose out of my spontaneous awakening, which
I write about in my book, was the recognition, the knowledge, that I was
as much Palestinian as Israeli or American, as much Christian or Muslim as Jew,
and that the so-called other is an image in the unexamined mind. This image of self
and other is a primal error, and it creates a world of us against them.
Let me interject something. I am not
denying that there are people who want to harm Israelis. There are always some
who want to harm others. In the case of Palestinians, if you investigate the
documented history, you find that only a small percentage has used violence
against the state of Israel. And even that violence must be looked at in the
context of the history, of the taking of Palestinian land and a brutal
occupation.
What I am saying is that we distort our
ability to see clearly. We reduce things to a primitive and inaccurate orientation.
We create the other by superimposing or projecting onto him the
beliefs and images we have absorbed and created within our minds, our
imaginations. When we look at the one we define as the other, we don’t see who
he or she really is. We see a reflection of our beliefs about them superimposed
upon who they really are. How we see the other, how we interpret his words,
what we think he is thinking, what we think his objectives are with regard to
Jewish people, all of this is a result of the indoctrination that most of us
have accepted without question.
A phrase I hear a lot in Jewish society,
especially among the ultra-Orthodox, including my own family, is “all Arabs
want to kill all Jews.” This belief is part of the collective Jewish mind. If
we have not inquired into and seen the inaccuracy of the belief, inevitably
when we encounter Arabs we will superimpose this belief upon them. Notice the
projection. When we fear that all Arabs want to kill all Jews, wouldn’t we feel
safer if our leaders incapacitated all Arabs? And so we manufacture ideas that
enable us to rationalize policies that remove or even kill Arabs day in and day
out – until they are no longer a threat. “All Arabs want to kill all Jews”
becomes “We want to kill all Arabs?” In fact, I’ve heard a number of ordinarily
good-hearted Jews express this exact sentiment. Similarly, the fear of genocide
against Jews becomes genocide against Arabs. This type of language is
frequently encountered, in particular, amongst Israel’s extreme right-wing.
I am virtually certain that the principle
reason it has been so difficult to solve the Israel-Palestine dilemma, is that
fundamentally we are not dealing with a political problem; we are dealing with
a problem of identity. This is how it was for me. I could never have understood
the dilemma until I understood my own mind and my presumed identity. In my book
I describe what motivated me to begin a thorough research of the conflict. But
quickly, I ran up against my presumed identity, a lifetime of propaganda about
myself and my so-called people. The confrontation was shocking. The anger and
shame and sadness I discovered in myself were a raw wound. But the wound was
necessary; it was the doorway to the end of fear and confusion.
It is hard work to examine our minds and
question our identities. Core beliefs are so ingrained that we cannot conceive
of letting them go. They are a part of our mortal identities, and they
cannot be talked away. They operate in visceral ways, in the subconscious and
unconscious. To question them seems unimaginable. In truth, we are terrified of
letting go of these beliefs because doing so means death. It means the end of
our presumed identity. This is why, rather than inquiring into the patriotic
beliefs and images tied to their American identities, so many were willing to
send their children to Iraq in 2003 to kill or be killed. Their patriotic
identities were more precious than the lives of even their own children.
Our identities are mental constructs. From
the awakened perspective, they are fictional or illusory. When we let go of the
limits set by our indoctrination, we recognize our inherent oneness or
connection to all of life. And our prior way of relating to life is seen as
dreamlike, not fully conscious of what we were doing or why we did it.
Yago: The unexamined
belief system goes with another expression of yours that we live in a mental
prison. Indeed, we can be slaves of our own minds. This has been said
throughout history by the wise men of all traditions. In this regard, Gandhi
stated that “freedom and slavery are mental states.” What can you say about
that?
Rich: We may have all the freedoms promised by any
charter or constitution. We may come into possession of the entire land of
Canaan, and populate it with Jews only, thereby fulfilling what we believe is
God’s covenant with the Jewish people. But what if, in order to have satisfied
this hunger, which is a consequence of our collective worldview, we gave up our
personal integrity and sacrificed our humanity at the altar of dogma and greed?
Are we free or are we enslaved to an unexamined mind?
If we had to choose between on the one
hand fulfilling all of our pseudo-religious and material fantasies while losing
our humanity and, on the other hand, living as slaves, but with our humanity
intact which is the right choice?
So I would agree that we are slaves of
belief systems. Until we inquire into our core beliefs, we will never be free.
If, as we are bound to do, we look at the world through the prism of unexamined
beliefs and images, our attention may not even accommodate an awareness of what
is most threatening to our self-images; and what it is aware of will be limited
and distorted. Thus, our understanding or interpretation of the information
available to us will likely be biased and inhumane. In my book, I say “where a
man cannot look he cannot feel and where a man cannot feel he has not really
looked. Without both, he will never understand.”
The goal of all spiritual work, be it
Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity or Judaism, is to go beyond beliefs,
beyond the separate selves that are framed by beliefs. Once we release our
attachments to these beliefs, we will recognize our true nature, which is
beyond description, self-identification, or separateness. We are all part of
the whole. And because we are all part of the whole, each of us contributes to
the collective mind of humankind and each of us is responsible for the
suffering in the world.
Yago: What role has the Holy Scriptures, the Torah,
played in your life? How did your interpretation of the Torah keep you in a
state of indoctrination, caught in a mental prison? Could you experience inner
freedom and liberation through the Scriptures?
Rich: Many people have been brought up to believe that
God is an omnipotent, omniscient, infinite yet human-like Being. This belief is
the hardest to let go of because it stimulates and appeals to one’s
imagination. It is imbued with fear, mystery and wonder, of a Being who created
us and can destroy us. This underlying belief resides in the unconscious.
As I suggested a moment ago, many Jews and
Evangelical Christians believe Jews are the chosen people to whom God gave the
land of Israel. This belief is a form of consolation that inflates one’s
self-image (identity or ego). They believe it because they want to
believe it. They crave the consolation. With this belief, they can rationalize
all kinds of abominations – the theft of Palestinian land, the behavior of
fanatical Jewish settlers who raid Palestinian villages, poison their wells,
destroy their olive orchards, and abuse men, women and children.
Many, who take advantage of this belief to
rationalize such abominations, also claim that Israel is the only democracy in
the Middle East. The two ideas cannot coexist. Yet, the contradiction never
occurs to these claimants. Furthermore, any proclamation about Israel’s
political structure cannot magically disguise the inequality and lack of
democracy that is made possible by these very people. Because they operate out
of self-interest, they promote narcissistic points of view that care only about
their personal identities and the collective or tribe with which they identify.
They are incapable of compassion towards those who are not part of their
collective.
Let me add that a prominent rabbi who was
brought up in the ultra-Orthodox tradition and who reads Aramaic and Hebrew,
told me that the Torah does not call Jews “The Chosen People,” it calls
them “A Chosen People.”
To your question if the scriptures can
guide us to inner freedom, I would say that sections of the Scriptures
can serve as guides on the path to freedom but freedom can only be found when
one gets in touch with one’s heart and allows the heart to be the guide.
We have to learn to trust our heart-based
intuition. This is not easy because we have been indoctrinated into giving up
our power and our reasoning to religious texts and all kinds of authorities.
We’ve lost touch with our inner wisdom which, at its most unobstructed, flows
from the heart. No text or authority figure, if only we would get in touch with
our deeper selves, knows our hearts better than we do.
Yago: Could you share how your mind maintained its
vicious circle of indoctrination?
Rich: Growing up, I experienced some anti-Semitism. I
also experienced what I construed as insensitivity toward me and my people. In
elementary school our classes would celebrate Christmas and Easter, but there
was never a celebration of Hanukkah or Passover. I thought that was unfair. I
saw it as an insult to who my people were and to our long history.
The hurt I felt from being exposed to
anti-Semitic attitudes and insensitivity caused me to retreat more forcefully
into my Jewish identity. I became more dogmatically loyal to my people. This
loyalty, along with the common belief in Jewish and American society that the
Palestinians were always sabotaging Israel’s sincere efforts to make peace,
reinforced my certainty in the innocence of my people, which in turn
contributed to the certainty that I myself was innocent. It never occurred to
me that my unquestioning loyalty to Israeli policy played a role in the
subjugation of another people.
Instead, I held onto the idea that Israel
had always wanted peace but the Palestinians did not and that the Palestinians
were willing to sacrifice their own children in order to drive the Jews into
the sea.
Even though I was not religious and did
not attend synagogue, whenever I would encounter someone defending Palestinian
behavior, or hear of a suicide bombing, I would become more zealous in defense
of Israel, which was really a defense of my self-image or identity. I concluded
that Palestinian society was pathologically hateful towards Jews. I generalized
the activities of a minority onto the totality of Palestinian society.
In the mid nineties, I read From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters. I was led to believe this book was a
well-documented history of the relationship between Israel and the Palestinian
people. Without bothering to validate the claim, I blindly accepted that the book
was in fact well-documented. I did so because what the book said conformed to
and strengthened what I wanted to believe.
Peters’ main thesis was that the
Palestinians were an invented people. They never existed. They were Arabs from
other parts of the Arab world who had come to Mandatory Palestine in the first
half of the Twentieth Century to work for Jewish landholders, who paid them
more than they could earn in their own countries. Because the book added
credibility to my belief system, it became a kind of Bible for me. Whenever
someone criticized Israel I resorted to Peters’ book to refute their argument.
I later discovered that From Time Immemorial had been thoroughly
debunked by Israeli and American scholars.
Then, in the summer of 2006, Hezbollah, the
Lebanese nationalistic political/military organization, crossed over into
Israel and killed three Israeli soldiers and abducted two. Israel immediately
retaliated with immense firepower. While many accused Israel of
disproportionate force and the targeting of civilians, I insisted its response
was necessary. In my mind it was obvious that Hezbollah and the entire Arab
world would stop at nothing to destroy Israel and the Jewish people. Just three
weeks earlier, Hamas had captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit on the
Israel-Gaza border, so I saw the two provocations as proof that my analysis
that the Arab world wanted to destroy the Jewish people was accurate.
Yago: Let’s move to the awakening. What provoked this
peak experience? How did you manage to break the chains of slavery in your
mind?
Rich: Hamas and Hezbollah’s behavior and the war in
Lebanon outraged me. I complained to a couple of non-Jewish friends about the
Arab world’s hatred of Jews and its obsession with destroying Israel. These
were intelligent men, whom I admired for their insight and wisdom. In the past
they had been critical of Israel but this time, considering that two
“terrorist” organizations had instigated hostilities, I was sure they would see
things from my perspective. To my surprise and disappointment, however, they
disagreed with me. They said that Israel was using disproportionate force, and
that this was a continuation of Israeli behavior that had gone on for decades.
Their response to my perspective not only
fortified my resistance to their perspective, it also fortified my attachment
to my Jewish identity. It made me realize that only Jews can understand the
suffering of our people. This was yet another belief that separated me from
the rest of humanity.
A few days after those conversations, a
Jewish friend I’d known all my life phoned to tell me he would be attending a
Bar Mitzvah out West and would be visiting me in New Mexico, where I lived at
the time. I then took the opportunity to complain to him about Hezbollah, Hamas
and the entire Arab world. I went on and on for two hours. During my diatribe
he mostly let me talk. Occasionally he interrupted, usually saying “that’s not
right, that is incorrect,” but he was non-judgmental, basically neutral and
unemotional about the subject.
Now, I knew that he had studied
Israel-Palestine more than I had, so when, at the end of the conversation, he
recommended I read two well-regarded Israeli historians for a more
comprehensive understanding of the issues, I was open to his suggestion.
Because he didn’t resist my point of view, or judge or criticize me, he opened
up a space where I was able to say to myself: “I can do that. I have never
really studied the history of the Arab-Israeli problem. Maybe there is
something I should be aware of.”
After we hung up, I went online to Amazon
to look for the authors he recommended. When you type in the name of one
author, the names of other authors in the same discipline appear. So I compiled
a list of books, my chief qualification being that the author had to be Jewish.
I was afraid that if I read non-Jewish authors I would suspect bias. I took
this list to the local library, checked out two books, came home and put them
aside.
The next day I picked up Beyond Chutzpah by Norman Finkelstein. I hadn’t yet heard of Finkelstein, so I
didn’t know what a controversial figure he was. From the very beginning of the
book, he was critical of Israel, with no criticism of the Palestinians. I
thought this a little odd, but I wasn’t yet ready to reject the book,
especially because it was brilliantly written and meticulously documented. I
wanted to see where the book was going.
I figured that since the Israeli view was
very well known, perhaps Finkelstein wanted to present the Palestinian point of
view. Alternatively, I was also open to the possibility that he was a
self-hating Jew with a talent for distortion. And the subtitle of his book is On
the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. I thought: “Who is
misusing anti-Semitism, he or I?” So I kept reading.
I read about awful things Israelis were
doing to Palestinians: home demolitions, stealing land, the use of violence by
Israeli soldiers in situations where there was no threat of violence from the
other side, lethal violence against children and institutionalized torture of
prisoners.
At a certain point, I needed a break from
this powerful material. When I put the book down, I hadn’t yet differentiated
all the feelings I had gone through while reading. I was aware I had
experienced a range of feelings but I had been so absorbed by the book’s
content that I hadn’t consciously registered them.
So I put the book down and closed my eyes.
The next thing I knew, I came out of a space that in retrospect I call nothingness.
I don’t know how long in chronological time I had been in this timeless space,
but the first thing I noticed is that I felt cleansed and purified. The
negative feelings I’d experienced while reading were completely gone, without a
trace, but now I was able to delineate those feelings. The contrast between my
new feeling and the feelings I had experienced earlier was so stark that I
instinctively looked around the room, searching for my old feelings. I looked
in my bookcase and in the corners of the room, wondering, “Where is the shock,
where is the anger at Israel and at myself, where is the shame and
embarrassment, where is the sorrow for all that the Palestinians have been put
through?” These were the specific feelings that had been stimulated while
reading, but now they were nowhere to be found.
So I just sat there, in a state of bliss,
in the Eternal Present, free of negativity, without a desire to be
anywhere or do anything. Then I felt a mild pressure upon my eyes, as if a
cloth was covering that part of my face. I quietly acknowledged this sensation.
After about a minute, the cloth began to unravel in a spiral motion, first
uncovering the left eye and then the right. There was a soothing quality to the
unraveling. When the cloth was finally gone, I saw that the world as it
really is is empty of all qualities, that in Reality it is a
reflection of my inner states of consciousness. I saw that the world was my
creation; it was a projection or superimposition of my mind’s content. The veil
that had obstructed this recognition had fallen away.
Yago: In your book you describe this process as moving
from fear to compassion and from confusion to clarity.
Rich: Yes, the next thing I noticed was that I could not find
any attachment to a particular identity. There was simply a feeling of non-separateness.
And in that moment I understood that I was as much Palestinian as Israeli, as
much Muslim or Christian as Jew.
Next, I started seeing the dynamics of how
we project our perception onto the world and then presume that the world we see
proves the reality of our perception. In a never-ending cycle of
unconsciousness, we persist in creating the same reality or worldview over and
over again. This process imbues our internal logic with the deluding certainty
that the world truly is the way we perceive it.
When my core Jewish identity could not be
found, I was no longer imprisoned by beliefs and images that had once emanated
from and reinforced that core identity. Nor was I compelled or condemned to
identify with one group to the exclusion of any other. Therefore, I could see
the world from any perspective, without bias. I understood that the real enemy
is the unexamined mind that projects its own suffering onto the world and then
blames or scapegoats the world for the suffering.
Throughout my being, I felt a tangible
sense of peace and realized that peace cannot be found in the world unless it
is first found within one’s self.
Fear is an inevitable component of
separateness, of the attachment to or belief in an exclusive or limited
identity. A limited identity implies the existence of something outside its
limits. Just as our limited identity is presumed to be our self,
whatever is interpreted as falling outside our identity is presumed to be the other
and is seen as a possible threat. This is the world of Us against Them
or Good against Evil.
Having somehow let go of fear, I realized
that fear had been a lens that colored the way I saw the world. And because
fear prevents us from seeing the world as it really is, it is always
accompanied by confusion. But once fear vanishes, we can more easily empathize
with the suffering of others. Thus, in place of fear, compassion arises.
Compassion is the ability to stand in the
shoes of the other and see from all perspectives. Thus, in place of confusion,
clarity arises.
Yago: You describe your transformation as a letting go of
the mind and journeying towards the heart. Could you explain what really
occurred?
Rich: Letting go of the mind set free the natural
intelligence of the heart. This intelligence is always available, but in order
to access it we must first let go of the indoctrination that blocks its access.
A passage through the darkness of ignorance into the light of understanding is
a journey that each of us must make at some point if there is ever to be peace.
Yago: It looks like a kind of dis-identification from the
thinking process. You were able to discover that you were much more than your
thinking process.
Rich: Exactly! And there is not a single thought that has
to be believed. We can accept thoughts as having relevance but we don’t need to
believe them as the absolute, as reality itself. Anything we believe can be
looked at and questioned. We can ask of any belief: Is it really true or
is there a possibility that it is false or not always true?
Yago: Listening to your transformation, I recall the
words of Richard Rohr in his book, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer: “Real religious conversion can, in fact, take care of
years of therapy. To really experience the absolute is to experience the
essential pattern. When we are reconnected at our core, we leap over years of
problem-solving and years of asking questions about ourselves (…) True religious
experience dissolves the fortress of ‘I’ by abandoning its defenses.”
Life is a constant journey of
shadowboxing. I would like to know how you are integrating and processing this
new sense of identity and understanding of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Rich: I would say that sharing my journey and the
insights gleaned from it is integrative and part of my commitment to peace. And
although the Israel-Palestine issue is the context through which I share these
insights, the insights are applicable to all human beings under all conditions.
However, in my opinion Israel-Palestine is
the core foreign policy issue of our time. It is an archetype of conflict and
it can become an archetype of peace. A just resolution can serve as a model for
future generations. The Book of Isaiah refers to the Jewish people as “A light
unto nations.” Well, Israel and its Jewish supporters are certainly not
operating in the light now. But if they can penetrate their darkness and come
out into the light of transformation, they can shine that light upon other
nations and help the Palestinian people heal from their traumas. For it is only
when the Palestinian people are healed that the Jewish people themselves will
be healed. And this healing can herald a whole new consciousness of compassion
for the world.
The key is education and critical
thinking. We need to find out for ourselves what is real and what is false.
People are mostly decent. Once they learn what is actually happening, they will
demand that Israel make a fair peace with the Palestinians. For this to happen,
though, we have to stop relying on our leaders for answers to our problems.
Leaders are often the most attached to their identities. Their status or sense
of importance can be a trap that lures them into a prison of inflated
self-images and hinders the ability to empathize with the other.
When we open to the possibility that
things are not always as they seem, and become curious as to what the real
history is, we will begin to see that the behavior of people, no matter how
bizarre or self-destructive, does not take place in a vacuum. We will recognize
the necessity of taking responsibility for how our inertia, obliviousness and
apathy affect the behavior of others, of our society and the world. We will see
how interconnected we all are.
Yago: During the last months you have been invited to
give talks, TV and radio interviews. What impact are you having? (Link to latest TV Interview)
Rich: I speak wherever I am invited, though invitations
are rare. I want to point out that no matter which side of an issue people
identify with, they all have their own self-images to contend with. And as I
just said, leaders, and others who are looked up to, tend to be more ensnared
by their self-images than the average person.
My message of self-inquiry challenges
self-images, but especially the self-images of those who think they are more
important than other people. A sense of specialness or importance acts as a
barrier to fresh and unique ideas. The challenge I speak of makes it difficult
for me to be invited to speak at conferences sponsored by organizations with a
leadership hierarchy. Many leaders have vested interests and are not interested
in someone who says that a spiritual problem, a problem of identity, is at the
root of the Israel-Palestine dilemma; and that the antidote is inquiring
within. They would rather invite speakers who stick with the history.
Yago: You talk about the difficulty of getting your
voice heard. You also mentioned the difficulty organizations have in accepting
your perspective. Let’s look at the positive impact you are having. What kind
of people and networks are you engaged with? Who is welcoming and encouraging
you in your honorable task? What are your areas of influence?
Rich: There are a lot of ordinary people who’ve read my
book, watched my TV interviews or come to one of my talks, and they are
inspired. My description of how our attachment to a limited identity affects
the way we see the world helps them find clarity.
Further, my explication of what is really
going on in the minds of those who accuse me, because I am critical of Israel,
of being a self-hating Jew or anti-Semite, makes a great deal of sense to my
audience. Briefly, what I say is that these accusations are, together, a
reflexive defense mechanism or projection that is used to deny what my critics
are afraid of seeing within themselves. When, for instance, I criticize Israeli
attacks on civilians, Israel’s defenders automatically label me an anti-Semite
or self-hating Jew. This tactic lets them off the hook. After all, if their
label fits, my criticism must be nothing more than slander founded upon an
irrational prejudice toward Jews. But what is really happening is that my
criticism functions as a mirror. These defenders cannot look in the mirror out
of fear that the face of inhumanity will be exposed, that in persecuting the
other the way their people were once persecuted and in denying the humanity of
the other, they have sacrificed their own humanity. Looking in the mirror would
reveal that their criticism of me is actually true of themselves. It is they
who are acting out of hatred and irrational prejudice.
I explain why it is so common for those
who justify Israel’s oppression of Palestinians to equate concern for the lives
of Palestinians with hatred toward Israel. The dualistic mind works that way.
It infers that those whom it perceives as a threat possess qualities that are
opposite of the qualities it presumes of itself. If you are pro-Palestinian,
you must be anti-Israeli.
The dualistic mind supports oppression as
an apparent path to peace. People quickly grasp the absurdity of this
proposition. A mind of oppression can never lead to peace, not in the world and
certainly not within one’s self. If we want peace we have to go beyond
duality, beyond pro-this and anti-that. We have to go beyond labels and the
effect labels have on our perception of reality. If we must use labels, let us
say that we are pro-humanity, which is both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli.
That label at least points to the path to peace.
Imagine the confusion that exists within a
mind that justifies oppression yet claims it wants peace. This mind is so
afraid of confronting its self-destructive thought processes that it cannot
comprehend that when we oppress people and deny them their rights, they have
legitimate reasons to rebel. Instead, it labels the rebellion as terrorism. At
the same time, it is oblivious to the terror that it, as an enabler of
oppression, inflicts upon a people who every day are denied the same rights it
demands for itself. The fear-based mind is not just narcissistic, it is
fascistic.
Yago: You talk about apathy in today’s world, especially
apathy from people who govern. Many politicians appear egocentric and
indifferent to the suffering of the world. They protect themselves within their
own world of artificial well-being and small pleasures. What can you say about
apathy in today’s world?
Rich: Apathy gives leaders permission to disregard the
consequences of their actions and enables them to mislead us about things they
have already done. It encourages them to do things they might not otherwise do
if they knew the eyes of the world were focused on their behavior and that they
would be held accountable.
There is a great deal of economic stress
in the United States. When people have to struggle to survive, they don’t have
time to pay attention to issues that do not appear to impact them directly. I
doubt that more than five percent of Americans have much awareness of the
effect the policies of their government has on the Israel-Palestine issue. This
is a shame, because if more people became aware, for example, that America
gives more money to Israel to spend on its military than Israel spends itself,
the outcry would force the United States to change to a foreign policy that
focuses on peace rather than on supporting the illegal occupation of
Palestinian land. This change would in turn free up resources that could
be used to alleviate suffering in this country.
Yago: Before, you told us about the role of the Torah in your life's journey. Could you share with us the role your understanding of the Torah (Jewish Holy Scriptures) plays in the on-going conflict between Israel and Palestine?
Rich: Instead of cultivating beliefs that conform to the
wisdom of their scriptures, people commonly make the meaning of scriptures
conform to their pre-existing beliefs. They pick and choose passages that
seemingly support their beliefs while ignoring passages that challenge them.
Although the Torah, which is considered
the word of God, is used primarily by Jews, it is also used by Christians. Many
Jews spell the word G-d. The missing letter acknowledges that God is a
mystery, incomprehensible to the mind. Yet many of these believers claim with
conviction that they know God’s intentions, that He intended to give the
land to the Jewish people. They justify the dispossession of an entire people
and the humiliating tactics used to facilitate the dispossession by resorting
to this dogmatic and self-serving belief.
Likewise, they ignore the many
prohibitions in the Torah against scheming, stealing and breaking contracts.
And they pay no attention to the practice of Tikkun Olam, or repairing
the world, in which every Jew is obligated to rectify injustice. They wait for
the coming of the Messiah, but they ignore the very practice the Torah says
will make the world a dwelling place for the Divine. Is there anything less
Jewish than denying God a dwelling place by exploiting His word so that the
covetousness of one people can be satiated at the expense of another? In my
talks I emphasize that, rather than resorting to dogma, opening ourselves to
the intelligence of the heart is how we prepare a dwelling place for God. This
is Tikkun Olam, and it is the same wisdom all the great scriptures of
mankind intend to transmit.
Yago: In your book you make reference to the Book of
Deuteronomy, quoting the passage: “You shall love the stranger;” and you also
find similarities between the Koran and Torah. You are pointing out a common
message in the three monotheistic traditions. Could you elaborate on this?
Rich: Some form of “love the stranger” is found in every
religion. In Christianity “love thy neighbor” is a core principle. A Muslim
friend of mine, who read my book, told me that I had made a mistake in citing
the Talmud as saying “Whoever destroys a single life is as guilty as though he
had destroyed the entire world; and whoever rescues a single life earns as much
merit as though he had rescued the entire world.” She told me that the quote
comes from the Koran. I learned that this wisdom exists in both religious
traditions.
Over time wise people in all religions
have discovered basic truths, including the truth of our real nature, beyond
the mind or separate self.
Yago: Your transformation has allowed you to
compassionately enter into the worldview of the other, in this case the
Palestinian people. Looking back at your life before the transformation, what
does it mean and feel to be imprisoned in indoctrination or, in this case, the
collective pain-body of the Jewish people? How is your compassion and sense of
oneness reflected at the level of feelings towards Jews who are still caught in
a narrow and partial view of the conflict? Do you know in your own living
experience what they are going through?
Rich: I do know what Jews are going through because I
went through the same thing. Nonetheless, I sometimes become angry when I hear
someone exclaiming: “Palestinians are terrorists who want to kill us all,” or
when I hear people justifying the killing of children. It is difficult for me
not to become angry. And although mine may be a righteous anger, I know that I
can be more effective in encouraging people to look into the history when I
discipline myself and remember their point of view, which was once my own
situation. So it is important that I stay aware of my thoughts and feelings.
I want to emphasize that my goal is not to
convince someone that my point-of-view is more accurate than theirs. I often
say in my talks that I do not want anyone to believe what I say. Rather, I want
them to find out for themselves the history of this subject. Only personal
investigation, with an uncompromising intention to discover the truth, allows
one to take responsibility for their role in the suffering of others.
I need to add, though, that I have not met
a single Israeli loyalist who has impartially studied the actual history. If
they had the decency to do so, most would discover that they have character
assassinated the Palestinians and expedited their misfortune. The real conflict
for these loyalists is not Israel versus the Palestinian people. The real
conflict is the inability to integrate the hard-to-believe but inescapable
awareness of Israel’s treatment of non-Jews with unquestioned loyalty to the
Jewish state. One consideration recognizes Israel’s dark side; the other denies
the dark side exists.
Only by committing myself to the truth was
I able to apprehend the astonishing reality that criticism of Israel was never
my principal concern. I had never defended Israel, at least the Israel that
actually exists. I had defended an
idealistic image that was projected onto the real Israel. This projection
enabled me to repress and deny painful revelations that I would have learned
about Israel and myself if only I had looked without the influence of an
unexamined mind.
Denial and projection go hand in hand.
What I denied about Israel and about myself, I projected onto the other, who
automatically and necessarily became my enemy. My
reaction to criticism was motivated more by the fear of taking on the challenge
that criticism of Israel posed to my identity than by fear for Israel’s
survival.
Yago: We are invited to face and dialogue with conflict
with a Yes of “basic acceptance” of what is occurring, but at the same
time to say No to the injustices that undermine a human being’s true
potential. To be able to combine both attitudes simultaneously, we need to
integrate that sense of oneness that you experienced in your transformation, to
incorporate a compassionate, non-dualistic mind in our journey in the midst of
conflict.
Rich: It would be naive to expect people to go through as
radical a transformation as I underwent, though it may occasionally happen.
Most people are capable of applying themselves in pursuit of the facts of
history. This is why I emphasize that the most effective path is to find out
the history for oneself. If we do, we will finally figure out that we have been
deceived by propaganda and one-sided belief systems. We will recognize that we
have supported injustice and we will understand the various forms that
Palestinian resistance has taken over the years, both violent and nonviolent.
This is a more compassionate view of the world. And the compassion liberated in
our new understanding of this particular conflict will affect the way we see
conflict in general.
In a peaceful world people will be less
anxious. They will be more capable of self-inquiry. Mankind’s journey toward a
more humane consciousness will accelerate and our materialistic society will
move closer to spiritual values as greed and acquisition begin to lose their
seductive allure.
Yago: We are moving towards the end of the interview, I
know you were in Gaza in November, 2012. What is the current situation there?
Rich: Gaza is virtually unlivable. The economy is dying.
Between 1996 and 2000, exports averaged 1,736 truckloads per month. In 2011
exports averaged twenty-five truckloads monthly. I am not kidding. I did say
twenty-five.
The Israeli blockade only permits enough
food into Gaza to keep its residents at a subsistence level. Anemia,
malnutrition and stunted growth afflict substantial portions of the population.
Eighty percent of residents are dependent on UNRWA (United Nations Relief and
Works Agency) for food. Israel has created buffer zones inside Gaza that seal
off access to thirty-five percent of Gaza’s agricultural land. If a farmer
dares to venture inside or even near these zones there is a high probability he
will be shot. Gaza used to have thriving citrus and olive industries. Neither
industry exists anymore, destroyed by Israel.
Ninety percent of the water is so polluted
it is undrinkable and the availability of clean water is limited, so that per
capita water consumption is well below the minimum standards set by the WHO
(World Health Organization). Ninety thousand cubic meters of sewage is dumped
into the sea every day, yet Israel does not allow Gazan authorities to build
water treatment plants. High levels of nitrates and chlorides, related to blue
baby syndrome, kidney disease and prostate cancer, are found in the water.
Every one hundred meters along stretches of the Mediterranean are wells from
which Israel takes clean water for its Jewish residents, none of which is
available to Gazans.
Over 100,000 tons of garbage sits on the
streets of Gaza. Everywhere I went I saw garbage. Israel does not permit the
government to import garbage trucks.
The Oslo Accords stipulated that
Palestinian fishermen could sail twenty nautical miles out to sea to harvest
their catch, but Israel reduced the limit to three nautical miles. To catch the
large fish, fishermen have to go at least eight miles out to sea. After
Operation Pillar of Cloud, which ended in November, the fishing limit was
extended to six miles. Nonetheless, just as happened prior to Pillar of Cloud,
Israeli military vessels frequently confront fishermen within the limit,
force them to swim to the Israeli boats, strip off their clothes and swim back to their vessels.
The effective rate of unemployment, when
you include people who have given up looking for a job, is over fifty percent.
Young people with college degrees cannot find work. They are prime targets for
recruitment by extremist groups.
There are nowhere near enough construction
materials, schools, houses, medical supplies, hospital beds, doctors, nurses,
etc. I could go on and on. According to UNRWA, by 2020 Gaza will have reached
the point where life is untenable. All of this is economic warfare, collective
punishment at its worst. And none of it adds to Israel’s security. If anything,
by flaunting its contempt for non-Jewish life, these restrictions inflame
anti-Semitism throughout the world.
The international community has to insist
that Israel abide by international law. For the sake of Palestinians, Israelis
and Jews worldwide, it must demand that Israel’s government respect the dignity
of human life. Think about it. If all countries adhered to these laws, which
have evolved over centuries to safeguard the well being of all peoples, the vast
majority could look forward to a future for themselves and their children. This
vision may be idealistic on my part but it is a future we all must work
towards.
Yago: Are you networking with Palestinians or Jews who
have gone through a similar experience of integration of a compassionate and
non-dualistic approach to the conflict? Or do you feel alone in this process?
Rich: I do feel alone, but there are a lot of people who
appreciate my point of view; and even though they haven’t had such profound an
awakening as I had, they understand that peace can only prevail when both
peoples are treated equally.
One of the things I often say is that the
human rights movement, at least with regard to the Israel-Palestine issue, is
very small. There is a need for many more people so that we can reach a
critical mass where our support for the rights of all, not some, will begin to
be felt within the halls of Congress and other centers of power.
Another thing is that people, who are into
non-traditional types of spiritual practice, such as Buddhist meditation or A
Course in Miracles, as well as teachers like Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie,
must get involved in human rights. The world needs their wisdom and their
support. Their numbers probably exceed by a wide margin the numbers found in
the human rights field. I think the two fields should be combined so that one
completes the other. Spiritual seekers need to understand that their search for
enlightenment, liberation, happiness, whatever they call it, cannot truly be
fulfilled if it is merely about them. They need to understand that we are
all Palestinians. Of course, we are all Iranians, Americans, Chinese and
Israelis too. And, as I said earlier, we are all responsible for the suffering
in the world. But the Palestinian people, to a large extent, have become an
archetype for loss and suffering. As such, their healing can play a critical
role in the future of the planet.
People involved in human rights, and there
are some amazing people, need to work toward a deeper insight into the nature
of reality. They need to combine their activist approach with self-inquiry or
self-reflection. If they fail to do so, the ancient paradigm of victim becoming
oppressor, of one group being made a scapegoat for another will continue.
Yago: My final question is in line with your last words,
which for me are fundamental. Could you summarize the characteristics of a
peace builder in the context of today’s world?
Rich: We have to become more self-aware and we have to
acquire self-understanding. To acquire self-understanding we need to inquire
within and discover how our indoctrination influences the way we see the world
and how it convinces us to favor one group over another. This is how we find
our real humanity. When we find our humanity we will recognize the humanity of
everybody else. We will see that we are all in this together. If we engage this
process, prejudices we were never aware of will reveal themselves and be
resolved.
Next, we need to put our new understanding
into action by finding out, in the case of any subject that affects people’s
lives, the actual documented history. Regarding Israel-Palestine, this
commitment will take us beyond the myths and false beliefs that are so
characteristic of the issue.
I always tell people “Don’t believe what I
tell you. If you simply believe what I tell you without finding out for
yourself, you may believe the next person who comes along, especially if he is
more persuasive than I. And that person may be promoting a self-serving worldview.“
So we need to initiate a practice of doing our own research and finding out, as
best we can, the real history. This is not as difficult as it seems.
Israel-Palestine is the most legally documented conflict in Mankind’s history.
If we do our research we will understand
why people behave the way they do. We will see the effects of fear and greed.
We will understand the despair and hopelessness that can lead people to commit
acts of desperation. We will discover how, by denying the humanity of the other,
we lose our own humanity; and we will recognize the internal logic that induces
us, in the name of security, to brutalize the other. We will have acquired
greater compassion and clarity. The world will begin to transform itself into a
realm where each of us has the opportunity and the resources to pursue our
dreams.
Yago: Rich thanks a lot for the wonderful contribution to
this blog.
Rich: Thanks to you, Yago!
