Facing Down Our Shadow

Recently I read a book called Esoteric Healing written by new age spiritualist Alice Bailey. Within her work, Bailey makes bold assertions that the Jews created their demise in the Holocaust because of their unchecked collective karmic history. She weaves her anti-Semitic rhetoric throughout her supposed channeled works and stands largely unchallenged amongst her followers. Bailey has a vast library of esoteric writings, most of which never mention such explosively harmful diatribe. But like our own personal shadows hidden within our unconsciousness, Bailey’s unbridled bias pours plainly onto the written page in this particular work.

While reading her words, I noticed my breathing become shallow, my skin grew prickly and a haunting sadness rose into my heart. Memories of personal encounters with discrimination merged with the ancestral suffering of my Jewish inheritance and challenged me to pay attention and breathe.

I grew up in a Jewish home knowing many in my family and community who had lost so much under the insanity of Nazi-Europe. And my favorite Polish Grandmother was sent to America as a young teen, all alone, to escape the horrors of the Russian Pogroms. She often shared stories about her youth, describing how her family was terrorized simply for being Jewish. Can you imagine living under that kind of constant threat simply for observing a religion other than the majority?

I was raised to be hyper vigilant regarding anti-Semitic rhetoric and even became a member of the Anti-Defamation League as a young college student. My entire family embodied this fear, having lived through death of loved ones and other hurtful acts all due to prejudices against Jews. Fear of persecution had become imbedded in our psyche and if there is such a thing as a collective psyche, then it exists within the Jewish consciousness too.


Perhaps we have all encountered prejudices and in my life it has shown up in numerous forms: some connect to being Jewish and others do not. Here are some examples:

*When a former corporate boss learned I was Jewish, he turned pale and said “all this time I thought you were one of us”.

*While on a casual date with a fellow student from a college political science course, I shared that I was Jewish. His face grew red as he announced I was a Jew spy, he then ran out and left me alone at the restaurant.

*While walking home from elementary school the Catholic school children often screamed offensive terms to my friends and me: “kike; Heb” and one group pushed my books right out of my hands calling me a “Christ killer”.

*One of my dear childhood friends announced during carpool on the way to elementary school, that her mother had told her that I was not a real Jew, because I had been adopted.

*A puppeteer I hired for my daughter’s birthday party canceled via voicemail message the day before her party, claiming her church had declared me a witch and a danger because I was a medium.

*While attending my husband’s high school reunion, a couple began asking me about my work. Upon learning that I was a medium, they called me an abomination to Judaism and God. Then pursed a relentless attack on my gifts and character that left me balling in the parking lot.

*I once referred a very close friend to my revered shaman mentor and he announced that he could not go to her because his family decided she was really a “white witch”. She is not a witch; not even a “white” witch. That is a common claim for individuals who work shamanically or directly with spirit. But if she was, why would that be grounds for such fearful bias?

*Several fellow graduate students claimed to be Christians and told me that I was working with the devil because I could communicate with the spiritual world and did so professionally.

*My daughter came home from first grade crying “mommy, one of the girls in my class today told me that we killed Jesus. Why is she saying that mommy?”

*At her Montessori pre-school, my daughter was told by her teacher “to stop saying she could see fairies and angels” since they are not real.

Have you ever encountered bias so directly?

Have you ever noticed your own bias toward others?

When I read Alice Bailey’s book that a new acquaintance greatly valued, only to discover the spiritualist leader’s words proclaiming genocide as a manifestation of Jewish prior bad acts, my intuitive dander stood at attention. This happens for me, when I am faced with someone’s projection wrapped in seemingly glib presentation. I needed to know if he was aware of what she had written and was he willing to denounce her insanity.


I have pasted some of Bailey’s quotes below. But before reading them, I'd like to invite you to please find a comfortable position, take a deep cleansing breath and elongate your exhale. Call divine light to you and let the light expand throughout your body until every cell of your being is radiant. As you continue to breathe deeply into your lower abdomen and elongate your exhale,close your eyes and connect to the peacefulness of your own true center coming into your conscious awareness. Then open your eyes read the few excerpts from Bailey’s book, Esoteric Healing written during the Holocaust:

• Today (1949) the law of racial karma is working and the Jews are paying the price, factually and symbolically 
• Jewish religious history has been built around a materialistic Jehovah, possessive, greedy, and endorsing and encouraging aggression
• They (the Jews) have never faced candidly and honestly as a race the problem of WHY the many nations, from the time of the Egyptians, have neither liked nor wanted them... Yet there must be some reason, inherent in the people themselves, when the reaction is so general and universal. 
• The Jews are the reincarnation of spiritual failures or residues from another planet... The Jew represents materialism, cruelty and a spiritual conservatism, under the domination of the separative, selfish mind, that from which all good New Age disciples want to emerge. 
• The word "love" for others is lacking in Judaism... The Jew has never grasped the love of God. The God of the Jews is possessive and greedy. Jehovah is not God.
• Christ came to bring an end to the Jewish dispensation which should have climaxed and passed away as a religion with the [astrological] movement of the sun out of Aries into Pisces....
• They [the Jews] rejected that which was new and spiritual in the desert
• Bailey also states: The line that [the Nazis] have taken against the Jewish people, might be turned with almost equal justification against the Jews themselves. The latter have always been separative and have regarded themselves as "the chosen of the Lord" and have never proved assimilable in any nation.
  
  
   

As you continue to breathe in and out, notice how you feel when you read those words. Where is your energy in your body now? Do these words resonate as a spiritual truth within your being? What do you notice?


Breathe deeply and let go of the words completely. Can you? If so, notice this. If not, notice this too.


If Bailey had replaced the word Jew with any other religious or cultural group, my soul’s intuitive dander would still have risen. Would yours? When we don’t catch our own skewed perceptions they pour into the world and have a creative impact. Though Bailey's works didn't lead to the holocaust, her words reflect the Nazi rhetoric that ended in the death of millions. And Bailey continues to be revered as profound. As a new age spiritualist, she should have been confronted then and now.  This is where loving friends can challenge us to take a clear, compassionate look at where we are stuck. But in this case, Bailey and her foundation did neither.


After reading her work fully, I raised my concerns with the acquaintance who pointed me in the direction of Bailey’s work sensing this individual was not anti-Semitic nor was he hyper-vigilant with the imprinted fears of Jewish history. My concerns were challenged and I was told that I didn’t really get it and her and was urged to see Bailey's concepts about Jews within the context of all the great works she provided the world. Couldn't I just see how loving and important a figure she was?  He claimed to abhor separatism but would not go as far as denouncing Bailey’s words about the Jews.  

Can a responsible spiritual teacher truly justify Bailey's stereotypes; false representation of Jewish spiritual constructs;  calling the Jewish people ‘the reincarnation of spiritual failures or residues from another planet? Does a responsible spiritual teacher tolerate the rationalizations of genocide as though it was a karmic destiny; urging Jews to assimilate into the culture to alleviate discrimination and requesting Jews to stop taking away so many opportunities from those who are not Jewish?

I wondered, would only Jewish people be concerned about this? 


Needless to say, I was tweaked about the work itself and the lack of compassion regarding my concerns. I had some work to do to set myself free. So I engaged in mindfulness practice and then I journeyed. Journeying is the shamanic act of directly connecting with the spiritual worlds to access healing, wisdom and guidance. I sought the healing and guidance from my divine helping spirits. While connecting with my divine master teachers in one journey last week, the spirits of Alice Bailey and her teacher, Dwal Khul showed up. To say I was stunned is a gross understatement. Alice Bailey approached me with the aids of two of my master teachers in spirit. To my amazement she offered me direct amends for her spiteful words. She shared in depth how deeply this reflected a trauma within her family story and why spiritual concepts were filtered through her pain. She actually showed me how she was tethered by her father and how this tainted her perceptions. Bailey shared that she did not realized how gravely wrong she had been at the time and was truly contrite while sharing her insight. Her compassion flowed toward me as she encouraged me to stand up to her words and not be swayed by those fearful of challenging her.


And then Dwal spoke. He seemed to be a Buddhist type teacher, draped in simple robes. He told me that he worked with Alice from the spirit realm while she was living in the body because they had known each other in other lifetimes. He was quite austere proclaiming that he never shared insights with her about karma and the Jews. He told me that his words were gravely distorted when she wrote about karma. He told me “karma does not make anyone pay. For once in the light or nirvana, there is only understanding and responding from that awareness or lack of understanding and responding from that lack of awareness. There is no payback. There is no pay forward. There is only now.” While radiating pure compassion toward Alice and me, he wanted me to know that her understanding of his channelings was correct in many cases and incorrect in others – specifically speaking in this encounter about her references to Jews. I turned to my divine helping spirits asking them, “Is this really Alice and Dwal?” They gently reassured me, “Yes. Listen and learn”. So I did. In this journey, both spirits offered me amends and then guided me on the next steps for my healing and communication with my friends and others.


We are all capable of allowing our shadowy wounds to rule our choices. If you are human (and I’ll go out on a limb and assume that you are), you have unconscious wounds that are dictating your thoughts, words and actions right now. As my guides like to say it is those unconscious wounds, also known as imprints within your energy field, that create reality for you. Another way to say it - you create reality through these illusions. Very often we don’t notice their existence until we experience the effects of these imprints as unwanted experiences. But it is these experiences that allow the shadow to be illuminated so we can embrace ourselves compassionately, heal and evolve.


I now feel greater compassion for Bailey. From spirit she urged me to stand in the truth and fearlessly challenge the shadows within her work. She was now willing to see where she had been stuck while living and was still evolving in after-life. And that is a hopeful prospect.


I too am a work in progress. I am cultivating compassion for all of us who may be lost in the dictates of the unconscious shadow. I am grateful for a wakeful community of friends who willingly observe themselves, share when they are stuck or have been and process deeply within relationship in ways that allow transcendence to emerge gracefully. And I am grateful when I can be stuck without judgment, witnessed and urged to clearly see myself, open my heart and transcend any limitation that feels all too real for a moment…or two. For today, I am grateful that I met Alice Bailey when she had healed from where she had been trapped. I too choose to face down my personal shadows compassionately and fearlessly, while alive – healing and evolving one conscious breath at a time.