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CHAPTER FIFTEEN Before going into details about the process and practice of Rebirthing, it's important to discuss some ethical or moral considerations, especially because the idea that there are no victims, the idea that nothing ever happens without our consent, might seem to mitigate or excuse sexual or even violent interaction between Rebirther and Rebirthee. The topic of seduction, of having sex with somebody who has been or is a Rebirthing client, has come up for discussion repeatedly through the eighteen years that I've been involved with Rebirthing, not only because the topic itself is fascinating, but because it goes directly to fundamental theoretical issues: Can anyone seduce another? Is anyone in control of the behavior of another one? Please understand that I am not questioning Rebirthing someone with whom you are indeed intimate. I think it's marvelous when lovers Rebirth each other, or when parents Rebirth their children and vice versa, or even when close friends Rebirth each other, because this is how we extend the loving community that truly exists, spirit to spirit. I'm talking about seduction or including sex with the breathing session. This topic came up again the night before I wrote this chapter, when I was holding a meeting of people who are involved with Herakhan Baba, Babaji, and/or with Rebirthing. One of the "old timers" was reminiscing: "How lovely it used to be before AIDS appeared, when people would get together, lie down and breathe, get into a warm, loving, forgiving state of heart and state of mind, and then would form a couple with somebody who was also at the meeting and of a like state of mind and heart and go out and make love-how carefree and enjoyable it all was!" Then another person started talking about a Rebirther who routinely "talked" the women that came to him for Rebirths into having sex with him. Many of the Rebirthers in Los Angeles condemned this individual and, in fact, said that they didn't believe such a person should be allowed to be called a Rebirther. Then we joked about a popular Rebirther who encouraged his pretty female Rebirthees to make themselves "more comfortable" and allow their breath to be "more open" by taking their clothes off. And I talked about some female Rebirthees I've heard of who have set their cap for a particular male Rebirther by using such ploys as "Would you mind if I take my brassiere off so I can breathe more easily?" Whatever the particular variation on this general theme of `let's have fun and games' may be, the point is that the reason an individual is involved with Rebirthing is for his own spiritual progress, and that's not likely to come from getting laid. If getting laid were the royal road to success in spiritual enhancement and purification, then we all know who would be the people who would be the most "psycho-sexually mature" individuals in our society. They would be the prostitutes. And it obviously is not so. So I suggest that people essentially keep a clear distinction between their professional life as a Rebirther and their personal lives, especially their sex-lives. I don't think it's an especially positive approach for a Rebirther to use Rebirthing as a seductive ploy. I said, "Yeah, I have my own ideas about my brand new career for myself after I retire, but anyhow, what is it?" And he said, "Well, you'll open a grieving service, a service for men in their late sixties or early seventies who have just lost a spouse and who need help with the grieving process." I was dumbfounded by his suggestion and asked him why on earth would I want to focus on such a population in my practice. And he replied, "It's really simple. You'll just keep meeting these men who are newly bereaved until you find one who really turns you on, who thinks that you're attractive, and then that's that. You get married and give up the business, and you'll be happy for the rest of your life." Maybe such an approach works with Rebirthing, too. But I think it always rests on a scarcity consciousness. I think that, generally speaking, a Rebirther who has his life under control, who's getting what he wants out of his life, doesn't need to be sexually attracted to a client who comes to him for Rebirthing. I also recommend, if a Rebirther does find himself sexually attracted to a Rebirth client, that he do some Rebirthing and find out what the scarcity thought is that underlies this attraction. It may well be that he wants to be in control. It may well be that he doesn't think he's good enough for someone to love just for himself alone-they can only love him if they need him or are grateful to him for his help. Straightening out old negatives should quickly restore ordinary professional distance between Rebirther and client. As for nudity, generally speaking, I suggest that my clients keep their clothes on, and I keep my clothes on while I'm Rebirthing them, even in the hot tub. Although I usually use my hot tub for myself nude, I wear a swimsuit and I recommend bathing suits for all Rebirthers conducting wet Rebirths. I recommend to people who come to my workshop to train to be Rebirthers that they do the same. Your job as a Rebirther is to get your clients to give up their grievances and to let go of their negative consciousness, so they can create a good life for themselves instead of a life that's muddied by the manifestations of their negative consciousness. Scarcity thoughts about sex probably lie at the foundation of all sexual acting out. I think such a scarcity thought was operating when one well-known Rebirther, for some strange reason I can't even imagine, took his client into one of my bathrooms and balled with her in the bathtub, fully clothed. His shoe kicked one of the porcelain faucet handles and broke it. The first thing I knew of it was when he later came into my living room, with the broken handle in his hand, and said, "You could be cited for this, you know-it's against the revised building code!" By the way, that Rebirther had sex with two other women in the four days he attended that particular workshop-not a new indoor record by any means, but still very active. And all indicative, I believe, of his underlying PDS grievances. He could have balled with every one of these women elsewhere, outside of the training. Why do it in my home? What a naughty boy he was being! Another
"cute" story involved the daughter of a former Catholic nun, brought to one of my weekend workshops by one of my patients who had been having sex with her. This young woman somehow managed to partner for the first round of Rebirths with a young man who, though old enough to be a college graduate, was still virgin. By the time we gathered as a group to start the next morning, she had managed to alter his virgin status. Then, that second evening, she partnered with a different young man who, though married, was also apparently quite willing to have sex with her-and also open to discussing their adventure the next morning when we started our Sex and Love seminar. She puzzled me by saying that her mother had given her a healthy attitude towards sex (something I find hard to believe of her mother who had, after all, originally chosen to have been a nun), but that, of course, she wasn't promiscuous.
"It isn't as if I have sex with a different man every day." Hysteria was rampant! She cried, then sulked-and my Rebirth client who brought her was totally mortified to learn that this woman he had treasured enough to pay for her weekend had shown so little loyalty. They stopped seeing each other soon afterwards. Lots of long-lasting lover relationships and marriages have resulted from meetings at Rebirth workshops-in fact, my 18-year-long tie with my friend, Louis, was the outcome of his attendance at a workshop I organized for C.W. Light. Obviously, I think that's OK. But when it comes to making a practice of concluding professional Rebirth sessions with seduction and sex, I hesitate. Somehow, it seems as if the Rebirther is being opportunistic. But who knows? Maybe not. Ultimately, you'll have to make up your own mind. While you're thinking about it, remember to breath and to remind yourself:
Another ethical question is whether anyone who Rebirths has gone crazy or caused harm to others. One case served me immensely in dealing with forgiveness. In Spring, 1981, about ten days before Louis and I were due to leave on our first round-the-world trip, which included our first visit to India to see Babaji, I received a phone call from a Rebirther I knew who lived in upstate California. I hadn't heard from him for a year. He was somebody I had met at Campbell Hot Springs several years earlier, and I had enjoyed working with him and admired his calm and very gentle-appearing nature. In fact, I had appreciated his approach to groups and Rebirthing to such an extent that I had even invited him down to Los Angeles for a day in Fall of 1978 to help lead and organize a One Year Seminar. I didn't hear from him again until one day, in early Spring of 1979, when I was in San Francisco. I ran into him at a restaurant with a group of other Rebirthers I knew. They invited me to join them, and I sat opposite him. I asked him how things were going in his life and learned, much to my great surprise, that he had spent most of the intervening time in jail, having been accused of murdering his wife! He had been released because the police did not have sufficient evidence to charge him. The dinner party that night was to celebrate his release which had just happened. I thought everyone was joking, so my response when he looked me in the eye and told me that he had been suspected and held for the murder of his wife was, "My God, I'd sure hate to be on your shit list." Everyone at the table laughed, no one seemed to take offense, and the moment passed by. I hadn't seen or talked with him since, until that phone call just before Louis and I were ready to leave on our round-the-world trip in February, 1981. He phoned and said that he was thinking of giving up his teaching job and that he wanted to talk with me. Could he come on down to Los Angeles and spend a day or two? I told him we were leaving the next week for a trip around the world and that life was pretty hectic, so I might not have a great deal of time to spend with him. But, of course, he was welcome to come on down, and I'd see if I could help him make whatever career decisions he was facing. When he arrived, we had many pleasant conversations, but throughout I was mindful of two facts. One is that he had been educated in Germany and had lived in Germany during World War II. And the other fact was that he was a man who had been accused of killing his wife. I went back in my memory to the day in the Fall of 1978 that he had spent with me in Los Angeles, meeting people and discussing the formation of the One Year Seminar. I remembered that, late that evening, after we had returned from having dinner with my son, he had talked about how he and his wife weren't getting along well, and how he, no matter what he did, couldn't make her happy any longer. He said that their life together had been fine until he had had a very bizarre airplane accident a few years previous which he said involved the gas line parting in his airplane and the plane's plunging some 18,000 feet. He was with his good friend and with his little son at the time. He told me that he had concentrated on envisioning white protective light surrounding his son and his friend as the plane fell down to the desert ground. The results of that accident were rather miraculous in themselves. His son was completely uninjured and was able to leave the site of the crash, walk down the road for a mile or more, and summon help. His friend's leg was broken. And my friend only suffered from a piece of metal pushed into his forehead. He was hospitalized with his head injury for quite a while following the accident but made a total recovery, presumably. However, that Fall night in Los Angeles, at the end of the One Year Seminar day, he told me that ever since the accident, he had been in a continual state of bliss which made such things as sex no longer especially desirable. He far preferred to stay in the psychological bliss state that he was constantly experiencing. His indifference to sex was annoying his wife and making their marriage less than the happy one it had previously been. As he was talking, I had a sudden intuition that he was really very angry, not only at his wife, but possibly at all women. Equally suddenly I became aware of the fact that here was a person who was large enough to have played semi-pro football and who seemed to be accessing a level of aggression and violence and strength that could be dangerous. The next morning, I awoke early and drove him to the airport so that his plane would get into San Francisco with plenty of time for him to drive to wherever the One Year Seminar there was meeting. In between was the murder. Then came my meeting him at the restaurant after he was released from jail without being charged. Not only help, but company, for, as he heard our plans for our round-the-world trip, he asked if he could accompany us at least as far as India. He had decided definitely to resign from his teaching job, and he wanted to go to India to meet Babaji. How could I refuse? Over the next two days, Louis helped him locate the Federal Building where he busied himself getting a new passport. Louis also accompanied him in shopping for things like a money belt. The day after he went for his passport, when they returned to the house, he told me that his van had been broken into and that everything had been ransacked, but that everything was in place and nothing was missing that he could tell! I thought that was bizarre, and actually didn't believe him. I thought he was mistaken. Two evenings later, the two of us, this fellow and I, were the only ones sitting in my living room. Other people who had spent the evening at my house were leaving, getting into cars at the curb on the street. As I continued to look at him, wondering if I had truly heard what I believed I had heard, he added, "You still love me though, don't you?" I suddenly needed to urinate, so I replied, "Excuse me, I've got to go upstairs. I'll be right down." As I sat upstairs in my bathroom pondering this revelation, this acknowledgment on his part that he had, indeed, committed the crime of murdering his wife, I wondered why had he told me that? What did it mean? I spent a lot of time pondering why I had "created" him in my life. I was especially mindful of the fact that he was the only person I had ever been so afraid of that I'd removed myself from his presence. By myself up in my bedroom, I thought about all this and about his request to accompany us on our trip to India. It suddenly dawned on me that I had probably created him and those circumstances to lead me to let go whatever lingering elements of grievance I still felt toward men who had been physically violent with me. And I further realized that his Germanness was confronting me with the issue of how to find perfection in the Holocaust, the Nazi massacre of millions of Jews, Poles, and gypsies. As I pondered that, I thought about the affirmations:
And I pondered the questions of evil and of reincarnation. Are our souls immortal? Do we go through life after life after life, being reincarnated, to learn new lessons each time? If those lessons are always ones of forgiveness and love, do we gradually perfect ourselves and finally realize our goodness, our Godliness? A possible and reasonable purpose for reincarnation (if I indeed believed in it, and I hope I've made it clear that I am by no means absolutely convinced) would seem to be that we each of us continually, through many lifetimes, become as purely loving and forgiving as we consider and want God to be. We're here in our mortality, in our humanness, to achieve a closer and closer relationship with God, to become more and more like God, therefore to become more forgiving and loving. In almost every religion, Western and Eastern, God is completely forgiving of everyone if they perform certain activities. God is good, God forgives all sinners. In Catholicism, for example, if you make a sincere act of contrition, and you properly atone by completing your penance, then God must forgive you. The Hindu, for example, meeting another individual, says, "Namaste," and pranamms to that individual. The word, "namaste," incorporates the concept, "I bow to the God within you. I salute the God within you." So there I was, sitting up in my bedroom, thinking about why, just as I was about to leave on a trip to faraway places where I might visit Babaji and other Holy Personages, had I brought this person into my life? He had scared me by his implicit, covert violence. He had been suspected and accused of murdering his wife, and if I could believe my ears, he had just confessed to the crime to me! Maybe he shared the common Teutonic or German values or belief in the Superman, the Ubermensch. He might even share the Nazi attitude toward Jews, that we're inferior and, in fact, not even human, and can and should be disposed of to purify the Aryan race. I confronted myself with questions: "Why have I created him here at this time? Why have I even created his desire to accompany me and Louis on our first trip to India to see Babaji? How does this have anything to do with love and forgiveness? What is the teaching? Where is all this going?" And I then suddenly had an insight which made me recognize that I had created him to show me that I could and did still feel affection even for someone who had apparently, at least by his own acknowledgment, killed his wife! If I could feel affection and forgiveness for him, certainly there was no reason why I should go on carrying any grievance against my husbands or other lovers who had lost their tempers and resorted to physical violence against me. In an instant flash, I forgave all of them, this time completely-not just on the `okay, let's forgive it, let's forget it,' sociable, affable, bluff, hearty level that had characterized my meetings with the fathers of my children when we met at graduations, weddings, and other state occasions. I saw clearly in that instant that I wanted to and was completely open to letting go all animosity that I had ever felt toward them. I wanted to forgive them all, not only to be relieved of the burden of my old negative feelings, but also because I did not want such negative thought in me to result in the metaphysical creation of any other individual who might go even further with his violence, towards me as well as others. And so, I sat by myself, thinking about forgiving, letting go completely any negatives I had ever felt toward any man who'd ever acted violently toward me, including the doctor who had delivered me-for whatever he did to make me come alive probably was violent. I'm sure a brand new, soft, tiny little baby feels almost every touch as a violent assault-being held upside down and being tweaked or spanked or whatever can't be pleasant for a little baby. And resentments pile up whenever somebody does something to us that we find unpleasant. So I thought about forgiving Dr. Foster Meyers and forgiving my father, blessed be his name, and my uncles, cousins, boyfriends, husbands, lovers, even my son (although he had never struck me, he had gotten violent and kicked the kitchen stove one day when he was an adolescent). All of that accrued animosity that I felt toward them seemed to be washed out of me as I willing agreed:
As soon as I had thought that thought, my mind became caught up in my question of what does this fellow's Germanness, his connection with Nazism, have to do with me? I thought about how, at almost every workshop that I have led or participated in, someone has scoffed at the affirmations:
"How can you say everything is perfect? The corollary of that thought is that there must be perfection, somehow, even in something like the Holocaust. How can you say the Nazis and the Holocaust are perfect? Your Rebirthing philosophy is a pile of crap if you believe something foolish like that." I suddenly realized that instead of thinking of the six million Jews who were killed by the Nazis as victims, it was more appropriate to use the term that is used at Yad
Vashem, the memorial in Israel to the six million Jewish people who died in the Holocaust. Yad Vashem is called a memorial to martyrs, not to victims. A martyr chooses to suffer his fate rather than change his behavior or his belief system. A martyr is a saint. The saints of the Catholic Calendar of Saints, for example, are people who willingly gave up their lives in order to persist in their public acclamation of Catholicism. They didn't recant. They didn't agree to pretend to believe something that they didn't believe just because they wanted to save their lives. Their faith in God as they contemplated and believed in God was more important than their lives. Saints, martyrs, all give up this life to maintain their belief system because they have faith that God is good, God will not forget them, God creates everything that happens. The Ten Commandments comprise the law within which an observant believing Jew functions constantly. He seeks not to lie, to bear false witness, to covet, to commit adultery, to steal, to mock God or take God's name in vain; he seeks to observe the God-given rest called the Sabbath, to honor his parents, and not to kill. For most of the history of Judaism, that commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," has been interpreted to mean that Orthodox Jews are what we now call "pacifists" or "conscientious objectors" who must not participate in military service. During World War II, I was personally acquainted with several people who claimed conscientious objector exclusion from the draft because they were Orthodox Jews and, therefore, according to the commandment, were not allowed to kill. That extend of the meaning of that idea has not only occupied the consciousness of modern people here in America, but even more so the consciousness of the Orthodox Jewry of Germany and Western and Eastern Europe. If you're not allowed to kill, then you're not allowed to kill to save yourself, you're not allowed to kill to save your wife and your children, you're simply not allowed to kill! Had the Jews slaughtered during the Holocaust chosen to die? As is well known, millions of Jews went to their deaths without struggle, without making any effort whatsoever to harm or murder their murderers. Hannah Arendt even wrote a book about this, condemning the Jews for their failure to bear arms and to fight against the Nazis. She blamed the Jews for allowing themselves to be victimized. But sitting in my bedroom that evening, I saw clearly that they weren't victimized. They were martyred. They maintained their belief. Singing the praises of God, they marched into the ovens. I agree that's a romantic picture. Obviously, in their frenzy, in their anxiety, in their desperate fear, in their horror of pain, Jewish people resisted the Nazis. All Jews didn't go to their deaths like meek little lambs. In fact, even meek little lambs have to be pushed and prodded and forced to go into the slaughtering pens. As I thought these thoughts, I realized that my attitude toward the six million Jewish victims of Nazi persecution had now changed. Instead of pitying them and actually, in a sense, being angry with them because they hadn't resisted more, I found myself honoring them. They weren't poor schmucks who didn't have enough sense to fight back. They were God-loving, God-fearing people, who knew that God would never desert them. They went to their deaths as martyrs to their faith, a faith which I share. It was as if I had come back into an approving, loving, accepting relationship with six million of my relatives, meine ganze meshpuche. By changing my mind, from the term victims, to martyrs, I had just given myself an immense number of people that I could love and honor, instead of aching for. I felt pretty good about that! Then another thought came to me: There was indeed perfection in the Holocaust, but it could only be seen if a person accepts the concept of purposeful, repetitive reincarnations, the idea that in each lifetime we are destined to confront certain issues, certain negatives where we believe that what is happening is wrong, that it goes against God's will, that there is no God, that God does not love, etc. And as we confront those issues and surmount them and go back to forgiveness, we become as forgiving and wise as God, and we've completed that particular job in that particular lifetime. We die. We get to hang out with God for a while, being one with that energy. Then, since we have other tasks to handle, we assume our form in another lifetime. And we go through that lifetime, or perhaps we even go through several lifetimes dealing with a new particular issue. Eventually we finally get to where we've dealt with all possible negative issues, we've seen the perfection in all of them. Then we can stay with God and merge our consciousness in God consciousness completely without needing to assume human form again. Well, I'm not certain that I actually believe all that. But at least it's an internally consistent kind of philosophy, assuming that you're willing to accept the initial few premises. Mind you, all these thoughts went through my mind as I sat in my bathroom for probably no more than 10 minutes. After having these insights, I went back downstairs, to find that the Rebirther from up North was ready to leave; he was going to drive back up to his home and make final arrangements for storing his vehicle and securing his home. He told me that he would try to arrive back early enough two days later to go with us to the Los Angeles airport. But in any case, he already had his ticket and his passport, and so, if necessary, he would meet us at the airport to get on the plane to leave for our trip around the world. So, we flew off to Hawaii and Japan and Thailand without knowing a thing about where he was. I figured he had decided to change his ticket and travel with Leonard, in Leonard's coterie. He probably hadn't had time to send us a message to tell us that his plans were changed. I figured we would probably run into him in India. But, when we got to India, he wasn't there and none of the Rebirthers traveling with Leonard and staying at Anjali House knew anything about where he might be. After leaving India, Louis and I went to Egypt and Israel and then to Greece and Italy and France and finally to the United Kingdom. Eventually we came back to Los Angeles after several months of traveling. Well, several months passed. I finally learned what had happened from Susan, a nurse I'd first met in 1978 at Campbell Hot Springs. It turned out that when that fellow had driven back to his home in Northern California the night of my big forgiveness insights, he had been arrested! Apparently some evidence had been located which the police felt was sufficient so that they could arrest him and charge him with the murder of his wife. Not only that, but he had been tried and he had been convicted and he was actually in prison at the time that I spoke with the nurse who knew both of us! That really blew my mind. I asked the nurse what evidence had been found. Was it in his van? What were the findings at the trial? How had his wife even been killed? What was it all about? She didn't know anything about the trial. She only knew that his wife had been found murdered on the day that he had returned to San Francisco from being in Los Angeles for the One Year Seminar. And that he had arrived at the San Francisco One Year Seminar several hours late. He had explained that I'd gotten him to the airport too late for him to make the early flight that would have gotten him there on time for the beginning of the San Francisco One Year Seminar. Just in that instant, I had a vision that after arriving in San Francisco at 8, he had gone out to his home, a couple of hours away from San Francisco, stabbed his wife, put her body in their freezer, so that the signs of death would be delayed, returned to San Francisco, participated in the One Year Seminar, and then returned to his home late at night to report to the police that he had found his wife murdered on his return. Susan didn't know whether his wife had been stabbed or if she had been put in the freezer-those were parts of my vision, and to this day I don't know any more about it. I still believe I had indeed tuned in on his rage over his wife on that night so long ago, rage which less than 24 hours later led to her murder. Over the next two years, I received several letters from him asking for small sums of money so that he could buy some conveniences in jail. He also asked if I would be willing to testify at an appeal or some other court proceeding. In fact, I had several phone conversations with his lawyer about that, and told him there was really nothing I could testify to that would be especially helpful to his case. I said, "If I were asked questions about when he had been in Los Angeles, and when he had gotten on the airplane, I would have to report that, so far as I knew, he got on the plane to San Francisco so early on Sunday morning that he would have had no difficulties whatsoever getting to the One Year Seminar on time-or getting to his home, murdering his wife and then getting to the One Year Seminar at the beginning of the afternoon." I also told his lawyer about his strange verbal confession when he said,
"You know I did it, don't you? But you still love me, anyhow, don't you?" After a couple of exchanges of letters and my twice sending small amounts of money for two Christmas collections from which shoes and toiletries were bought for him, the nature of his correspondence changed. In his next letter, he berated me for being afraid of him and made the strange remark that I was somehow or other not courageous because I was Jewish. I never replied to his last letter. Even as I think about it while I'm writing right now, I feel my interaction with him was complete and finished. It taught me the value of trusting my intuition. All I could say in reply was, "No, that hasn't been my concern. I would imagine that if he spends a long time in jail, he'll have other things on his mind when he gets out. And there's no real likelihood that we will meet again, since I seldom go to San Francisco, and he would have no reason to come down here." That's the story of one murder involving a Rebirther. The other murder was committed by a client of a Rebirther I know in England. He left her following a very excellent Rebirth-according to both of them, as they shared following its completion-went back to his home, and murdered his housekeeper! I don't know any more about it. Why do I write about such terrible things? Primarily because I think that it's foolish to hide facts that seem to cast a negative light on Rebirthing. How do I account for two murderers? I can't. Can you get into a murderous or self-annihilative fervor and act on those negative impulses, even if you've done a lot of breathing previously? Well, the answer, apparently, is Yes. Should I fault their Rebirths? Should I say they never really Rebirthed the right way? Of course not. Of course not. They can breathe and let rage go. And most of us don't have such murderous rage within us, anyhow. It takes immense repeated abuse to produce a killer. Fortunately, most of us haven't had such abuse. If you are conscious of keeping your breath connected and you open yourself up to your breath, and surrender to it, it heals you. It completes you. You don't go riding off full tilt on the steed of your rage and your old stale negatives. Rebirthing can save you. It allows you to let go old negatives. But it doesn't work if you don't do it. Rebirthing works only if you work Rebirthing. If you still have a lot of old negatives and you fear you're about to act them out, you must stop yourself long enough to take a breath and remember that those old negatives are not real. What do you Will? To breathe or to act-out? By and large, my experience is that people who come to Rebirthing workshops are seeking to be loving and forgiving, and they don't have a big, huge, inner store of murderous rage. So they don't really need to be afraid of what will eventuate if they start opening up the unconscious, letting old negatives rise into consciousness momentarily as the breath is releasing them. If six or maybe even a dozen people out of hundreds of thousands who have Rebirthed have killed themselves or have killed someone else, I imagine it's still well below the ordinary statistical average expectation. Who knows? Maybe these acts completed their life tasks, giving others the opportunity to forgive and love. In this connection, I'm reminded of a workshop I led in southern Indiana, which is where the home office is of the Ku Klux Klan. I think this hate- mongering organization is almost as bad as the Nazi party. Several people attending the workshop were the children of Klan members. They had been brought up knowing that their parents, especially their fathers, hated black people and committed criminal acts against black people. The people attending my workshop hated their parents and hated the Ku Klux Klan. They came to the Rebirth training in hopes of being able to forgive their parents and to reconcile with them, to let go the negatives they have about their KKK activity. Anything else would only have perpetuated hate. I'm also reminded of some of the children of Nazis that I have worked with in workshops in Europe. They, too, sought to let go rage and shame, not to act out. But the truth is, I'm not absolutely certain about it. Right now, also, I'm not even concerned enough to focus on illuminating my negatives. Does this mean that you as a Rebirther need to be worried and concerned lest you Rebirth somebody who does have such an immense store of repressed rage that he might become suicidal or murderous? Is it your responsibility and obligation to scrutinize your clients and make certain that no such dangers are likely? If yes, how? I think the answer comes from your intuition. I have refused to Rebirth a few people, following an hour or more of talking with them at no charge. Each time I've realized that something about the amount of anger that they were feeling frightened me, and I did not want to put myself in the path of that rage. At those times, I relied on my own intuition. I realized that I was uncomfortable with them, that I was afraid of them, that I didn't want to be with them. I acted on that intuition, just as I had acted on a similar intuition that night long ago when I ran upstairs to lock myself in my bedroom before going to sleep to wake up to take the fellow to the airport to... etc., etc., etc.
I remind them that they will always know what their Rebirthees are feeling because they share those tensions and feel them in their own bodies. All they need to do is pay attention to how they feel. All the people I've asked to leave and refused to Rebirth came to see me when I was all alone. What I perceived to be their violence level was more than I wanted to handle all by myself. I haven't had to refuse to Rebirth some other people who affected me the same way because I wasn't alone when they came for their sessions. In those instances, I went find Louis outside in the treatment center, and told him, "Listen, I'm going to go start a breathing session right now, and I don't feel really good about this person, so I don't want you to go away. I want you to be around, and I want you to be sort of alert in case I yell. I want you to come and save me, okay?" Having taken such precautions, I've felt safe enough to proceed to Rebirth these people and help them to let go some of the major charges of their rage. I've worked hard at such sessions to get them to go into forgiveness toward parents for whatever outstanding grievances they've been holding onto. In a sense, I've pulled the plug on the quantity of rage they were struggling to contain, and I think that has helped the Universe out. So I suggest if you are afraid of someone who has asked you to Rebirth him, try to structure an atmosphere of increased safety around you-have somebody else around and have them be available in case you need them. Finally, in connection with thinking about the Holocaust and the whole issue of forgiveness, I want to tell a couple of stories. One is about a workshop, a one evening workshop, that I conducted in Amsterdam in the early '80s on Kol Nidre, the beginning of the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for Orthodox observant Jews. I thought that if Rebirthing promotes forgiveness, then it's appropriate that it be dealt with on that particular night. And I especially wanted to work with people who felt that they had been harmed by the Holocaust when the Nazis invaded Holland. To my surprise, there were none. They were all too young! But one of the women in the workshop told me that she had had a very lengthy love affair with a member of one of the Palestinian liberation organizations, one that was especially filled with what I would call terrorists. Dealing with her defense of her relationship with him brought me a whole new understanding of forgiveness, even of Palestinian terrorists. It was a great evening, and everybody had really excellent Rebirths during the group Rebirth. Great things came from it, too. One person, in particular, is a very well known oncologist who, as a result of that Rebirth, stopped smoking, an activity he'd been engaged in on a daily basis ever since he was seven years old (children in Holland used to start smoking when they first started going to school, and he was one of them). He has since engaged in highly positive research involving the use of Rebirthing by his cancer patients. And he has also married and named his daughter after me, so I have a Dutch namesake-redheaded as is my other namesake in Salt Lake City. Another event that brought up this whole business of the Holocaust and my thinking about it was my recent trip to Poland to lead workshops there. We went to Auschwitz, where all of the members of my father's family who still lived in Poland-and there were dozens of them-were killed, and where whatever few little remnants of my mother's family who still were alive were also killed. I was very surprised when the psychiatrist who had organized a workshop for me in the South of Poland asked me, "Why do you want to go to Auschwitz? Why do you want to go to this place that has such bad feelings in it?" I believe my first thought was that maybe she didn't think there was anything wrong with Auschwitz. Maybe she thought the Nazis were good. After all, her parents survived in Poland during that time, and maybe they were part of the Polish population that didn't resist the Nazis, that survived because they were accomplices in the murdering of their fellow countrymen, Jew and non-Jew alike. Also, maybe she hadn't realized that I'm Jewish-after all, Jones isn't a very Jewish name and my eyes are green and my hair dark blonde and grey. So I was silent in response to her question for a couple of minutes as I thought through my various thoughts, and then I said to her, "I think everyone in the world should go there. I think everyone should go. It's true. There is so much negativity stored there, it will dissipate only if each of us goes and takes a little of the burden and feels some of that pain, and forgives. I think everyone in the world should go there, not so that they will condemn the Nazis again, but so that they will feel compassion for the poor people who were destroyed there at Auschwitz, who became martyrs." Om Namahah Shivai. I surrender to the Will of God. |
The Logic of Magical Thought and The Dance of the Breath CHAPTER
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