Clearing Family Karma

Empaths are often the bearers of light in a family. As you awaken to your sensitivities and heal, you may find that you're the one chosen to break generational family patterns of dysfunction or abuse. Part of being an empowered empath is building your confidence and self-esteem. You learn to set boundaries when someone treats you disrespectfully. By saying no to family members or others who don't support your sensitivities or highest self, you are helping to stop ongoing negative patterns.

In Buddhism, karma is the destiny you earn through actions and behaviors. What you give is what you get. Though you may not have consciously volunteered to change your family's karma, it only takes one courageous person in a lineage to stop repeating harmful patterns. This monumental decision will benefit your life and also the lives of generations to come.

- Judith Orloff (Thriving as an Empath: 365 Days of Self-Care for Sensitive People, March 18)

When I reached this daily portion in my daily reading of this book, I felt as if the author were talking about me (and to me) and realized so clearly why I had never wanted to have my own children even by paying a very heavy price for this refusal - I wanted unconsciously to stop passing harmful patterns I had "inherited" from both paternal and maternal sides. Even though I'm conscious of this decision, I know this is a unhealthy idea, but I couldn't help otherwise when I was faced with a thorny dilemma to choose between two options - to have or not to have my own children.

Ironically, thanks to one of the toxic mental and behavioral patterns that must have been in my family karma for generations and made me decide not to have my own children, I could put an end to this family karma. It was when this toxic pattern caused unbearable suffering to myself and people close to me. Then the suffering became totally unbearable, I started to wake up.

Since then I've been working on myself through the study of Chabad Hasidism and other non-Jewish teachings of nonduality. I seem to have got rid of many of the toxic mental and behavioral patterns that were in my family karma. Even if not, I'm at least fully aware of them when those toxic patterns that may still remain emerge.

Even after clearing my family karma to a large extent and even if I should have a "co-creator", I'm not interested to have my own children for a totally different reason now. What we perceive as human beings seem to me now as divine sparks from the same Source. Separateness and individuality are illusions. So I have no reason to stick to my own biological children. All of us as souls that borrow physical bodies are interconnected. I'd rather spend the rest of my life helping others who come in touch with me to understand and embrace this simple truth.

(Not) Visiting Moscow

I visited Moscow for the first time in July 2006 for an academic reason - to participate in the Eighth Congress of the European Association of Jewish Studies held in Moscow. I grew up, so to speak, with the Iron Curtain, so I never imagined that I would someday visit Russia. I felt hope for a better future, at least in Moscow, for ordinary citizens in general and Jewish life and Jewish studies in particular. I was right. Since then I've followed Jewish life and Jewish studies in Russia, mainly in Moscow with great interest. Both seem to have flourished gradually but steadily.

My next visit to Moscow was in December 2015 for a totally unexpected private reason and continued to make several visits to the city for the same private reason for about a year and a half. My last visit was in September 2017.

Since then I planned a number of times to visit Moscow. Then the pandemic started. I had to postpone my plan several times. Then something totally unexpected happened on February 24 this year, which has put the Iron Curtain anew after three decades of free traffic. Russia has become isolated again, and this time even worse than it used to be under Communism.

The more I continued reading and watching on Moscow, the more I came to be fascinated by it. Now I seem to know more about Moscow than about any Israeli city other than Jerusalem.

What I like best in Moscow is its book culture. I miss a couple of general bookstores there. While waiting for my next visit there, I started buying electronic books in Russian. Now this humble of joy of mine has also been shattered as I can't pay with my non-Russian credit card and PayPal. I've also been dreaming of visiting the bookstore section of a Chabad publisher and spending a Sabbath at one Chabad shul I fell in love with when I visited it in one of my private visits to the city.

As of now, I don't know at all when I'll be able to visit Moscow next time, but naturally, this "problem" is dwarfed in comparison with the worsening economic and other situations of ordinary citizens in Moscow and the other places in Russia, who are actually hostages in a sense.

Illusion of Homaranismo by Zamenhof

Those who know or have heard that Zamenhof, who initiated a "universal" language" named Esperanto, also initiated a "universal" quasi-religion named Homaranismo, or a watered-down version of Judaism without practical halakha. Followers of this quasi-religion claim and seem to believe blindly that they are human beings.

I wonder how many of them are aware and whether Zamenhof himself was aware that even this identity/identification, which may impress many people who hear it for the first time, is nothing but an illusion of the ego, which is an ultimate illusion in itself.

It took me several years of studying Hasidism and other non-Jewish teachings of nonduality to realize this. The soul is our essence, and it has no identity, including the one as a human being.

Zamenhof came to this idea as one of the two possible solutions to the interethnic conflicts he had witnessed in his childhood. It may be much better than nationalism, but they are essentially the same in that they are both based on the illusion of the ego, whether individual or collective.

Zamenhof dreamed of unifying the mankind through Homaranismo as well as Esperanto, but actually, we as souls are already unified. Einstein said, "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." All we have to do is to change our level of consciousness. Believing blindly that our ultimate identity is as human beings only hinders this change.

Studying Hasidism and/or other teachings of nonduality is far more effective for this change. Both Homaranismo and Esperanto only keep us stuck with the same illusion of the ego, hence the same problem created by the ego they try to solve.

PS: Language is also the gatekeeper of our egoic mind, so even Esperanto can't help us transcend our ego. The true problem is not whether the language is "universal/neutral". Both Zamenhof and Esperantists totally miss this point.