The healing that came from hugging a German
Last week, at a More to Life training course in South Africa, and after some very challenging work, I found myself hugging a German man. This embrace, I hope, was not only a reflection of my own spiritual break-through, but shot out shockwaves of healing to my world and rippled out of us into the universe changing energies into our shared planet. Rarely do I feel my actions impact the world at large. I hope my shift will have an impact on my family, my community, at work…but when it comes to making a difference globally, I rarely feel I dent its fabric. The most fascinating part is, I wasn’t even thinking about the macro-universe, I was so focused on the micro-me: I was just trying to do my own healing and work on my own inner residue of anger. Without intention, I really feel that I, together with my new friend and mentor, made a difference in the world.
But let’s take it a step back. Last March I went on a 3 day course called the More to Life Weekend in Tel Aviv. My experience was profound and I wrote about it here. It was so deeply significant that with “a little help from my friends”, and a whole lot of blessings (and an amazing husband who held down the fort), I was able to go on this epic journey.
The More to Life course I took this time is called “A Way of a Warrior”, a 6 day retreat aimed at challenging and shifting how we see the world and act in it. We had worked for 3 days already on our own way of being, our unconscious beliefs and our deep desire to have life be the way we want it to be. Part of this course was about learning to rid ourselves of resentment using what is called the Atonement Process. We were invited to choose a person we resent and work on our feelings and beliefs around him/her by closing our eyes, envisioning their face, and saying words to help us align our authentic self with the reality of others humanity. It was a challenging process and one that required me to dig deep and move past my judgements and upsets.
After learning the technique in its depth, what it means conceptually and how to actually do it, everyone went to their corner to try it out. I went to my corner and thought: who should I do it on?
My ex? A parent? Myself?
But what was really surfacing for me was how badly I wanted to find a different space in me with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran and all terrorists.
One of my four trainers, named Ulrich, told me that when it’s a group of people, it is an easier starting point to use an individual with an actual face who represents the group.
I decided to do the process on Hamas leader Yayah Sinwar. To be clear, this is not a process of justifying, accepting or condoning someone’s actions, but to free oneself of the toxicity of holding resentment. We were invited to release the resentment we carry in our souls and bodies which weighs us down so heavily, preventing us from being our highest selves.
They say resentment is like drinking poison and wanting the other person to die, and it’s self inflicted. I wanted to stop drinking that poison.
Ulrich, one of our trainers, is a German from Munich originally (now living in New Zealand) and had previously shared with the group that when growing up, he unconsciously took on immense national guilt. He saw I was struggling with my intention to free myself of hate and anger, and so he came to help me.
I was totally calm and felt nothing when we started. Nothing at all.
Ulrich got down on one knee and held my hands (he was much taller than me!) He told me to close my eyes and picture the face of Yayah Sinwar. That was hard enough. I didn’t want to “look” at him.
I began with affirming my own authority which was a fairly easy process because we had been working on living from a “higher self” and stepping into and inhabiting my “I” … my true essence and my raw identity.
I then moved on to seeing HIM. I was able to recognize that this man, (if you could call him that) was indeed a person of flesh and blood. Reality dictated that no matter how hard I tried to rip him of his existence as a human, at the end of the day, he was a human- that’s just what he was.
But my hatred and anger was there and it was so real.
I started again.
I am the human being I am – Ok, got it.
He is a human being too. Hard to accept, but eventually, I got there.
The next step proved really difficult – how could I possibly see me and him as human beings, two people with shared humanity? I began to walk through our physiological bodies. He had a liver. I have a liver. He had kidneys. I have kidneys. He had cells, bones and blood. So do I. He had a heart, although an evil one, and I have a heart. I began bridging our humanity. Again, not to forgive, but to release the deep deep hate that was eating me alive and preventing me from living lovingly and fully.
I began to sniffle. With my eyes still closed, I started to feel physical pain. It was a pain I had stored in my body but denied myself to truly feel…my eyes began to wet.
We are both human beings – one-ness!?! NO. Absolutely not. There was no way I was saying that. But after a long time, I began to have an understanding that Sinwar had a context, history and (warped, from my point of view) education, and I too had my own context, history and education.
We both showed up to the world with our own narratives. This did not evoke sympathy, but it did evoke openness.
Soon I was crying. My eyes remained closed and Ulrich was still holding my hands supporting me. And the words finally came out after a lot of work with my own altered version.
“I am who I am, you are who you are, we are both physiologically human beings, with our own context, history and education, and under that pretense, we are one”. Oneness did not imply unity, it did not mean solidarity, it did not mean equality and it certainly did not place us on the same stage in life. But it did open an awareness that we shared the same universe.
I began to cry.
“We are one”- This was not a statement of saying what he did, or what terrorists do in general, is ok. But I was able to release my ill-will. I do not condone what they have done … but now I see that I don’t want to hold on to this anger and being one is giving it back to G-d and declaring that He is in charge and dictates reality, not me.
This process of letting go of the hatred I was holding onto (in every cell of my body) was about everyone murdered on October 7th, every hostage, every soldier killed, every pigua (terrorist attack), all of it.
This was about terrorism and antisemitism around the world.
Suddenly, Sinwar’s face turned into Hitler’s face- as a complete shock to me. It was not intentional. It just happened.
I started to cry really hard.
And then I started the whole process again with Hitler’s face and in a similar way ended with:
“I do not condone, but I relinquish the pain I am holding.”
And as I was doing this process on Hitler, in a bit of a trance, with my eyes still closed and sobbing, the irony didn’t escape me: the man holding my hands was German.
Suddenly, I broke down and eventually my legs would no longer hold me and I fell to the floor.
I was crying in pain and had no consciousness that I was in a room with 70 people and they were doing their own work on their resentments.
I was shaking and releasing…
Suddenly it was about the 6 million. The ovens, the camps, my grandmother.
I realized that I was mumbling words between tears and that Ulrich was crying also. Somehow, he understood what was happening.
After crying on the floor with my eyes closed for a long time, I slowly became aware that I was in a room with other people and that we were in the middle of a seminar. I slowly stood up, dizzy from tears, and went to the side of the room and did deep breathing.
After the session was over, Ulrich came up to me to check how I was doing, but knew not to touch me because I am an orthodox Jew. So instead, I looked at him and asked if I could hug him. As a 39 year old Jewish woman who is the grand-daughter of a survivor, I embraced him- a 60 something year old German man. And right then and there, there was a Tikun Olam (fixing of the world).
At that moment, I couldn’t be more grateful that he was German. It was the ultimate moment of trying to remedy the pain that we all live with.
We hugged for quite a few minutes and then I said I would remember this hug forever.
He then said the following words to me: “My 22 years involved in More to Life and the work I had done on my inherited guilt was worth it for this moment”. I have no doubt the hug sent powers of healing in all directions of the world. When saying “We are One” in front of Ulrich in White River South Africa, I released hatred that was sitting in my body. And as we hugged, we made a difference in our shared humanity.
