Eros, Errors, and Evolution
A Personal Statement Regarding Media Accusations and Accountability
I want to begin by acknowledging that among the thousands of people I have worked with over the years around the world, a few have been hurt through their encounters with me and my work. For this, I am deeply, very sorry. Their personal experience of pain is unquestionable. When I manage to undefend my heart, I can feel a deep resonance with them. I understand all those who, out of grief and pain, have directed blame at me. I understand the desire to seek accountability for the pain one feels, especially from someone in a position of influence.
Have I occasionally erred in judgment? Certainly, although it is important for me to make clear that I have NEVER intentionally violated anyone's boundaries. In recent years, I have learned a great deal from all my past mistakes. I'll continue serving Love, Freedom, and Empowerment in the world without repeating those mistakes, making only “better mistakes” in the future. I am aware that at times I have failed people's expectations of me, sometimes even mistakably not standing to my own values, and it is not what I aim for. Nevertheless, as Winston Churchill said, "The definition of success is the ability to go from one failure to an other without losing enthusiasm."
I recognise that in the past, I have been, at times, too defensive. I lacked the capacity to simply be with people in their pain when they pointed blame at me. Instead of listening with full empathy of the heart, I was trying to point them to "see the truth" – "remember their commitment for full sovereignty." As a result, these people did not feel held, listened to, or seen by me, and their pain grew even bigger. I am learning and consciously developing my empathetic skills.
What changes have I made to my work? Today, I am no longer making myself available for personal erotic interactions with women who see me primarily as their teacher. In addition, I make sure to inform people of the radical nature of my containers so they know better what to expect. People need to apply to my events, and we do our best to vet those we suspect are not a good match for this work. A feedback form is installed on my website, and I am committed to receiving any candid feedback with an open heart.
I stand open to honest and truthful dialogue with anyone who feels they were hurt by me, so that we can understand what really happened, cry together, acknowledge mistakes, and grow as a community toward healing. This healing is not only personal. It is archetypal as well, and hence greater than either and both of us. I promise to receive your words with respect, humility, and gratitude.
So what happened? In good faith, I trusted women who were with me in intimate interactions. I trusted that as adult human beings, their "yes" means yes, and their "no" meant no. This was especially true after we invested so much time and energy in our seminars teaching and practicing the right of every person to set personal boundaries and how those boundaries should be respected. I want to state clearly that I always respected the boundaries and desires of the women who were with me, as they expressed them to me.
I understand today that I was mistaken when I took their words and actions as evidence that this is what they truly wanted. The perceived power differentials between us sometimes prevented certain inner parts of these women from being expressed—parts that might not have been on board with our encounter. In those days, naively, it didn't even occur to me that despite what the woman with me says and does when we are together, she might later feel differently about our encounter. Since then I have updated my understanding of "parts work" and consequently changed my ways.
In those days, I mistakenly believed that for those people who chose to join the unconventional and experimental paths I walk, a brief educational series of some days would be sufficient. I taught the importance of clearly saying "no" in any situation where they do not feel "hell-yes," believing this would allow us to meet at eye level, beyond status. I believed that we could accept ourselves with self-humor and compassion if and when we mistakenly fall again into old habits of freezing or fawning. That we could get back on our feet, clear the dust, and try again. But I was wrong.
Today I recognize that the natural tendency of the nervous system to freeze and fawn as a post-traumatic response is stronger than I understood. This tendency to inhibit one's sense of choice and agency in the face of “authority figures” often overpowers the psyche's desire to empower itself with internal authority and find sovereignty. This realization influences my current work to be more trauma-informed without losing its radical nature and magic.
I am a radical person. That is, although I have a very loving, gentle, and sensitive heart, I am primarily dedicated to the simple truth, or what seems to me as truth at any given moment. I "follow my truth," as they say, and every few years I pay quite a high price for it. I don't tend to play successfully in the normative playground, which contains many repressions and pretenses.
At the same time, nothing human is foreign to me. Everything exists within me, from the most sublime to the darkest. Like all humans, I, too, have plenty of shadows. As the Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh wrote, "Please call me by my true names, so that the door of my heart remains open, the door of compassion... (for) I am the frog, and I am the snake devouring the frog, I am the Vietnamese girl raped on a refugee boat at sea, and I am the pirate raping her, my heart too numb to feel compassion." Anyone engaged in honest inner work knows that there is no human trait that doesn't exist within themselves to a certain degree. All is included. Our "true names" are true only when they hold the complexity of light and shadow together.
In the last two years, the press has portrayed me to the public as that snake devouring the frog and as that heartless pirate from Tich Nhat Han’s poem. The character of "Ohad Pele Ezrahi" created by the press, with the encouragement of some Israeli social media activists, is truly terrible and shocking. If I didn't know the person in question, and if I didn't deeply question the authenticity of any media narrative, I too would think that this "Ezrahi" is a terrible guy worth warning against.
I am not claiming to be all pure, but the "Ezrahi" character created by the media is far from reality. Not only that reality is always much more complex and multifaceted than journalistic accounts can provide, but in my case, there are so many distortions and falsifications in these stories that I have neither the strength nor the need to point them out, argue, or bring evidence of my innocence. They are simply too numerous. Instead of engaging in pointless arguments, I prefer to learn from the past and invest my time and energy in the service of humanity, now in more humble and accurate ways than before.
Eros is a sacred and divine force, far beyond what civilized and proper people like us can accept or digest. Eros is a creative and fertile power, a poetic and eruptive force that brings us joy and health when it flows through us, yet can also confuse our minds and cause great heartbreaks and life upheavals.
And me? — I am a radical person who has been working for many years with this force as sacred medicine. I explore it as a force capable of awakening expanded consciousness, creating inner transformation, and perhaps even general social healing.
So, "Please call me by my true names" — because in my true names, I am also a revolutionary who has been dreaming and working for decades toward the establishment of a new human culture. A culture founded on deep honesty, on love as an organizing force (yes!), on radical freedom, and on inner empowerment for every person regardless of gender, race, or nationality.
I see myself more as an artist than as a teacher or facilitator. Part of my art involves working with people, with the wild forces of nature, and with texts from ancient wisdom traditions. I use all these ingredients to create radical experiences and initiation rituals in ancient-new ways for the awakening of human consciousness — the consciousness that must awaken from the slumber it has fallen into before it's too late.
I will not play into the hands of those who wish to silence or cancel me, but I remain deeply committed to listening to anyone who feels pain as a result of our encounter. I am interested in understanding what happened from their perspective and sincerely apologize for the places where, retrospectively, we can see that I could have acted better. I seek to bring us all to a broader systemic consciousness that has more compassion and more understanding of complexity. I want to contribute my part to healing the ruptures that have recently opened in our field, and I will do so with a sincere heart and from inner integrity.
I am aware that combining the archetypes of "rabbi," "kabbalist," and "spiritual teacher" with "sexuality" and "rituals" invites all the demons and fears of humanity to be projected onto me. This is not fun for me on a personal level, believe me. It's also not fun for me to know that in my attempt to help people, I sometimes took part in their suffering. It's painful and saddening to me.
At the same time, I know that these risks are part of the lessons and initiations my mischievous soul signed me up for when it descended into my chubby and cute body for this incarnation. Sometimes, from within the silence, I can sense how it’s watching me moving through life—and wholeheartedly laughing.
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Lars Borgmann Accountability Evaluation
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