Why Israel-Palestine will never be at peace whilst all parties identify with ethnicity, ancestry, religion or any other egoic identity.

Who we are at the deepest level is not our mind and body. Quantum physics is coming to this understanding. We are temporary expressions of formless consciousness.? Our body is a vehicle or an “exploratory spacesuit” to enable this expression, in a world of time and space.

Our ego needs to identify with forms; physical, biological, mental, political, ethnic, religious, socio-economic, and so on. It creates an illusion of self from these forms, although these forms at a sub-atomic level are impermanent, made up of wavelets of energy, arising and passing very rapidly. The self could also be described as a survival mechanism for the ego. Our ego needs a landscape of time and space, within which to experience the illusion of separation, of us and them, here and there, past and future.

Human ego is not usually satisfied with a singular, finite life for the “self.”? It wants an eternal self.? Some religions are willing to oblige, with the promise of an eternal differentiated self in heaven, as apart from the reality of undifferentiated consciousness. It is the core of the business model for agents of such religions to capitalise upon the human ego’s fear of death and delusion of an eternal self.

There is a saying: “Most people spend half their life building their identities, and the other half defending them”. It is so true.?Our ego wants and needs identities, multiple identities: from our family of origin to wherever, whatever and with whoever our ego wants to associate with, to strengthen its “self”.?Directly or vicariously through others.

However, if we were able to expand our awareness from the world of form and duality to a world of formless, non-duality, we would know by direct experience that there is no wise person, there is only wisdom, though our ego will do all it can, to resist this awareness.? Whilst ignorance persists, ignorant desires from attachment to impressions (sanskars), will result in karma and hence rebirths in the world of duality. This is what the ego wants, continued survival in a world of duality and form.? For the remainder of us who are not aware, we do not have the direct experience, but we can develop our awareness beyond our ego’s limitations, through Advaita Vedanta or techniques that go far beyond mindfulness, such as Vipassana meditation.

We need our ego and our senses, to be able to function within our mind and body, and to experience the illusion and projection of “me and you, here and there, past and future”, in a world of time and space. However, by being unaware of our ego's limitations, our perspectives remain limited. We think that we are "in" the universe, and that the universe is something "out there". We are not aware that we "are" the universe, a locus of expression of consciousness that requires a time and place for expression, a "playing field" of the universe.

The ego chooses to believe whatever myth of race it wants, rather than tracing the body’s DNA back far enough to the time of primates in Africa.? It is absurd enough for a “self” to be of a particular race.? It is even more absurd to think so, when one is aware that one has not inhabited the same ethnic body DNA in each life lived, nor will in future. If one has lived 99 lives as a Jew, Christian or a Hindu and now lives one life as a Muslim, does that make one a Muslim, or vice-versa, or neither?

It is even worse when the ego adds political constructs such as tribal and national boundaries, and delusions such as “God is on our side”, to justify horrors such as tyranny, war, genocide, and terrorism.

Anywhere you look in the world, you will find these challenges of the collective ego’s determination to preserve itself.? It is in the horrors of war and proxy wars in Israel/Palestine, Ukraine, and Yemen.? It is in “arms races” in cold wars and in the struggle for political independence versus dependence of groups of people, based on ethnicity, religion, sub-religion, power, land, and other forms of identity. These are complex problems, that have developed over centuries of human dysfunction, and will remain intractable, so long as people believe their “self” to be their (illusion of) form identity, and believe it is their right to harm or exploit others who are of a different “self”.

Hence it is no surprise that the present-day war (and proxy war) in Israel and Palestine has no sign of a long-term peaceful resolution.? The various players in power in the past and today, are sunk within their collective egoic identity, unwilling to see other perspectives. They have been able to momentarily “tilt the playing field” in their favour, using coercion and violence, until a point in time when the “playing field is tilted the other way”.? This pendulum will continue to swing, with the momentum of egoic dysfunction behind it. No significant change will occur until there is a consciousness shift out of egoic ignorance to awareness.