Jewish Shaman

Knowing the world versus knowing the person

2012-01-16T20:54:00.000-05:00

In struggling with some personal issues, a friend of mine recently sought out two teachers who are known for their spiritual teachings. When asked about the difference, she told me that one listened to her issues and responded based on his knowledge of Jewish spirituality and his personal experience. The second listened to her, and responded to her particularly. He seemed to know her instantly and was able to talk about her issues as they related to her specifically. She said that both teachers gave her good advice, but one was based on prior knowledge and experience and the other was based on his knowledge and understanding of her personal situation. The second teacher was able to connect instantly with her and seemed to just "know" her.

I really liked the distinction - knowing the world versus knowing the person. Both are important but very different.

These are the things I know to be true

2011-09-23T09:17:00.000-04:00

There are things that I believe to be true. There are things that I want to believe are true. But there are actually very few things that I have experienced and know to be true. I think only God knows the Truth with a capital "T", as we are limited by ourselves and our small perception. These are the things I know to be true:

There is a physical world and there is a spiritual world. There is that which can be seen and touched and measured, and that which we perceive but can’t see.

Far into the spiritual world is God.

All beings in this plane have a physical body and a spiritual one. The spiritual one, which is called soul, existed before the physical and continues after. There is a world of souls that exist in the spiritual realm.

There is no past or future, there is only now.

All memories connect us to patterns that happened before, some of which are carried into the now. We carry with us patterns from our physical lineage, from the family that raised us, and from our own spiritual lineage, from our soul. Life is the repetition or breaking of those patterns.

Healing is changing those patterns.

God is the ultimate way of changing the patterns. The closer to God we get, the slower the motion of the patterns become until, in the presence of God, they stop altogether and the soul becomes pure love. When the motion resumes, the patterns are changed, the healing has begun.

When a person is healed by another, they have to be willing to surrender to God.

Much of health and illness can be understood as the struggle of the soul to be aligned with physical body. There are times when the soul lifts out of the body and illness comes, and times when the soul is in alignment with the body and health abounds.

The soul and the body are always in an uneasy dynamic relationship. Sometimes they vibrate together in harmony, and sometimes they vibrate discordantly. The pre-natal patterns of the soul are sometimes in conflict with the post-natal patterns of the body and a person’s family lineage. There are times when the two work together in perfect alignment and there is health, and there are times when the soul is distant from the body and there is illness.

Each person has a power in this world. In Jewish tradition, this is the spark of God within each person. It’s the point where the soul and the body perfectly align, and God is able to flow through the person. Though one might think the body and soul would want this to happen, it seems to be the opposite. For most people, this is a difficult place to be. The soul doesn’t seem to want to be full present in the world, and the body doesn’t want to be pulled into the spiritual world. The power is generally uncomfortable for people and it takes great practice to allow it to happen.

Four Angels with Four questions

2011-08-07T21:17:00.000-04:00

After I recited the Shema in bed the other night, I called the four angels. They each asked me a question:

Michael asks: Angels are messengers, we bring different aspects of God into the world. What aspect of God do you bring into the world?

Gabriel asks: Where is your strength? Where and what is your power? How does it manifest? When is God most present for you?

Uriel asks: How do you see the world? What do you see when you look at it?

Rafael asks: How do you heal the world and bring God presence into the world?

Avodah Zarah

2011-05-05T20:45:00.000-04:00

Avodah Zarah means "strange work" or "strange worship", and is usually used to mean idol worship which is expressly forbidden by Jewish law. Avodah zarah is worship of the messenger instead of the God who sends the message.

God exists. In the space between us and God, there are lots of intermediaries: angels and demons, souls and spirits. Angels help to connect us to God. Demons try to disrupt that connection. Their are souls of tzaddikim and of our ancestors who can guide us. Who we meet in the spirit realm is largely up to us. If we do the work on ourselves, then our good deeds create angels. If we don't, we will face our own failings and fears.

There are objects in the world that have spiritual power. Tefillin are a good example. They radiate their own power and amplify our own spiritual power. They are good lenses for the transmission of God into the world.

Avodah Zarah is forgetting that God exists behind and through all of the intermediaries and worshiping the intermediaries as gods. Avodah Zarah is worshiping the messenger.

Photo courtesy of Voyageur Solitaire-mladjenovic_n

Blood is Life

2011-04-03T09:41:00.001-04:00

R. Yochanan teaches:

Blood is the impure part of a dead animal. The soul lives within the blood and when a being dies, their soul leaves the blood creating a spiritual void. It's a vessel with nothing inside. The shape of a being without the essence, which is called tameh, impure. Menstrual blood is also considered impure for the same reason. It is the form of life without life.

The Five Named soul

2011-03-27T12:00:00.013-04:00

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been starting to study Hayim Vital's Shaar HaGilgulim, Gates of Reincarnation. The book explains Isaac Luria's understanding of reincarnation. This is the first in a series of posts outlining the basic concepts of reincarnation as found in this text, and I hope that it will help us to understand the spiritual growth that takes lifetimes to develop.

Vital writes that there are the five names for the soul: Nefesh, Ruah, Nishama, Haya, and Yechida. He introduces them as five aspects of a person's soul, though his language quickly shifts to discuss them as five separate souls. This reflects the paradox within much Kabbalistic thought: God is one yet we discuss the ten sephirot. The soul is one, but it can be talked about as five. My understanding is that God is so indescribably large that the sephirot represent different places where God interfaces with the world. It's like describing the ocean differently as different ports around the world. The clarity of the Mediterranean is the same ocean as the murky depths of Boston harbor, yet swimming in each is a very different experience. In the case of souls, I think it is easier to talk about them as separate souls, but with the understanding that they are really one.

We receive them as we grow older. The first soul received is the Nefesh, which is given when we take our first breath. The second is the Ruah which enters the body at age 13. The third, the Nefesh, enters the body at around age 20. He does not specify when the last two enter the body (at least not yet).

In order for the Ruah and Nishama to enter the body, the person needs to be worthy of them by means of good deeds and following commandments. If a person is not worthy of his next soul when the time comes, he does not receive it in this lifetime. So a person may go though this incarnation with just a Nefesh, or just a nefesh and Ruah but no Nishama.

Each soul has a ladder of spiritual growth which allows him to receive the next soul. If a person completes, or repairs, his nefesh at a point in his lifetime at some point after his 13th year, he must wait until his next incarnation to receive his ruah. Spiritual growth, by design, takes place lifetimes. The same is true of all levels. If a person completes his ruah he needs to be reincarnated again to receive his Nishama. A person is able to climb up within his soul during his lifetime, but not into the next soul. Reincarnation is a necessary part of spiritual growth.

Each of the five names of the soul represents a different soul level that can be reached by completing and repairing each step of each soul. But to merit the next soul, a person must be reincarnated.

The Long View

2011-03-22T10:18:00.001-04:00

I've been starting to study Shaar HaGilgulim (The gates of reincarnation) by Hayyim Vital. I'll write more later on what I'm learning from the text itself but it's made me realize that I've started to take the long view in my life. I don't know if it's related to getting older, but things don't feel as rushed as they used to. I know that I have the rest of my life to work on my spiritual development. I can have רחמים compassion with myself if it takes awhile to happen. I know that growth takes place over many lifetimes, and all that I can see now is a small piece of a much, much larger picture. I can't stop working. I have to put as much effort into my growth as possible, but it's ok if things don't always go as planned.

One of my Hevrutas overslept a few days ago and we missed our study time. At first I was a little upset and annoyed, but then I realized that we've been studying together for two years and b"t we will be studying for another many years. If we miss this week, in the scope of things, it's not such a big deal. But only as long as we're made plans for next week and the week after.

There are so many stumbling blocks that lie in the path of our growth. It's important to know when we've hit them and how to move through them. But it's important not to let the yetzer harah, the impulse to self-destruction, use those stumbling blocks as an opportunity to beat us up and stop the growth.

The long view is a great motivator. It tells us that the problems we have in this life will be repeated in the next until we've worked them through. Or, more colloquially, same shit, different lifetime. I have no desire to go through these challenges again, so I know I have to work as hard as I can to grow so I don't subject myself to them again. At the same time, there will always be another chance to face these issues again. If I don't get it right the first time, there will be infinite second chances, which is both good and bad.

There is a Talmudic story about Honi the Circler who came upon a man planting a carob tree. Honi asked the man how long the tree would take to bear fruit? The man replied 70 years. Honi asked the man, Why do you plant a tree whose fruit you will never eat? The man said that he was planting it for the next generation, just as his father and grandfather had done for him. Honi walked away, suddenly felt very tired and lay down to sleep. He awoke to see the tree was now a giant and the same man picking the fruit. He asked the man if he was the one who had planted it? The man shook his head and replied that it was planted by his grandfather. Honi realized he had slept for 70 years.

Honi saw for himself that growth takes generations and lifetimes. Small seeds we plant now may grow into giant trees later on, though we won't, in our current incarnation, see them. We have to do the work so that we continue to grow. But we have to be patient to let things grow no matter how long they take.

Photo courtesy of Macropoulus

Intention counts too

2011-03-01T22:41:00.000-05:00

Malachi 3:16

אז נדברו יראי יהוה איש את־רעהו ויקשב יהוה וישמע ויכתב ספר זכרון לפניו ליראי יהוה ולחשבי שמו׃

It was spoken between those who feared God, each man to his friend, and God paid attention and heard and it was written in the book of remembrance before him about those who feared God and those who thought of him.

In Masechet Berachot 6a in the Talmud we find a discussion of this biblical passage. The first part of the discussion uses this passage to demonstrate that each time two people meet to study Torah, the shechina is present. My experience is that the shechina is present whenever two souls truly connect, though studying the torah definitely makes it easier. This is a topic I wrote about earlier.

What follows is a wonderful lesson. Rav Ashi teaches that the last phrase "and those who thought of him" refers to those who thought about doing a mitzvah, but "were coerced and failed to do so". He continues that we learn from Malachi that God writes their deeds in the book of remembrance as if they had done the mitzvah. Later commentators teach that the coercion comes from the Yetzer Harah, the evil inclination, which always tells us to not do mitzvot. So even when we think of doing a mitzvah, we have to push through the additional layer of the yetzer harah in order to do it. If we don't always make it, we still get credit for trying.

What I love about this is the inherent forgiveness it implies. It's easy to beat oneself up for not doing things on a regular basis. I constantly hear people disparaging themselves for not meditating or praying or studying or working out or eating right, and sometimes using that as an way to keep themselves from doing it. Rav Ashi gives us another way a looking at it. We get credit for truly intending to do something that we just didn't manage to get done. Since the need for spiritual practice is the same everyday, we always get another chance to do it. We get credit for our intention, so we don't have to feel bad about not getting to it, and we get to try again tomorrow. It is our responsibility to try to be better, and if there are things that prevent us, even our own inclinations, we just have to try again with no punishment because we missed the time before. What a wonderful way of looking at things!

Contraction of self to make room for God

2011-02-02T08:00:00.002-05:00

Lurianic Kabbalism states that God created the world by contracting himself to create a space without God which allowed the world to be created.

In making room for God within ourselves, do we need to go through a similar process of self contraction to allow God to enter? What would that look like?

Missing the Angels

2010-12-23T02:59:00.000-05:00

While packing to leave Israel, I made the decision to ship my stuff via the post office rather than doing a lift. It was much cheaper than hiring a shipping company, but my problem was getting the boxes to the post office. I had no car and even though the post office was only a ten minute walk, I had too many boxes. For the first four boxes I packed, I managed to walk it, but for the second shipment of 11 boxes, of which four were books, I realized that there was no way I could carry them to the post office. A friend offered to drive me to the post office, but the scheduling was really problematic. We finally found a time.

He came over, we packed up his car, and drove up to the post office. He waited at the gate at the end of the driveway while I went to ask the guard to open it so we could unload. The guard looked at me and said that I didn't have time. In typical Israeli fashion, the post office is open until 4 pm everyday except the day we came (a Wednesday I think) when it closed at 2 pm. It was 1:56 pm and the guard told me I didn't have enough time to unload the boxes before he locked the door at exactly 2 pm.

After getting over my stunned disbelief, I argued with him and got him to open the gate. We managed to unload the boxes though he he did lock my friend out without opening the gate for him to leave. I was astonished that he couldn't wait the extra minute for me to unload in a country where nothing ever runs on time.

Two months later, in America, the boxes started to arrive. The first shipment of four arrived intact, but the second shipment of 11 didn't. The boxes were beat up. The boxes containing the books were the worst. One arrived empty, the side split open and then pushed back in place. Of the four boxes of books, one came complete (though repacked by the US post office), and of the other three I received only 10 books. The worst part of it was that these were many of my sifrei Kodesh, my religious texts.

When I went to talk to someone at our local post office, he told me he'd gotten complaints that day from two other people who'd received boxes from Israel. Apparently, the container containing my boxes had gotten thrown around and there was a lot of damage to everything in it. I had mailed another 10 boxes a few weeks later and they all arrived without a problem. It was only those 11 that were damaged.

The guard at the door was my angel and I'd missed it. If I'd listened to him and not shipped the boxes that day, they probably would have arrived without a problem.

It's so difficult to realize when the roadblock in your path needs to be climbed over and pushed through or if it's there to turn you to another path. Even more so during stressful and difficult times in life.

Photo courtesy of Sal de Mar

Demons among the ruins

2010-11-18T23:33:00.000-05:00

In Masechet Berachot 3a-3b, there is a story of R. Yossi entering a ruin in Jerusalem to pray. Eliyahu comes and guards the door while he prays, and then chastises him for praying there when he is done. R Jose states that, among other things, he learned that one should never pray in a ruin. Eliyahu then asks him what he heard while praying. R Jose replies that he heard a divine voice (בת קול) that was lamenting over the destruction of the temple. The Gemera continues with a discussion of why one should not pray in a ruin. The main reason given is to avoid demons (מזיקין). But if there are two righteous people then the demons will not manifest unless it is a place that is known to be haunted.

The word for Demon is מזיק which derives from the root נזק and means something that causes damage. This offers a relatively simple definition of a demon or bad spirit. It is one who causes us damage. The passage also supplies a relatively simple method for avoiding demons - keep good company when doing spiritual practices. But it is not enough to be with others when opening to the shamanic realm, the others must be כשרים or Kosher! Literally it means that they are proper or fit. To prevent spirits from damaging one needs to be surrounded by people who are upstanding and nourishing.

Places absorb energy from the people who lived there. Depending on the energy, different types of souls will be attracted to that place. In the ruins of Jerusalem not long after the destruction of the Temple, there would be a lot of dark energy surrounding those ruins. The last people who lived there likely died by either starvation or murder or worse. The first thing that he would have felt there would have been that pain. R. Yossi entered those ruins, opened himself to the spiritual world and heard a divine voice mourning the destruction. R. Yossi felt but was not overwhelmed by the sadness and pain. For another person, that pain might evoke fear or pain which makes a person in the spiritual realm more open to negative influences.

R. Yossi's initial prayers had called an exceptionally strong spiritual presence to him in Eliyahu hanavi. The text reads: בא אליהו זכור לטוב ושמר לי על הפתח Eliyahu, of blessed memory, came and guarded me on the opening. The traditional way of reading it is that Eliyahu guarded the door, but one could also read it that Eliyahu guarded the spiritual opening so that R. Yossi could hear the divine voice without being overwhelmed by the pain and sadness of the place or becoming susceptible to the spirits that are attracted to a place like that.

One can contrast this to the demons who do damage. The angels guard and nourish us. When we are with people who we trust and love, then the energy we create draws good spirits to us. When we are with people who's actions and intentions are questionable, the distrust and fear draws bad spirits to us. This is especially true if we are in a place that is full of dark energy. The gemera refers to places that are known to be haunted by demons. These are the dark places of power. Even when we are with trusted companions, we have to be careful in these places before we enter into the spiritual world there.

By and large, who we are determines the spirits that we encounter when we enter the shamanic realm. That's why it's very important to continually work on oneself as one walks this path. R. Yossi teaches us to be careful with our company and where we pray so that each opening into the shamanic realm is not filled with pain but instead we encounter those who guard and guide us even through difficult situations.

Photo courtesy of Callmetim

Truth within the system

2010-07-22T16:00:00.000-04:00

I recently had a fascinating reading from a medium named Kurt Leland. He channels a spirit named "Charles" who mainly focuses on people's greater purpose in life. During the reading, I could feel a tremendous amount of power, which is one of my litmus tests. The focus of this post is not on what he said, but how he said it.

The reading was presented in the format of a very advanced version of the Michael Teachings. The basic idea is that the soul develops over lifetimes and goes through seven soul "ages" each with seven levels. Each soul has a primary archetype which remains constant throughout lifetimes. Each incarnation has various overlays which define the personality of that incarnation, and a "chief feature" which is either the greatest blockage or the source of the greatest power in that particular lifetime.

During the course of the reading, he also lead me through a powerful visualization/journey based on the fours worlds as interpreted in the lens of theosophy (of which I will write about in another post).

What he told me was accurate and true, which, according to the Ba'al Shem Tov, is the test of any medium or seer. The format he used was the method in which he conveyed the truth. It's important not to mix up the two.

There are two steps to receiving information from the spirit world. One is receiving it and the other is being able to convey it to the person receiving the healing. Kurt/Charles was exceptional at using the format to convey the reading in terms the I could easily understand and make sense of. My wife also received a reading a few months ago, and I was struck by the differences in wording between the two readings.

Is his system true? Are there seven soul ages and seven levels in each? I can't really say.

Chaim Vital writes about ten soul levels with ten stages in each. They are based on the ten sephirot. Each lifetime we can move up or down levels, but the general progression is upward. He writes about soul roots. That each of our souls grows out of similar roots. So that some people can have a soul root of Cain or Hevel, and others could be King David. The soul roots don't change over lifetimes even as we climb up the sephirot.

What is clear across systems is that souls contain certain elements which remain the same throughout lifetimes, and there is growth across lifetimes. In both Vital's system and the Michael Teachings, the end goal is union with the divine.

It's important to understand the lens of the system to clearly understand the message that's being presented. It's also important that the system is just that: a way of conveying a message so it can be clearly understood. One of the reasons I spend so much time studying Judaism is that it's the system that makes the most sense to me, and most fully explains my experiences. So the better I understand Judaism, the better I understand my relationship with God.

It's also important to realize that the power is in the message, not in the system. The system is worth studying and thinking about so you understand the message, but the power lies in the truth hidden within.

As a fellow healer, I also wanted to give a recommendation to Kurt/Charles. He does readings via Skype, so is available to anyone. If it sounds like something that might be helpful to you, drop him a line.

Moving back to Boston

2010-07-17T18:29:00.000-04:00

I just wanted to apologize for the upcoming month or two when posts will probably be few and far between. Due to personal reasons and several clear messages from the spirit world, I am moving back to Boston in early August. Over the next few months, most of my time and effort need to be focused on the transition between Jerusalem and Boston. I will try to continue to post regularly, but I suspect that I won't have much time until after the Holidays.

Typologies

2010-06-23T16:00:00.000-04:00

I recently stumbled across the Michael Teachings. As I read through the different archetypes and personality typings, I became very impressed with the system and it's approach to understanding a person's basic personality. Habitually, I began to compare and contrast it with different systems I know and finding the flaws in this system. It was then that I remembered the advice given to me by my mentor John: If it works, use it, if it doesn't, throw it out.

Typologies are ways of making sense of an infinitely complex world. They give us boxes and labels to help us comprehend the world around us. In a western mode of thought, we are always looking for the one true typology. We argue about the merits and values of each system and which is the best.

The truth is that the world is so varied that some typologies are true now while others are true later. Some are true for some people, and some for others. Judaism itself has many ways of dividing up and understanding people, so much so that it would be impossible to say for sure that there is one true set of Jewish typologies.

In the end, John's advice is best. If it's useful, then learn from it. Take what it's offering and use it as a tool for growth. But if it's not useful, don't get hung up on it and try to force it to work, just look for the next thing that can help you grow.

Photo courtesy of Andreas E J

Processing Fear

2010-06-20T16:00:00.000-04:00

There are three facets to using fear for power.

You need to learn to feel/see the fear itself, and not react to it with another emotion - usually sadness or anger. Then you can get used to it so you can identify it in your life. The more time you spend with it, the more you will get desensitized to it so you feel but don't act on it's advice. Finally you feel compassion for yourself for having been so scared and send the fear Love. In that moment, you will reclaim the power of the fear.

Photo courtesy of Dean Ayers

Does fear of God connect us to God?

2010-06-16T16:00:00.000-04:00

This weeks Torah portion contains an interesting and very Jewish way of connecting to God. The background: the Hebrews are wandering in the desert. Miriam has just died and they have run out of water (there are many good midrashim about that connection). The people come to Moshe and Aaron and are complaining bitterly of their thirst.

Numbers 20:6:

ויבא משא ואהרן מפני הקהל אל פתח אהל מועד ויפלו על פניהם וירא כבוד יקוק אלקים: וידבר יקוק אל משה לאמר

Moshe and Aaron came away from in front of the community to the tent of meeting. They fell on their faces and they feared the presence of hashem their God. And God spoke to Moshe saying...

The key phrase here is "feared the presence of hashem their God". There are several ways of understanding this phrase. Either he feared to have the presence of God enter the room, or his fear was the way he connected to God.

Moshe was going through a tough time. His sister had just died. The people he had saved from slavery with miracles and wonders were complaining bitterly that he was now going to let them die in the desert. He did not know what to do. He came to the Tent of Meeting, where he normally would go to talk to God and fell down on his face instead of just walking in. Moshe was fed up and exhausted. He wasn't sure he wanted to talk to God. He was scared of what God might require him to do.

Or maybe he was just scared. He was in the middle of the desert and midrash states that Miriam always dealt with finding water (in corporeal or mystical ways). He was scared that he really had no solution for the people's need for water. And that fear connected him to God even though he was in a place where he felt no connection to God.

God had mercy רחמים on him. He told Moshe to talk to a rock and it would produce water. It was a simple thing to do. But Moshe was so emotionally worked up that when he went to the rock, he struck it with it his staff instead of speaking to it. For this he was prevented from entering the land of Israel. Perhaps God knew that Moshe needed to turn from a crisis leader to a leader of peace, from one who can send plagues to one who can talk for his solutions, but Moshe couldn't make the transition.

When we are emotionally charged, we are full of fear. It can lock us into ourselves and prevent us seeing the world around us. Or we can engage with our fear and use it's energy to grow closer to God.

Photo courtesy of Bootload

Joseph: the master at just being

2010-06-09T15:00:00.000-04:00

We asked while studying this week: why is it that our forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob sacrificed on a regular basis, but Joseph never did? Neither did God speak directly to him, but he did receive messages in the forms of dreams, though they were more metaphors to be interpreted rather than clear words. So what shifted between the first three generations of Jews and the fourth?

My Hevruta asked if God was always with Joseph, so there was no need to build an alter or sacrifice to bring himself closer to God. At that point, I felt the presence of Joseph come into the room and he showed me how he experienced the world.

Joseph was a person who was always open to the flow of energy around him. He could perceive it and used it to make choices that based on where the energy would flow most powerfully. He could perceive it in others and his reactions to them were guided by his energetic perceptions rather than his physical ones. In that sense, God was always with him because he could always perceive God around him and in the world. He had no need to increase the energy around him as he knew that it was always there.

When his brothers threw him in the hole, he didn't fight or run away because he could perceive that it was the correct thing to happen. I imagine he was very puzzled by it, but he went with the flow as he always did.

When Potifar's wife tried to seduce him, he ran because he could see her evil intentions and knew her seduction was a power play rather than an expression of Love. He ran from her because he could see through her.

When he interpreted dreams, he could feel the meanings within them. He could see how the energetics of the dreams matched up with reality.

He was the master of Being. He didn't puzzle about life or try to make things happen. He just went where the flow was strongest. He didn't need to build power to get close to God because he could always perceive God in the world.

Photo courtesy of Joseph Brauer

And God arose from upon him

2010-06-02T16:18:00.000-04:00

ויעל מעליו אלקים במקום אשר דבר אתו

And God arose from upon him[Yaakov] in the place where he talked with him

Genesis 35:13

This verse occurs at the end of a message Yaacov receives from God, and signifies the end of the message. This is a very interesting way of describing a spiritual experience and union with God. Kabbalah often talk about Ruah Hakodesh (holy wind) that descends upon people and allows them to receive information, but here we only learn about it when it ends. I think that in itself is very common. People often move into an elevated state of consciousness slowly and don't realize how high they've gone until it's over.

The Ramban writes that it was not a prophetic vision or dream alone, but that the Shekinah came to him where he stood, and put him on the path to truth. He cites Genesis 17:22 as another example of this type of experience. We must also ask if the place mentioned is a physical place or a spiritual place or a place within Yaakov?

Yaacov has a great variety of spiritual experiences. He has prophetic dreams, he gets messages directly from God, he wrestles with Angels, and, as seen in this verse, he experiences mystical union with God

The question is where is the place within you where God can connect to you? How can you make the space within yourself to invite God to descend upon you?

Wrestling Fear into Transformation

2010-05-10T15:35:00.001-04:00

My hevruta Shmuel Shalom Hacohen teaches experiential Torah. It's often difficult to explain what that means, but our study this past week really made it clear to me. It's when studying Torah is not simply the intellectual process of trying to make sense of the text. It's when studying Torah makes sense of one's life. The process of making sense of the text is the process of making sense of one's own life and self. If that process links directly to one's heart, then the study becomes a healing ritual to connect one to God and break through klipot (barriers) and blockages.

The story we studied was Yaacov's first meeting with Esau after years of separation. Yaacov had a lot of fear about the meeting. He'd been told by God to return to the land of his birth, but that meant seeing his brother Esau. The last time he saw Esau, Esau was swearing to kill him. In Genesis 32:10, Yaacov prays to God that his meeting will go well and expresses many of his fears. What follows is the wonderful story of his wrestling with an angel all night. A close reading of the text will show that this was a night of transformation for him, allowing him to move beyond his fear, beyond his image of himself, and transform the relationship between himself and Esau.

The story begins with Yaacov leaving his camp, at night, with his wives, handmaids, and children. He crosses over the מעבר יבק which literally translates as the "empty passage" or "the passage of desolation". He helps his family to cross a river, but remains behind alone. He is in the midst of his family, but isolated from them. When fear is in control, it separates us from those we love. His family has moved on in the journey, but he remains stuck in his own desolation.

He then struggles with a man until dawn. Another aspect of a person lost in fear is their anger with the world, especially when the fear is about one's personal safety. It doesn't matter who this man is (Gn 32:30), Yaacov would have found a way to fight with him. Had he not been lost in fear, he might have welcomed the man in to talk, but as is, he struggles and fights with him.

It becomes clear that they are evenly matched and so the man touches Yaacov's hip and dislocates it. The man then begs to be freed from the struggle as the dawn is approaching. Yaacov asks for a blessing in return. The man asks for his name. Yaacov, he replies. Yaacov יעקב derives from עקב ekev, or heel. He was named that way because when he was born, he was grasping the heel of his twin Esau. עקב ekev also means footstep. Yaacov had been following in his brother's footsteps his whole life.

The man changes his name to Israel, one who struggles because Yaacov struggled with God and with man and was up to the challenge. Israel, ישראל can also be interpreted as ישר אל straight to God. When the sun rises, he names the place Paniel for here was the place where he saw God face to face (Panim פנים). On this night of struggle, after injuring himself, Yaacov was finally able to connect directly to God and was no longer trying to imitate his brother.

The result? "He raised his eyes and saw, and there was Esau coming with 400 men" (Gn 33:2). Esau was also clearly expecting a fight. But with his fear no longer in control, Yaacov could truly see Esau and understood that he no longer wanted a fight. By changing himself, Yaacov had changed Esau and their relationship. The work done on himself reflected into Esau and both were changed by Yaacov's night of struggle.

So when Yaacov approached him, he sent his wives and children first, not his fighting men. When the two brothers saw each other, they embraced and cried. Yaacov was truly Israel then - no longer following or fearing his brother, but able to stand as equals and truly love Esau.

This interpretation arose during our Hevruta study. When I was going over my notes later on, I suddenly realized that this was me. I am going to be in the states in a few months and will be seeing an old friend with whom I've had some problems over the past few years. I've been worried about the meeting and trying to figure out how we can avoid fighting. I realized I need to find out what I'm afraid of, experience it for myself, and allow that change to shift my relationship with my old friend. It feels as if most of the change has already happened as a result of this study. This is the essense of experiential Torah study.

Photo courtesy of Docman

Animal guides

2010-05-05T06:33:00.000-04:00

Photo courtesy of Kirklandj

A common question I hear is if Judaism has animal spirit guides or totem animals. There are references to angels that appear in the form of animals, but the idea of an animal spirit guide is not commonly found in Jewish mysticism. During a Zohar class, we studied a story of two men who went on a journey and were led by an Eagle. It conversed with them and eventually turned into a man who brought them to the heavenly beit midrash (house of study).

I'm not a person who has ever been attracted to animal spirit guides or totems. Most of the souls I encounter are in Human form, if they have a shape. I share this reference in answer to the questions I've received and for those who do interact with spirit animals.

From the Zohar, part III, page 161 bet, parsha Shelah. Translation by my teacher.

He [the spirit guide] turns to them and says, go out from here, you are meritous, you are righteous. They went out. That appointed being gave them each a rose and they went out. When they went out, the door of the cave was closed and couldn't be seen at all.

They saw that Eagle that was coming down from that tree. And he went into another cave. These two they smelled their rose and they entered into there. And they met the Eagle by the opening of the cave, he said to them: “Please come in true righteous ones, friends, because I have not seen the joy of friendship from the day that I'm here. Only with you.”

They entered into the cave. They arrived in another orchard and the Eagle is with them. They found people there studying the Mishna. So then the Eagle transformed into the image of a person in garments of glory shining like them [the masters of the Mishna]. And he is sitting like one of them. He said to those that were sitting there [the two people in the story]. Give honor to these masters of the Mishna who came here because their master has shown them great wonders here.

One of them said, Do you have sign? They said yes, we do. They took out their two roses and smelled them. The masters of the Mishna said “please sit down master of the yeshiva, sit down true righteous ones.” They were happy with them, and they sat down. At that time, they learned there 30 Halachot that they did not know before this, and others secrets of the Torah.

Magic Eight balls and free will

2010-04-25T09:45:00.001-04:00

Photo Courtesy of CRASH: candy

Everyone wants a magic eight ball. Ask a question, shake, then get a definitive answer as to what to do. Unfortunately, the world doesn't work that way.

Generally when we ask for spiritual direction, we do not get clear directions from the spirit world. I think it's part of God giving us free-will. If God spoke plainly to us, our only choice would be to do or not do. When we get vague images or half-remembered dreams, it forces us to do the work and make the best choices we can. Our role in this world is not to follow blindly, but to engage and grapple with God. The messages we get can help us along, but it's still up to us to do our work so we can interpret them correctly.

Healing is swimming in the Ocean

2010-04-14T05:36:00.000-04:00

Photo courtesy of Morberg

A patient of mine was late earlier this week. She called me to let me know she was on her way, but running about 20 minutes late. As I waited for her, I began the treatment. I sat at the head of the table and placed my hands where they would be if she were lying on the table. I pictured her in front of me and felt our energy connecting. I felt like I could "see" her whole body I felt a strange pattern in her neck, which I'd never felt in her before. When she came in 10 minutes later, the first thing she said was that she had slept funny the night before and her neck felt stiff.

When I work on people, my main focus is creating the space in which they can heal. I am not very good at "seeing" everything that is going on in their body, but when the connections are made and the space is created, the healing happens. So it was a little surprising to me that I'd seen her neck problem before she came in.
I realized that the distance between us had allowed me to "see" her problem. Like most feelers, I instantly react to the presence of others. I feel their emotions and energies and immediately start to interact with them when I touch or am in the same space with them. I realized that seeing requires distance, which is why it's so hard for me in the treatment room.

It's the difference between standing on the cliffs and watching the ocean and swimming in the water. While on dry land, you can see the expanse of the water and hear the crash of the waves. But when you are swimming in the ocean, you can feel the cold of the deep and the motion of the waves. The healing happens when you are in the water. The connection between the healer and the patient is what bring the shechina and God into the healing, which allows it all to happen.

A Pesach thought: Mishna Pesachim 10:4

2010-03-23T16:29:00.000-04:00

The Mishna in Pesachim 10:4 begins with the four questions and then continues:

The father should teach [about the exodus] according to the son's knowledge, wisdom, and ability. You begin in disgrace and end with praise.

The traditional explanation is that one teaches about the disgrace of our slavery and end with the praise of God for bringing us out of Egypt. I think it's more didactic: teach your children according to their ignorance and curiosity. When they are uncomfortable with their ignorance is when learning begins, so find out the things which don't sit right with them about the exodus and about the seder and begin the teaching there.

May you all have wonderful Seders that move from confusion and consternation to praise and connection to God.

The Jewish Standing Stone

2010-03-16T11:23:00.000-04:00

Photo courtesy of Minipixel

The study of sacrifices brings us to the story of Jacob's dream. The story can be found in Genesis 28:10-22.

To quickly recap the story: Jacob has left home to find a wife in Paddan-aram and left an angry and vengeful Esau behind. He's on his way and, seeing that the sun is about to set, takes a stone from the area and lays his head upon it. That night, he dreams that there is a ladder fixed to earth upon which angels ascend and descend. God stands by his side and promises him that his many descendants will be a blessing to all the nations. God also says that God will protect him be with him where ever he goes.

When he wakes, Jacob lifts the stone upon which he slept into a Matzebah מצבה (pillar), pours oil upon it, and proclaims that this is the house of God and it a Gateway to heaven. Jacob then vows to God that if God protects him, he will accept God as his God and the pillar will be God's house. Furthermore, of all the God gives him, he will tithe 10 percent to God.

On the pshat (simple) level Jacob had an unexpected spiritual experience, his first, in which he found that God was protecting and standing next to him. He realized that where he slept was a place of power and created a Matzebeh to mark the place. He then makes a vow to God demonstrating that he was changed by the experience.

One central issue in this story is what is a Matzebah? The word derives from the root יצב which means to station oneself or to take a stand, and appears three times during the story.

The first is verse 12 in reference to the ladder that reaches from earth to Heaven: סלם מצב ארצה "the ladder was fixed in the ground". In this case, it means fixed permanently. We learn here that this is a place where there is always a שער השמים a gate of heaven (Gn 28:17). The ladder is not resting on the ground, but it is fixed to the place.

The next occurrence is in the next verse ה' נצב עליו which can be translated as "God is standing upon him" or "God is stationed with him". Again, there is a sense of permanence here. God will always be with him.

The last two occurrences are in relation the rock. In 28:18 it states: וישם אתה מצבה "and he put it (the stone) as a pillar". In 28:22: והאבן הזאת אשר שמתי הצבה יהיה בית אלקים "And this rock that I put as a pillar will be the house of God". The Brown Driver Briggs translation of Matzebah is a pillar or obelisk or a stone that is anointed as a memorial of a divine appearance. In addition to that the Matzebah is a special marker that denotes a place where God can always be reached. Then Jacob poured oil upon it, it was a type of sacrifice to proclaim that this was a holy place, a place of power where the gate of heaven is easily accessible.

A מזבח mizbayach is the more common type of Altar that can be moved or built as needed. The Matzebah is determined by it's location and can't be moved.

Bringing this to the present day, I'm left wondering if there are certain places where everyone can connect more easily with God? Or places where individuals can easily connect to God due to a prior history with the place? Or if we need to build some sort of altar when we want to connect, and what that would look like from a modern Jewish perspective? What do people think?

Healing to Face to Face

2010-02-28T09:00:00.000-05:00

Image courtesy of joshbousel

Last night I learned a text on Purim from the Shaar Hakavanot by R Luria and R Vital. His explanation for something I commonly experience was quite beautiful and I'll try to explain it here.

What I experience is that on some days the divine energy flows and on some days it just feels like it's inaccessible. It flows in a very cyclic manner. The other thing I experience is a period of deep stillness during my treatments. In craniosacral terms they are known as "still points". The energy in the patient and the room seems to come to a halt as everything slows to a stop. Sometimes they last just moments, sometimes they extend beyond the time I have for the treatment. When things start to move again, it as if everything has "reset" and where there was dysfunction is now health. I always explain it as equivalent to hitting Ctrl-alt-delete in the PC world. But I think the Ari's explanation is a lot more beautiful.

In Lurianic Kabbalism, when God created man during the first creation story, God created man as androgynous, one being containing both male and female, connected back to back. During the second creation, God put the man to a deep sleep דורמיטא and separated the two halves which allowed them to turn around and be face to face.

One way of understanding the effects is to look at how the two beings would relate to each other. Back to back allows no communication and, although they are connected, they aren't having much of a relationship. When they are face to face they can really relate to each, see each other, understand and love each other.

God took a being in a state of dysfunction, caused a still point, and they awoke from sleep in a state of health. My experience in the treatment room models on the same process. I help the client enter a stillpoint at which point God rearranges them into a state of health.

The Ari points out that during Purim, Haman, who was a master Astrologer, knew when the connection between the Jewish people and God would be weakest. It was then that Haman planned to destroy them.

The Ari writes that the human experience of the deep sleep דורמיטא is a time of troubles and difficulties, during which there is very little divine providence. God feels very distant to us, but when the cycle completes and the connections again strengthen, there is much greater health. In the midrash around Purim, it is believed that Esther's son became King and assisted the Jews to return to Israel to build the second temple.

The cycles of divine energy are part of the healing too. This is a beautiful way of understanding the ebb and flow of divine energy in the world, and how that too, pushes us towards healing.

The Unbinding of Avraham

2010-02-26T04:00:00.000-05:00

Photo Courtesy of Underpuppy (And Rembrandt)

As my study of sacrifices continues, we have come to the Akeda - the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22). Avraham is asked to sacrifice his only child and in return for doing so, he is rewarded with a promise from God that he will have many, many descendants. The paradox is that in his willingness to give up the thing he most cherished, he was able to assure that it would remain.

The story is very well known and studied. God tests Avraham by telling him that he needs to sacrifice his son as an Olah עלה sacrificial offering. Avraham sets off with his son and two servants. He gets to Mount Moriah, binds Isaac, and places him on top of his newly built alter. As he reaches out for the knife to do the sacrifice, an angel calls out to him and tells him to stop. He raises his eyes and sees a ram stuck in a thicket which he sacrifices instead.

To understand the deeper meaning, we need to look at changes that occurred as a result of the Akeda. As Avraham is approaching the mountain, he and Isaac are described as walking as one: וילכו שניהם יחדו (Gn 22:8). After the Akeda, Avraham returns to his servants but we are not told what happened to Isaac. The two never spoke again after that day, and Midrash has it that they departed separately from the mountain. It is certain that they no longer walked as one.

In response to Avraham's actions, God blesses him with "...descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven..." (Gn 22:17) If the separation that occurred between the two led to the blessing of descendants, then the connection between the two was a spiritual blockage that prevented it. As Avraham was the one commanded by God, then the blockage was inside of him.

In Shamanic healing, most powerful blockages are usually fear. In this case, Avraham's greatest fear was that he would not have descendants (see Gn 15:2). As is the case with all fears, if they have power over us and we work too hard to try to prevent them coming true, that pretty much ensures that they will come true. In order to take back the power from the fear, Avraham had to be willing to give up his what he most wanted.

When Avraham reaches for the knife he is stopped and looks up to sees a ram. The text reads "וירא הנה איל אחר" And he saw, here was another (a different) ram (Gn 22:13). The text makes a point earlier in Genesis 22:7-8 that there was no animal for the offering, so how can there be "another" at this point? If you remove the Yod from איל (ram) then you are left with El, God. The fear had become so dominant for Avraham that it had become like a God to him. At that moment, he was finally able to see the fear that had been the other god in his life and in sacrificing it, bring himself back to God.

It was the emotional intensity of the moment that freed him. In order to go through the catharsis, he had to believe that he really was going to do it. When I think of ways to bring this idea into the modern world, we must be prepared to give up things that we want in order to make them happen. It's important to note that Avraham's fears revolved around Isaac and not around himself. He was trying to influence something over which he ultimately had no control.

It's a lesson to all parents, that we can hope for our children, but it's best not to be dominated by our expectations and fears for our children. It will only ensure that the fears will come true. If it's in our control, we can work hard and get it. If it's out of our control, we always have to be prepared to let go of it completely.

One final note on symbolism in the text: when Avraham gets to the top of the mountain, he built an alter, laid out the wood, then bound Isaac. Building the alter is how Avraham builds spiritual power and creates connection to God. Laying out the wood is the preparation that went into the act. In order for wood to burn easily as is required for a burnt offering, it needs to be dried for months and sometimes years. It shows that Avraham had already been putting in a lot of hard work before God enabled him to break through the fear.

The last is the actual binding of Isaac. There is a midrash that Isaac asked Avraham to bind him so when the moment came, he did not flinch. When we go to do things of such emotional intensity, we need to bind ourselves to the act so that we don't flinch when the moment comes.

Why Shaman? A definition and clarification

2010-02-25T07:47:00.000-05:00

Photo courtesy of Akiva

People often ask me why I use the word Shaman. The question usually follows the statement that being Jewish and being a shaman are not compatible and that shamanism is part of Avodah Zarah (Idol worship and therefore forbidden). The term shaman originally referred to tribal healers in Eastern Asia, most probably Mongolia, who definitely held beliefs and performed rituals which would have been considered avodah zarah. However, over the past 50 years as the term Shaman has become more widely used in the west, it's meaning has blurred to such an extent that it no longer really refers to those original tribesmen.

In it's vagueness, Shaman has come to denote a type of person, not a set of beliefs. A shaman is one who interacts with the spirit world. Most Shamans, but not all, use that interaction for healing. The only common belief among all shamans is that there is a physical world and there is a spirit world. The shaman is a person who can access the spirit world. There are beings that exist in the spirit world which can interact with the shaman. Lastly, changes made in the spirit realm effect the physical world so any changes done there are reflected in the physical world.

None of these are incompatible with Judaism or could be called Avodah Zarah. Judaism believes that there is a physical world and three other worlds above that. Judaism believes that some people are able to transcend the pargod (veil) to enter the spirit world and interact with angels, demons, ghosts, and tzaddikim there (among others) or through practices in this world make contact with those beings (look up the practice of lying on graves of Tzaddikim). Jews believe that these spiritual beings can cause all sorts of blessings or problems in the physical world. Jews also believe that people in this world are capable of making changes in the spiritual realm to heal in this world. Jews commonly ask for blessings from rabbis or brides or anyone who is considered to be in a holy state and can more easily bring down blessings from God.

A shaman is a descriptor of a type of person, not a set of beliefs. That's why I see no problem with using the term Jewish Shamanism for what I do. I use Jewish means to effect changes in the spirit world for healing and that makes me a Jewish Shaman.

One man's trash...

2010-02-17T14:26:00.000-05:00

I went to the bank yesterday. I had about 10 minutes between appointments, and I needed to make a deposit. My heart sank when I walked in - the place was mobbed. The banks here are known for their long lines, so by the door is a number dispenser. I pulled out number 481. I looked up and heard them call number 444. I sighed and looked for a seat. At least I could eat my lunch before I had to go.

I sat down and noticed some crumpled papers on the table in front of me. I didn't give them much thought but pulled out my food. I heard them announce 446, then 447 when no one moved. I had another bite. I got curious and smoothed out the papers. It was number 446. I smiled to myself. If I had just looked at the papers first, I would have been able to do my deposit. As it was, I had to come back the next day and wait another half hour to get it done.

Sometimes God does you little favors, it just takes an open mind to notice them.

Home is where your altar is

2010-01-12T16:30:00.000-05:00

Photo courtesy of Premasagar

In this post, I will look at how altars are used in Genesis 12 & 13. Avram builds altars to mark places of power, to invoke God's name to help him through difficult situations, and to help him establish a home.

After the Sacrifices in the story of Noah, the next time we encounter them are in Genesis 12:7. God appears to Avram and Avram build an altar to mark the spot. The word for altar is מזבח which derives from the root זבח which means sacrifice or slaughter for sacrifice. An altar in biblical Hebrew is a place where sacrifices happen.

In this case, we are not told if he actually made a sacrifice, but only that he "built there an altar to God". It's interesting that he did not build an altar when God first appeared to him in Ur (Genesis 12:1) and told him to go to Canaan, but only when he arrived there and God showed him the land. In this case, the altar is used as a place marker for a place of power.

There are two general ways of contacting the spiritual world. The first is when the souls or God intrude upon us and they initiate the contact. I don't use intrude in a negative way. The second is when we do some sort of ritual or practice that opens us to the spiritual world. In the traditional metaphor, the first type is that heaven descends upon us and the second is when we ascend. One aspect of places of power in the world is that Heaven is closer to the earth at those points and contact is easier. Avram's altar is marking the place where contact is easier.

The narrative continues and Avram continues to travel through Canaan. He builds another altar when he is in the mountains between Bethel and Ai (Gn 12:8). His innovation here is that instead of a sacrifice, he "invokes the name of God". He has discovered that the name of God is itself powerful and can bring him into the spiritual world. For those of us in the modern world who are averse to animal sacrifice (and I hope most of you are), this has important implications.

It's easy to see his intention for making the altar by looking at the literal translations of his locale (thanks to my chevruta for this insight): Bethel בית אל means the house of God and Ai עי can be translated as destruction or ruin. עי comes from עוה which means distortion or ruin. Avram is in a hard place and doesn't know which direction to go. He sees that one way leads to God and another to ruin, but he's unsure of the path to take so he builds an altar to ask. In the verse immediately following the altar, Avram moves forward on his journey, so clearly he got an answer.

After a brief sojourn in Egypt, Avram returns to the altar and again invokes the name of God. This time, there is strife between his herdsmen and the herdsmen of his nephew Lot. He is looking for a good solution, and invokes the name of God to help lead him to peace between his people and Lot's. Lot goes one way and Avram another.

The last altar in this section is built when Avram moved his tents to Mamre in Hebron. In this case, there is no clear reason given for building an altar. He moves, sets up camp, builds the altar, and then the narrative moves on in another direction entirely. In this case, Avram is setting up his camp and knows that a strong spiritual connection to God is central to creating a good home.

Altars are used in three ways: to mark a place of power, to get direction from God, and to create a home. The commonality is that each use is about creating or noting a connection to God. In the two cases where Avram creates the connection himself, he invokes God's name to do it. This is a little bit different from the next mention of sacrifice in Genesis 15 which involves no altar but cutting animals in half. Stay tuned!

Surrendering to the Bus Buzz

2009-12-12T13:27:00.000-05:00

Photo by sicoactiva

I was waiting at the bus stop downtown yesterday needing to get home in a hurry. There are two buses that I can take: one which runs more frequently but takes longer, and one that runs less frequently and is much quicker. Just as I got the stop, the bus that takes longer pulled in. As I often do, I "vibed" the bus. Energetically, I placed the longer bus to my right and the quicker bus to my left. I shifted my attention between them and the quicker bus buzzed, so I chose not to get on the longer bus. After about two more minutes of waiting, the quicker bus pulled up and got me home without a problem.

I've been using this technique for a long time and find it very helpful. My interpretation is that I'm doing a small check in with the flow of the world to see where I should be at the moment. It's always important for me to remember that where I should be is not always where I want to be.

There are times when my buzz has been to take the longer bus which got stuck in a bad traffic jam. As I'm sitting there grumbling to myself, I have to remember that there is some reason that I'm on this bus and not the other. Sometimes it's a reason I can see: when I get off the bus I bump into a friend who I haven't seen for awhile. Sometimes it's for a reason I can't see: so I didn't run into the friend who really isn't good for me. And sometimes, it feels like the reason is that I'm being reminded to trust my reasoning, and not place blind faith in this energetic trick.

There are times when I feel like my life is just going with the flow of the world. The things I desire for myself seem to be in concert with my place in the world. And there are times when I'm far from the flow, nothing seems to be going smoothly or well, and I need to do something to get back with God. I know that there are certain activities the usually get me back into alignment, though I sometimes have to go through several different ones before I feel fully aligned. Everyone is different, so it's important to know for yourself what brings you back in alignment.

Being close to God involves a great deal of surrender without collapse. When one is aligned, one's desires match those of Gods, and the movement is akin to swimming with the current. But there are occasions when the messages we receive do not match up with our own conclusions, and these often make me hesitate. If I know that my energy is aligned with the world's, then I trust that the message is correct. But if my energy has been "off" then it's hard to know what to do.

This is especially true when receiving messages through others. I know people who see into the spiritual world very clearly. I always an tempted to just call them for the answer rather than trying to work it out for myself. The danger is that I am receiving a message through someone else's eyes. I don't know if they are aligned with the world when they are giving me the message, and depending on my own alignment, I can wildly misinterpret the message even if it is correct.

This is why it's important to know for yourself how you connect to God and what makes the connection more powerful. When you are connected, your impulses and the flow of the world will be the same.

One of my favorite biblical passages can be found in Ecclesiastes 7:14: When times are good be happy, but when times are bad, reflect. In this instance, one can read that as when one is connected, be happy, but when one is not, reflect and reconnect.

Removing the Evil from the decree

2009-12-10T06:26:00.000-05:00

Again something I wrote a few months ago:

During Yom kippur services, I was struck by Unatana Tokef. The power and the words of the prayer spoke deeply to me.

The second paragraph, which begins "On Rosh Hashanna it is written..", is a fairly standard shamanic incantation. Calling on the ancestors who have died in various ways: "who will live and who will die... who by water, who by fire, who by the sword, who by a wild animal..." When I recite the prayer, I feel the souls of Jewish ancestors fill the room. It is a very powerful prayer and can be used as a calling the souls meditation.

It then outlines the goals of Jewish Shamanic Healing:

ותשובה ותפלה וצדקה מעבירין את רוע הגזרה
And repentance, prayer, and charity removes the evil of the decree

The word "decree" is generally used in kabbalistic texts to refer to judgments of heaven that effect our lives. In the context of this blog, it refers to illness. Repentance, prayer, and charity do not remove the heavenly decree, but remove the evil from it. This manifests in three ways: they heal, they change their attitude to the illness, or the change happens without illness. For some people, the person gets sick, but heals completely. For others, their attitude towards the illness changes and they no longer view it as so damaging to their lives. For others, the change or energy that causes the illness manifests in another way which is not destructive to the person. This allows them to manifest the decree without damage or illness.

People often ask me if they will heal completely from whatever is ailing them. My answer is that they need to change with the illness, and they will feel better, even if their symptoms persist. But, more often than not, their symptoms disappear as well.

Noah's Ascension

2009-12-06T13:33:00.000-05:00

בראשית כ וייבן נוח מזבח ליהוה וייקח מכול הבהמה הטהורה ומכול העוף הטהור ויעל עולות במזבח כא וירח יהוה את ריח הניחוח ויאמר יהוה אל ליבו לא אוסיף לקלל עוד את האדמה בעבור האדם כי יצר לב האדם רע מנעוריו ולא-אוסיף עוד להכות את-כל-חי כאשר עשיתי כב עוד כל-ימי הארץ זרע וקציר וקור וחום וקיץ וחורף ויום ולילה לא ישבותו.

Genesis 8:20 And Noah built an alter to God. He took from all of the pure animals and from all the pure birds and raised them as an ascension offering at the alter. (21) God smelled the pleasant fragrance and God said to his heart, I will not continue to destroy the earth because of man for his heart's inclination is bad from his youth. And I will not again destroy all life as I have done. (22)To the end of the days of the land, during seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will not cease.

The next time sacrifices are mentioned in the Tanach is during the story of Noah (Genesis 8:20-22). After the flood is over, Noah comes out of the ark and builds an alter (מזבח). He takes one of each of the pure animals and sacrifices them in/at the alter. The word for Sacrifice is olah עולה, to go up. The scent of the sacrifice (and possible Noah) go up to God, and in response God says to his heart that he will not destroy the world again in response to man's evil inclination.

This is a very different type of sacrifice then Cain and Hevel. Their sacrifice was a mincha (rest), and the result of the sacrifice was that God gazed upon Hevel. In this sacrifice, the goal of the offering was to ascend, and the result was that God made a change. One question I had was what exactly ascended? In the text, God smelled the "pleasant fragrance". My general assumption is that God is so far beyond us that we can't even begin to understand or explain God, but how does one make sense of God "smelling"?

I think the answer lies in a closer reading of the text. The word for pleasant odor is ריח הניחוח reach hanichoah. The first word can be read as רוח or spirit/wind, and the second is a variation on his name: נח Noah. When God smells (וירח), his spirit (רוח) meets with Noah's. This reading is that the spirit of Noah ascended up to God, God "spirited" Noah's "spirit", and it effected God's heart.

The Mincha sacrafice is a type of offering that results in a connection with God. It seems that the person offering the sacrifice brings God into the world. An ascension offering is more active and one that makes a change in the world. Here, the person goes into the spiritual world to make a change.

I'm excited to see how these types play out as we go further into our study, and what we can learn from how sacrifices were used biblically.

Praying to move things

2009-12-01T10:00:00.000-05:00

Image courtesy of SoulHolder

One of the major aspects of Jewish spiritual growth is prayer. Our tradition is to pray three times a day. This builds discipline and focus. One way to spiritually make things move is based on strong focus. Concentrate on the object you want to move, send it love, and it will go in the direction it is supposed to go.

There is danger here in that one is often tempted to move it in the direction that one wants it to go, which may or may not be the direction it's supposed to go. Depending on your spiritual power, you may be able to move it towards your desire, but as any mechanic can tell you, if you push it in the wrong direction it will break and all your good intentions will take you or your patient to a worse place.

I think it's always best to connect oneself to God before trying to move anything, then reflect on your own motives for trying to move it, and only then send it love and power if your motives are for healing. I often find that once I've connected to God, I find I no longer have any desire to move the thing. I find that it is exactly as it should be even if I am not really happy with it. It's difficult to tell a patient that their illness or pain is where they need to be at the moment, but if it's true, all efforts to move it will backfire.

The waiting room of prayer

2009-11-29T10:00:00.000-05:00

Photo courtesy of Paul Denton Crocker

Gikatilla brings up a very interesting idea. Malchut is the gateway to the spherot. It's intimately connected with yesod. All of the higher spherot feed down into yesod which joins with malchut. Malchut, though it it thought of us as empty on it's own, distributes the shefa to the world that it received from Yesod.

The process also works in reverse. When a person prays by themselves, the prayers go up through malchut into Yesod. Yesod has gatekeepers who evaluate the prayers to see if they are worthy of going up to God. How are they evaluated? If the prayers are done with the proper intention and feeling. And if they are not deemed worthy? Then they go to the waiting room. The prayers are not thrown out or discarded, but placed in a special place, a Geniza, a waiting room. When the person prays with proper intention the gates of prayer open and all of the prayers that have been in the waiting room get brought before God.

He also writes that the gates of heaven are always open to tears. When a person cries while praying, or prays while crying, the prayers go straight up to Heaven and are not held up by the gatekeeper in Yesod. Likewise, when we pray in a minyan, then the prayers go upwards. The gathering calls the shechina so the prayers are automatically thought to be accepted.

This is a fascinating idea.

Repairing the Intentionally Broken world

2009-11-26T05:24:00.000-05:00

R' Chayim Moshe Luzzato writes:

כלל ראשון: כוונת הבריאת

מה שנודע לנו מכוונת המאציל ב"ה בזה, הוא, כי ברצותו להטיב רצה להמציא נמצאים שיקבלו טובו. וכדי שיהיה הטוב שלם, צריך שיקבלוהו בזכות ולא בצדקה, שלא יהא הבושת פוגמו, כאוכל את שאינו שלו. וכדי שיוכלו לזכות, המציא מציאות אחד שיהיה צריך אליהם להתקן, מה שאינו צריך הוא, ובתקנם אותו – יזכו. והוא מציאות הספירות, כי הם מציאות אחד כמו מחברת צינורות, שבעמדה על תיקונה כראוי, ממשיכים השפע מן המאציל אל המתקנה. וזהו זכותו – שהקים חפץ המאציל ב"ה, שחפץ שיקבלו נמצאיו את טובו.

כללי פתחי חכמה ודעה
רמח"ל – חיים לוזאטו

What we know of the intention of the creator, blessed be he, is this: in his will to give goodness, he created the world in order for it to receive his goodness. In order for the created to receive the full measure of his goodness, they had to receive it on their own merits and not by means of charity, so shame will not blemish the receiving, like eating food that belongs to someone else. In order to be worthy, the creator created a world that needs repair, but it is not for God that we do the repair. In doing the repair, the created become worthy. The world that needs repair is the world of the sephirot. They are one system like the joints of a pipe, which, when repaired, draw down the shefa from the creator to the repaired (person). And this is what is meant by merit, that he fulfils the will of the creator, blessed be he, that desires that his creations receive his goodness.

- RaMCHaL - Moshe Chayim Luzzato - Principle Elements.

The simple interpretation of this text is that God wants to give us his goodness, but he requires our personal effort to make ourselves worthy. He created the world "broken" in order to give us the necessary challenges for us to earn the merit of his goodness. Essentially life is one big test, and if we pass, we enjoy God's goodness. If we don't do the repair, we presumably are cut off from God's bounty.

I really like that he frames the issue in terms of personal effort. It's not a gift from above or an innate talent, but our personal actions that determine our connection to God. God is always waiting there for us, but it's up to us to make ourselves worthy of the connection. In my mind, this is what Tikkunei Avon (repair of sins) are all about. When we first start to do spiritual work, the first step is to begin working on our own blockages between us and God. It's a continual process, something that we are never done with, and requires constant care and attention. This process is both internal and on our relationships in the world.

This worldview also gives us limitless possibilities. Every difficulty is an opportunity for a repair, and there certainly is no shortage of difficulties in this world. It also shows us how to have mercy on ourselves. If we come up short or miss the mark on today's repair, there will be another chance tomorrow. When the yetzer harah asks us to beat ourselves up for our failures, we just have to wait until the next test when we can try again.

One note on the translation: the word for goodness is הטיב or טוב which is accurately translated as good, but in this context, it could also mean Love. When I first read this passage, I thought that his worldview required an enormous amount of faith to believe that the world was intentionally broken just to give us an opportunity to be fix it. It means that the problems of the world are inherent in it's basic structure and can never be truly solved.

But it also means that God wants us to succeed because someone who loves us doesn't give us a challenge which is beyond our capabilities. I think my first impression was completely backwards: this worldview shows how much faith God has in us. He wants us to do the work on ourselves so that we can bring God's love into the world, which, as far as I'm concerned is the point of it all.

Cain wasn't Abel

2009-11-25T04:41:00.000-05:00

Photo from Okinawa Soba

I've recently started studying with a new Hevruta who also has a shamanic background and is a cohen. We've decided to try to explore the practice of sacrifice in Judaism and to see if we can apply what we learn to our practices. We're beginning with the story of Cain and Hevel (Abel), who gave the first offerings to God. The story can be found in Genesis 4:1-16.

The names are very significant: Cain, קין, means acquired, and Hevel, הבל, means vapor or breath. Cain is the farmer, the worker of the land, which is cursed at this point, and Hevel is a shepherd. These facts set up the dichotomy between the two: Cain is a person who must always be busy tending to his fields and to his crops. The life of the shepherd is very different. It's mostly a quiet, meditative life. Cain is very tied to the physicality of the land, while Hevel is able to concentrate on more spiritual pursuits.

In my paradigm, Cain's gift is doing: working and producing. He is most connected to God when he is farming. Hevel's gift is being: meditation and quiet observation of the world. He is most connected to God during "spiritual" times and rituals.

Interestingly, it is Cain who first makes the offering of first fruits to God, and only then does Hevel follow. The word for offering is מנחה (minchah) which derives from לנוח (to rest), and in this form, can mean "to cause to rest". The purpose of the sacrifice was to cause Cain to be able to rest from his work. My understanding of this is based on my experience when I connect to the souls. I feel very peaceful and relaxed, even to the point where I forget my words or my questions (if I had any). Perhaps Cain was seeking a similar experience.

But God accepts Hevel's sacrifice and Hevel himself, but not to Cain or his sacrifice. The word for accept is וישא, which means to Gaze (steadily with interest) or to turn towards and pay heed. Hevel sacrifices and connects to God. Cain sacrifices and neither he nor his sacrifice connect to God.

In our reading, this makes perfect sense. Hevel connects to God through ritual and through spiritual means. Cain connects through working and producing. When Cain sacrifices, he is trying to connect to God through Hevel's gift, which, of course, doesn't work for him.

It's noteworthy that Cain figured out a good way for Hevel to connect. It's a reminder not to spend all our time with people who have similar gifts to ourselves. Often, the outside perspective enables another to see how we can use our gifts more effectively. It's also important to live in community so that when we are faced with a task that is outside of our power, we have others who can do it for us. Cain's response might have been to ask Hevel to do the sacrifices for him. In turn, Hevel would be probably be unable to do tasks that would require him to be fully in the physical world and would need Cain to do them for him.

And here is where Cain goes astray. He gets angry and disappointed that God wouldn't gaze upon him when he sacrificed, and God chastises him for it. God tells him that "if he does right, there is uplift" (literally exalted and majesty). Doing right, in my reading, is doing and living according to his gift. But God continues, "if you do not do right, Sin crouches at the door". Any time that we try to live according to someone else's gift, we run into trouble.

Cain then kills Hevel. God asks Cain "where is your brother Hevel?", and we get the famous reply "Am I my brother's keeper?" God replies that "Your brother's blood cries out to my from the ground (אדמה)." The ground was Cain's source of power. He was a farmer who derived his power, and connected to God, through working the land. But the murder of his brother poisoned Cain's power so that he would never be able to access it again.

God's punishment to Cain was twofold: destroying Cain's connection with his power and cursing him to Hevel's power which would never really work for him. God tells Cain directly that if "you till the soil, it shall no longer yield it's strength to you." He then curses Cain has to wander the land, which is what a shepherd does, not what a farmer does.

Cain replies "My punishment is to great to bear. Since you have banished me this day from the soil and your presence will be hidden from me..." Cain is aware that he can no longer connect to God as he has been separated from his gift. Cain continues "...anyone who meets me may kill me." God then puts a mark on Cain's forehead as protection.

Why does Cain need protection only at this point? My approach to spiritual protection has always been awareness, love, dealing with fear, and staying within your power. It's a much longer discussion, but my view is that when Cain was no longer in his power, he was vulnerable. Hevel had no trouble wandering the land and living. Cain is unable to do that.

There are some people who naturally avoid fights, and some people who can't seem to go anywhere without having someone start a fight with them. Hevel might have been a person who did not naturally get into fights or quarrels, but Cain, being more in the world, might have. Now Cain is wandering the world with Hevel's power but people are still fighting with him, and he now has no defenses so he needs God's protection.

This story sets up one of the basic polarities in Human existence: those who are more in the physical world and those who are more in the spiritual world. Each has a unique gift that enables them to connect to God and only run into trouble when they try to be someone who they are not.

The soul's balloon

2009-11-17T08:21:00.000-05:00

Occasionally when I treat people, it feels as if their soul is empty. When I reach out to connect to them spiritually, I can't feel anything. It almost feels like I'm seeing a shadow of the person: they are physically there, but spiritually it feels like there's nothing there.

I used to think that their soul had left their body for some reason. but it was rightly pointed out to me recently that if their soul wasn't present in their body, they'd be dead.

One possible explanation could be based on the Jewish idea of their being five levels to the soul. The lower soul could be present, but the upper could be missing. But my perception is not of a cup half full, but of the cup being completely empty.

In Hevruta today I came to an explanation that feels more accurate. The soul is like a balloon. There are times when it is empty and times when it is full. When it's empty, it may be barely visible and offers no resistance to our touch, but when it's full, it's clearly visible and touchable. So what fills it? The breath of God. When God created Adam, he animated him by breathing life into him.

So my experience is that the client's soul is empty, and after the treatment, if it's been a good treatment, then their soul is full of God's breath (רוח הקודש). Illness in this way of thinking is caused by an empty soul, and health by a full one.

I'm curious to hear from my readers: Does this match your experience? Does this explanation help you to heal better?

Standing in Fear

2009-11-05T16:02:00.000-05:00

Photo courtesy of Krembo1

The Amidah is a very powerful prayer. As I've written about before, it has become a way for me to check in with my fear every day.

The Amidah begins with three prayers of invocation or supplication where we call the souls of our ancestors. The first is a direct calling of our fore-fathers and fore-mothers (if you choose to do it that way, which I recommend). The next is the prayer for the reviving the dead, which calls in all of our ancestral souls, and the last is a the prayer of holiness to proclaim that we are now in a holy space.

The Amidah continues with what is traditionally called the Bakashot, or requests. I slightly alter my perspective on this section my fears. Each of these requests represents or stems from a fear within each Jew that we wish assuaged. For me, these become reminders of the fears within me that I need to visit everyday. As I read through the Amidah, I pause after each blessing and touch the fear before continuing on to the next.

Some days, certain fears will hold a lot of power and certain fears will feel neutral. I especially look for fears which feel numb to me - these are the ones I need to spend the most time with until I can feel what's going on underneath.

The last section of the Amidah is for thanking God. In this section, I surround myself with love and send it to any lingering fears. This section begins with the avodah, or service, which implores God to accept our prayers instead of a sacrifice. I suspect that this allows us to call some of the spiritual power of a the sacrifices into the power of our prayers, but this will require further meditation.

I suggest the everyone study the prayers themselves and come up with their own understanding of the fear reminders. Each of the prayers speak to every one of us in a different way, so it's important to find yours. What follows is my understanding of them at this point in time

Binah - Fear of not being smart or clever enough.
Tsuvah -Fear that I've succomb to my yetzer haRah, my urge to self-destruction.
Slicha - Fear of having done something unforgivable
Geulah - Fear that things will never get better both personally, nationally, and environmentally
Refuah - Fear that I'll be sick
Birkat Hashanim - Fear that I'll be poor and unable to pay the bills or buy food.
Kibbutz Galuyot - Fear that I won't have a home and I will wander and never feel at home.
Din - Fear that there will be no justice in the world or in my life
Birkat Haminim - Fear of betrayal
Tzaddikim - Fear that the wise in my life will be removed. And that the wise among our nation will be taken from us.
Binyan Jerusalem - The cossack fear that Jerusalem will again be taken from us as a result of our own actions.
Malcut Beit David - This is unclear to me. Probably a fear that we will never be worthy of bringing the messiah.
Kabbalat Tefillah -Fear that we can't connect to God. Fear is one of the main blocks that prevents a person from connecting to God, so this sums up the others fears.

Amidah - Blessing for the year

2009-10-22T15:41:00.001-04:00

Following up to my thoughts on using the Amidah as a tool to feel fear. Tonight, the fear came up during the prayer for a good year. The fear I had was one of poverty. It gave me an opportunity to focus on the fears I have for my business and if I was going to earn enough to support my family. My fear during this prayer was all about livelihood. I'd be interested what other people feel during this part of the Amidah. Let me know.

Hands are more important than heads

2009-10-12T04:28:00.000-04:00

I recently learned a teaching from the Beit Yaakov:

Why do our arms reach higher than our heads?

Because the effects of our actions have far more ramifications than our thoughts. What we do in the world is much more important than what we think. When we work on personal growth or shamanic development, we have to pay the most attention to what we are actually doing. What we do with our hands matters more than what we do with our head.

Shaking in the shefa

2009-10-08T09:11:00.000-04:00

This is the Lurianic technique I learned for shaking the four species:

A quick note: the four species represent the name of God. The הדסה (myrtle) is the yod, The ארבות (willow) is the first hay, The לולב (palm) is the vav, and the אתרוג (Etrog) is the second hay.

Recite the blessing for shaking the four species with the lulav in the right hand and the etrog (held upside down with the stem facing downward) in the left. The two should not be touching. The blessing is Baruch Ata Hashem Elokeinu Melech Haolam asher kidshanu b'mitvotav vetzivanu al nitilat lulav.

Turn the etrog over and then hold them together.

Do each movement three times:

Hold the four species out to your right and shake three times drawing the shefa of Hesed חסד. Pull the hesed into yourself and shake three times near your heart.

Hold the four species to your left and shake three times drawing the shefa of Gevurah גבורה. Pull it into your heart and shake three times near your heart.

Hold the four species in front of you and shake three times drawing the shefa of Tiferet תפארת. Pull it into your heart and shake three times near your heart.

Hold the four species upwards and shake three times drawing the shefa of Nesach נצח. Pull it into your heart and shake three times near your heart.

Hold the four species downwards and shake three times drawing the shefa of Hod הוד. Pull it into your heart and shake three times near your heart.

Hold the four species behind you (either over your shoulder or turn around) and shake three times drawing the shefa of yesod יסוד. Pull it into your heart and shake three times near your heart.

The Principle of the 1000th.

2009-10-08T03:50:00.000-04:00

Photo courtesy of Rahel Sharon

My friend Mike Short, who is an excellent acupuncturist and herbalist, is also a serious martial artist. I asked him once how he got so good at herbs and his response was that he treated it like martial arts: you learn a technique and then practice it a 1000 times. After the 1000th time, you realize how it works and what you've been doing wrong so far. So you do it another 1000 times. At this point, you see how you can begin to make it your own and begin to notice the subtleties of the technique. So you do it another 1000 times and you actually understand it. And then you can learn another technique. He approached herbs in the same way and it made him an amazing herbalist.

When I mentioned this story to my mentor John, his reaction was that in Shamanic work, after the 1000th time, you really don't need another technique. If you pick one technique that is meaningful to you and do it for years, then you won't need another. It will take you where ever you need to go.

I was reminded of this rule this morning while studying in a friend's sukkah. He asked me if had done the four species. I replied that I hadn't.

There are certain things that make sense to us in the abstract, but because we didn't grow up with them, they seem weird. I didn't grow up shaking a Lulav and Etrog, so it's always felt weird to me and I don't do it.

He reminisced that the first time he had worn his kippah outside of yeshiva, he felt very strange: as if everyone was going to stare at him all the time. He quickly realized that here in Jerusalem, no one really noticed. And shortly after, it felt more natural to wear a kippah than to not. He had his own weird factor to get over.

He then pulled out his lulav and etrog and taught me a very powerful Lurianic kavannah (intention) to do while shaking them. For the first time in my life, I felt power in the ritual. The Holiday is over tomorrow, so I don't think I'll have much time to do more shaking, but next year I'll buy the four species and do some shaking. Maybe after the 1000 time, I'll begin to understand the ritual.

Amidah as reminders

2009-09-22T14:57:00.000-04:00

It always surprises me that there is no mention of fear in the Amidah. From a shamanic point of view, it's essential to check in with your fear everyday and be aware of it at all times. In Judaism, fear of God is the first step towards wisdom and is important for a number of reasons. I discussed one aspect of it in a prior post.

Tonight, while I was davening, I got to the prayer for healing and the fear overwhelmed me. I paused, felt it thoroughly, and then sent it love. Then I continued onward with the prayer. I am a healer, and I periodically go through fears related to healing (which is happening now), so it made perfect sense to feel the fear at the point.

Each of the 18 blessings links to a different things. The first three are praise, the next 12 are requests, and the last three are thanks. Perhaps we can use the middle blessings as reminders of where to check for our fear. Or to use them as reminders to check for how we are feeling on the different aspects of ourselves. It's worth studying in more depth.

Energy centers

2009-09-10T02:10:00.000-04:00

Over the past few years, I've gradually become aware of three major energy centers in the body: my forehead, my heart, and my lower abdomen (hara). Interestingly, each of these is considered the center in different traditions. In Jewish mysticism, the forehead is very important as one's inner light shines from there. There is a long tradition of reading letters and words on a person's forehead. As a persons spirit becomes stronger and more pure, the letters become clearer. The heart is a center of power for the shamanic tradition I've studied, and is the source for bringing love and healing into the world. The lower abdomen is called the Hara is Chinese medicine and is the center of power in the martial arts world.

Each is a different way of connected to my patients. When a patient first comes in and I begin to connect with them, I try to be aware of how I'm connecting to them. I'm always surprised that how I'm connecting is not what I expect. I expect an intellectual person will connect through the forehead, but then I find a heart connection with them. Even now, I feel the urge to define each connection and what it is used for, but the truth is that they are just three ways of doing the same things.

I see the primary roles of the shaman as threefold: gaining sight or knowledge, creating the space for healing, and action. All of these are directed towards healing and unifying with God. And all three energy centers can do all three tasks. Sometimes the heart connection is what's needed to move through a blockage, sometimes the forehead.

Jewish study and prayer often concentrate energy in my forehead, which makes me think too much. It takes an act of will while praying to bring the energy down. I often wonder if Jewish spiritual techniques make us tend towards overthinking, or if our value on education led to the most intellectual people developing the spiritual techniques, but either way, we are definitely encouraged and trained to think.

My general tendency, by nature or by being raised in an academic intellectual household, is to overthink. I've found that I often need to draw in the energy at my forehead. It feels like putting a metal plate over my forehead to keep the energy in. At that point, my heart radiates and gets stronger. I think much of my power lies in my heart, but the overthinking saps it and drains the power off. When I close my forehead, the energy can accumulate in my heart.

All shaman are different and it's important to know where your power lies. I'm curious what other people perceive as their energy centers and how they use that in healing. Let me know what you think.

Why we're not angels

2009-07-13T15:24:00.000-04:00

In Sanhedrin 42:1, it states:

אשר במאמרו ברא שחקים וברוח פיו כל צבאם חוק וזמן נתן להם שלא ישנו את תפקידם

In your speech, you created the heavens, and with the breath of your mouth, all the [heavenly] hosts. Rule and time you gave them so they will not change their role.

In Jewish thought, Angels have no free will. They are created with a certain role and are unable to change it, always fulfilling their assigned task. Humans, on the other hand, have free will, so we are able to change our roles and actions to, hopefully, improve ourselves. It's an important distinction. The goal of many shamanic traditions is to align oneself with the will of God so that one surrenders and one's actions become in perfect harmony with the universe. The difference is that we choose to do it, and Angels have no ability to do otherwise. It also gives us an adaptability to the ever changing world.

A central Kabbalistic tenet is that the world is in a state of continual creation. Our words and actions continually create and change the world, which makes our adaptability a much needed skill. As Heraclitus wrote in the fifth century BCE: No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he is not the same man. Even the things that we've done time and again are different each time we do them because we are different, and each interaction we have with another person is different, no matter how close we are or how frequently we see them, because we and they are different.

Studying last night, I applied these ideas to the concept of choseness. Jews consider themselves to be the chosen people, but in light of continual creation and constant change, that means that Jews are constantly being chosen. And as such, we are constantly being examined by God to see if we are worthy of the choice. It's not enough to rely on received wisdom and traditional practices (though we can learn a tremendous amount from them), but each Jew must strive to make the right choices to live a Just life so that we are worthy of being chosen. The world is constantly changing and we need to react to it with wisdom so that we can remain chosen.

Traditional wisdom teaches that we are stuck with the designation and will always remain the chosen people, but I can't imagine that is true. When someone gives you an honor and holds you up as an example of righteousness, it's not a license to do immoral things or to be discriminatory or to try to kill someone over a parking lot. Instead, it's a motivation to be more righteous and more just, to show that we are worthy of the designation. We're not angels, we are not created in only one way. We are continually creating the world, and so we must strive to make it the best world we can.

Mishnah Pe'ah 1:1 - Kindness is without measure

2009-05-22T12:13:00.000-04:00

מסכת פיאה פרק א

א,א אלו דברים שאין להם שיעור--הפיאה, והביכורים, והריאיון, וגמילות חסדים, ותלמוד תורה. ואלו דברים שאדם אוכל מפירותיהן בעולם הזה, והקרן קיימת לו לעולם הבא--כיבוד אב ואם, וגמילות חסדים, והבאת שלום בין אדם לחברו; ותלמוד תורה כנגד כולם.

Mishnah Pe'ah 1:1

These are the things that are without measure: charity, first fruits, pilgrimage to the temple, righteous deeds, and studying Torah. These are things that a man can eat of their fruits in this world, but their true fulfillment is in the world to come: honoring one's parents, righteous deeds, bringing peace between a man and his friend. Studying Torah is equal to them all.

This mishnah strikes me as a study guide: these are the things you should get out of studying Torah. If you study Torah and it doesn't make you into the kind of person who gives charity, does righteous deeds, and makes peace between a man and his friend, you're doing it wrong.

There are actually measures for many of these things in the Torah, but what the Mishnah is telling us is that you can do them as much as you would like and they are always a good thing. Interestingly, all of these things are done in relationship with others except studying Torah (which is usually done in hevruta, but not always). It shows how concerned Jews should be with their community and those around them who are in need.

Unfortunately, it's a lesson that many in this country, religious and secular, need to learn: that there is no limit to being kind to people.

Words create

2009-05-19T11:38:00.000-04:00

In class today, we talked about how ineffectual words can be to actually communicate. What I mean when I say something may or may not be what you think I mean. Even when we both think the communication was clear, there may be a complete lack of understanding.

In our tradition, words were used to create the world. We are in the image of God, so every time we speak, we create. Tradition teaches that the world is in a continual state of creation.

Words create worlds. When someone speaks, what do their words create in you? Isn't that how communication works: we create in someone else. It makes all of our words so much more powerful, and should make us so much more careful about what we say.

Tugging on your shirt

2009-05-18T02:07:00.000-04:00

Working with a client this past week, I found myself repeatedly using the analogy of a small child tugging on her shirt. There was a thought that kept going through her head repeatedly during the day and she wasn't sure how to make sense of it. The energetic was exactly like a small child: when they want your attention, they pull on the edge of your shirt. If you turn and acknowledge them, they usually are satisfied and go back to playing. But if you ignore them or don't actually listen to what they say, they continue to pull on your shirt more aggressively.

Such it was with this thought of hers. It was asking for her attention. She knew about it, but she hadn't really fully acknowledged it. As we continued to talk, She asked how one can more effectively acknowledge the thought? It's the difference between yes-ing the child and lowering yourself to the child's level to look her in the eyes and really listen to what she has to say. With this thought, my client needed to take some time during the day and dedicate it, without distraction, to dealing with the thought and the emotions associated with it.

For the emotions, more effectively acknowledging them means to feel them more intensely. If the emotion is tugging on your shirt, then the more intensely you can feel the emotion is the way to listen to it more effectively.

The souls are similar. There are times when they demand our attention and we'd best pay attention, but if we can give them a time during the day that we do nothing but interact with them, then they are less likely to need to demand our attention while we are doing other things.

So if you find a small thought or emotion tugging on your shirt, bend down, look it in the eyes, and listen.

Yibani ha mikdash

2009-05-17T07:37:00.000-04:00

יבנה המקדש!

There are many times during the prayers when we pray for the rebuilding of the holy temple. It's my very humble opinion that it might already have happened.

The temple was the home of the Shechina, the aspect of God that is most present in the world. When the temple was destroyed, the Shechina went into exile with us. And, presumably, when we came back to Israel, she came back with us.

As I've written in an earlier post, I experience the Shechina as the energy created between two people. When I came to Jerusalem, I felt the power of this city. So many Jews here, so much energy created when they study, pray, and live together.

Maybe the Shechina has already made her home here and we didn't notice? We have built Jerusalem for a third time as a Jewish city. We live in a world where Judaism is decentralized and can never be recentralized again without destroying what was created over the past 2000 years.

So maybe we have already built the third temple, though not as it once was in all it's splendor and glory. We have built it through so many small synagogues and minyanim. Together, they shelter the Shechina.

So maybe we should not be reciting "may we be blessed to merit the re-building of the temple". but instead we should be saying: "we give thanks that we have merited to live during the time of the third Jerusalem." בנינו בית המקדש Amen.

The balance of Rain

2009-05-05T12:55:00.000-04:00

In class today, we discussed a section of the Zohar where the sephirah of חסד-Hesed (loving kindness and compassion) is referred to as water. Hesed, in Kabbalah, is in tension with גבורה-Gevurah (strength and boundaries), which balances in תפארת-Tiferet (splendor). In the daily prayers, the prayer for rain is called גבורת גשמים (gevurat Geshamim), or the power of the rains. In this context we pray for the balance between gevruah and hesed.

One of my classmates pointed out that if there was just hesed and the water came all at once, it would be like a tsunami - incredibly destructive. If there was just gevurah, we would have a storm with no rain, which would also be destructive. So we require the balance between the two to enable the rain to come down in little drops (hesed held within gevurah) that are nourishing to us and the earth. We always need a balance between strength and compassion because too much of either doesn't heal anyone.

Piazetzner meditation

2009-04-18T14:48:00.000-04:00

I had referenced a meditation by the Piazetzner rebbe in another post and wanted to just spell out the meditation as I learned it.

This is a quieting meditation. The goal is to quiet the chatter of the mind and let the stillness fill the space.

Sit quietly and pay attention to your thoughts. Every time you think of something, say to yourself: I'm thinking of [Whatever it is you are thinking]. Try to be specific. An example would be: I'm thinking of doing the dishes, I'm thinking of cracks on the dishes, I'm thinking about cooking food for dinner tomorrow, etc... Every time you name what you are thinking about, you are decreasing it's power over you and your thoughts and drawing the power back to yourself.

The analogy that always comes to mind is of my children who are always coming up to show me things. If I try to push them away, they get annoyed and talk louder, but if I acknowledge what they are saying and pay a moments attention to them, they go back to playing and don't bother me anymore. In this meditation, we are doing the same thing to our thoughts.

Once your mind is clear. Recite the Shema silently. As you say each word, visualize it and allow it to drop into the still water of your mind. I always visualized this as watching the words slowly fall into a still pool of water.

As the last word drops into the water, ask for a gift or ask a question. Then wait and see what comes.

It's quite a wonderful meditation and especially good for finding insight in stressful times.

Love or Fear - It's your choice

2009-04-09T14:28:00.001-04:00

I talked to John the other night and he gave me some simple wisdom in response to my questions about how to choose the good inclination (יצר הטוב) over the bad one (יצר הרע).

He said it's really making a choice between fear and love. If you choose to live with love, then it will be easy to make the choices that nourish and support. If you choose to live with fear, then the choices will be ones of self-destruction.

So how, I asked, does one move from fear to love?

He answered that it's about learning to send love to your fears. Simple to say, hard to do. The example we talked about was dealing with old memories of times that were dominated by fear. We can't change who we were, but we can change our attachment to the memory.

In this particular memory, I had not realized how scared I was at the time it happened, but in retrospect, it was very clear to me that I was being controlled by my fear. I concentrated on the memory and then threw my arms around my young self to send love. As I did, the feeling of the memory changed. I think this is one I'm going to have to go back to a few times, but the fear was starting to change. And in doing so, I'm changing who I am now by changing my attachment to who I was.

I'm learning to send love to my fear, and in that way, give power to my self-nourishing inclination and remove it from my self-destructive one.

The warp and the Woof

2009-04-01T14:14:00.000-04:00

warp and woof
The essential foundation or base of any structure or organization; from weaving, in which the warp — the threads that run lengthwise — and the woof — the threads that run across — make up the fabric: “The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are the warp and woof of the American nation.”
warp and woof. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/warp and woof (accessed: April 01, 2009).

I had an interesting conversation with my friend Yael today and it got me thinking about the warp and the woof of Judaism. The background is that I have been thinking (again) about going to rabbinical school and coming to the conclusion (again) that it's probably not the best place for me. As a friend said a long time ago: "I think you wouldn't learn what you are looking for in Rabbinical school, and the teachers wouldn't know how to teach you." I guess there are not many places to go to school to learn to be a Rabbi-healer, so I've decided I need to figure out what I think a rabbi should know and then put together a plan for learning it.

There are two aspects of my Judaism that make it difficult for me to fit into a standard program. The first is the shamanic way I experience Judaism and texts, as I've written about on this blog. The second is that I tend to approach things from the heart. Jews, especially the Yeshivot here in Jerusalem, tend to hyperfocus on the Talmud. I tend to think of the Talmud as Jewish Koan study and the result is critical thinkers who excel at dissecting texts and arguments in a relatively cold way.

I tend to approach things from my heart which means that I'm more interested in how to connect with the text, if it has power, and how it interacts with my life and thoughts. Talmud study, as I've experienced it so far, is very intellectual by it's nature, so the difficulty is learning to understand the complexity of it without getting lost in the abstract nature of the arguments.

In thinking of what to study, I came up with a list of the major texts: Tanach, Mishnah, Talmud, Shulchan Aruch, Zohar, and Hassidut. I thought to pick a starting point then just start going through the texts. The warp.

Yael looked at it and remarked, well that about covers Judaism. She was right, I had a simple list in which each could be a lifetime's study. She suggested that I pick topics and then follow them across the texts, learning each text as it arose in the context of the issue. The woof.

They are basically two different approaches to the texts. One focuses on how to understand and learn the texts, the other focuses on how to explore issues through the texts. I think they are both valuable, and the question is how to balance them to maximize learning.

I think there are certain texts, like the Mishnah and the Tanach, that are foundational to the whole tradition and need to be read from start to finish. But the Talmud is probably best done by topic.

I need a method for learning texts that results in a compassionate, heart-centered person, rather than a hyper-focusing one. If people have thoughts on how to do that, please let me know.

Hungry rats 1, Overthinking Students 0

2009-03-27T05:01:00.001-04:00

I found the following quote in Learning How to Think by Nocholas D. Kristof. The editorial is about how predictions by expert pundits were often wrong. It seems that the more famous you are, then the more likely you are to be wrong, and that expertise is not a good indicator for making accurate predictions. He wrote:

In another, a white rat in a maze repeatedly beat groups of Yale undergraduates in understanding the optimal way to get food dropped in the maze. The students overanalyzed and saw patterns that didn’t exist, so they were beaten by the rodent.

I think this is a vote for viewing the world as it is, not as we want it to be. As I wrote in an earlier post, it's important to accurately describe what's going on while limiting, as much as possible, any diagnosis. If one can use neutral words to describe the sensations or experiences then one will be led to a more accurate account of the experience, which will then help one to be more in touch with one's soul.

Of course, my overly analytical mind wants to know if it's important that it's a white rat in the study? Why not a gray rat? Or a brown one?

How you describe yourself determines who you are

2009-03-20T07:42:00.000-04:00

I used to be an auto mechanic and every once and a while a friend had a car question for me. This morning, I helped acquaint a friend with her new car. She had never owned a car before and was interested in what was under the hood.

We popped the hood and as I pointed out each of the mechanical systems. She asked questions and wanted to know what kind of maintenance each needed. Mostly she was worried about how often she will need to check her oil and top off her fluids.

At one point, I think it was when I was describing the cooling system, she said something to the effect of: "So if there's a problem there, I'll go in to my mechanic and tell him my radiator's broken and he needs to replace this part?" I stopped her right there. "Don't tell your mechanic what's wrong with the car," I said, "tell him what you are hearing or experiencing in the car, and let him determine what's wrong. You are not the expert, he is." It's something I've told patients before: don't arrive with a diagnosis, come in with a set of problems, tell your healer how you make sense of things and understand them, but always start with what you are feeling before you try to make sense of it.

What I realized today is that this is another way to get in touch with your soul. Who we think we are often prevents us from seeing who we really are, but if we get in the habit of accurately describing ourselves, we can avoid that pit-fall.

Tommy Thompson part II

2009-03-08T13:56:00.000-04:00

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of attending two seminars taught by Tommy Thompson. He teaches Alexander Technique and is a true healer. The first seminar was just for Alexander teachers and I wrote about in an earlier post. The second was for the general public, and I was one of the few who took both. His approach is relatively unique (I’m told) in the Alexander world, and I found a lot of wisdom in his approach and his style. What follows in this post are some of his teachings which particularly impressed me.

He taught that our responses to the world are often shaped by who we think we are as opposed to who we actually are. When one responds to something, one reaches for who one thinks one is, which may not be who one actually is. We need to be open to what is really going on, not what we think or expect to be happening. His model is the physical body, but this is very true for all of our interactions in the world. It’s very true, I would add, in shamanic or spiritual experience. We have “peak” spiritual experiences and then seek to repeat those experiences, often expecting the next shamanic experience to be the same as the last. But it never seems to work that way. Sometimes there are similarities, but usually the expectations prevent us from perceiving what’s actually happening and make it harder to have shamanic experiences.

Tommy talked about this as “Faulty sensory appreciation”. He explained it to mean that where you are is not where you think you are. Alexander technique is about retraining and activating ones proprioceptors so that our perception of where we are and how our body is acting matches what our body really is actually doing. (A proprioceptor is defined as a sensory receptor that receives stimuli from within the body, esp. one that responds to position and movement.)

He continued that we need to have the experience, not react to the experience we’re having. We can change the quality of our experience by saying to ourselves “This is me having the experience of…”. And in this way, we focus our attention on what we are doing instead of reacting to it. My understanding of this was that by verbalizing what we are doing, we distract the conscious mind much in the same was as the Piazetzner meditation works (I'll write about this in another post). His description was to “become part of the experiences you are already having.”

In discussing his Alexander work, he gave a lesson in how to teach in general. If you try to get a person to conform to what you expect, the person will get an idea of what to do, but it won’t be the awareness that they need. It won’t be the internal awareness that generates the change. We need to meet the person where they are and offer alternatives, not try to force the person to change in the manner in which I think is best.

If one acts on an expectation, one’s own or another persons, or what experience has taught you from unreliable sensory perception and diminished kinesthetic cues, then one is not relating to reality, one is relating to one’s expectations. An example is when you reach down to pick up a suitcase, expecting it to be heavy, only to realize it is empty. You need to divest yourself from being who you think you need to be and you can be yourself.

I would add that it's important to always know that our perceptions of the world are always changing. If we react to things according to our experience, we may be reacting in a way appropriate for who we used to be but not who we are now. And if we continue to react in the same ways, then we actually prevent ourselves from growing and lock ourselves into one way of being. The experience of "dying" is very common in shamanic experience, and it can be understood here as reaching a point where we need to spiritually die and be reborn in order to let go of our old way of relating to the world in order to move forward.

A less dramatic way to approach this problem in to experience our emotions and not react to them in our usual way. In parenting, I find that often it’s best if I am non-reactive to my child and let them work through their emotions without influence from my emotional reactions. My sense from Tommy was that he felt that we should approach ourselves in this way so that we experience ourselves without judgment which allows us to experience ourselves without the weight of our own expectations.

I was very impressed with Tommy’s teachings and with his approach to healing. So much so that I had a very interesting response. I wondering what would have happened had I met Tommy earlier in life, before I went to acupuncture school. Would I have then studied Alexander technique first? Or is it the experiences I’ve had as a result of going through acupuncture school that allowed me to recognize what we was teaching? My own approach to these thoughts is usually to have faith that I am supposed to be an acupuncturist and if I was supposed to be an Alexander teacher, I would have met Tommy before I started studying Chinese Medicine.

I also wondered if I should start to study Alexander technique with Tommy (if that becomes geographically feasible at some point)? I realized that I don't need to study an entirely new system to be able to use his teachings to find wisdom in what I do already.

I left their wondering if there is a way to do Alexander technique on the soul? Is there a way to activate the proprioceptors of the soul, making us more in tune with our soul and inner being. To know when we are in touch with our soul and to know when we are basing our actions on experiences rooted in faulty spiritual sensory perception. I think Tommy’s answer would be that as there is no difference between the body, mind, and soul, that when we do that on the body, then we are becoming more in tune with our souls. Though I’ll have to ask him.

Energy mirrors

2009-03-08T13:55:00.000-04:00

Something interesting happened today during a treatment. Often, I am able to feel, physically, what my patient is feeling. Today, as I felt it, I tried to work on it within myself. I could feel two things happening at once, my energy was shifting within myself and the energy was shifting within my client. There were times when I needed to nudge a little on one side or the other, but the two were changing together.

The sensation of feeling two things at the same time was also noteworthy. I’ve felt it before, though usually it’s when I’m trying to work on myself and using someone else as a mirror. I connect with the other person and then try to connect with myself through them. That allows me to see myself from another perspective and then work on myself. Today, I was using myself as a mirror for the other person to work on them through me.

Giving the Material Snake Power

2009-03-03T15:55:00.000-05:00

In a teaching from the R. Moshe Cordovera (Ramak), I found the following passage from the Zohar (Part II, Shemot, 17b)

R. Yossi went out to the road, and R. Acha ben Ya'acov went with him. As they were walking, R. Yossi lapsed into silence and his thoughts turned to matters of the world, but R. Acha continued to think about matters regarding the Torah (as they walked). R. Yossi turned and saw a snake coming after him. R. Yossi said to R. Acha, Do you see the snake running after me? R. Acha said that he did not see the snake. R. Yossi started to run and the snake ran after him. R. Yossi fell down and blood flowed from his nose. He heard it being said "Only you I knew from all the families of the earth, thus I call you to account for all of your sins." (Amos 3:2) R. Yossi said, If this is how it is for a moment, then how much more so would you despair from one hour thus.

Cordovero uses these verses as a proof text for his argument. He states that when a person does a mitzvah, they draw down "shefa" into the world. So we learn from the above passage that it's important for all Jews to constantly do mitzvot so as to continue to draw down shefa from God. If we were to stop doing so, there would be problems in the world from the lack of shefa.

He also uses it for a later argument that tzaddikim draw down a greater share of shefa as they are at a higher level. If they stop doing their work, then there is a greater deficiency in the world, so it is more signifigant.

My reading of the source text is slightly different. My reading of the text is that R. Yossi began to think of concerns in this world until they began to consume him and have power over him. For someone at his spiritual level, it makes sense that the fears would externalize and take the form of a snake only visible to him, which chased him until he fell and hurt himself. When he fell, he received a teaching from the angels. We never learn what happened to the snake, though presumably it disappeared when he fell.

In this reading, the sin of R. Yossi was getting too caught up in worldly matters such that they held power over him. Jews live in the world. There is no tradition of monastic ascetisism within Judaism. It is considered a commandment to get married and have children, which, as all parents know, firmly grounds one in the world and gives one lots of worldly things to think about. R. Yossi's mistake was to let the worldly matters control and drive him.

Living in the modern world, there are many times when I see clients who are being driven by the need for money and their busy schedules. Their "snakes" are their date books and emails. The fears drive them forward faster and faster until they eventually develope health problems which lead them into my office. Those problems often stop them in their tracks and force them to reflect and consider, which can open them to the spiritual world.

In the Zohar passage, the message R. Yossi heard was that Jews are punished more for their sins because they are the chosen people. He understood it to mean that if he was caught up in the physical world for just a few moments and had such a strong reaction, then what could he expect if he spent an hour controlled by his material fears? Or days? Or months?

There is clearly a place in the Jewish world to think about our worldly needs, but one needs to be careful that they don't control us or have power over us. Otherwise they will drive us to self-destruction. But when we do fall down, we need to take that opportunity to grow.

The value of Silence

2009-03-03T13:49:00.000-05:00

I heard a wonderful piece of advice recently that came from a friend in Boston:

"You should wait to speak until you are unable to prevent yourself from speaking."

She explained it as meaning you shouldn't say the first thing that comes to mind, but listen to the conversation very carefully, engage fully in what's happening around you, and then speak when you really have something to say.

My take on it is always be aware of our motivations when speaking. Are we saying something because we genuinely want to help the other person? Are we speaking to create connection between ourselves and others? Are we speaking to gratify our own egos? Are we speaking to dominate another person? Are we using what we say to hide ourselves from others and deflect the conversation away from ourselves? Are we speaking because the souls are speaking through us and guiding our voices? All of these, and many more, are possibilities when we speak.

The sages often talk about nullification of one's ego as a part of spiritual work, and I think one of the easiest tools to that end is to listen carefully to what we say. Every word that comes our of our mouths has the potential to create or destroy relationships and worlds. Examining the words we use will let us know if we are speaking for our own benefit, or the benefit of the world and God.

Proverbs 27:19 - Part III - Tears

2009-02-25T13:34:00.000-05:00

יט כַּמַּיִם הַפָּנִים לַפָּנִים כֵּן לֵב הָאָדָם לָאָדָם.
19 As face answers to face in water, so does one man's heart to another. (JPS Translation)
19. As the water of the face is to the face, thus the heart of man is to a man. (My translation)

My last thoughts on this piece are from my own interpretation. I interpret “water of the face” as tears, so the question becomes what is the relationship between tears and the face? It then follows to ask what that teaches us about the relationship of a man’s heart to a man?

Following on the earlier discussion, seeing tears on someone’s face is a quick way to feel compassion for someone. It represents an opening in their heart, and it causes an opening in your heart and allows an opportunity for real connection. Just as the tears open the face to compassion, thus a man’s heart opens the way towards compassion for another.

But that is based more on the prior interpretations rather than the text itself. The text would indicate that tears have a special relationship with the face. Tears often come of their own accord, and are expressions of strong emotions. We cry in great happiness or great sadness and the tears become the accent point on our face, no matter how demonstrative our faces are of what we are truly feeling.

The heart likewise has a way of showing itself through into our actions and being. No matter what choices we make with our minds about how to behave or act, our heart will always make itself known through our actions.

Another way of looking at it would be to work backwards by looking at the heart first. Our hearts give us direction, and show us the way in the world. Love and compassion come from God and flow through our hearts to teach us how to behave in the world. In this understanding, tears become the tool to teach us about our feelings and give us direction. We can learn about our gifts and what our tikkun is in the world by what moves us to tears. Compassion opens gates within us, so the tears can lead us forward to repairing the world.

Proverbs 27:19 - Part II - Ba'al Shem Tov

2009-02-25T01:58:00.000-05:00

"When a man stands by the water, he sees his shadow large upon the water. But when a man lowers himself down, the shadow is made smaller. And the more he lowers himself, the more his shadow becomes smaller and smaller until his face upon the water. At that point, the face of his shadow meets the face of the man.

Thus it is with the heart of a man to a man. When a man thinks of himself as great, his friend also thinks of himself as great. But when a man humbles himself before his friend, then his friend will also humble himself until there is nothing but humility between them. And between them is an equality and an equilibrium and by this means they becomes friends who never part."

- Sefer Ba'al Shem Tov, Ki Tessa 15

The BSh'T takes the traditional idea of others reflecting ourselves to a new level. The water becomes the canvas for our shadow, which is only an image of ourselves. When we touch the water, then we encounter our true selves, but to do so requires us to be humble and small. So too with our friends: when we are humble then we can lower ourselves down to the level of real connection with our friends. If we are prideful, then we can expect that from our friends, or if we are hateful, or devious, or any of the myriad of negative emotions. But if we are humble and loving, then we will get that in return from those around us. Implicit in all this is the idea that we can only find our true selves while we are in relation to others.

The question arose in Beit Midrash about what happens when we become small, and our friends respond by become big. An easy example is when two people meet and one is quiet and the other talks a lot. The talker may like talking or he may be talking more to fill the space created by the silence. In this case, there is no equilibrium, no equal balance, and the relationship has changed to one of a different sort.

My first response was to think that they are no longer truly relating to each other. That the relationship has shifted from one of friendship to one of dominance. This is more of an I-it relationship where one person is treating the second as an "other" and not as a full person. Going back to the earlier interpretation of the text, the face of both people become obscured, with neither person showing their true face, as their interactions are determined by their role in the dynamic and not by who they really are.

The BSh'T is challenging us to rise above this dynamic and, with humility, to transcend it. If both people are humble, then neither sees themselves as better than the other, and both are free to show their true selves, no longer allowing the relationship to define them, but to let their own true selves define the relationship instead.

When I thought further on this, I realized that in all relationships, there are times when one person has a larger role in the relationship that the other, or when one person is leading more and the other following. This is a natural part of any relationship. So there is a quality to the relationship that the BSh'T is referring to that is not necessarily about dominance, but about the times when the people are no longer relating to each other, when they are seeing the shadows of each other, and not the actual person in front of them.

A modern psychologist, John Gottman wrote that the thing that really determines when a relationship will fall apart is contempt - when one person loses respect for the other and no longer takes them seriously. My own experience with this is that a person starts to treat the person as an image, not as the person themselves. They listen to what the other person says, but hear something completely different. They've taken their face out of the water and can only see shadows.

This discussion reminds me of good teachers, those that are able to really engage their students without arrogance. They listen to what each students says with a serious ear, and welcome the students contributions without judgment. Just because they are more knowledgeable than the students doesn't mean that the students have nothing to offer and I'm always impressed to hear teachers thank their students for new insights on material the teacher has been studying for years. Their humility allows them to bring out the true face of their students. My mentor John once told me that he never wants to teach someone to become a clone of him, he wants to teach people how to be themselves, only more so. I think that embodies the ideas I'm talking about.

The BSh'T elevated the idea of seeing one's reflection in another person to a moral imperative. He challenges us to be so humble that we are able to truly connect to other people, and our humility induces humility in the other person until we are each able to show who we really are, and in that way elevate the world to a higher level.

Proverbs 27:19 - Part I - Water as a mirror

2009-02-24T15:09:00.000-05:00

Today in beit midrash we studied the following passage from Proverbs 27:19. We focused on verse 19, but the first two are included for context.

יז בַּרְזֶל בְּבַרְזֶל יָחַד וְאִישׁ יַחַד פְּנֵי רֵעֵהוּ.
17 As Iron sharpens iron; so a man sharpens the wit of his friend.

יח נֹצֵר תְּאֵנָה יֹאכַל פִּרְיָהּ וְשֹׁמֵר אֲדֹנָיו יְכֻבָּד.
18 He who tends a fig-tree will enjoy it's fruit; and he who cares for his master shall be honored.

יט כַּמַּיִם הַפָּנִים לַפָּנִים כֵּן לֵב הָאָדָם לָאָדָם.
19 As face answers to face in water, so does one man's heart to another. (JPS Translation)
19. As the water of the face is to the face, thus the heart of man is to a man. (My translation)

It was a very interesting discussion and I was left with three very different ideas.

The first comes from Rashi. He interpreted the verse in two sections:

כמים - הללו הפנים שאתה מראה לתוכן הן מראות לך
Like water - That face that you see within it, it reflects/will show you.

כן לב האדם לאדם - חברו לפי מה שאדם יודע שחבירו אוהבו כן הוא מראה לו פנים
Thus the heart of man is to a man - Friendship is according to how much a man knows that his friend loves him, and he will show his (true) face accordingly (my interpretation). Literally: a friend according to what a man knows that his friend loves him, thus he will show him his face.

The other commentators build on this theme. They take the water to mean a mirror that reflects a person back at himself, and the heart to mean that our friends reflect ourselves back at ourselves. If we feel hate or love for another person, they will probably feel the same way as we do.

I read, in a management book many years ago, that when one is frustrated with an employee, then that employee is probably frustrated with you. And it's a good time to sit and talk with that person and work things out. Here was the very same idea expressed over the past thousand years of Jewish commentary. One of those wow moments for me.

Another way to look at this was to know that we can use our relationships with others to reflect back on ourselves. If everyone is angry at you, then chances are you have some anger issues within yourself and it's a good time to reflect. There is a Hawaiian form of Shamanism called Ho'o-Pono-Pono, of which I've heard that one of the main principles is to find the patient's disharmony inside of yourself, correct it there, and then it will be healed in the patient.

In this sense, if a person wants to do a tsuvah between himself and another person, a good way to do that would be to that would be to find the issue inside of yourself, heal that, and then see how the relationship changes. An example would be if two people are angry at one another, but one of those people is able to work through their anger, and transform it, then probably the relationship can be healed. We can only fix the things over which we have power, and mostly that means the things within ourselves. We can't wait for another person to change, we need to change ourselves.

The next post will be about where the Ba'al Shem Tov takes this idea.

Amulet making part II - the difficulties of connection

2009-02-24T13:46:00.000-05:00

As I wrote earlier, I am in the process of making an amulet for someone I know who is going through a tough time. Two weeks ago I completed the brass prototype of the design (pictures below). I made a prototype to learn the skills needed to make jewelry and to see how the design would look. It came out pretty well, if I do say so myself. So this past week I bought some silver and began work on the real thing.

While I was working, I took out a picture of the person for whom the amulet is being made and placed it in front of me . My thinking was to connect to her energy while I was creating the amulet so it would be linked to her. In creating the prototype amulet, I snapped two hacksaw blades (they are very, very thin). In the first twenty minutes of working on this amulet, I snapped six blades. My cuts were uneven and ragged, and nothing seemed to be going well. I stopped working and took a moment to try to figure out what was going on - my body was relaxed, my hands were soft, but my energy was crazy.

I realized I connected to her and had drawn her energy into the room with me. She is in a chaotic and crazy place in her life where things just don't seem to be working out as she wants them too, and that was effecting my work on the amulet. Once I realized that's what was going on, I was able to change my connection to one of healing. In that way, the making of the amulet became a tikkun for her, not just an object of power.

It was still difficult to complete the cutting, but I was able to do so without breaking any more blades and emerged with something I was happy with. The more I worked, the more focused I had became, and the smoother things went. I am hoping the energetic of 'chaos to focus' will stick with the amulet and help her along.

The front:

(The letters are done in ancient Hebrew writing, and I have a lot to learn about how to photograph jewelry - sorry!)

Back:

An interesting encounter with a Muslim Mystic

2009-01-13T14:34:00.000-05:00

I had a very interesting experience today. I attended a lecture by an Israeli-Arab Sufi mystic who does a lot of cross cultural talks. He was talking about the History of Islam and while he lectured, I felt no power or energy coming from him. He began to talk about how Muslim's pray and people were very curious about the bows (he had been describing it poorly). So he got up and demonstrated how it's done by going through the beginning of one of the prayers.

Immediately, the energy in the room changed. A conduit opened above him and a soul entered the room. He prayed for about two minutes and then returned to his lecture. I focused on the soul that had entered to see what it was. It occurred to me that his gift/power was in his prayers, not in his lectures.

I was in a very open environment, so a minute or two later, I asked him who had come in. At first he misunderstood the question, but then I rephrased it and he got what I meant (though I don't think anyone else in the room understood what I was talking about). He replied that Muslims welcome Eliyahu HaNavi when they pray. I replied that it didn't feel like the Eliahu that I'd met before. He smiled at me and continued with his lecture.

At that point, the spirit came over the me and began to circle me, faster and faster. It wasn't threatening, just moving around me. I felt myself, as I've felt before, as a Chasid: having a long beard and Peyot, and wearing a black coat and hat. The spirit circled me for awhile, then gradually faded as I disconnected with it.

I don't really know what to make of it all, but I thought it was interesting.

Yod

2009-01-11T05:36:00.000-05:00

My Chevruta Dov, who is a scribe, wrote a letter for me a few weeks ago. I had asked him to write me a letter that I could then focus on and use to help "see" better. He wrote me a Yod.

When I focused on the letter, it showed me that it was composed on three parts: the crown on top, the body, and leg, each a separate gate. I began with the leg. As I focused into it, I felt myself turning quickly to either the right or the left. It was like a prism, that instantly shifted the direction of the light that entered it. The body was filled with the swirling energies of creation, and the crown on top was filled with the pure light of God.

Putting it all together, I see the letter as representing powerful change done either in the direction of God or under the direction of God.

When you add vowel sounds to it, it changes the emphasis between the three parts. The different vowel sounds change the emphasis between the three parts. Though kamatz (the ah sound that looks like a T) brings out only the top two: the light of God and the power of creation, which makes sense, as that is, when pronounced, a name of God.

When I came back to Dov, excited by what I'd seen, he told me that the Yod is usually thought of as Keter-Hochma-Binah, the three highest sephirot.

He then told me that what he'd actually written was a vav! I realized I had looked at it quickly, then pictured a yod in my head when I meditated. So now I have to find out what comes from the vav. More next week!

Baal Shem Tov and Pulses

2008-12-31T04:32:00.000-05:00

This is a story that has come up in my life in three different unrelated contexts recently. When that happens, I realize it must be important. This version is from The Wings of the Sun by R. Avraham Greenbaum.

Another English version of the story, which is slightly longer, can be found in The Light and Fire of the Baal Shem Tov By Yitzhak Buxbaum.

"...Another story tells of a prominent doctor who had come to visit the wife of the local lord.

The countess lavishly praised the Baal Shem Tov as a great man and an expert healer. The doctor asked the countess to send for him. When he came, the doctor asked him if it was true that he was an expert healer. `True,' replied the Baal Shem Tov. `Where did you learn? Who was your professor?' asked the doctor. `God taught me,' replied the Baal Shem Tov. The doctor laughed heartily and asked him if he knew how to take someone's pulse. The Baal Shem Tov said, `I myself suffer from a certain problem. You take my pulse and see if you can find what it is, and I'll take your pulse and see what it reveals.

The doctor took the Baal Shem Tov's pulse and could tell that he had some kind of problem but he did not know what it was, because the truth was that the Baal Shem Tov was sick - he was love-sick for God (cf. Song of Songs 2:5), but this was beyond the doctor's level of understanding. After this the Baal Shem Tov took the doctor's hand and examined his pulse. The Baal Shem Tov turned to the countess and asked, `Have you had a burglary here?' The Baal Shem Tov listed a number of precious items. `Yes!' replied the countess, `It's some years since they were stolen and I have no idea where they are.' `Send to the doctor's lodgings,' said the Baal Shem Tov, `and open his chest. You'll find everything there, because I can feel this theft in the doctor's pulse.' The countess sent to search the doctor's lodgings and found the stolen goods, as the holy Baal Shem Tov had said, and the doctor left in disgrace" (Shevachey HaBaal Shem Tov #206.)

Responses to a flood

2008-12-31T02:31:00.000-05:00

I've always been fascinated with the idea of Jewish Archetypes. I think we could gain a lot in understanding our actions by seeing our own lives reflected in the stories and patterns of our ancestors. As I discovered last year, when I began to study texts in greater depth, the characters and choices of our ancestors are complex and often difficult to understand. The stories I understood, and last studied, when I was a child have a much greater depth than my childhood understanding could comprehend. Now that I study the stories as an adult, I see there are patterns and stories in our ancestors that replay themselves today, and maybe understanding the patterns will help to do Tikkun Olam.

I am not sure that I am the right person to prepare a comprehensive analysis of Jewish archetypes, but I think it's a good idea. So I'll send it out in the Universe and maybe it will germinate in the someone else for awhile until it grows into something or is passed along. (I also don't feel that I've studied enough to add to this discussion, but that's really an example of giving away my power - check in later for another post on that topic.)

It's raining in Jerusalem today. Due to soil conditions, an overabundance of development, and a lack of good drainage, whenever it rains, the runoff on the sides of roads tends to be mini-floods. This got me thinking about Jonah and Noah.

I had a patient awhile back who was re-playing the story of Jonah. There was something within herself that she was being asked to do that she absolutely didn't want to do, so she was spending a lot of time and energy running away from it. When I would connect to her, the vision I had was either her standing on the deck of a ship during a storm (when her symptoms were bad), to hiding in a storage room (when her symptoms were decreased).

I had no idea what God was asking her to do, but it became clear to me that for her to get better she needed to jump overboard in a raging storm and get swallowed by a fish for a few days. The first required courage in that she was essentially going to have to choose to allow her old self to die (a common shamanic metaphor - the shaman needs to die to move forward). The second would be enormously painful as she went though a near death experience in a cold dark place. But when she got spit up by the fish on the shore, things were going to be a whole lot better.

Today weather got me thinking about Noah too. In that case, Noah listened to what God asked and was able to ride out the flood in an ark. I can't imagine it was comfortable living in a huge boat filled with animals for a little over a year. Nor can it have been easy to watch your entire community, and everything you know, get wiped out. Noah also went through a "death" of sorts and emerged a changed man.

Comparing the two:
Noah listened to what God wanted and rode our the storm on top of the water.
Jonah ran away, got tossed around on a boat until he jumped into the water and rode out the storm in the water and in a fish.
Noah went through the change with his family.
Jonah went through it alone.
Noah listened and went through the storm with God.
Jonah ran away and caused the storm.
Noah accepted the change at the end and became a new person, though somewhat of a drinker.
Jonah didn't accept the change and did what he was asked but resented it.

If we are to think of these as Archetypes, we need to look at what they can teach us about our own lives and the problems we face. Both of these men were challenged by God. Is our response to our challenges to run away or to figure out what to do? Is the storm part of the challenge or is it caused by our response to it? Are we willing to let the challenge change us or are we going to resist to the end, long after the change has happened? How do we involve others in our challenges? Are we going to maintain our community connections or try to go it alone? Do we keep our problems to ourselves or do we let our challenges cause problems to others (the sailors on the ship Jonah was on)? Or do we involve others to help them ride through a crisis?

The Archetypal part of this is to ask if these behaviors go together. If we identify as a Jonah or as a Noah, can we use that to understand our behavior? And most importantly, can we use that to change and grow? A Jonah might suddenly understand why they cause problems to others when faced with a challenge and try to head off the storm by spending more time with themselves. A Noah might try to involve others in help her to meet her challenges instead of trying to go it alone.

This is just a brief sketch of what two Jewish Archetypes might look like. These two stories are very short and incomplete, so I wouldn't think that a person would be primarily one of them, but a person might have a bit of Noah in him, and that might be useful to understand. I'm very pragmatic about this and if they can help us to understand and grow, then it's something worth pursuing.

Amulet making part I

2008-12-27T16:21:00.000-05:00

I've begun work on an amulet. I had a feeling that this was the right time to do it and called a friend in the art world. She gave me the name of a jeweler who gives private lessons and the two of us hit it off immediately. I had thought of making amulets in the past, but things never seemed to work out. Now the path opened for me very simply, so I am assuming that this is the right time to do it.

I'm at the beginning of the process, but it's very interesting to learn a new skill at this point in my life. I've worked with tools all my life, and silversmithing is not that different, everything is just much, much smaller. I've come up with a very simple design for the amulet I want to make and the first step was cutting a small triangle out of a sheet of brass. (Brass is for the model, Silver will be for the amulet itself.)

Holding the sheet of brass and running the tiny hacksaw blade up and down was not an entirely new skill, but my attitude was wholly different. Amulets are about channeling spiritual energy into an object of power. In the past, when I have "charged up" objects, I have held them in my hands and done the equivalent of a healing on them: connect to Shechina, connect to the object, and let the energy flow through me into the object. In this case, I am creating the object, so I need to make sure that I am transmitting energy every moment that I work on it.

I try to always work on the amulet in a healing mode. Usually my healing is very quiet with my hands kept still while on a person's body, tuning in to the patient's energy. Jewelry making is very different, every moment is concentrated on moving the tools in the proper direction using good technique. For me, it's a healing in motion where the only person in the room is me and the presence of the Shechina comes from my focus on my work, not from my connection with the client.

As I worked, every few moments I would have to stop and make sure that my body was relaxed. The focus in learning the new skill was causing me to tense up my whole body, especially my shoulders and neck. Then I would need to breath deeply and allow the energy to flow as I began to work again. It makes me realize how tense I must have been in the past when I've done physical work.

The hacksaw required a softness of hand that I'm not used to. Carpentry taught me to let the saw do the work instead of my muscles, but with thin blades, any tension or misdirection in my hand would snap the blade. The lines I was cutting were tiny without the margin of error I'm used to. Then I needed to breath and relax again, letting the Shechina flow through me.

If I get in the habit of always working on the amulet in a spiritual way, then it will come naturally as I continue to do the work. My focus is intense now because it is such a new skill. But as I get more practiced, it will become harder to maintain the focus and the energy. I don't know if I will make one amulet or many, or even if I'll complete the one I'm working on, but it gives proof to the idea that people don't need to be healers to bring God into the world. Anything that we do can be done with connection to the shamanic realm, it's just requires practice.

My Thoughts on Ritual Impurity

2008-12-22T15:03:00.001-05:00

One of the restrictions on Cohanim is that we are not allowed to be in the presence of a dead body, which is considered ritually unclean. Growing up this mostly meant I stayed out of graveyards and sat in a shed next to the funeral home with my father when my Aunt died.

I never understood why I did these things, though I did know that on the few occasions when I went through graveyards, I felt uncomfortable and had the feeling that it was wrong to be there. (Notably only recent graves; when I've walked through colonial era graveyards, I experienced no discomfort.) A few years ago, I attended a wake for the brother-in-law of a close friend. I looked at the body out of curiosity, but then stayed as far away from it as possible - it just felt wrong. I could feel the soul of the deceased was present in the room, which was normal, but the body itself made me feel uneasy.

Two years ago, my dog died. She had been with me for almost 12 years and fought against cancer for five months when we decided that the pain was too much and it was only going downhill from there. We brought her to the vet and as she was put to sleep, my wife and I cried. I felt her ancestors come into and fill the room immediately before the injection. They gathered her to them as she died, and surprisingly quickly, they took her to the other side and were gone from the room. We sat there crying and then I suddenly looked at my wife and said that we had to leave. Her body, which only a minute or two early had been filled with life, was now empty. And impure.

A few days later, when I picked up her body to take it to bury, it was no longer impure, energetically I felt nothing.

At the moment of death, there was a particular energetic about it that felt like this was a vessel for life that had none in it. It's very hard to describe as it's not anything I've felt since. It's hard to base my thoughts on a major tenant of Judaism on a single experience, but when I look at other examples of ritual impurity, it seems to make sense.

In modern times, menstrual blood, or Niddah, is a good example of ritual impurity. When women have their periods, they are ritually impure until a period of time passes (seven days after the last drop of blood) at which point the woman needs to immerse herself in a Mikvah (ritual bath) to become pure again. There are many Jewish men and women who do not touch members of the opposite sex because they are worried that the woman is in a state of Niddah and may pass along the ritual impurity.

Menstrual blood is that same state as I describe earlier: it is a vessel for life that has none in it. The egg has the potential for life, but there is no life there. When it is discharged from the body, the blood would have the same potential. The seven days might be the time period that it takes for the impurity to wear off, so to speak, just as it did with my dog.

Different people have different gifts, and I think feeling ritual purity has not been one of mine, or at least it's nothing I've focused on. I don't know if I felt it so acutely with my dog due to the intensity of my emotions, or if it was because it was the first time I had ever been with someone as they died.

I suspect that there are people who feel impurity very acutely and I think the Jewish laws on ritual purity originated in a person or persons with that gift. They then got canonized and expanded by people with a more intellectual gift. I need to study all of the other instances of ritual impurity (such as Tzora'at) in the Torah to find out if my ideas fits in the other cases.

A first look at Tzora'at

2008-12-22T14:14:00.000-05:00

I took a few minutes today to look over the mention of Tzora'at in the Torah. Tzora'at refers to some sort of skin disease. The usual translation is leprosy, but from what I understand, it is not known what disease it is exactly. The discussion is found in Leviticus 13-14, in parshas Tazria and Metsora.

A quick read is that the first section is about deciding when a person has Tzora'at, which is mostly about a Cohen (priest) coming to look at the person. The Cohen then makes a determination if the person is clean or unclean depending on the color of the skin, the depth of the skin disease, and the color of the hair growing in the affected area. If a person is unclean, they are isolated from the community for seven days at which point they are checked again. If they are determined clean, they can re-enter the community, but they need to go through a very elaborate cleansing ritual which involved shaving all the hair off of their head (eyebrows included) and sacrificing sin and guilt offerings. The blood of the offerings is put on several places on the person's body and then they are considered clean.

The first thing that stuck me was that the diagnosis is done by looking - it's entirely visual. The Cohen must be there is person, and they must look at the afflicted person. I have to study it more to see the role of the Cohen in the healing, but it seems that they declare a person as impure, wait, then declare them pure and perform the purification ritual to allow them to re-enter the community. (I will write another post soon on my thoughts about purity and impurity.) So the simple read is that the Cohen's role is to know when a person can or cannot be ritually pure, and help them become pure when it's possible. This bears more thought.

One passage that particularly struck me was Leviticus 13:13:

יג וְרָאָה הַכֹּהֵן, וְהִנֵּה כִסְּתָה הַצָּרַעַת אֶת-כָּל-בְּשָׂרוֹ--וְטִהַר, אֶת-הַנָּגַע: כֻּלּוֹ הָפַךְ לָבָן, טָהוֹר הוּא.

13 then the priest shall look; and, behold, if the leprosy have covered all his flesh, he shall pronounce him clean that hath the plague; it is all turned white: he is clean.

If someone has Tzora'at, they are impure, but if it has covered his entire body, so that he has no healthy skin at all, then he is pure. The following passage states that if "living skin" re-appears, then he is immediately impure.

In Chinese medicine, one of the basic principles is that Yin can transform into Yang, and Yang into Yin, and extreme Yin can transform into extreme Yang. A simple example is hypothermia. One of the warning signs that someone is entering hypothermia is that they start feeling warm when it is freezing outside. They become so cold that the Yin transforms into Yang and they begin to feel warm.

So it is in this case, when someone has become completely transformed by the impurity such that there is nothing pure remaining about them, they are transformed into a state of purity. It's as if the disease itself, by completely taking over the body, has purified them. This strikes me as a third possibility, they are pure, impure, or extreme impure that becomes pure.

This would also suggest that there is a state of extreme pure that becomes impure, though I don't know what that would look like but the myth of Icarus comes to mind. Perhaps there are those that try to get too close to God only to have it destroy their body.

The role of the Cohen is also generally considered the one who blesses. My hope is that this study will help me understand what exactly is the blessing that we give, and how to do it.

Bringing God into the world through the 13 attributes

2008-12-21T13:07:00.000-05:00

We studied a passage from the Sefer Ba'al Shem Tov last week and as we were studying the sources behind the text, I went in a different direction than the text. So I'll present the sources and how they formed my thoughts.

This post has a lot of text quotes. I like to provide as much original texts as possible to inform as well as empower. These are my conclusions, but far from the only possible interpretation. If you have the whole text, you can come up with your own interpretation.

The first is from the 3rd Chapter of Joel:

ה וְהָיָה, כֹּל אֲשֶׁר-יִקְרָא בְּשֵׁם יְהוָה--יִמָּלֵט: כִּי בְּהַר-צִיּוֹן וּבִירוּשָׁלִַם תִּהְיֶה פְלֵיטָה, כַּאֲשֶׁר אָמַר יְהוָה, וּבַשְּׂרִידִים, אֲשֶׁר יְהוָה קֹרֵא.

5 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered; for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those that escape, as the LORD hath said, and among the remnant those whom the LORD shall call.

The question that arose from this is what does it mean to call on the name of the lord? How does one do it?

One answer can be found in Sifrei Devarim 49:

ללכת בכל דרכיו, אלו הן דרכי מקום?
"ה' אל רחום וחנון" (שמות לד ו)
ואומר: "והיה כל אשר יקרא בשם ה' ימלט" (יואל ג ה)
וכי היאך איפשר לו לאדם לקרא בשמו של מקום?
אלא נקרא המקום רחום - אף אתה היה רחום,
הקדוש ברוך הוא נקרא חנון - אף אתה היה חנון, שנאמר: "חנון ורחום ה'" וגו' (תהלים קמה ח) ועשה מתנות חנם,
נקרא המקום צדיק, שנאמר: "כי צדיק ה' צדקות אהב" (תהלים יא ז) - אף אתה היה צדיק,
נקרא המקום חסיד, שנאמר: "כי חסיד אני נאם ה'"(ירמיה ג יב) - אף אתה היה חסיד.
לכך נאמר: "והיה כל אשר יקרא בשם ה' ימלט"(יואל ג ה) ואומר: "כל הנקרא בשמי ולכבודי בראתיו יצרתיו אף עשיתיו" (ישעיה מג ז) ואומר: "כל פעל ה' למענהו"(משלי טז ד) .

"To Walk in all his ways." (Deut 10:12) What are the ways of God?
"God, God, a merciful and gracious God." (Ex. 34:6)
And it is said: "Whoever will call on the name of God shall be saved." (Joel 3:5)
How is it possible for a person to call on the name of God?
God is called Compassionate - you also be compassionate;
The holy one, blessed be he, is merciful - you too be merciful, as it is said: "God is gracious and compassionate" (Psalms 145:8) and you should give unconditionally;
God is called righteous, as is said: "For God is righteous, Justice he loves" (Psalms 11:7) - so you be righteous;
God is called Merciful - as it is said: "For I am merciful, says God." (Jeremiah 3:12) - You too be merciful.

I think the simple reading of the text is that when one does something merciful, one is calling the name of the God. Another way of reading it would be to say that when one does something merciful, one is bringing God into the world. That to embody the attributes of God is to bring God's presence into the world. I connected this to my idea of the messianic age - when it comes no one will notice. It's not that God sends someone down to save us, but we raise the world up to God. In that sense, going back to Joel, those who embody God will be saved, and such, will save us all.

My pragmatic side made me think about how one does this. I think I need to think and explore a lot more about the 13 attributes of God, but one thing that strikes me is that they are very vague attributes. They are not specific actions, but philosophical principals. So how does one encourage this in oneself and in others?

One of the child-rearing principals I hold to is process based praise. Trait based praise is praising someone for being smart or pretty. Process based praise is praising them for the effort they put into things. An example would be a child who completes a puzzle - one can say that she succeeded because she is smart or because she thought carefully about where each piece goes. The child will then try to emulate the praise: the process based praised child will try to think more carefully about where each piece goes and ends up working harder. The trait based praised child will try to be smarter. But how does one do that? By succeeding, so that child will look for easier challenges to succeed at and get frustrated when she has to work harder at things because it indicates that she isn't smart.

Applying this to the 13 attributes, one needs to praise oneself for working towards Justice or putting effort into righteousness, not for the trait, but the process that leads to each. The next step is to determine one's personal gifts and how we can use those to bring God into the world using the 13 attributes as a guide.

A family story about being a Cohen

2008-12-21T08:34:00.000-05:00

I was just reading something my father wrote last year and came across this passage:

By the way, my father’s synagogue was basically a store front kind of place, and the people in it were all from Ostrova. My father and I were the only Kohanim in the congregation, so at the important holidays the few Leviim would wash our hands and we would bless the congregation.

Every one, of course, knew each other. It wasn’t a big congregation, all poor people who couldn’t afford a Rabbi, so everything was done by the people themselves.

On Saturday, after services, there would be a small piece of cake and some schnapps, so I got used to strong liquor from when I was a child. I wore tzitzit till I was sixteen, and in my second year in college, when I guess it got too embarrassing for me.

At some point one of the writers, who must have been widowed, for one of the Jewish newspapers, not an Ostrovan, joined the synagogue, and many of the congregants (the word doesn’t feel right, but it fits) would vie to have him come for Sabbath lunch – he was, after all, an educated man.

Given my reconnection this past Shabbat, I found this very interesting and timely.

Receiving the blessing of the Cohanim

2008-12-20T15:04:00.000-05:00

I went to the Amika-Debira minyan this morning. It's a wonderful place to pray, they pray with a lot of Ruah (spirit) and they sing almost all of the prayers. Which makes for a very enjoyable, though long service.

One difference between praying here in Jerusalem and in the states is Birkat Cohanim, the priestly blessing. It's done during the leader's repetition of the Amidah. The Cohanim (those descended from the priests of the temple) go to the front of the room, say a short blessing, and then bless those assembled. Outside of Isreal, it is done only on High Holidays, if it's done at all, but here in Israel, it's done all the time.

When I first got here, I remember seeing it done and staring amazed at the people up front with the Talitim over their heads blessing the congregation. I am a Cohen, but I'd never done the Birkat Cohanim. I felt an urge to, but always felt held back because I had no idea what it meant or how it was done. So when the Cohanim would go up front, I would stay in my seat. On a Shabbat morning, the Birkat Cohanim is done twice, once during Shacharit (morning prayer), and once during musaf (additional prayer).

At some point during Shacharit today, I got to thinking about how I heal. This past week, I was explaining to someone about my approach to healing (in Hebrew) and mentioned that I study shamanism. "Shaman?" She asked, "That's a kind of Cohen (priest), isn't it?" It got me thinking that she was correct and that perhaps what I do could best be termed "Cohenic Healing" or something like that. I realized that I don't really know what that means and it might be a good idea to go through the Torah and look at all the examples of when the Cohens acted as healers.

About then, it came time for the first Birkat Cohanim. I saw only one person go up front and give the blessing (there are usually three or four people as all the Cohanim present give the blessing). We then took a break for kiddush and I put my thoughts on hold. When we gathered again for the Torah reading, I realized that the only other Cohen had left. So when they asked if there were Cohanim present, I raised my hand for the first aliyah (call to the Torah).

My teacher Avraham, who was reading the Torah for that Aliyah, looked at me very funny and said "You're a Cohen?"
"Yes." I replied, "Is that ok?" He was looking at me very funny.
"With the name Askanase, I didn't think..." He replied.
"I got the name with the marriage." I said. I took my wife's name when we got married. She wanted to keep her name, and I wanted to have the same name - we both won.

I did the blessings over the Torah reading and returned to my seat thinking that this really was a Cohen day. Now that I had come forward as a Cohen, and there were no other Cohanim there, I was going to have to go forward to do the Birkat Cohanim! I kept my eye on Avraham and later on, I saw him step outside for a breath of fresh air. I followed after and asked him if he could tell me how to do the Birkat Cohanim. He told me that he hadn't realized I was a Cohen because I never did the Birkat Cohanim, to which I replied that I had never done it because I had never done it and didn't know how. He was amazed and gave me brief instructions on what to do.

He asked me why I had never done it. I stumbled for an answer and told him I just didn't know what to do. If we'd had a second more, I would have continued that I'd never done it because it would have made me feel arrogant - that I get to do this special thing because I am better than everyone else. But the truth is not about humility or ignorance, but about fear. This was a new thing to me and I was scared to try it out.

Whenever the other Cohanim had done the blessing, I had tried to feel the energy or power that came out of it, but hadn't felt anything. So I put the ritual down and came up with all sorts of rationalizations why I shouldn't do it. But the truth is that I was scared. I probably hadn't felt anything from it because the fear blocked my perceptions. When I got his basic instruction, I became less scared, but as the time came closer, I began to shake quietly with fear.

When it came time, I went forward to do the blessings, only to be led to the side by two Levites (the tribe who traditionally did the administrative and logistical duties in the Temple). They took me into a side room and ritually washed and dried my hands. I returned to the front of the room and took off my shoes and stepped onto a rug placed there for this purpose. I pulled my Talit over my head and felt the fear throughout my entire being. It was an interesting sensation to, at the same time, be both experiencing and being aware that I was experiencing the fear.

I said the blessing before the blessing, then put down my prayer book, placed my hands in front of me in the priestly sign, and repeated as the blessing was read aloud word for word. I know the blessing very well as it's the same blessing I say to my children every week, but I couldn't remember a word of it. I had trouble understanding the words that were being said to me even though I knew them by heart. That's how scared I was.

When I finished, and lowered my Talit, I head Avraham say a Shehechianu (the blessing thanking God for bringing us to this moment that is said when something significant or new happens). Others looked around, not understanding why he had said it, but as I found my way back to the seat and Avraham gave me a big hug, he told others that it was my first time. Then all of the handshakes came and another friend came over to give me a big hug.

When the service came to a close, many others came over to thank me for letting them share in my first time doing the Birkat Cohanim. It was quite moving.

I continued to talk to Avraham, a few others, and the person who had been leading Musaf. It turned out that he was a cohen also so he gave me a few instructions on how to do the prayer. Avraham looked at me and said that it all made sense now as the Cohanim were the spiritual healers, the shamen of the Jews, and it was all in the discussion of Tzoraat (sometimes translated as leprosy). I looked at him and said that now I knew what I needed to study next.

The whole time we were talking I kept turning around to find out who was behind me, but there was no one there. Then I realized that I was feeling a huge spiritual connection behind me. It felt like there were generations of cohanim standing behind me, and they had all shown up to be with me for this service.

I am a Cohen, and this is my lineage, and today I finally realized what that means and how powerful it is. I hope that I can make them proud.

Blessing the Children

2008-12-20T14:55:00.000-05:00

This is something I wrote last year that I wanted to share.

December 17, 2007

Blessing the Children

In this week's Torah Portion, VaYehi (Genesis 47:28-50:26), we come across the blessing the Jacob give to Manasseh and Ephraim. They are his grandchildren, the children of Joseph. The blessing they are given is:

"The God in whose ways my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked,
The God who has been my shepherd from birth to this day -
The Angel who has redeemed me from all harm-
Bless the lads.

In them may my name be called,
And the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac,
And may they be teeming multitudes upon the earth." (Genesis 48:15-16, JPS Translation)

Later on it continues:
"By you shall Israel invoke blessing, saying: God make (put/appoint) you like Ephraim and Manasseh." (Genesis 48:20)

And so it is that on every Friday night, we bless our children with the blessing that for boys begins: May God put/appoint you like Ephraim and Manasseh, and for Girls begins: May God put/appoint you like Sarah, Rebbecca, Rachel, and Leah. It continues: May God bless you and keep/guard you, May God illuminate his face (presence) for you and teach you, May God turn his face to you and put/appoint peace for you.

We were talking about this in class today and what does this actually mean. What was the blessing the two grandchildren received, and what exactly does it mean to bless someone like Ephraim and Manasseh?

People were throwing out some very good ideas of what it means to be blessed like these two, such as that these are the first example of brothers without sibling rivalry in the bible, so we should all be so lucky. Or that they were really fathers to our people, and we should all be blessed with such fertility. Or that they grew up comfortable and didn't really seem to experience many struggles or hardships, so we should all be blessed to have such uneventful lives. (We know very little about their lives as their only role in the bible is to receive these blessings, but given what others had to go through, that's maybe a good thing.)

I sat quiet for the first part of class because I was lost trying to figure out how I would bless my children. I mean, I say this blessing every week, and my wife always does a wonderful job of giving each of the girls their own personal blessing after I do the traditional one. Things like: "a week of health", "A week of good sleep", or "A week of new words." But I've never really thought about how I would want to bless my children. And I was at a loss.

I think often of the blessing I gave a good friend's daughter at her naming. There is a chassidic story that goes something like this: Reb Zusya was dying and was very anxious and worried. He was known far and wide as a tzaddik, a righteous man, and those around him said: don't worry, you have lived as righteous a life as Moses or King David, surely God will accept you into the world to come. When Reb Zusya heard that, he cried even more and answered: When I get to the world to come, I won't be asked if I've been a good Moses, I'll be asked if I've been a good Zusya. I'm worried if I was the best Zusya that I could be. My blessing for my friend's child was to be the best her that she could be.

I always thought that my blessing for my daughters was something similar to that one, it's how I try to parent, so it would make sense. But how then to make sense of this blessing that I say every week. It feels very powerful and I enjoy saying it, but how to make sense of it?

It then came to me to understand it slightly differently: not to be blessed like Ephraim and Manasseh, but to be blessed like they were blessed. Jacob blessed them by connecting them to his lineage, to his God and the God of his fathers. The Torah portion continues with Jacob's blessings to his own sons, which are pretty stark. Some of them even sound like curses, but these two boys were blessed with the connection to God, and with Jacob's spiritual lineage. And maybe that's why we are commanded to bless our children as they were blessed - we give our children our spiritual lineage, our connection to God and the Jewish people. It's a call to me to work on my own spirituality so that I have more to pass on. We are not commanded to bless our children to be any particular way, but we are blessing them to be connected to God like our forefathers and mothers were.

The blessing for daughters is then read that they should be blessed as our foremothers were blessed. Each of whom was blessed with a strong and powerful direct relationship with God. I will continue to try to help my daughters to be the best persons that they can be, and in terms of blessings, I'm not sure what else I could hope for other than a strong connection to God who can help them be the best them that they can be.

Joel 2:13 - Tearing one's heart

2008-12-15T13:15:00.000-05:00

In Joel 2:13 it reads:

יב וְגַם-עַתָּה, נְאֻם-יְהוָה, שֻׁבוּ עָדַי, בְּכָל-לְבַבְכֶם; וּבְצוֹם וּבִבְכִי, וּבְמִסְפֵּד.	12 Yet even now, saith the LORD, turn ye unto Me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with lamentation;
יג וְקִרְעוּ לְבַבְכֶם וְאַל-בִּגְדֵיכֶם, וְשׁוּבוּ אֶל-יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם: כִּי-חַנּוּן וְרַחוּם, הוּא--אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם וְרַב-חֶסֶד, וְנִחָם עַל-הָרָעָה.	13 And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God; for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abundant in mercy, and repenteth Him of the evil.

In the midst of reading Joel, I was struck by the above passage. Joel begins with an apocalyptic vision of the destruction of Israel followed by a call to repentance, after which there will be an abundance in Israel.

Two things struck me from this passage, the first is that he asks us to rend our hearts and not our clothes. When we are doing true repentance and change, it must come from the inside, not the outside. It's no good changing our external appearance - we can fast, we can weep, we can say the right things, but only when our hearts are torn in two can we really change.

Later, we learn our rewards for change in Joel 3:1:

א וְהָיָה אַחֲרֵי-כֵן, אֶשְׁפּוֹךְ אֶת-רוּחִי עַל-כָּל-בָּשָׂר, וְנִבְּאוּ, בְּנֵיכֶם וּבְנוֹתֵיכֶם; זִקְנֵיכֶם, חֲלֹמוֹת יַחֲלֹמוּן--בַּחוּרֵיכֶם, חֶזְיֹנוֹת יִרְאוּ.	1 And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out My spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions;

The result of all of this soul-searching and heart rending is prophesy and being filled with רוח הקודש (the wind/spirit of God). One could read this in reverse and learn that if one is searching for direct spiritual connection, one must start with repentance and do תשובה (Tsuvah - returning) from the heart.

In my mind, this is a very simple thought, but I think it's a very important one. It's a nice summary of the Jewish approach to building spirituality. The first step is to make oneself as pure as possible, then one is able to connect to the spirit world.

[The translations are from http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt1403.htm]

Thoughts on a seminar with Tommy Thompson

2008-12-11T01:57:00.000-05:00

Two days ago, I had the pleasure of attending a seminar on the Alexander Technique given by Tommy Thompson. From July 2003 until we left Boston in 2007, I had been working with a student of Tommy's in Boston named Debi Adams (a very gifted healer), but had never managed to meet Tommy himself. I'm glad I made the effort to attend his seminar in Tel Aviv as it was really great and contained many gems on Healing that are applicable to all healers, no matter what your modality.

This seminar was mainly for teacher of the Alexander technique, so it was interesting to be a witness to the internal Alexander debates. Tommy mainly focused his lecture on differentiating between really connecting with the person and working with them as a piece of machinery on whom the technique is performed. He gave many demonstrations of working the "regular" way and then working when connected.

Watching Tommy switch back and forth between a connected treatment and a "regular" one was impressive. His words for connecting were "finding the person". In doing the treatment, you related to the client as a person, not as a machine or a piece of meat. Instead, you try to find their deeper movements beneath their normal "patterns of behavior". He told a story of being on a sea kayak in the ocean. He could see the waves moving, but it took him a long time to realize that there were deeper currents underneath. When he ignored the visible waves and focused on the currents, he was able to maneuver with ease, but when he tried to steer according to the waves, he always struggled.

He said that our patterns of behavior are the waves, but those may not be the person, they may just be what the person is used to doing. Underneath that is the real person and we need to connect to that person when we are doing healing.

In many ways, it is such a simple concept, yet so profound and difficult to do. Some practitioners reach this point on their own through either long experience or moments of realization. Some meet a teacher, and are helped to this realization. Some have a natural tendency to connect to the true person, and some never manage to do it at all. It strikes me that many of the best practitioners I've met all get to this same point. Much of what Tommy spoke about is very similar to how my mentor John Myerson talks.

There were several people in the crowd, several of whom were very vocal, who clearly did not get it. They kept trying to understand it within their own patterns of thought and it was clearly not their experience so they missed the point entirely. Some tried to minimize what he was saying by rationalizing it into other, more popular concepts in their work. I guess there is a fine line to know when someone is saying something that can enlighten my own understanding of my experience, and when they are experiencing something completely different that requires me to broaden my understanding.

Some other gems from the seminar:
People don't come to you for their health problem, they come to you because the energy of the universe has led them to your door. Their deeper self brought them to see you, so don't get lost in their surface problems.

He took two matches and lit one. Then pressed it to the other match which flared up as it was lit. He said that this represented our passing the knowledge onto to our clients - we are not given them something they don't already have. We are igniting something that is already there. In the moment of contact, the two matches burned brighter than either apart.

"Put your hands where they are needed." Not where you think they should go. He was clear not to get caught up in the technique, but to let the healing happen. "You can find the face in the back." No matter where you are working, you are treating the entire person.

"If you get hit a lot, you develop a pattern of behavior to prevent yourself from getting hit." Which may not really be you, but a reaction to your surroundings. Try not to focus on the pattern, focus on the person inside.

As a practitioner, always let the work to make you a better person.

When someone goes through a traumatic experience: if they experience it, they will be fine. If they react to it, it will get stuck in the tissue. Most people react to it without experiencing it and have troubles later on. Help the client to experience it without reacting to it and the can move beyond the event. (I was struck by how similar this is to the way in which I approach fear.)

Experience what you are experiencing. If we don't go looking for something in particular, then we can really experience what is going on, but if we go looking for something, then we miss what's happening.

Experience things from who you are now, not who you were. Change the story you tell to reflect who you are now, not who you were when the story originally took place. Let go of any attachment to the event as you used to understand it and then you can heal and move on.

I really enjoyed learning from Tommy, and look forward to attending another seminar tomorrow. If anyone has a chance to study with him, I strongly recommend it.

You can read about the second class here.

Rethinking the Shechina

2008-12-10T12:04:00.000-05:00

The Shechina is understood as the feminine presence of God. When we feels God's presence, we are feeling the Shechina. I've never given much thought to what this meant, but recent study has made me realize that I had been thinking of the Shechina as the warm and fuzzy side of God. The presence that arrives which makes us feel whole and connected. But I think I've been wrong. Or at least not complete in my thinking.

With many Kabbalistic concepts, my methodology has been to compare the writing to what I have experienced in the past and see if they are explaining something I've experienced. If it doesn't, I try to connect to the author of the text, and then use that connection to feel what they were experiencing. Another variation on that is to use the text itself as a guide to try to find the experience. If I'm still drawing an experiential blank, I try my best to understand the concept intellectually and how it fits in to my larger understanding of shamanism, spirituality, and Kabbalah.

Shechina is traditionally associated with the lowest sephira of Malchut. I've been studying Shaarei Ora by Rabbi Yosef Gikatilla (1248-1310) with my Hevruta and we've just completed the first section on Malchut. He finds many different words in the Torah that connect to the Shechina and uses them to describe her different aspects. Two of the major descriptors of the Shechina are as an empty pool or mikvah that is filled up by the other sephirot, and as the gateway between the spiritual world and the physical one. The Shechina sits on the bottom of the sephirot and in order for us to access the treasure rooms above, we must first pass through Malchut. Likewise, when the higher sephirot act upon the world, they also pass through Malchut.

He seemed to imply that there are time when the other sephirot act upon us directly, through malchut, and times when the empty nature of malchut fills up with the higher Sephira and then malchut acts upon us. Practically, I'm not sure if we would be able to feel much difference between the two, though I would imagine that when the higher Sephira acts upon us directly, it is a more powerful experience as there is no mediator involved.

This makes a lot of practical sense to me. There is a veil or a gate between the spirit world and the physical one which can be called Malchut. Whenever we want to enter into the spiritual world, we need to pass through this gate. There are many different ways of doing this, through drumming, singing, praying, and others. But the idea of a gate or doorway makes a lot of sense with my past experience. It also didn't bother my notion of a warm fuzzy Shechina.

But at the end of Gikatilla's section on Malchut, he writes about Malchut wearing three types of fire, each associated with a name of God: black (Shakai), red (Elokim), and green (A-D-N-I). (I'll write another post with the whole passage and a longer discussion.) The Black devouring fire disperses bad spirits and impure things. The Red fire destroys everything around it, good and bad, like a plague. And the green fire causes fear, awe, and trembling upon all the created. Not so warm and fuzzy.

This version of the Shechina means that when the presence of God comes to us, it can be terrible and dark. It can use that dark energy to heal us and drive away dark spirits, but it can also destroy everything around itself. In this sense, when the Shechina comes to us, it's not always a good thing. I am tempted to link this to what John Myerson writes about dark energy and the dangers it presents when we use it, but I think that would be too much of a reach at this point. I want to see what else Gikatilla writes about dark energy, if I can use that term "black fire that devours".

In class yesterday, my teacher taught us of an idea in the Zohar that the Shechina is the energy that is created between people. The Shechina can be thought of as Knesset Yisrael (the gathering of Israel) . And from that we can understand that anytime people get together the shechina manifests. I experience this everyday. There is a particular power that manifests in my healing when there is a connection between myself and the patient. I just have been calling it a connection, but might I also be able to understand it as the Shechina?

That connection has a power, but it can be many different types of power and do many different things. I have to pay more attention to this to determine if what I am terming the power of connection is truly the presence of the Shechina. If so, it can lead to a whole new way of explaining the connections between people, and a new way of understanding how to call the Shechina. It is not just the presence we hope will descend upon us, but something that we intentionally draw towards us by improving the connections between us.

We'll see how that develops, but for now I am certain that the Shechina is not always so warm and fuzzy!

Words stretching across creation

2008-12-07T16:33:00.001-05:00

I had a wonderful vision during a treatment I recently received. I was brought into a room and shown a book with black pages. I looked into it and knew I had to write something. In white letters, I began writing בראשית (Berashit - the first word of the Torah). I wrote the letters in the same script as the Torah. At some point, I realized that I was writing black letters on a white page. As I finished the word, I looked at it and realized it stretched across creation. The start of the word, written in white against nothingness crossed into black letters on creation. It was profoundly beautiful.

The Role of Healers in the Healing

2008-12-07T04:54:00.000-05:00

In dealing with my Yetzer haRah (see last post), I spent a lot of time thinking about the role of the healer in the healing, and particularly my role in the healing.

I often think of my treatments as creating the space for the healing to happen. My role is connecting to the patient, connecting to God, and then the healing happens. The power for the healing came from God, but I was involved as well. So how do I understand my role? And from that, how do I become a better healer?

I can interpret every treatment as completely God's work in which I am an empty vessel who simply does God's work. In this story, my role is to learn to be empty. There is no particular training needed, no need to work on healing techniques or better needle insertion. There is only one skill - being empty. Whatever path I followed to suppress my ego and become empty is all I need to keep doing to be a better healer. The danger of this path is that one can beat oneself up for having any ego at all, and so get into a rut of self-denial and self-suppression. I think there are people for whom this path works, it's just not who I am.

Another way of describing the treatment is that I can take complete credit for the treatment. I can believe that the whole treatment comes from my power, and there are no greater forces involved. My ego has complete control here. The dangers here are many. The story is all about me, and there is no room for God. This is the story of arrogance, and there is no need for growth - I did such an amazing thing, aren't I wonderful. There is no fears or tears or tensions created that would drive me forward. In this story, I am already perfect.

The challenge is finding a way to tell the story that allows me to have a sense of self, to keep growing, and to acknowledge the role of God. I think it is natural to take joy in our successes. When the harvest comes in, the farmer is joyful, but the farmer knows it is only temporary as it will be soon be time to start planting again.

I know that God played an integral part in the treatment and all the power is his, but I was there too. Is that arrogant to say? Is there a way to tell the story such that I acknowledge the work I did to enable the treatment to be successful?

The farmer knows that just scattering seeds on the soil and waiting won't bring crops to harvest. One needs to do a lot of planning, and hard work to make those plants grow. Ultimately, it's God who makes the plants grow, the rains fall, and who decides if the harvest will be successful. But that doesn't free the farmer from working very hard to create the right conditions in which the crops can succeed.

I think it works this way with healing. I have to work very hard to create the right space, to relax the patient, to place the needles in the right points, to place my hands on the right places - all that so that the healing can happen. My tension for growth is to always get better at my part of the healing. And then when I succeed and the patient gets better, then I feel joy. But like a farmer, I know the joy lasts only until my next treatment when I must begin all over again.

My teacher John once said to me that the Zen concept of not attaching to things is very important. I see it in this case: if I attach to the joy, then it prevents me from growing. If I deny the joy, I am not being honest with myself. If I feel the joy and then let it go and move on, then I can continue to plant and grow.

The story should perhaps be told in this way: A patient came in, I worked hard to create the space for the healing, and then felt joy when God connected to us and helped the client to heal. And then I moved on to the next patient.

A final note:
I wrote this post yesterday. Last night, I was reading The Wings of The Sun by Avraham Greenbaum. In the section on the rabbinic tradition (chapter 4, p. 33), he solves my dilemna by stating that God heals, but he grants the doctors power to heal as God's agents. He continues the point thus:

This latter viewpoint is vividly expressed in a midrash telling of a sick man who approached Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Akiva as they were walking in Jerusalem one day. The sick man asked the two rabbis what he should do to be cured. They gave him a number of recommendations, upon hearing which a farmer who had been listening said to them, "You're interfering in something that's none of your business! God afflicted him with illness and you want to heal him?" "But don't you as a farmer do the same?" they replied. "God created the earth, but you have to plow, till, fertilize and weed if you want the land to yield produce. `As for man, his days are as grass' (Psalms 103:15). The human body is the tree, the medicine is the fertilizer and the physician is the tiller of the earth" (Midrash Shmuel 52a #4).

What amazed me was that my analogy of a farmer was actually a classical one. It's amaizing when things come together like that!

If you follow the link to Wings of the Sun, the entire book is available on-line. It's worth the read: http://www.azamra.org/.

Feeling Joy without arrogance

2008-11-30T02:14:00.000-05:00

I finished a treatment last week and smiled. It was a good treatment: there was a lot of power in the room, I had felt a very clear disharmony in the patient's cranial rhythms and was able to return it to proper functioning, and the client was one who I had a personal stake in the treatment's success. It was a patient who is well connected in the local community and I knew that if I was able to give him a successful treatment, it could directly benefit my business.

When the patient left the room, I pumped my fist and smiled a broad smile and said "I did it!" Then I paused and checked in on myself. I hadn't done it. God had done it. The power, the clear vision, the healing the patient felt happened as a result of God working through me, and working directly on the patient. But here I was taking credit for it.

I'm a person who has long struggled with arrogance. In my youth, I think it was a defense mechanism: if I was better than everyone else, then I didn't need to work hard or measure myself by their measures. So if I failed at something, it wouldn't matter to me. Like most things, I think it was generated out of fear. In particular, a fear of not being the best - of not succeeding. So rather than trying and failing, I found a way to convince myself that I didn't need to try. And then, if I failed, I could always say that I failed because I didn't try, but if I had tried, I could have succeeded. I know now that it did matter a great deal to me, but back then I didn't have the tools to succeed, so I fashioned an attitude which allowed me to fail and not feel bad about it. It was neat little knot I had tied myself in.

These days, I'm always worried that the arrogance will come back. So when I find myself taking too much credit for a good treatment, I feel the need to do some introspection. The first place I look is at my fears. I knew there was a small fear that my business wouldn't succeed, but that's always there. I think that I need that fear of business failure needed to keep me motivated to keep working on my business.

There was also the fear that I am not a good practitioner. Again, the fear of not being proficient is necessary to keep me growing. But what I saw was that alongside this fear was my Yetzer haRah (urge to self-destruction). The fear opened a small place inside me when the Yetzer HaRah started telling me to beat myself up over taking joy in a good treatment.

It was an interesting energetic thing - I was not criticizing myself for the quality of my treatment, I was going after myself for my reaction to the treatment. The patient received a good treatment. His symptoms were lessened, and he was in a much better place when he left then when he came.

My feeling on how to overcome the Yetzer HaRah is to be aware of it. I haven't found a lot of traditional sources for ways to deal with it energetically. Most places simply talk about suppressing it or overcoming it, but not much on how to actually do that. I treat it much the same as fear: know when it's present and be aware of it. Then you can decided to listen or not to listen to it, but it no longer has any power over you.

In this case, it was trying to lead me down an old path so that I get caught up in myself and stop moving forward. There is no fault in taking joy in a job well done as long as I realize my role in the treatment and don't take credit for the parts in which I had no part. The tricky part is that this moment can lead me down two opposite bad directions: either getting arrogant and taking all the credit for the treatment, or taking no credit at all and beating myself up for feeling joy. The delicate middle path is where I ended up, but I had to sort out where the energies and inclinations were coming from.

My next post will be about the role of the healer in the healing which was also a result of the same moment as this post.

The tensions that move us forward

2008-11-27T03:34:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking more about the Ba'al Shem Tov's tips for perpetual growth - sowing tears and harvesting joy (though he really just focuses on the tears). I have been taught that one of the differences between Judaism and many eastern religions is that in Judaism there is no concept of becoming enlightened. In Judaism, there is a dynamic tension created between the world as it is and the world as it could be. We are always trying to find ways to do tikkun in the world, and, more importantly, on ourselves. The Ba'al Shem Tov is outlining one of the methods for using that tension to continue to grow.

(As a side note, the goal of all of this tikkun is to repair the world so that the messiah can come. My personal feeling is that when the messiah gets here, no one will notice. We will bring about the messianic age bit by bit and tear by tear. We repair the world slowly, as we repair ourselves gradually. There will be no huge event when the messiah comes, no great jump forward, he will just show up and, God willing, be like everyone else. The messiah is not a person who will come to save us, we will save ourselves and thus bring the messiah to us.)

I have been spending some time looking at my life and seeing the tensions that drive me forward. I am old enough to start seeing patterns in my behavior and to see that many issues in my life return after I thought I had dealt with them. I have changed my focus now in how I follow the patterns of my life. What I am looking for now is the tensions that create those issues. A clear example is my marriage. I can see the differences between my wife and I that create friction, but they also drive us to deepen and strengthen our relationship. Though the will probably never be resolved, they push us both forward to become better people.

I would suggest to everyone to take a moment and consider the recurrent issues in your lives, and then examine the tensions that create those issues. Are there tensions that create growth? Are there tensions that create self-destructive behavior? Are there tensions in which you get to choose a nourishing or a destructive path? The next step is to strengthen the tensions that force us to grow, and get out of the destructive ones. The goal is not to become enlightened, but to meet the tensions with wisdom and grow from them. To give power to those things which help us to do Tikkun, and take the power away from those things that lead us to Yetzer ha-Rah (evil inclination).

Mishnah Berachot 5:5 - R. Hanina's Healing

2008-11-25T23:07:00.000-05:00

There is a very interesting mishnah about healing found in Berachot mishnah 5:5 (translation is mine):

Some who prays and makes a mistake: it's a bad sign for him. If the prayer leader [shaliah tzibur – emissary of the public] makes a mistake, it's a bad sign for all who are led because those who send an emissary are just like him. It's it said of rabbi Hanina ben Dosa that when he would pray for the sick, he would then say: this one will live, and this one will die. The said to him: From where do you know? He said to them: if the prayer is fluent in my mouth, and I know that it will be received, but if not, I know he will be consumed by the illness [literally torn apart or devoured].

My first response to this was of course that's how it is. If R. Hanina was connected to God, he will know when his prayers are having an effect and when they aren't. By connecting to the sick person and then praying, he knows if the person can heal or not.

I had a teacher in school who described a certain type of pulse that indicated that the patient would die in the next few days, and that he had felt this pulse in the past and the patient did pass away soon after. When I asked another teacher about it, he described a different pulse, but said it doesn't work that way in reality, only in theory. I asked a third teacher, and she said that was bunk, she'd worked on terminal patients who died shortly after she saw them and she felt nothing in the pulse. My conclusion was that the first teacher had a gift for knowing when a person would die, and the tool he used for it was the pulse.

Similarly, R. Hanina had a gift for knowing when a person would recover or die, and the tool he used was how well his prayer for the patient came out of mouth.

People have different “tells” for when the spirit world is communicating with them. When I started this work, my tell was pressure on the left side of my head. Whenever there was spiritual energy in the room, my head would feel like someone was pressing on the side. Others feel it in different places in their bodies, or they just know. After a while, I learned to distinguish between my imagined or internal feelings, and those that were connected to the spirit world. At first I relied solely on my “tell”, but after a while, I started to recognize the qualitative difference in my feelings.

R. Hanina's “tell” was how well his mouth worked when he said the prayer. The text asks "From where do you know this?" R. Hanina answer is a response to this question, and he is telling us about his indicator or "tell" for his receiving a message from the spirit world and God. It is unclear if is when he said the prayer itself or just the person's name, though he knew that if he stumbled during one of them, the prognosis was poor.

Praising the growing, not the growth

2008-11-25T13:40:00.000-05:00

From the Sefer Ba'al Shem Tov , Mishpatim 16.
Below is my translation and then my interpretation.

It is based on Psalm 126:

(1) A Song of ascents.
When the lord restores the fortunes of Zion
--We see it as a dream --
(2) our mouths shall be filled with laughter,
our tongues, with songs of joy.
Then shall they say among the nations,
"The Lord has done great things for them!"
(3) The Lord will do great things for us,
and we shall rejoice

(4) Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
Like waterways in the Negev.
(5) They who sow in tears
Shall reap with songs of joy.
(6) though he goes along weeping,
carrying the seed bag (or spreading the seeds he carries),
he shall come back with songs of joy,
carrying his sheaves.

The Ba'al Shem Tov teaches:

If he walks from [spiritual] step to [spiritual] step and desires to achieve more, he is really like the Ayn Sof (without end - a name of God) in that there is no end to his potential. Thus is the man who has the attribute to obtain the stream that comes from Ayn Sof.

But the man who says I have enough in what I can learn. This is not success only straw and hay which are klipot (shells - spiritual blocks).

And the explanation of the verse: "(6) though he goes along weeping" is that it says that if he wants to walk from [spiritual] step to [spiritual] step then all that he has obtained is already not enough for him. This is the "carrying/spreading the seed bag," that Ayn Sof has given him.

Thus someone who says "He shall come back", as if he has already been to top of the steps, and he is in "joy" all the time. And who says my soul is at peace because he has learned a lot of Torah, and doesn't need any more. This is "carrying his sheaves", and they are nothing but straw and hay.

My interpretation is more cyclic. You need to keep walking, keep searching for knowledge. Keep spreading and sowing seeds to rise up from step to step. Otherwise, in the passage of time, you will be left with only the fruits of the harvest - straw and hay. Because if you stop planting, the straw and hay will soon be used up or be blown away. And you will be left with nothing.

The cycle is sown with tears and harvested with joy. To grow, we need to look to our tears. To find the frustrations and short-comings in our learning and practice so we can grow. If not, we will soon find ourselves surrounded with only dead straw, with no young plants to nourish us in the future.

When a person is always happy, he is not moving forward. Each challenge in life follows this cycle: we get frustrated with ourselves about something so we work hard to grow in the area. At some point, something happens to make us realize how much we have grown and find we are no longer frustrated in the same way. A wise person meets their problems with wisdom and grows. A fool doesn't engage in their problems and doesn't grow. A wise person welcomes the cycle of tears and joy, but looks for the tears always knowing that there is further to go.

I am reminded of an article on how to praise children by Carol Dweck. She would say that one should praise oneself and others for the process of growing, for the tears, rather than for the accomplishment, the joy. I think the Ba'al Shem Tov would subscribe to her philosophy - he praises us in the teaching above for always striving to be better, not for the success in having grown.

After a Spiritual Journey: Bread and Wine

2008-11-25T13:10:00.000-05:00

I heard a wonderful teaching today from my teacher Avraham: according to Jewish tradition, when a person returns from a mercavah journey, having visited the heavenly palaces, and stood in the presence of God, the best thing to do is to eat and drink.

To me, this is pure technique: when someone has been meditating deeply or journeying, one of the best ways to ground oneself and bring oneself fully back to the physical world is to eat.

In Genesis 15:18, during the meeting of Avraham Avinu and King Melchizedek of Salem, we are told that "Malchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine". He then gives Avraham avinu a blessing.

Another story Avraham my teacher relayed was of a Hasidic rabbi who was known to rise up to the heavenly realm during prayer. He had a hasid (disciple) who's job it was to hand the Rabbi bread and butter when he finished praying so that he could return fully to this world.

I believe there is another textual source, but haven't been able to find it yet. I'll post when I do.

Gevurot Geshamim

2008-11-24T01:07:00.001-05:00

Sometimes it seems that I am led to certain topics. The latest is Gevurot Geshamim, גבורות גשמים, the strength/powers of the rain. At the end of Sukkkot, we change the rain prayer we say twice during the Amidah from blessings to rain.

The prayer occurs twice. The first time is during the prayer for reviving the dead, מחיה המתים, and the second is during the prayer for a good year. The Talmudic explanation for this is because when the rains come it is like reviving the dead. I remember being in the Negev desert many years ago and watching what I thought was a dead branch start to sprout immediately after the rains. There are certain plants in the desert that remain dormant for years and then come to life after the rains. Thus the rains can easily be understood as bringing life to the dead.

Interestingly, during this prayer, we mention the rains, but don't request any. Later, during the prayer for a good year, we specifically ask for a blessing during the summer, and dew and rain during the winter. In any land, rain is essential to agriculture, and too much or too little rain can determine who lives and who dies in the coming year.

Traditionally there are three things for which God alone is responsible: creating life (babies), reviving the dead, and the rains. This leads to very interesting discussions about the effect of modern technology on human power to effect those three things, but in my mind we are still technicians. For all the medical advances in IVF, we still have no idea how life is created. We can help it along, but if it works or not is far beyond us. We can predict the rain, but we have no control over it. We've just gotten better at observing what God does, not influencing it. Though human actions do seem to have an effect on the climate, we are just a small part of a very big system.

My question here is really about the term Gevurot Geshamim. In one sense it could mean just the strength of the rains meaning that we want strong rains and not just a drizzle. In another term, it might mean the power to cause the rain to fall. In that light, I called the soul of Honi the circler who was a Talmudic figure who actually did cause it to rain.

The last time I talked to him about this, he showed me that he could connect to the weather and influence in much the same way that I heal clients. If God meant for it to rain, then he was able to help that process happen, and if God did not, there was nothing he could do.

This time, he showed me how to connect to the energy of clouds. They felt very scattered, like touching something that has a form but very little substance. The process of helping the rain was one of filling the clouds so that they became fuller, more dense. When the cloud became too "pregnant" with energy, the rain would come forth. I practiced it awhile, connecting to God and then connecting to the clouds, though I don't think I'm much good at it. And it is very humbling to realize how little power one have over this process. The analogy that comes to mind is of pushing a truck. If you are going downhill, it will roll with your help, but if you are trying to push it uphill, there's not much you can do. Maybe the strength of the rains is the strength to push that truck?

I need to do some more study on this topic, so hopefully will write more in the future. I suspect also that this is one of those topics in Judaism which energetically comes up every year around this time, so if I don't get back to it soon, I'll probably be back next year about this time.

Knowing when to Heal

2008-11-21T02:25:00.000-05:00

I heard a wonderful story last night told in the name of R. Shlomo Carlibach.

A barren couple went to a famous rabbi in a neighboring village who was known as a great tzaddik. They asked the rabbi for a blessing to enable them to have children. After they had received the blessing, the rabbi's gabbai (assistant), with great confidence, told the couple that in a year they would be back to visit with a new baby.

Sure enough, a year later, word came to the rabbi that the couple had just given birth to a baby boy and requesting that the rabbi please come for the great honor of being the Sandak during the bris (the person who holds the baby while it is being circumcized).

On the day of the Bris, the rabbi and his gabbai set out for the bris. As they were traveling through a field, a storm came upon them suddenly. The rain came down in buckets and the wind was blowing fiercely, so much so that they needed to stop and take shelter. The Gabbai grew worried that they would not be able to reach the bris in time and the rabbi would not be able to fulfill this honor. So he began to pray that the rain would stop and the wind would cease.

Sure enough, soon after the gabbai started to pray, the storm stopped just as suddenly as it had come, and they were able to continue to the Bris. The Gabbai was amazed and impressed that his prayers had been answered so quickly, but the rabbi did not even acknowledge them. For the whole celebration, and on the way home, the rabbi remained stern and did not acknowledge or thank the Gabbai for what he had done.

As they arrived back in their own village, the Gabbai could bear it no longer and spoke to the rabbi, "Didn't you see what I did? Why don't you thank me for stopping the rain and wind so that we could make it to the bris?"

The rabbi looked at the Gabbai sadly and said, "Do you know why it was raining? So that the village would have enough water to grow their crops and quench their thirst. It's been a very dry year. Do you know why the wind blew so hard? There is a swarm of locusts heading this way, but the wind would have prevented them from coming and eating all the crops. Now that you stopped the rain and the wind, you have caused immeasurable harm to the village."

The story was told to me with the moral that if one doesn't understand why things are happening, then it's best not to interfere with them. This is a common theme among Jewish folktales, that something that appears bad is actually for the good, and it's just our lack of perspective that makes it appear bad. The story was told to me in the context of a discussion on healing, and knowing when to heal and when not to.

I see the gabbai's mistake as threefold: he wanted the rain to stop for the benefit of the rabbi, not the benefit of God, he did it partly to stoke his own ego (and demonstrated by his disappointment that his deed went unnoticed), and he failed to see the benefit of the rain. So what does this teach us about healing?

Always check one's motivation. What is the involvement of the healer's ego in the healing? Sometimes I find that I have a patient, who, for whatever reason, I want to impress. It could be that I hold the person in respect. It could be that I view that patient as a potential source of referrals and I know that a good treatment will benefit my business. It could be that I'm having a bad day and want to show myself what a great healer I am by making this person feel immensely better.

In those times, I try to force the situation and the flow of energy, and invariably, it's a terrible treatment. Not only am I assured of making the person feel worse, but I am assured of not getting the referrals, respect or self-flattery I was looking for. If I had been aware that I was making the treatment about my own ego and not about the patient, I would have been able to look inside myself and see that my fears had caused me to attach so strongly to the results of the treatment.

I have fears: that I'm a bad healer, that my business won't succeed, or that I will lose the respect of the patient. When I am able to change my relationship to those fears, then I am able to let go of the results and provide a good treatment.

I can't emphasize how much fear damages the connection to God. When people talk about annulment of ego, my feeling is that if one works on one's fears, then the ego loses power and slowly disappears on it's own. Trying to suppress the ego on it's own has always been a fruitless exercise for me, but after I changed my relationship to fear, the ego issues quieted on their own.

Another lesson is is to remember God's place in the healing. I am not a seer, so by the rabbi in the story's words, I should stop healing. I often have no idea why a person is sick or how that sickness fits into the world. But I know that if a client has ended up in my office, then it's my responsibility to do everything I can for them. My assumption is that if God caused our two paths to intersect, then I am supposed to work on them, but I know that I can't force things. I connect to the client and I connect to God and I see what happens. Sometimes that means interacting with, and forcing energy to change, sometimes it means creating a healing space for the client to do their work in which I have no role other than to sit there and watch. Sometimes it means that nothing happens (though that is rare at this point). But if I am connected to God then I can feel what is the best way for healing. If I'm not connected, then I risk harm.

My ultimate barometer of the treatment is how the client feels at the end. I know that there are times when he/she won't feel better or even feel a difference, but I can feel changes in them: their pulse is stronger, there energy is more present, or they are more connected to themselves. And when they come back the next week, I'll hear about the results of the treatment because the client's often take a few days to fully process the treatment.

In acupuncture school we were taught to look at barriers to healing, meaning reasons why the patient themselves does not want to heal. One of the big ones was that the patient was receiving some kind of benefit from the sickness: sympathy, lack of certain responsibilities, someone to care for them, or something similar. This has its own feel when I encounter it in the office. The patient actively resists my energy and the connection that I create between the two of us. Or they try to take control of the treatment and don't let themselves be nourished by the treatment. At this point, my response is to back off my energy as far as possible. And then just wait. When they see that I am not trying to interfere, but just to connect, their energy will reach out to me and we can connect. Or we don't.

I once had a patient with whom I tried to force a connection and force the healing while she was actively resisting it. She felt wonderful immediately after the treatment and I felt like I had really accomplished something. She left the treatment room, tripped on the stairs on her way out of the building, and called me three days later to cancel her next appointment because her ankle was really badly sprained. I didn't hear from her again.

I think that the Gabbai should have just prayed to God. His fear wanted the rain to stop, so that's what he prayed for. But a better way would have been to connect to God and then pray that they get to the bris. He gave his fear of missing the bris power, and as such, missed out on the connection to God. When his fear's prayer was answered, his ego took hold and gave him pride in what he had done. If he had felt the fear, not given it power, and then prayed for what he really wanted, he would have clearly realized that he didn't stop the rain, God did. Or he would have known that it wasn't God's will to stop the rain, and hopefully have found another way to the Bris. Or maybe he wasn't supposed to get to the Bris at all.

If one knows him or herself, and doesn't give one's fears power, then one can maintain a connection to God. Then one can know when one is truly healing.

Dealing with Prejudice

2008-11-18T14:03:00.001-05:00

I received an disturbing email today from a list-serve of which I am a part. The list-serve is for alternative practitioners here in Israel. The email began with a blatant fallacy: The word shaman comes from the word שמן (Shemen) which means "oil" in Hebrew and refers to the practice of anointing animals with oil. My eyes just about bugged out of my head as I read through the list of basic misconceptions about shamanism and it's interaction with Judaism. The writer's conclusion was that it's too dangerous for Jews as it can lead us astray and keep us from the "real" truth.

Aside from the mystical chauvinism, which states that Jewish mysticism is better and more powerful than any other kind, and all her other misconceptions, I was most concerned with how to approach people with her attitude. My initial reaction was to correct her facts and leave it at that, but the focus of my studies is the interaction between shamanism and Judaism so I felt compelled to answer her a bit more directly. I feel that for some religious Jews, the notion of shamanism is a bit too far out, and their fundamental beliefs won't allow room for it. But for others, they are open to it, though may have issues with the word "shamanism".

Below is my response. If there is anyone out there who has more experience dealing with people like this and has pointers on how to respond to them, what presses their buttons (and how to avoid doing that), and how to get them to acknowledge that what I am searching for is a part of Jewish tradition, I would love to hear your feedback.

The etymology of the word Shaman is somewhat in dispute. It originally referred to the traditional healers of Turkic-Mongol areas such as Northern Asia (Siberia) and Mongolia; šamán being the Turkic-Tungus word for such a practitioner and meaning "he or she who knows." (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamanism - you can see the academic citations in the footnotes). In the course of the 60's & 70's, and particularly by Mircea Eliade's book Shamanism, it became popularized in the west.

More recently Shamanism has come to refer to many different methods of healing that make use of, and are in contact with, the spirit world (usually connected to Briyah, the second world where the angel's reside). There are some forms of shamanism which pay varying importance to animal totems or spirit guides, but they are only several among a vast array, and are usually a less important part of the practice. Practical Kabbalah would be included in this definition of shamanism.

At the root of all shamanic traditions is that the shaman connect themselves to God, by whatever name they use, and heal by means of that connection and according to God's will. This connection is the heart of all shamanic healing. Every culture has created it's own set of rituals to create and strengthen that connection. Some of which may be connected to avodah zarah. But many of which just open the veil, and then try to describe what is seen/experienced there.

Within our own tradition there are many, many example of people entering a shamanic trance and communicating with tzaddikim and angels. Lurianic kabbalism is full of techniques for entering the spiritual world and making changes there. On a recent trip to tzafat, I saw people lying down on the graves of tzaddikim to absorb their energy. I believe it was Yoseph Karo who read mishniot until he entered into a trance state at which point his maggid would descend upon him and speak through his mouth. More recent kabbalists speak of ascending into the heavenly court to annul heavenly decrees. It is in these paths, and many more, that one may explore the shamanic in Judaism.

One thing I didn't add was that I feel that cultural background influences how one experiences the spiritual world. A Catholic is going to interpret souls as saints and a Jew as Tzaddikim, but my sense is that they are dealing with the same thing. The prohibition against avodah zarah, idol worship, is very important in Judaism, so my thinking is that a Jew should probably search out the shamanic through Jewish means. That's one of the big reasons I'm searching for Jewish ways to open up and connect to the spirit world. But I also think that experiences that people have had elsewhere can help to enlighten their Jewish experiences. It's also always bothered me that people go searching elsewhere for things that exist in Judaism because they are viewed as inaccessible or non-existent. The Shamanic has always been present in Judaism, though not always completely visible.

Throwing away the shells

2008-11-17T15:01:00.000-05:00

I met with a teacher of mine tonight to talk about dealing with rabbis who have personal problems. There have been several very highly publicized cases in recent years of rabbis who have sexually molested students. It had come up several times recently in conversation, and I asked to meet with this particular teacher because he had known two of the rabbis.

We talked over the issues for awhile as I was trying to grasp how such a thing could have been tolerated in the Jewish community. He, who is older than I, reminded me that women's rights were not respected very well in the past, and it is only recently that things have begun to change for the better. These rabbis had grown up in worlds where such behavior was not openly discussed and though it was viewed as wrong, there wasn't much pressure not to do it. I want to point out to that my teacher never said any of this to justify the actions, just to understand them a bit better.

When I asked the question of how to deal with teachings of these rabbis, some of which are really very special, when we know that the person who taught them is deeply flawed? He responded by quoting from Talmud. There was a Talmudic persona called "Acher" (other) who was very well respected and then excommunicated (for unclear reasons - click here for an earlier post about it). People asked one of Acher's main disciples how he related to his teacher after he was declared a heretic, and his response was that he ate the sweetness inside, but threw away the shell. My teacher said that's how it is with these rabbis today, keep the sweetness of their teachings, but don't learn the lessons they taught by living badly. He also pointed out that doesn't mean deny what happened or minimize it in any way, but learn the lessons of what not to do from them as well.

I thought all of this very wise and wanted to pass it along.

Prayer stones

2008-11-16T15:09:00.000-05:00

I don't usually remember my dreams, though I tend to have more vivid dreams here in Jerusalem then I had in Boston. I had a dream a few weeks ago which has stuck with me:

I was carrying some stones that had great importance. They looked like regular round stones that might be found anywhere in New England, but they had some significance which I couldn't quite grasp. I kept looking at them but they were just ordinary stones.

In my dream, I carried the stones with me and I met some people who did not pray. As I held the stones, I could see them through the eyes of the people I had just met and they looked just like regular stones.

I continued on my way and met some people who were praying, and I knew, prayed regularly. I again was able to look through their eyes and saw that the stones were glowing!

When I awoke, the lesson was obvious. I knew that if I prayed on a regular basis, the stones would glow again. That somehow the prayers would allow me to see the radiance of the world.

Preparation for Prayer

2008-11-12T16:48:00.000-05:00

I've been to several Jewish Meditation groups where the meditation was a 15-20 minute silent meditation followed by regular prayers. My understanding is that the source for this (I'll try to find the actual source) is in the Talmud where it describes the first rabbi's taking an hour to prepare for praying.

This has never sat well with me, though I don't know why. It makes sense that someone wants to get in the right frame of mind to pray, but doing mindfulness meditation or just focusing on the breath didn't feel right for me.

Tonight, before devening evening prayers, I felt overwhelmed with fear. It's a fear I've been interacting with over the past few days, and it felt like I needed to sit with it for awhile before I prayed. I sat for awhile and then had particularly powerful davening, lots of energy, lots of souls.

And then it hit me, the line is "the first step in wisdom is fear of God", but I could never find any particular place in the liturgy that would give us a moment to feel our fear. So maybe this is what it's referring to: sit and feel your fear first, and then interact with God. Use that time at the beginning to be with your fear and that will open the way to use the prayers to talk to God.

I'm going to have to sit with this awhile longer and play around with it, but something feels right about it.

More thoughts on Wheat and bakers - Zohar 176/a-b

2008-11-12T16:34:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking about what I wrote and realizing that "one who comes in and goes out" probably refers to one who can enter and exit the spirit world. One of the traditional roles of a shaman is to enter the spiritual world for information. While they are there, they gain an understanding of the essence of a person or thing, and then bring that understanding back to the physical world for the purpose of healing. But often, when they are back, the shaman then needs to do some counseling or other type of healing to help the person make proper use of the information.

One reason I don't like week-end shaman seminars is that a person gains understanding and then has no structure for using that to implement change in their lives. Change seems to take place slowly over long periods of time, and as such, a weekend can be beneficial as part of longer term work, but there needs to be a recognition of the needed follow-up.

So it is with the person who enters and exits, they need to be able to live in this world and be able to travel in the spiritual world. Without either, they are limited. So this frames the work a person needs to do if they are on the shaman's path: they need to be work on easily traveling back and forth into and out of the spiritual world. They need to understand wheat, but also how to bake bread because if you understand wheat, you can make some really good bread. but if all you understand is wheat, you don't even try to cook.

I think one of the traps I fall into is dismissing people who are good bakers because they don't get the wheat. I tend to say that people are not worth learning from because they don't understand the spiritual aspects of what they do, but they may be very good at what they do nevertheless. It's then up to me to learn as much as I can from them and then add the spiritual component to make it more meaningful to me. And also to know when people are good at wheat, but not so good in this world.

Zohar 176/a-b - Those who come in and out

2008-11-04T12:57:00.000-05:00

I started my new Beit-Midrash today and it gave me several things to think about.

We studied a section from the Zohar, page 176/a-b, parshat Terumah. It's the introduction to Sifra D'Tzniutah, which roughly translates to the Book of Modesty. It reads in my very poor translation:

Who is the one who modest of the book [What is modesty of the book]? R' Shimon said, they are five parts that include the palaces of all, and and fill all of the land. R' Yehudah asked, if they include everything, they are more preferable then all. R' Shimon said thus it is for those who goes in and comes out, but for those who don't come in and go out, it is not thus.

It is told of a man who lived in the mountains and didn't know of the city, he grew wheat and ate the wheat by itself. One day, he came into a city and they gave him good bread. The man said to them, why? They said, bread is for eating. So he ate it and it was very tasty. He asked, from what do you make this? From wheat, they answered. Later, they gave him challahs that were dipped in oil. He tasted them and said from what are these made. From wheat, they said. Later they gave him sweet mixtures kneaded with honey and oil. He said, from what are these made. From wheat, they said. He said, it's certain that I am master of all of these as I eat the essence of all of these, which is wheat.

According to this way of thinking, the refinements [manifestations] of the world are not known, and they are lost. Thus it is for whoever grasps the basic rule but doesn't know all of the useful refinements that come out from the same basic rule.

The five parts are the Torah, which then fills up the world. R' Yehudah suggests then that we just study Torah and nothing else as in it is contained everything. R' Shimon replies that if you are "one who goes in and comes out" then you can do this, otherwise best to study everything. Who is "one who comes in and goes out"?

We then hear a story about a hermit who lives on wheat alone. When he comes into the city and tries all the yummy baked goods that can be made of wheat, he declares himself the master of all these things because he grows and eats wheat. He understands wheat, the basic ingredient in all these things, so he believes that he is master of all things made of wheat. The text then points out to us, if we haven't already gotten there ourselves, that this person is a fool, and anyone who thinks they can be master of a thing just by understanding the basic rules of a thing has really missed the point.

My interpretation of "one who comes in and goes out" is a person who lives in this world. We can study Torah to understand the world, but it's only useful if we are actually participating in the world and seeing how it is made manifest in the world. If we live in seclusion, then all the study is wasted, as we're really missing the point. If a person has trouble being in this world, and is spending all their time in the spiritual world, then studying the deep matters (basic principles of the world) is a problem as they lose sight of the beauty of the physical world.

There are some people have an easier time being in the physical world and need to work to be in the spiritual one, and there are others who are exactly the opposite. Those people have difficulty getting their feet on the ground and staying present in this world. I believe this story is teaching us that if you can be in this world, then it's ok to learn to travel in the spiritual world, but if you have trouble being here, then spend your time learning to enjoy this world. For one who can go into the spiritual world and come back into the physical world, they can extract from the basic principles to all the possibilities. But for someone who is stuck in the spiritual world, they need to concentrate on learning the manifestations in the physical world.

The last question I want to address is actually the first of the text: Who is one who has modesty of the book? If the book is everything in the world, and the book is the essence of all in the world, then modesty of the book would mean that any who understand the deeper workings of the world should be modest about it. If our story man was our bad example, then we learn that even if we understand a deep principle, we don't proclaim ourselves master over it or any of it's refinements, we remain modest and humble, and know that to truly master a thing, we have to understand the basics and all of the possibilities that can come from it.

Past lives

2008-11-02T01:37:00.000-05:00

Last night at the Rebbe's, I asked Rebbe Nachman about past lives. I was curious about how to discover my past lives as I've never been aware of them. He took me on a very peculiar journey.

The visualization was traveling into a vagina, and then feeling the warm amniotic waters surround me. At this point, I could repeat the process to go further back, or feel the energy around me and know what it felt like to be in that lifetime. I don't know what my immediate prior life was, but the first life I felt was around 1919 or so. I was a Hasid on my way to see my rebbe. The next one I saw was 1853, and I was a peasant on a hunt. I was being careful as I was poaching from a lord's land.

At this point, I asked him if there was life that had something to teach me that I could use in this life. One of the reasons I've never really pursued past lives was that I didn't see much point. We are living in the present life, so all of our issues and problems can be dealt with here. But recently, I've been bumping into Karmic issues in my life, that is, issues that I was born with and have no clear cause in this lifetime. When I would go looking for patterns of actions to understand what and why I was doing certain things, there wasn't one. So that's why I decided to look in the past lives to see if they could help shed light on the current issues.

One thing I've seen John do is jump back through a client's lifetimes to find the genesis of an issue. When the genesis is dealt with, then the person is able to deal with the issue in the current lifetime. That was what I was trying to do with myself.

At that point, I jumped to a much earlier life where I was being killed. The only thing I could see in that lifetime was the moment of death. After going through the moment of death several times, I was able to see the person who was killing me. I realized that I had known and loved that person, and now they were killing me. As I sat with it longer, I was able to forgive that person. We were both warriors, and he had been my teacher, but when the political situation shifted, he had followed the rules of his side and fought against me. We had valued the political allegiances over the connections of the heart and he had killed me for it.

As I embraced him, I felt myself heal. I'm not sure exactly how yet, but we'll see how it goes. But in this lifetime, I know that I try to value the connections of the heart over political allegiances and rules that exist outside of myself.

Calling Jewish Souls: Four angels and Patriarchs & Matriarchs

2008-10-12T15:52:00.001-04:00

I have been thinking about how Jews call souls and two techniques came to mind.

The first is the four angels which is done at bedtime when reading the nighttime Shema. On the right is Michael, on the left is Gabriel, in front is Oriel, behind is Raphael, and above is the Shechina. The technique is to say the Shema, then call each angel to their proper position. This is also a technique that can be done for others in the same manner.

The second technique is the first paragraph of the Amidah when we call the fore-fathers. As each patriarch is names, bow. Abraham is in the middle, Isaac to the left, and Jacob to the right, then Sarah to the middle, Rebecca to the left, and Rahel and Leah to the right (I alternate who I call first but I always say God of one then God of the other). During morning prayers, the ancestors come down to us, but during the evening prayers, we are raised up to them. I also use this technique during treatments to invite them to come and help with the healing.

These are two ways of calling Jewish souls, and I hope to write about more as I learn and practice them.

Worlds in the letters

2008-10-12T15:40:00.000-04:00

I was at the rebbe's last night and had a vision of Reb Nachman. I met him, as usual, in a forest. We traveled for a little bit and I asked him how I could learn to see better in the spirit world. He said to follow him. We went through lots of twists and turns and I realized we were walking through a navy ship - up metal stairways, through doors, and down narrow passages. We emerged into blackness, I continued to follow him through nothingness. In front of us appeared a podium, the only lighted thing I could see, and on it was a table with a Torah laid open upon it.

I looked down into it and he told me to look at the letters, at every stroke, even at the crowns upon the letters. As I did, each one drew me in and opened into an entire world. It was like I was going through the letter into an entirely different place. When I pulled myself out and back to the podium, I looked again at a word and the word became translucent and I was drawn in and through it.

Reb Nachman told me to practice this technique. Start with a letter and see where it takes me and what it feels like. Then focus on the entire word, then on a sentence. Then start again at a new letter, even at a stroke or a crown, and see what it feels like and where it takes me. He said that if I practice this, then it will help me see.

On the way home, I told my friend about it and he mentioned that this is one of the Ba'al Shem Tov's fundamental ideas: that each letter of Torah is an entire world. So it makes sense that the BSh"T's grandson would send me there.

Silence is not creation

2008-10-07T04:01:00.000-04:00

It occurred to me the other day that it makes no sense to talk on Shabbat.

God created the world in six days and on the seventh he rested and did no creation How did he create? He talked and as he spoke the world came into being. We are created in God's image, and, as many kabbalists have pointed out, every time we speak we create. Which is a strong incentive to watch one's words very, very carefully as they have immense power. On shabbat we are commanded to neither create nor destroy. Since words are creation, why do we talk on Shabbat? It would make sense for it to be a day of silent contemplation and meditation so that we take a break from the role of continuously creating the world (another kabbalistic idea).

On the surface this idea seems silly, I mean, hey, we're Jews, we talk. But it seems to make sense.

I asked my friend Yoni about it and he said that there is a discussion in the Jerusalem Talmud about whether it is permitted to say "shalom" to someone on shabbat. This would imply that their practice was to be silent on Shabbat, and they concluded that it's maybe, reluctantly permissible to greet another person on Shabbat.

And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God ceased from all the work of creation that he had done.
Genesis 2:3

This is the first time God does not speak during the week of creation, but God blesses and makes it holy in silence. Two possibilities present themselves: either there are two different types of speech, one with the power of creation and one for blessing, or speech is for creation and silence is for blessing and making holy. It would imply that our words create, while our intention is what is important for blessing and making holy. So words could either create a good or a bad thing, holy or mundane, and it is our intention that determines how if it will be holy and a blessing to the world.

Menachem recently described to me the difference between God's nature and God's ability. It is within God's ability to create and destroy, to make both Good and Evil, but it is God's nature to Love and bless. Much as we see in the Human realm, the mirror of God, that we can do wonderful things and terrible abhorrent things, and it is up to us to decide. We struggle to give our good nature control over our ability so that we can be a blessing to the world. This idea dovetails nicely with what I'm describing above: our speech can do things, but our intention is what determines if it a blessing or a curse.

This is a good reason that all people walking the spiritual path have to spend a lot of time working on themselves and always look inward at their intentions and emotions to make sure they stay on the path.

In my own experience, I think there also exists speech that has power and speech that does not. One is done while connected to God, while the other is done without. When I work with my clients and am responded to something they have said, I always try to make sure I am connected, so that my words are healing. The same is true of writing, some of it is done with power and some of it is just words. This a longer discussion that I will get back to in another post.

equalization

2008-10-07T03:50:00.001-04:00

A interesting energetic pattern I've noticed lately is one of opposition in a relationship. There are times when my wife and I find ourselves in an interesting dynamic where one of us starts to head in a direction that has some sort of difficult emotional component for one or, usually, both of us. So in reaction, the other person starts to resist and head in the opposite direction. At some point, this dynamic assumes an energetic of it's own which is apart from whatever emotional components spawned it. At that point, we have to go through two steps: dealing with the difficult emotions, and removing the oppositional dynamic. These two are often related to one another, and are not always two distinct movements, but both need to be deal with.

What is even more interesting is that often, if one partner is still, even in the face of difficult emotions, the moment of the opposition will resolve itself before it spins into it's own energetic, and then the difficult emotions can be dealt with without the struggle. Though there are times when the oppositional dynamic is needed to power us and bring us forward into a new, better place. Those are times when we would not take such a strong or extreme stand if it was not in reaction to the other person, but that is the place where we actually belong. As the opposition resolves, we find a new equalization which is better (one hopes) for the two us.

Not in Heaven

2008-10-02T07:33:00.000-04:00

Deuteronomy 30:11-14

יא כִּי הַמִּצְוָה הַזֹּאת, אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם--לֹא-נִפְלֵאת הִוא מִמְּךָ, וְלֹא רְחֹקָה הִוא.	11 For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not too hard for thee, neither is it far off.
יב לֹא בַשָּׁמַיִם, הִוא: לֵאמֹר, מִי יַעֲלֶה-לָּנוּ הַשָּׁמַיְמָה וְיִקָּחֶהָ לָּנוּ, וְיַשְׁמִעֵנוּ אֹתָהּ, וְנַעֲשֶׂנָּה.	12 It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say: 'Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that we may do it?'
יג וְלֹא-מֵעֵבֶר לַיָּם, הִוא: לֵאמֹר, מִי יַעֲבָר-לָנוּ אֶל-עֵבֶר הַיָּם וְיִקָּחֶהָ לָּנוּ, וְיַשְׁמִעֵנוּ אֹתָהּ, וְנַעֲשֶׂנָּה.	13 Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say: 'Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that we may do it?'
יד כִּי-קָרוֹב אֵלֶיךָ הַדָּבָר, מְאֹד: בְּפִיךָ וּבִלְבָבְךָ, לַעֲשֹׂתוֹ. {ס}	14 But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.

When I read these passages from last week's torah portion, I was struck by the difficulty in reading them. One simple reading is that we are able to do all of God's commandments, that they require no extraordinary effort, no supernatural intervention to fulfill, but each and every one of us is able to fulfill them. The other part of this reading is that we each need to do it and not wait for anyone else to do it for us. We should not wait for someone else to go to Heaven to fulfill the commandments, but we should be able to do it ourselves, that is, that it is doable by all of us.

That is the crux of the difficulty I had with the passage, does it mean that all of us should be able to go up to heaven ourselves? Are we all mystics to ascend and receive our commandments from God ourselves? Or does it mean that we don't need to ascend at all, that everything is right here already? And, in a very Jewish way, the thing we are supposed to receive when we ascend are words that we can hear. Or another possible reading is that we are not commanded to do anything that is out of our reach - each of us does according to their ability, though determining that would be a difficult task.

My sense is that the traditional view is that everything is already given to us, and all the commandments are already written down, so there is no need to go to heaven to get anything else. My desire is that it means Judaism is very flat, that there is no hierarchy, and everyone can fulfill all of the commandments. But that's not really Judaism. In the temple days, the Cohanim did the sacrifices and entered the holy of holies and clearly were elevated above the rest of the people. Since then, we've elevated the rabbi's above the rest, though in an interesting way. The rabbis earned their rank by their learning: the more knowledgeable and learned they were, the higher they were regarded.

In the Hasidic world, the rabbi was also a tzaddik who went to higher levels than others, and was venerated for it. In Morgenstern's latest pamplet he says that people should try to be near a tzaddik during Rosh Hashanna because the tzaddik is at a higher level and will help lift them up during the high holy days. One problem is that a tzaddik is not always created by his learning and intellectual ability. Spiritual ability and academic knowledge are not the same thing. Working on my view that the spiritual activities of Judaism include study, it makes sense that someone can be very learned which leads to great spiritual ability, but it doesn't always follow. Which then poses the question of how to know a tzaddik when one sees one?

Getting back to the text, another possible reading is that we each have gifts which allow us to connect with God. So when the baker bakes, if that is his gift, he connects to God while baking. Likewise, if the doctor's gift is healing, then she is connecting to God when she is working with patients. But the text talks about specific people who are able to connect with God and words emerge that we can hear and base our actions on them. This is a very specialized gift: the ability to sail into the spiritual world and return with words which enable us to do God's will.

At one point, while working on patients, I would see scenes from movies. I assumed for awhile that I was just day-dreaming during a treatment and didn't put much stock in them. After awhile though, I began to realize that the scenes were connected to my patients and what was going on with them. I realized that I was watching a lot of movies at that point in my life, and the stories that I was hearing were how I was interfacing with the spiritual world - they were the clothes the spiritual visions took. As I study more Judaism, I'm finding that my insights are coming more and more in the form of Jewish texts and metaphors.

People who spend all day, every day studying must receive their insight in the form of words. When Morgenstern goes into his trance state at the Tish, he speaks and brings insight from the spiritual world. In this way, text study defines the spiritual experience that Jews have. A problem is that people's gifts are so varied and widespread that only a small percentage of people will have the gift to experience the spiritual world through words. Religious Judaism, in the past, had a lot more flexibility regarding this as it put value on people's working lives, so that the baker who find God in bread can bake. But these days, in Jerusalem, the value in only on education. There are scores of people who spend their lives in Yeshiva, and the value is that anyone who can do that, should. For those who's gift is words, that's great, though for others, it's very limiting.

All of which brings us back to the original text. To me, the more important part tells us that we should not ask someone else to go to heaven for us, we should go there ourselves. If our path to God is through words, then we need to study and pray with words so those shape our spiritual experience. Then we will find the words on our mouths and in our hearts. We need not rely on anyone else to do it for us, as it's all inside of us.

The language of feeling

2008-10-02T07:14:00.000-04:00

One of the things John has talked about for the past few years, and now written about in his book, is seeing vs feeling. There are two general ways that people connect to the spirit world: one type of person can see first and then connects, the other has to connect first and only then is able to see. I am a feeler. I need to feel a connection to a person and to God before I can see what is going on with them spiritually. Often, I am only able to feel, and not able to see, which makes it difficult to explain what I do.

My friends who are seers can look at a person and know things about them. They instantly get an idea of who this person is and can accurately talk about what's going on with that person. In a healing world, these are the people who put their hands on someone (or even just look at the person) and can immediately know where the problem is located in their body. Their method of seeing is placing their hands on a person, but once they do that, they can "see" the person's energy and issues.

For me, I feel. I feel a connection with a person, I feel power generate when I work on someone, I feel when there is a change and when they are healing, and I can sometimes tell what is going on. I know that one of my fears of the spiritual world blinds me to what is going on. We all have to work through our fears to do this work - this is mine. Hayyim Vital talked about Tikknei Avon, repairs of sins that need to be done before a before a person can enter the spiritual realm. Perhaps there should also be a tikkunei pachad - repair of fear.

John's book is written from the perspective of two people who see, as both John and Judy are see-ers. I am curious and want to explore the language of feeling. How to describe what one is feeling as one make the connections that allow that work to be done in the spiritual world.

When I meet someone who says they do spiritual work, I always ask them to be very specific about what they are doing and feeling. That helps me to clarify what they are experiencing so we can compare notes and make sure we are talking about the same experience. But when it comes to my own experience, I often lack in words. I think, over the next few months, that I will try to explore the language of feeling and see if I can more accurately describe my experiences.

Fear is a mover

2008-09-24T05:13:00.000-04:00

One of the big movers is Fear. The question is still how to create change in the physical world by making changes in the spiritual one, and how the shaman is able to do that intentionally and directly. Often, in myself and my clients, fear is often a big factor in influences the events around us. Fear is one of our basic emotions and cornerstones of human existence. As such, there is no way for us to get rid of it or push it aside, but it always remains with us. So we need to learn how to have a good relationship with fear. I think about it as a power based relationship - either fear has power and dominance over us or we have power over our fear and can use it for our benefit.

When I think about it, talking about fear in this sense is more about not letting fear influence one's life, so more of a preventative. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people planning big events, about which they have a great fear, only to have numerous things go wrong at the last moment.

In my practice, I often see fear clearly in expectant mothers, though this is more about how our fear effects us personally than how it moves the world around us, but I think it's informative. I worked with a woman who was a trained nurse had worked in obstetrics in the past. She understood the birthing process very well, and had seen in numerous times before, but she also knew everything that could go wrong. And it scared her so much that she was preventing herself from going into labor. When she actually got to me, she was already post due date, though we had made several appointments prior to when she actually came in. She'd had to change and cancel the appointments as things kept coming up for her.

I was never sure if those things were under her control, but my sense was that there were things she was doing and things happening around her that kept her from taking care of herself. In the end, nothing I did could help her as the fear was too great and she ended up having a c-section. My personal fear was that her fear would cause something to go wrong with the baby, but was happy that her fears were about the delivery, not about the health of the baby.

Fear is an important emotion, it tells us when to think about something, and when to run for our lives. But if we fear something, and the fear has power over us, it can cause an internal result, of our own actions causing the fear to come true, or an external reaction, of causing the world around us to help the fear come about.

So how do we deal with fear? In Chinese medicine, fear is controlled by thinking (Water controlled by Earth). So one way of dealing with fear is knowledge. We can name our fear, we can learn a lot about it, we can study it, or we can do anything that helps our minds to understand it. The image is of a child who is scared of the cloths hung over a chair because they think it is a monster, but when you turn the light on, the fear goes away because the child knows what she is dealing with. So if you know what you are scared of, and can name the fear, then the fear is weakened.

But there is also the emotional component that needs to be dealt with. My approach to this is exemplified in Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink. He discusses police officers "desensitizing" themselves to the fear of being shot, which allows them to enter dangerous situations and still exercise good judgment. Once the fear has been named, it's important to spend time with it, so that one is aware of when it is present, one is used to it's presence, and one can decide whether or not to act on it.

In regards to the main discussion, I think fear and other strong emotions influence the world around us, and to gain control over one's ability to move things spiritually, one needs to have control over one's fear.