These are the things I know to be true

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.

Typologies

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

And God arose from upon him

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?

Why Shaman? A definition and clarification

 

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.

The Role of Healers in the Healing

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/.

The tensions that move us forward

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).

The language of feeling

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.

Receiving and sending

In Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point", he talks about how people are influenced by the moods and emotions of others on an unconscious level. The study he cites is that two minutes in the presence of another, not even talking to them, can change one's mood. He goes on to write that there are people who are senders and people who are receivers, that is, some people influence others (charisma) and some are more influenced by others.

It's clear to me that we are all a mix of both, but one type can dominate. For me, I am often a receiver. One of the ways that I can learn about the emotional state of my patients is to observe how my own mood changes when they enter the room. At times, I will even feel their symptoms in my own body. But I am also a sender when I heal. I enter a trance like state in which I am deeply relaxed, and I can feel my patients relax as well.

but I also know that I can be a good sender when I am in a dark mood - making those around feel agitated and annoyed very easily. So I guess one challenge is to figure out how to send out warmth and love when needed so people feel nurtured.

Often I will feel myself changing who I am in reaction to others. My manner of being, my responses sometimes seem foreign to me and I wonder if I'm doing this because it is what the person needs to heal, or if it's because this is what the person wants or expects from me. My guess is that if I stay connected to God, then however I react to a person will be healing, even if it's not nice on the surface (though that's rare).

The image I always had was to aspire to be that person who stood tall, commanded attention, and inspired all around him to a new direction. But I think, as a receiver, that my healing will mostly be one on one or in small groups. That way, I can react to the person, where I can be different with different people and not aspire to treating everyone the same way.

blink

I just finished Blink by Malcolm Gladwell and was very impressed by it. One piece that particularly struck me was his description of the food tasters (chapter five, pp 176-186). They were able to train their taste buds to an extreme - even being able to taste the differences between different quality ingredients in different batches of the same foods. Gladwell writes that they are able to understand so much about their tastes because they have an extensive vocabulary to describe what they are tasting. They are able to talk extensively about a brief moment of taste. Gladwell's book is all about how people make snap decisions, so this fits right into his theme.

Earlier, he writes that most people who are asked to describe why they like or dislike something end up changing their opinions once they have tried to justify it. They lose that moment of experience to the longer thinking process. The food tasters are able to hold onto their initial opinions because they were trained to accurate describe the initial experience and therefore don't need to change the taste to fit the description.

I see a clear link between this and shamanism. When I first began having shamanic experiences, my initial reaction was to try to explain what happened. Part of working with a teacher was having him explain what was happening, but I still wanted a clearer idea of what was going on. It's the same as driving a car: you press on the gas and the car goes, but most people have no idea what's going on under the hood. I used to be an auto mechanic so I have a pretty good idea what's going on. I know all the names of the parts and what they do. Shamanic healing is a lot like driving. I turn on the key and call the souls. Then I drive around, though not always knowing where I'm going, and then people get healthy. I have no idea what's going on under the hood: what makes the car move or how the engine works.

In my practice, I've found that the Jewish explanations for the experiences seem to most accurately describe what's happening, which is why I try to study as much as possible. But I've heard a lot of crazy explanations for what's going on once you turn the key. It seems that people can't accurately describe what they are experiencing (myself included) and so we do our best to come up with an explanation. And the explanation sometimes, or often, changes what we experience. I've seen that often the explanation is more about the practitioner than the experience.

So what if we took a page from the tasters and came up with a detailed vocabulary for describing the experience of driving the shamanic car. Not how it works as I think that's beyond us and will always remain a mystery, but what we actually experience. I have no idea how to do this, but am curious to see what I can come up with.