I went to see a Hasidic master named Morgenstern last Saturday night. Not really see him, but sit at his table while he prays and speaks entirely in Yiddish. I don't speak any yiddish, nor do I really understand the Hebrew as it's so heavily accented. So mainly I'm there to soak up the energy, which can be quite powerful.

It is their custom to extend the sabbath as long as possible, so even though it was after shabbat for me, for him, the sabbath continues until late in the night. Accordingly, I was there for seudah Shlishit, or third meal, which usually occurs around four in the afternoon. I got there about 10:15 pm, and they had only started a half hour earlier.

I went last week, so this was my second time. He does this every week as the sabbath goes out. The general flow is that people sing and pray, then Morgenstern speaks for a while, then more songs and prayers, then another talk. So these were my thoughts on my visit tonight.

The room was packed. Someone had gotten married today, so this was a blessing for him or something like that. It also meant there were a lot of people there who don't normally come.

During the first time he spoke, I went on a journey to the beit midrash elyon (the heavenly study house, a place of power for me that I go to often). All was quiet there as people listened to him. They made occasional side comments about what he said, but as I couldn’t understand what he was saying, I didn’t know what they were saying either.

I went to table there and sat down. A book was open and I looked at it. The words were vibrating. The letters were floating around the page, and all through it, the words were infused with the multi-colored ribbons of creation. I understood that Morgenstern goes to the other side by studying, and the words carry him there. And I understood that I can do this too.

I realized also that the physical room was full of distraction. The people there were listening to what he was saying, but they didn’t really get it, so the room was terribly distracted. He spoke for a long time, so people got very restless. I found their behavior distracting. And I closed my eyes again, and was told to open my heart, which has been the message I’ve been getting for the past few weeks. I did and it was overwhelming. I could feel all of the people in the room and their distraction. All of their emotions, and thoughts. I wanted to check out again, but I was told to stay and ride with it. I did until the end of his talk. It will take a lot practice to do that without being overwhelmed or taking on other people’s stuff.

When he spoke the second time, I felt myself pulled very fast forward, like everything was in super-speed. I just went with it, and then found myself in a yard with a bunch of logs and an axe. I was told to chop wood. I chopped. I got distracted, I was told to chop. My thoughts wandered, I was told to chop. Towards the end of his talk, I was shown some of the exercises I need to do to learn Hebrew, and I was told to chop. I realized that I’m not chopping wood to achieve the zen enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water. I’m chopping wood so I can learn to focus and do the same exercise over and again until I get it. I was also shown that some people get through to the other side by doing a repetitive action.

I'm excited to go this week and see what happens.

A difference

There are moments in my life when I suddenly look up and realize that people are different and there are more ways to do something than I thought possible. And in that moment, I gain enormous perspective on how I actually do things. Tonight at Tai Chi class was one of those moments.

We were doing some very beginner push hands techniques trying to sink down while pushing our partner away from us. I am not very good at this at all. Most of my partners pushed me off balance while I was unable to move them at all. While I was working with one partner, I realized that both of us were trying to feel the connection and not really push the other. So I reverted back to my healing connection and started to establish a heart connection with him, and it was then I realized that the push hands connection was very different.

I realized that the heart connection I make brings the person Love. It can bring them to an altered state of consciousness, but fundamental to it is the lack of desire to move them anywhere. The connection becomes the most important part and all of the work is in establishing and maintaining the connection. The push hands is all about projecting one's Qi outward, and in particular, finding your opponents weakness and pushing through it to knock him/her off balance.

In my healing work, I don't project my energy outward, I invite souls into the room to heal. But this has recently been one of my issues, I need to learn to project myself outward, so this means either a change in the heart connection, or I have to learn to be able to do both and use either as appropriate. Very exciting to be learning a new way of moving energy around.

A fear of Cossacks

I was walking up to my Tai Chi class tonight when I realized I had walked down a familiar line of thought. I imagine some disaster that suddenly, God forbid, takes my family away. I imagine my reactions and how it would destroy my life. Usually, when I catch myself thinking these thoughts, I thank God for what I have, and try to feel the fear of loss more intensely so that I can put it back in its appropriate place and not let it control my actions.

Tonight, however, I suddenly felt the fear as part of something much, much larger. It almost felt as if the whole city was a part of the intensity of this fear. I had to stop walking several times and just let the fear run on past me. It almost felt like the ancestral flow. That's when I realized I was probably feeling the Jewish fear that no matter how good it gets, someone will come and destroy it all and take it away from us. I call this the Cossack fear, though it should probably be called the Tisha B'Av fear (that's the date of the destruction of the second temple).

It's the fear that we are going to be sitting in our village, and then, for no reason we can see, a bunch of cossacks come running through town destroying everything. How many times has this been repeated in our history: the expulsion from Spain, the holocaust, and now, the fear that Israel will fall. Does it happen because we don't know how to deal with this fear, and we remember all the times we were almost destroyed (or were destroyed) without knowing how to respond to the fear that comes with it? Or is it just a part of who we are?

Another possibility is that this is my personal ancestral fear, as my forebearers certainly had life hard. I'll have to interact with it a little more to get a clear read on it.

What I am really interested in is how to change this fear, or if that is even possible. It was so powerful, so strong, that I'm not even sure it can be done. In that case, I'll have to learn how to live with it without giving it any power over me.

an unexpected visitor

Today in Ulpan (intensive Hebrew class at Hebrew University), we were sitting in the botanical garden while one of our classmates gave a short talk. Twice a week, one of the students in the class has to give a five to ten minute presentation (in Hebrew) about anything they want. When the student got up to talk, I expected her to give a short talk about knitting, which is what she had been thinking about yesterday, or something about the botanical garden, because we were there. Instead, she told us her grandparents were Holocaust survivors and she wanted to talk about the Holocaust.

As she starting talking about her visit to Poland last year, and some of the conditions here grandparents had to live through, I was filled with an immense sadness. At first I thought it was because I haven't really thought about the holocaust for a long time, and was not expecting to be hearing about how little they ate or how disgusting the building was that served as their bathroom, but then I realized I was connecting to something deeper.

I began to pay attention and realized that her grandparents had shown up. I think I was connecting with their feelings. As the presenter finished her talk she told us that she had decided to continue with university here in Israel and was not planning on returning to the states. Her grandparents could not have been more proud.

After class ended, I told her that her grandparents had shown up and they were proud of her. She kind of looked at me in a confused way, said thank you, and went on her way. I don't know if it meant anything to her, but I know it's what they wanted me to say, so I needed to do it.

God and the MBTA

This morning I searched the house in Vain for my "Charlie Card" - the plastic ticket that gives me cheaper fares on the MBTA, our local subway. It was really frustrating to not be able to find it.

When I got on the bus, I asked the driver if there was anyway I could get the free subway transfer without the card. "No" is what he said. Still frustrated, I got off the bus and walked the five minutes to the trolley stop. I was going to try to buy a ticket for the train fare that would allow me to transfer on the way home, but the machine didn't dispense the Charlie Cards. Frustrated again, I glanced over at a nearby machine and found a ticket for a free subway ride sticking out of it. Apparently, someone had purchased it and not taken it. There was no else there, so I took it and got a free ride the rest of the way to work.

On the way home, I asked the trolley driver where if I could get the Charlie card from her, but She was all out. I sat down right behind her, only to have her call me back and tell me that she'd arranged for someone to meet us at the next stop so I could get a card. And sure enough, at the next stop, an "inspector" showed up with a card. As I thanked him for it, I asked if there was a way to use it for the transfer. Hmm, both he and the driver said. They spent the next two stops trying to figure it out, but couldn't. Finally he asked me what bus I was going to. When I told him it was about a five minute walk from the train, he looked outside and said "it's a nice day, I'll walk over with you." And he did.

So what happened? I was angry in the morning, but by the time I got the bus stop, I wasn't anymore. But I didn't give up trying to get my transfers, because I asked the drivers to help me. Somehow my anger in the morning built up power that I followed all day. Now I have to figure out how to do this on purpose!

Akiva and the Jewish angels

R. Akiva came to me when I was studying Hagigah the other day. The tractate was about why Abuyah committed heresy and became Acher. It talked about Akiva getting to Pardes by means of the angels carrying him there, and that the angels that carried him were the angels that were assigned to Akiva. I likened this to the 27 ancestral souls that one calls in the shamanism I've learned. Akiva told me that his angels were Jewish ones, called by Jewish means. Abuyah's angels were mixed with the Greek and roman angels that fascinated him. That's why Abuyah was led astray after he returned to Pardes. Akivah was very firm that the practice had to be Jewish in order to lead one in the right direction.

I had always assumed that we all go to the same place, just by different paths. There is one god, but we all experience him differently. Akivah seemed to think differently. That we really do get to different places and if one wants to get to a Jewish God, one needs to use Jewish ways of getting there.

My mentor John said that he thinks that we do get to the same place, but the way we get there helps to determine how we experience it. Kind of like wearing different color glasses - you may be looking at the same thing, it just appears differently.

I don't know what to think, though I think the two viewpoints, from a practical point of view, aren't really very different.

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.