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.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Worlds in the letters
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Silence is not creation
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.
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.
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.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.
Genesis 2:3
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
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.
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.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Not in Heaven
Deuteronomy 30:11-14
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.
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
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Fear is a mover
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.
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.
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