R. KABBALAH

Taken from A Patchwork Life: The Hands-On Guide To Living by Louise Silk

Available as an ebook: A Patchwork Life: The Hands-On Guide To Living 

Kabbalah is not a series of books or a series of theories, but a course in experience. It actually asks us to participate in the world in a new way. It asks us to be awake, to engage, and to awaken to that engagement. When we wake to such participation, something entirely different reveals itself; a paradigm that asks us to step out of the static, snapshot quality of our usual mode of thinking, and to enter an enfolded order born not of words, but nondual experiences where God and the world are truly One.

Jason Shulman

Beyond the limitations of mainstream Judaism, its mystical form, Kabbalah, includes unconventional practices, like meditation. In the tradition, only religious married men over the age of forty study it; that is, until an alternative new-age Rabbi started a Kabbalah center in California. He exposed the secret mystical practices to several famous students, Madonna among them. Coming to his work, I accessed the beginning of my transcendent Jewish vision.

Mystical practice, by its nature, is empirical. Reading, alone, only introduces the subject. To gain experience, I entered a three-year training program in Kabbalistic Healing at A Society of Souls (ASOS). The work tied together the theistic belief in G-d with spiritual thought and practice that would support my integrated path to awakening.

According to Kabbalah, the totality of existence is five-dimensional space and time, composed of four different worlds, ten attributes, and thirty-two paths. Divine Action on earth depends on each and every individual’s moment by moment free-will choice of self-determination.

These concepts rang true to my earth-based, feminist, contemporary beliefs. Contemplative Jewish life practices, heighted my serenity, deepened my faith, and sustained my acceptance of life on life’s terms.