Addressing Your Masks
God has given you one face, and you make yourself another. The Book of Genesis starts off with a bang and ends with some dust. In between it is one masquerade after another. The ball gets rolling from the beginning —energy slows down to parade as matter. Then comes the Eden story in which human […]
Melting ICE
The United States remains one of only a handful of countries to retain the Fahrenheit temperature system and therefore, we are aware that ice begins to melt as it reaches and moves beyond 32 degrees. How Daniel Fahrenheit’s system places water’s freezing (and melting) temperature at 32 degrees is a complicated story. The number 32, […]
“How to Win the Fight Against Fear” Guest Blog by KE Teacher, Rabbi Jamie Arnold
The principal of a local high school calls me up. “Hey rabbi, we had another anti-Semitic incident at our school. I’ve spoken to the student and his parents, but I’d like him to meet with you.” “Of course,” I said. A few days later, this burly seventeen year-old steps though the doors of the synagogue […]
Introduction to the Tree of Life by Dr. David Sanders This poem, a 2,000 year old description of Ten Sefirot is the basis for the Tree of Life –a map of the flow of energy from infinite to finite, or viewed another way they are different stages through which creative energy flows. Ten Sefirot of […]
The Intimate Picture
Louis Kahn, the great American architect, died in 1974 in a washroom at Penn Station. He was alone when his heart gave out. His only son, Nathan was eleven. A shadowy figure in his life, his famous Dad was busy at work, travelling abroad, and unbeknownst to Nathan, a father to his half siblings with […]
Holding Your Opposite
Which is it—grey or gray? Isn’t it fitting that there isn’t a black and white answer. Turns out they are both acceptable ways to spell my favorite color. Gray is a great color to represent ambiguity and grey is also a great color to represent ambivalence. The fourth principle of awareness: Hold opposites and recognize […]
Orchestrating Change
Awareness principle four: Live by setting intention. Be open to possibility—one door closing opens another. Measure success by effort not by outcome. In the Tree of Life this awareness principle is connected with the Sefirah energy called Netzach-Hebrew for the words Victory and Orchestration. Sometimes victory, such as the young shepherd boy David, […]
Accepting, Living, Surrendering
The voice synthesizer fell silent, the screen turned black. The vast network of neurons in his brain, much like the stars in the sky at dawn, began to recede from view as Stephen Hawking took his last thought with him beyond the space-time continuum. The screen reads: ACCEPT REALITY AS IT IS Hawking, […]
If Not Now, When?
If it was simple to be (fully) present “now” would we need so much instruction on how to be in the moment? Kabbalah places our relationship to time at the foundation of our awareness practice. Being fully present is an integration of past, future, and present as exemplified by the ineffable name of God, […]
Objects in the Mirror
Over the next 11 blog posts, we will look at one of the 11 principles of awareness, which we link with the Sefirot of the Tree of Life. We start at the bottom and work our way up—ascending in awareness. The most basic awareness principle is to pay attention to what shows up—which includes who […]