Tree of Awareness
Allen Afterman begins his book Kabbalah and Consciousness by declaring that “as much as Kabbalah is a philosophy it is even more a map of transcendent experience.” There are two important ideas that Afterman touches upon. The first is that Kabbalah is a philosophy. This may come as a surprise to some because Kabbalah emerged […]
Lost and Found
Have you ever been trying to find, perhaps with some urgency, a misplaced item and found something else you had thought was lost forever? These discoveries, being reunited with a forgotten item, are moments of joy, brief as they may be, interrupted by the necessity of getting back to finding your keys. Looking for one […]
Random Acts of Synchronicity
Legend has it that in 1982 Anne Herbert scrawled the words “practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty” on a place mat in a California restaurant and from there it randomly spread. About 10 years later Chuck Wall, a professor at Bakersfield College, recalls hearing about “random senseless acts of violence” and […]
No More No Less
In our new class, entitled Soul of Anatomy, we are looking at the correspondences between limbs of the physical body and the spiritual nature of the commandments (there are according to Jewish tradition 248 limbs of the body and 248 positive commandments of the Torah). These past two weeks we have been looking at […]
Kabbalah Experiences
It was the kind of accident that makes you avert your eyes…how could there be any survivors? It happened last Thursday afternoon on a curved stretch of California Highway 101, north of Santa Barbara. A small car, a BMW sedan, was mangled beyond recognition. The other vehicle, a big-rig truck, landed in ravine 100-feet below. […]
Oil that Sparkles
No matter how sophisticated we get, no matter where our science and technology boldly goes, there is a principle of physical reality that will never change. The lyrics of the song are: You can’t start a fire without a spark. You also can’t start a fire without something to burn. Whether you use wax candles […]
Making Good Time
I was watching Young at Heart, a delightful documentary about a singing group of people in their seventies and beyond. The group is a compilation of people making each day count. There are many precious lines—one I laughed out loud—“We may be lost, but we are making good time.” This is the time of year […]
Gratitude
You can say thank you or even try it in another language to let the person know—I mean it, todah rabah. Words, however powerful, can often be like a present without wrapping paper or a bow and a card that would have the recipient know—I took the time. So I want to try and wrap […]
Kabbalah and Coffee
With the start of the new semester we are offering coffee, tea and water for your convenience and enjoyment. We discussed how we could do this in an environmentally friendly way, so know that thought is going into this. The cups are Venti size—we call them Da’at size. You are welcome to bring your own […]
Getting Personal
Why do we name hurricanes? Does it make it more personal? I am not aware that we name tornadoes or earthquakes or tsunamis. Would giving them a name make it more personal? The devastation in Japan and for the Japanese people is still being uncovered in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami. How do […]