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My new Zohar
Traded copy #9 of Rekindling
of Faith" for books on Kabbalah.
The one that drew me first was
the Zohar, the Book of Enlightenment,
Date: 12/21/2006 1:44:35 PM ( 18 y ) ... viewed 1259 times 9:08 AM
December 21, 06
"The Book of Enlightenment: Zohar
In the 1820s in Castile, Spain, the most influential Kabbalistic text
of all was written. This is the Book of Enlightenment, Sefer HaZohar.
At first it was circulated among Kabbalists in short fragments, having
a great impact but only among a very limited group of mystics. It took
about two centuries for it to achieve the status that it eventually attained.
The Zohar is the only text besides the bible and the Talmud ever to be
considered a canonical book in the Jewish tradition."
--from "The Everything Kabbalah Book" by Mark Elber
I have it placed now under the other Holy Books
on the Altar in front of me. It is the Zohar.
Having one feels problematic. On the way out
of the Manchester Grand Hyatt the other night,
the site of the Tiferet institute's Kabbalah Conference,
I stopped at the bathroom. I left the book
outside on the water fountain, placing on it
the Camilia in harmonic colors that I was also
carrying it with me.
How to you care for a copy of the Zohar
that some say has mystical powers so prevalent
that simply scanning the Hebrew words, without
even knowing how to speak them, can cause
transformational shifts in our lives?
I am a Kabbalist by nature
and in nature.
Martin Buber once wrote a little book
called "The Way of Man." There is an little
story in there and a couple praises that
have never left me. The first is "Patchwork,"
and the second "All of one Piece."
The Zohar is "All of One Piece," though
I sense very few humans truly can are pieces
together in all four worlds--from top to bottom, inner to outer--
to truly piece it together.
When I brought this Holy Book into my room,
I did not know where to put it.
Did having a copy of the Zohar mean I had
to construct a whole new world around me
to house this book?
Was their room in my existing consciousness
for the whole book? What transformations would
I endue having it within eye range right in front
of my head upper right?
Before me is a picture of the Archangel Gabriel.
She has a wand in her hand. In front of that right
now is a photo of Reb Zalman, the Zeyde (grandfather
of the Jewish Renewal movement. The picture was
taken in 1995 in Fort Collins, Colorado. He was
Blessing me in my ministry as Maggid of the Enchanted Garden.
The Enchanted Garden is a name for our new earth.
I have spend more than 20 years unfolding the mystery
and writing about it. The Enchanted Garden comes out
of being "All of One Peace," and Plants are its Primary
Teachers of the Kabbalah of the Earth.
The Enchanted Garden grows one Seed and Seed Dream
at a time, organically, from our own literal as well
as metaphoric backyard.
It grows as we connect our deepest Seed Dreams with
literal Living Seeds.
One of the themes repeated at the Kabbalah Conference
was that to learn Kabballah, we need a teacher.
Preferably, a Master Teacher.
This is to enter Plant Parenthood.
Yes, we do parent plants, but in truth they are Reparenting
us. Plants teach us how to Repair the World.
Here is one of my favorite quotes from
a story by Edmond Bordeauz Szekely, "The Book of Asha."
He writes,
"In this small grain of wheat" he declared,
"are contained all the laws of the universe
and the forces of nature."
"If you watch the growth
of this seed...
you will find that there is
an indestructible and mysterious
power in it--the power of life.
If you watch long enough,
you will see that the grain
disappears and is replaced by
a plant which will triumph
over all obstacles and opposition--
which will gorw higher and higher
bedauase it has life within it."
[ This art appears on the Site where I found Dr. Hava's Bio Note
see below ]
There is much I would have liked to say at the recent
Kabbalah Conference. The theme was "Kabbalah for the masses."
I was once a "mass" myself, I remember writing
in "The Rebirth of Mother Earth," (1989).
Many times, I simple accept, I am more "mess" than "mass."
It is an amazing thought to be "All of one Piece."
I know plants have helped me become more of One Peace
because they live in all the Four
Worlds the Kabbalists imagine.
Rabbi Michael Berg, the inheritor of the Kabbalah center,
was one of the speakers at this historic conference.
The Kabbalah Center published this copy of the Zohar.
There were gifted respondents at this conference.
One with brilliant Jewish mind
called the work of the Kabbalah center "problematic"
in many ways.
The interactions-the moving energy-
between what he said and the respondent, female academic,
Dr. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, was pure poetry.
http://www.coejl.org/speakers/tirosh-samuelson_h.php
She showed a lot of restraint and "menschlikeit,"
which is something that woman as well as men can
show toward each other. "Mensch" is a Yiddish word
for " being a good man."
[For a lovely story and understanding of "menschlikeit,"
read this sermon by Rabbi Moshe Pinchas Weisblum
http://www.congki-annapolis.org/January72006sermon.htm
]
I found a lot of qualities in Rabbi Michael Berg
that I admired very much. I will reflect on these later.
The Kabbalah Center is where Maddona was introduced to Kabbalah.
See that Blog on her here:
http://curezone.com/blogs/m.asp?f=92&i=2090
To be continued....
Rainbow over the Garden:
This is a photo taken the day before the conference
began. It was one of our first good rains of the season.
http://curezone.com/blogs/m.asp?f=92&i=2091
___
Bio Note On Dr.Hava Tirosh-Samuelson:
Dr. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson is Professor of History
Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona.
She is editor of Judaism and Ecology:
Created World and Revealed Word (Harvard University Press, 2002)
and the author of the overview essays on Judaism and ecology
in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (Continuum, 2005),
Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd revised edition (Macmillan, 2005),
and The Oxford Handbook on Religion and Ecology
(Oxford University Press, forthcoming)
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