Like Sandra, I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions… and yet two things have dropped into my lap that happened to coincide with the New Year unintentionally. The first is working through The Artist’s Way. The second is officially studying Kabbalah.
Yes, I’m in. Not necessarily up-to-my-eyeballs in, but I’m wearing the red string, I’m reading the books, and I’ve started my home study program. The first level of study is a 23-day course, and I think I’m going to chart my experiences with it through the blog. But first, background on what made me decide to do this.
read more ↓As I entered into what my friends have started calling the “Woo Woo Phase,” I started researching various forms of spirituality in an effort to get a greater understanding of where I saw my own spirituality. The thing I never liked about most organized religion is it always felt so… restrictive. So I poked my nose into Agape, met with a Buddhist group, picked up various books and attended various lectures. I sort of started cherry-picking from various forms of spirituality to create what I wanted and what I was comfortable with, which was kind of an idea that came around from reading Sera Beak’s The Red Book. One of the things I did was buy a Kabbalistic calendar, and that’s how the whole thing began.
Nearly a year after I’d bought the calendar I started getting calls from the Kabbalah Center. I was immediately suspicious. I was convinced they were going to start pumping me for money or ask for my first born, trying to squeeze something out of me if they could. When I finally took the call, I was surprised to find it was someone working with the center who wanted to help me understand it better, answer any questions I had and assist me in my studies free of charge, should I decide to go that route. I was still incredibly skeptical and wary, because let’s face it – it’s suspect. It’s all suspect. The only way for a spiritual organization of any kind to continue is if it gets members… and members who are eventually willing to spend money. But by the same token, you don’t see Catholics calling other Catholics in an effort to help them not only understand what it is that they’re reading and committing to, but keep them on track so they don’t misappropriate the message and turn it into a power grab. And it's been on my mind for a long time to start donating to charities. And as one friend put it, "What's wrong for paying for something that gives you your money's worth?" (Within reason, of course - I wouldn't sell my condo and car and hand over a check.)
So I agreed. Why not? It was worth a shot, and if I hated it I could always say “Thanks, but no thanks,” and move on.
What started was a weekly to bi-monthly phone session that would see me with homework assignments that would then be discussed, often times with me winding up in tears… not because my teacher was berating me and making me feel horrible, but because I was really thoroughly working through some realizations about my behaviors and patterns that I’d created in my life. And the more I was sifting through that nonsense, the more I was coming to understand what it was all about, and the more I was interested in discovering. It was kind of like I finally had a map to figure out not only where I’d been and how I’d gotten to where I was, but how I was going to get to where I wanted to be… and it was with a map I was creating, bit by bit.
My evolvement through Kabbalah teachings slowed down the more I started to travel last year, but toward the end of the year I decided I wanted to take things a step further and see where it would lead me. So much like I’d decided when my teacher first called me, I figured I would work with the home study course and see where it got me. And if I liked where it got me, then fine, maybe I would continue… or maybe I would feel like that was enough and stop. But for as long as I was enjoying myself and getting something out of the experience, I would keep on going.
Yesterday I started with day one and figured I might as well blog about the 23-day experience, partially because I think it will help me organize my thoughts, partially because I think it would be an interesting experiment. But the course – and The Artist’s Way – require me to do daily journaling the old fashioned way, too…so we’ll see how it goes. But the first day was fairly basic, explaining what Kabbalah is and is not (which you can read about at the site, if you’re really that intrigued) and how the course would work (23 CDs of lectures plus my workbook assignments.)
My first assignment was to write down what I want in my life versus what I don’t want, and it should come as no surprise that the list of what I don’t want was much easier to write. Afterwards I journaled about whatever I wanted for 15 minutes, just letting my brain babble on about whatever. I don’t remember what I wrote about, but I felt instantly less frazzled after I did it. Interestingly, as I did my Artist’s Way Morning Pages journaling, I was able to come up with three whole pages of what I did want. Definitely a step in the right direction.
I have to admit that there’s a part of me that feels uncomfortable sharing this in a public space, because I think a lot of people write off this kind of work – and Kabbalah as a whole – as a bunch of nonsense and look at people who work with it as hippie dippie fools. There’s a lot of judgment that seems to follow people who choose to take a spiritual path of any kind, which I don’t get because if someone is committed to evolving into a better person, shouldn’t we support them as long as it’s not something doing harm to them or others? (I suppose I could look at it as Sandra does, when I talked with her about it this morning. Says she, “If people judge you, they’re assholes.”)
At any rate, whatever you think of the path I’m on, I’ve no interest in trying to convert you or convince you that this is The Way. I’m just interested in sharing my experiences. What you do or don’t do with that information is really none of my business.
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