Chapter 7--Practicing Life's Quickening Exercises " A depth of beginning, a depth of end; a depth of good, a depth of evil; a depth of above, a depth of below; a depth of east, a depth of west; a depth of north, a depth of south. The singular Master, God faithful King, dominates them all from His holy dwelling until eternity of eternities. " Sefer Yetsira, 1:5 (translation by Aryeh Kaplan) Practicing the Plunge The practice I am about to describe has been developed within a long family lineage whose most celebrated exponent and probable originator is the 13th-century Provençal kabbalist Isaac the Blind. In our own time, his direct descendant, Colette Aboulker-Muscat, equaled her predecessors as an innovator, revolutionizing the work that they initiated by her own considerable and unique contributions. In particular, she brilliantly adapted the work's time-honored methods to modern needs and to people of all creeds and beliefs. While its roots remain essentially Jewish, Sephardic and Mediterranean, the work employs laws familiar to followers of all sacred traditions, because these laws are universal to the imaginal mind. We will be describing them as they come up to help you understand the "science" that goes into constructing the guided exercises you will be using. These guided exercises take no longer than a minute each to practice, unlike the exercises in chapter 5. But, like those exercises, these also find their fulfillment in the dramatic way they help us deal with the problems of daily life. Just as Reversing and practicing the exercise of the Exam of Conscience Backward bring our freedom to choose back to us in situations where imprisoning habits used to rule, so these guided exercises free us to calmly face change when it is demanded of us, no matter how drastic it may be. When life's difficulties throw us off balance, having practiced the exercises, we are intimately "in the know" about alignment and thus are able to fluidly and quickly readjust. We ground our feet, elongate our spines and, without losing a beat, calmly reclaim our balance. Before we begin the guided exercises, let me briefly mention a few important things you need to know. In undertaking them, you should choose a quiet time and place. Sit in an armchair, arms relaxed on the armrests and legs uncrossed. Read the exercise to yourself, then closing your eyes, breathe out three times slowly, counting from 3 to 1, seeing the numbers in your mind's eye. See the number 1 as being tall, clear, and very straight. Now proceed to "sense, see, feel, live" the exercise. Do not "think" about the actual words of the exercise, instead try to experience them imaginally with all your senses. You should be rewarded with a 3D Technicolor response. When you have completed the exercise, breathe out once and open your eyes. While the guided exercises may appear trite when you simply read them or mentally deconstruct them. Experiencing them is another matter altogether. When you are truly present in the exercise, not only your mind, but your whole being , is engaged in the process. As we said earlier, the exercise is designed to jolt you into movement, just as a true poem is structured to jolt you with its orchestration of words. Being able to cause that jolt, of course, is the challenge, and the art with which the exercise is devised is the answer to that challenge. Using the laws effectively is what makes this happen. I call this the strategy of the exercise. Since you are working from a book, I have chosen simple exercises you can safely do on your own. If for any reason you feel disturbed by what you experience, don't hesitate to seek help. All responses are potentially explosive since the exercises were designed to uncover the true you. Guided Exercise 5 (Penetration 2) Breathe out once. Imagine that you are standing in front of a locked door. You are holding a key chain full of keys. Find the key that fits the lock. Insert it into the lock, turn the key and open the door. What do you see? What do you do? Breathe out once. Do you stand at the threshold or do you walk through? If the strategy of penetration--pushing forward in one direction--doesn't break the pattern, what do you do? Directions work in pairs. "Down" works with "up" (after Persephone's fall, she rises again) and "right" works with "left." Many of us favor one direction over the other. Suppose you are obsessively building your future and have no time to reflect or look back upon your life. The direction you then favor is the right. (The future translates as the right in the imaginal field.) Or, you are always looking to ascend out of your body, into your mental or fantasy worlds. Having found that this way of escaping your pains and responsibilities is more natural for you, the direction you favor is up. Both are survival techniques probably acquired in childhood that may no longer serve you. Continually exploring one direction to the exclusion of the others is an impoverishment. To become true dreamers we need to explore all directions. Suppose someone is constantly harping back to his or her past, this translates as the left in the imaginal field. Thus, doing an exercise that takes that person to the right, the future, may create a movement strong enough to jolt them from their obsession with the past. Stimulated by the jolt, that person's imagination unfolds an unexpected, new configuration that impresses them to the point of weakening or actually wiping away their obsessive stranglehold on their images of the past. Excerpted from Kabbalah and the Power of Dreaming: Awakening the Visionary Life by Catherine Shainberg All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
