Catherine Shainberg - The Kabbalah of Light: Ancient Practices to Ignite the Imagination and Illuminate the Soul

To my students past and future
Without whom I would be mute

THE KABBALAH OF LIGHT

Catherines done it again, assembling the hidden ingredients of mindfulness and brewing them in a cauldron of ancient and early medieval Hebraic mystery wisdom. An excellent guide whose magic we have yet to fathom and of which, through the books many exercises, we might finally catch a glimpse.

RABBI GERSHON WINKLER,AUTHOR OF MAGIC OF THE ORDINARY

Catherine Shainbergs new book is serious, delightful, and tinged with the magical, as is the author. It is a creative effort, filled with wonderful practices and exercises to raise the great Leviathan from the depths of the unconscious so as to awaken our creative imagination and life force. Shainbergs readings into biblical and Kabbalistic myth are wonderfully creative.

MELILA HELLNER-ESHED,AUTHOR OF A RIVER FLOWS FROM EDEN

The Kabbalah of Light is an audacious endeavor to present the esoteric wisdom of the Jewish mystical tradition as the science of letting the unconscious speak. The guidance in this book is to lead one to spiritual enlightenment and psychic well-being, the experience that Kabbalists call dveikut, cleaving to the divine, the highest rung on the ladder of dreams.

ELLIOT WOLFSON, MARSHA AND JAY GLAZER CHAIR IN JEWISH STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA

In this brilliant book, Catherine has given us a great gift. Not only is this work dazzling in its depth and beauty, it is also eminently useful and practical. Catherine guides us on a grand journey, a voyage of self-discovery. There lies buried treasurethe riches of a more fulfilling transformed life, illumined by the golden sunlight of divine revelation.

KEVIN MELVILLE JENNINGS,PAST CONTRIBUTOR OF THE DAILY SCOPE FOR VOGUE.COM

In her thrilling new book, Catherine Shainbergs treasure trove of playful and profound inductions will guide you to plunge deeper and deeper into the innermost realms of your soul. What a gift this book is to all seekers of light and delight. The Kabbalah of Light is mind-expanding. Its fun and fabulous!

DIDI CONN,ACTRESS AND PLAYWRIGHT

Contents

List of Exercises

PART I

The Leviathan, Great Beast of the Deep

1 The Mystery of Dreams

2 Tikun and a Ladder to the Light

3 Incubation and Saphire Imagery

4 The Creative Act

5 Signs of Transformation: The Grammar of the Imagination

6 Symbol or Metaphor

PART II

Taming the Leviathan

7 Playing with Manifestation

8 Dreamfields and Complexes

9 Ancestral Patterns

10 The Inner Child: From Duality to Singularity

11 Misery and Splendor: Restoring Relationships

12 Time and Choice

13 Healing: Will It Be Leprosy, Wellness, or Wholeness?

PART III

Raising the Leviathan

14 The Heart-Centered Way

15 Prayer and the Leviathan

Preface

Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.

GLORIA STEINEM

I have always been fascinated by the subconscious. At first I didnt know what the word meantbut I knew I was more interested in following what my imaginary friends were doing than what was happening around the dinner table. In fact, I saw no difference between the angels and fairies that populated my world and my little friends I played with in Hyde Park. It was my mother who persistently reminded me to pay attention to the real world and not to dream my life away.

I developed many strategies to remain aware of what was happening around me, so I was able to accomplish the many tasks that were required of me at home and at school. But at the same time, I couldnt ignore the goings-on in my other world. It took me years to understand that most people simply lived in the real world and paid scant attention to the other world. To me, this was a terrible loss. The flow of my imagination was varied and quick, and endlessly entertaining. It also educated me. A large dry leaf could be restored to the soft green of early spring, the leaf still attached to its branch, and the branch to a centuries-old tree whose wisdom I could hear booming in my inner ear. Colors glistened, and voices sang. Souls required me to accompany them to their heavenly rest. And homeless ladies (there was one who lived in a vacant lot opposite our house, and I waved to her every evening) needed a cocooning of light to stay warm at night. I lived a life of richness and beauty I couldnt get enough of. I devoured fairy tales and mythological stories. Voices spoke words in my ears that I generously transmitted to my playmates. This led to my being accused of lying and then punished. I soon learned not to communicate what I heard and saw. I became secretive and mute about my inner world, but its lure was too powerful.

When it came time to go to college, I opted out of practical solutions (my mother urged me to go to lcole Polytechnique, a prestigious engineering school, where I would meet lots of nice boys) and went to study art history at the Sorbonne in Paris. There I revived, somewhat. The colors on the canvases ignited colors within me, and soon my imagination was running wild. I wanted to study how images change people, but my thesis professor explained to me that I was there to become a scholar. As he put it, there were two types of people, those who live and those who watch other people live. Art historians watch other people live. I stood up and told him I was one of those who lived. I walked out on a career that seemed at the time the only way forward for me if I was to navigate the real world.

After floundering for a while in jobs that didnt suit me, I decided to apply to American universities. I did well and got a full scholarship to Harvard, but in 1971 I gave it up to follow my inner voice. The voice said: Go to the Middle East. I did. I went all over the Middle East. I was intending to go to Harvard to study the use of imagery in the political dialogue of Arab-speaking countries, so the voice made sense. But then the voice began making no sense: Go to Israel, it said. I had never been attracted to Israel or to the Jewish people. In fact, I knew next to nothing about them. My mother was anti-Semitic, as were many pieds-noirs. And I was a by-product of her belief system. Thus far Id had no reason to question her prejudices and had lived in a happy oblivion of nonconfrontation.

The voice woke me up: Go! My mother thought I was crazy and that I was going to Israel to annoy her. My father, being a journalist, was more tolerant. But still, giving up a scholarship to Harvard? He tried to talk me out of it. To this day, I wonder what internal compulsion made me disregard his kindly and reasonable advice.

This reminds me of the inscription Know thyself that was written in the pronaos of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. One can imagine two guardians of the sacred gates, swords raised, crying out: Do you know yourself? I had no idea who I was, what I wanted, nor what the voice meant. But there it was. I was committed to my inner world, and I was giving up a higher education to go pick fruit on a kibbutz in the Negev desert.