Catherine Shainberg - Kabbalah and the Power of Dreaming: Awakening the Visionary Life

Kabbalah and the Power of Dreaming

Many cultures believe that during a dream the soul leaves the dreamers body and journeys to other worlds, possibly visiting the imaginal realm where the dreamer seems to break free of the limitations of time and space. In Kabbalah and the Power of Dreaming Catherine Shainberg not only takes us into that realm, she provides insights and a travel guide. Not since the time of Joseph and his prophetic dreams has such a well-written storytelling guidebook been offered.

Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D., author of Mind Into Matter

A brilliantly articulated exploration of the elusive mystery of dreams and imagination, and how they dance both sides of the veil between fantasy and reality. Combining ancient mystical wisdom with contemporary metaphor, Catherine Shainberg not only illuminates our understanding about the phenomenon of dreaming and its impact on the waking world, but also offers us ample user-friendly exercises and meditations to experience the wisdom of both. Shainberg is a foremost disciple of one of the few and most notable women kabbalists, Colette Aboulker-Muscat, herself a descendant and student of the thirteenth-century Rabbi Yitzchak Saggei Nahor (known as Isaac the Blind) and of his mystery school. Like her teacher Colette, Shainberg has helped innumerable people through her healing work with imagery and dream. In Kabbalah and the Power of Dreaming she has, for the first time, shared with all of us the heretofore inaccessible wisdom of dream from the rich kabbalistic tradition of her teacher and her people. This is a book that delivers everything its title promises; it is an important addition to the classical literature of Jewish spiritual wisdom.

Rabbi Gershon Winkler, author of
Kabbalah 365: Daily Fruit from the Tree of Life

Catherine Shainberg contributes a fresh, creative, and innovative approach to dreaming and imagination through the practice of waking dream. In doing so she brings alive the ancient wisdom of prophetic Kabbalah in a practical and readily usable way. Kabbalah and the Power of Dreaming deserves to be read and enjoyed; its reader will be richly rewarded with the spiritual view of life it provides.

Gerald Epstein, M.D., author of Healing Visualizations:
Creating Health Through Imagery

The medieval system of Jewish Kabbalah taught that a more real world than our own lies behind the common one of day-to-day experience. Through lifelong routines of meditation and visualization, kabbalists drew on the insights of that other world. Now Catherine Shainberg, psychologist, poet, and dream specialist, provides a warm, richly detailed guide to this kind of thinking for the seekers of today. Her book opens with a moving account of her own search for bearings, then spans the ocean of kabbalistic tales and models. It is a heartfelt and generous guide to the questing imagination and, inevitably, to deepened relationships with others on the same trail.

Eleanor Munro, author of Originals: American Women Artists

Kabbalah and the Power of Dreaming is a magnificent guide to putting soul back in the body and walking a path with heart. Catherine Shainberg is a profound spiritual teacher who reminds us that dreaming is not only about what we do when we sleep but about waking up to a deeper life by remembering and navigating from our sacred purpose. It instructs us on how to tap into our Source energyincluding the images that speak to the body that can make it welland informs us on how we can be present at the place of creation. Her book contains a panoply of practical exercises for transforming fear and anger into heart-centered energy, thereby liberating ourselves from the rule of habit and healing the wound between Earth and Sky. I highly recommend this book.

Robert Moss, author of Dreamways of the Iroquois:
Honoring the Secret Wishes of the Soul

Catherine Shainbergs book begins with an entrancing account of her personal entry into the world of dreams and images, and reveals how she discovered her own great teacher of images and dreams, the renowned kabbalist Colette Aboulker-Muscat. Shainberg draws upon many years of experience to guide us through the possibilities of inner growth through dreamwork, offering exercises along the way that are intriguing and seem likely to open the mind and heart further and further. The power of dreaming is something Ive come to appreciate more and more in my own life, and Shainbergs book does justice to that power. She is on a path of great beauty.

Rodger Kamenetz, author of The Jew in the Lotus

Kabbalah
and the
Power of
Dreaming

Awakening the
Visionary Life

C ATHERINE S HAINBERG , P H .D.

In Memoriam

The author with Colette, in her garden in Jerusalem, 1979

To my teacher Colette Simhah Aboulker-Muscat I dedicate this book, a book that she never got to read. Colette passed away in the afternoon of November 25, 2003, at her home in Jerusalem. She was 94. The night before she died, she was still receiving visitors and dispensing wisdom and exercises. I had just arrived from the States. We spent the morning together reconnecting. Then she sent me away and she died.

The Tzaddikim (sages) who have died are present in this world to a greater extent than when they were alive.

ZOHAR III, 70B.

Colettes teachings live on in what you are about to read.

About the School of Images

The School of Images (SOI) is a Kabbalah school founded to advance awareness of imagination as the foremost language for instantaneous insight and transformation. The school, founded by Catherine Shainberg in 1982, teaches the techniques of dreaming, visualization, and revelation to gain access to the forgotten source of the imagination within, to cleanse, revivify, and motivate the individual.

The School of Images derives its methods from early Jewish, Sephardic, and Mediterranean sources. The lineage dates back to two kabbalists, Isaac the Blind of Provence and Rabbi Jacob Ben Sheshet of Gerona, Spain, who lived and practiced Kabbalah in the thirteenth century. The last lineage holder, Madame Colette Aboulker-Muscat, adapted these ancient methods to meet the needs of a contemporary, global society.

In line with her teacher, Catherine Shainbergs work is experiential. Some of the exercises are based on text but, in contrast to other Kabbalistic ways, in this method there is no direct study or analysis of text and no permutation of letters (the technique known as gematria). The work is pure Kabbalah (kabbalah means receiving), in that one receives from their inner gazing. Thus, SOIs brand of Kabbalah is not a difficult system to access, but rather an exploration of the imaginal field whose language is common to people of all denominations. Each imagery exercise is a peerless tool for instantaneous vision, transformation, and healing.

The mission of the school is to teach the use of the imagination for creative, healing, and transformational purposes. Its goal is for people of all languages and creeds to practice imagery. Its belief is that this global language has the power to unite all peoples while allowing each of us to follow our own unique path.

To receive more information about SOI or to contact us:

Go to www.schoolofimages.com