Kabbalah for Today – Installment 4
Hello! I am Gail Ginsburg, Spiritual Director of Esynagogue.org. Welcome to Installment four of Kabbalah for today. A video introduction to traditional Jewish wisdom designed to help you along your personal spiritual journey. In my years of work as a teacher for religion and a spiritual councilor, I have never met anyone who is completely satisfied with their life. This is true for me and I assume it is true for you.
But I believed that through the study in practice of traditional Jewish mysticism, we can experience amazing personal growth. In this installment, we look at the third of the sephirot, which is called Binah meaning understanding. This is the point in the on going creative posses of God in which the pure wisdom of Chokma discussed in Installment 2 becomes actualize as discernment, the ability to make distinctions. Binah along with c and Keter formed the upper triad of the sephirot. This triad is known as Atziluth or the world of Emanation.
It is from Binah using the image of mother balanced with the image of Chokmah as father that the entire created order precedes. So we can say that Binah or understanding is the point from which everything else emerges. Your own personal creative process is much the same. It begins with your innate God given abilities or potential. Until these abilities are actualize through understanding they are useless. It would be as if you had an electric outlet on your wall filled with potential power. But you failed to plug in your appliances. The electric potential is wasted and the appliances are useless.
You too have endless unused capacity just waiting to be put into action in creating your own new reality. As I mentioned, Binah is the place of discernment. Each of us needs to ask ourselves questions about our lives in the choices that we make. Am I making the right choices? Am I being true to myself? And am I honoring God in all that I do. We must be continuous, self reflective, seeking to correct our path when we wonder in a less than helpful or holy direction.
I have a new meditative exercise for you, beginning with the 363 breathing which I talked in Installment two of Kabbalah for Today. After you do the breathing envisioned light, golden lights flowing into your body, coming in at the crown of your head flowing down through you, joining this light of discernment at the every corner of your being. As this light flows through you begin to envision your life, allow the light to show you where you need to change and be healed in order to fully actualize your potential. Envision yourself and your life ideally as it could be. Visualize yourself growing into the fully beautiful, holy person that God intends.
After five or 10 minutes of this, do another round of the 363 breathing. Sit still for a couple of moments then I would suggest that you drop down any insights that you have been given. Do this daily for a week or so then move on to the next installment when we look at Chesed, the sephirot of compassion.
I am Gail Ginsburg and this is Kabbalah for Today!
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