Imbolc Anniversary Moon
Kabbalah. Last night at Beth Evergreen we dipped our toes in an ancient lake, one so esoteric that information about it was not written down until the time of the Spanish Inquisition. The kabbalah, it was felt, needed nuanced interpretation and written down it could be read by those who might misunderstand its teachings.
But during the Inquisition so many scholars were killed that many were concerned the teachings might be lost, so books began to be written. The Zohar is the famous Kabbalah text, a central work on Jewish mysticism.
Isaac Luria, a rabbi of 16th century Safed, a town in Galilee, at that time in Syria, is a key figure in contemporary Kabbalah.
Years ago Kate wanted me to go to Hawai’i with her for a continuing medical education event. I said, no thanks. She insisted. I went. My expectations were completely wrong. I had a cheesy hula dancer dashboard ornament, loud shirt, noisy American tourist understanding of Hawai’i. We went to Maui and the Big Island that year. I wanted to stay.
My sense of kabbalah comes from a teeny understanding of it as mysticism and the fact that Madonna got into it some time back. Its popularity among celebrities at that point made me avoid it then and colored my anticipation of what Jamie would have to offer. Last night I wanted to stay.
In kabbalah parlance in both instances I donned a mask of cultured (actually ignorant in these cases) sophistication. This mask has its advantages as it helps me avoid wasting time on matters I don’t consider important. But the instance of Hawai’i and kabbalah teaches me that this mask also excludes rich experiences if I know too little about them.
A key point of kabbalah is awareness of the masks (personas) we use and being able, eventually, to take them off and put them on when appropriate. Sounds like a long ride.
The full anniversary moon lit up our way home from Bistro Colorado. It was the 27th time we’ve celebrated our wedding day and it was peaceful, funny, thoughtful. With flowers and chocolate.
Been experiencing an unusual phenomenon, at least unusual for this period of my life. I’m getting all kinds of anxiety signals from my body. My feet rest on their balls when I sit down, not flat on the floor. My gut has this hollowed out and tense feeling. My jaw has small aches as my teeth grind unconsciously. This also makes facial muscles twitch. When lying in bed, I’ll notice that my legs are tight, again an unconscious contraction.
When we had our couple’s escape at Tall Grass Spa, I first noticed these physical manifestations. It was during the relaxing, 80-minute massage. As certain parts of my body felt calmer, others, like my legs and my gut, began to call out to me.
A follower of gestalt therapy in my younger days, I learned to pay attention to and interrogate a jumpy stomach, a twitchy foot. These are not disconnected from my psyche, to the contrary they reveal things occurring in that inner world hidden from view to my Self.
