The Law

The Law

The whole vast world is no more than man’s imagining pushed out. I must qualify that by saying that the world outside of man is dead, but Man is a living soul, and it responds to man, yet man is sound asleep and does not know it. The Lord God placed man in a profound sleep, and as he sleeps the world responds as in a dream, for Man does not know he is asleep, and then he moves from a state of sleep where he is only a living soul to an awakened state where he is a life-giving Spirit. And now he can himself create, for everything is responding to an activity in man which is Imagination. "The eternal body of man is all imagination; that is God himself."(Blake)…

We think everything in the world is completely independent from our perception of it, but the whole thing is dead. I see it, and come upon it, but the whole thing is dead…. frozen. Then I start an activity within me and then the world that was dead becomes alive, but not knowing I am doing it, I am sound asleep and then the whole thing takes over and it becomes a nightmare. But I must keep control and know it is dependant on me. The world is infinite response and the thing that makes it alive is the living soul called generic man (male-female). And then God wove Himself into the brain of this generic man, and then He sleeps. As man begins to awaken he controls and takes over, and is no longer a victim of his vision, so he has control of his attention. Everyone is free to create his world as he wants it – if he knows that the whole thing is responding to him…

On this level of the dream people think of getting even. It is a dream of confusion and people are reacting, but man has to awaken and become an actor. On this present level man is always reflecting life, not knowing he is the cause of all he observes. But when he awakens from the dream and then becomes an actor…

You can be anything in this world but you cannot know it or expect it to come unless you Act. If you react based on the past, you continue in the same pattern. To be the man you desire to be you must create the scene, and the whole world will be convulsed if that is necessary to bring it to pass. There is no other power but God, but God had to “forget” he was God in this state of sleep, and then He awakens and consciously determines the conditions he wants in the world…

For I, also, had to forget everything to become man. For when one goes and then returns he has to forget everything to become man. For when one goes, and then returns he has to forget everything, but he promises he will carry out his pledge and help man awaken. Then the living soul becomes a life-giving spirit, and then creates…

Take it seriously. Do not go through this with your dream un-acted. You tell yourselves, it must take time. What time? Read Corinthians 1:18, I could go before men with all the words of wisdom, but know only one thing, the cross. To the wise it is foolishness, etc. What is the cross? Think of it in this light. You began, seemingly in your mother’s womb and end in the grave. You do not, but you have that picture. Look on the horizontal line of the cross as time. Intersecting this vertical line and call that infinite states, like Jacobs ladder. At any section of time I can move up or down. Time is flowing and the state with which I am identified still unfolds…

Neville Goddard,

from an edited lecture

The Kabbalah Perspective

The Kabbalah Perspective

In Kabbalah, an individual gives up his or her quest for achieving an outcome and leaves the outcome to the invisible reality. In the life of Spirit, we are not interested in goals; we are not interested in bringing things to a head or to a conclusion. These functions belong to the domain of God. What we are interested in is opening ourselves to the invisible reality and letting it intervene for us. God said to Abraham and through Abraham to all of us: “I’ll give you everything, for the invisible reality is an endless resource. It’s limitless, it’s infinite, it’s eternal. And if you open yourself up to it, it will give you everything, but you have to open yourself up to it. And, remember, I am in charge of goals, results, outcomes.” Foregoing goals means accepting the existence – and the abundance – of Spirit.

If we are interested in an outcome, we block the path to healing because we block the invisible world from moving in to help and support us. The invisible world loves us, and it wants to give us everything, but we have to let it operate. If we are goal-orientated, we have co-opted the function of the invisible world; we have usurped the knowledge and power of God.

Intention, then is concerned with “process not product.” This is a shorthand way of framing the essence of the spiritual perspective of the kabbalistic system and of what Kabbalah sees as a key to attaining health. Product means the endpoint or goal. Process means focusing on the practice or technique you are doing. Your intention is your aim to heal, but your attention is on what you are doing to accomplish it. Your task is to focus on the process of taking charge of how you think. You approach the day with the faith that what then comes is what you need: in other words, the universe will support you.

Kabbalah For Inner Peace,
Gerald Epstein, MD

Kabbalah For Inner Peace

Kabbalah For Inner Peace

The Western spiritual tradition, of which Kabbalah is a part, holds that we are born with free will and choice and, at the same time, are participating in a grand cosmic plan that is already blueprinted and is inexorably moving toward its fulfillment. Each of us lives out his or her part of the plan. When we go astray from our inherent divinity, the universe reveals to us and provides us with the knowledge we need about ourselves.

The knowledge is revealed to us in the language of image. We always experience imaginally every event we encounter, whether the event is external, as in the direct waking experience of the physical world, or internal, as in daydreams, hallucinations, night dreams or imagery experiences that we initiate. It is through such imagery – prayers to the invisible reality – that we enter the inner life, which holds the cure to our emotional and physical imbalances and the promise of harmony between body, mind, and, eventually, Spirit. It is a central tool by which we seek to better our lives and bring abundance into them.

Kabbalah For Inner Peace,
Gerald Epstein, MD

A Zen Exercise of Mental Imagery for Experiencing Process, Not Product

A Zen Exercise of Mental Imagery for Experiencing Process (present), Not Product (future)

Close your eyes and find yourself sitting in the Pharaoh’s Posture.

Perform the Relaxing Breath, knowing that you are learning to concentrate on intentions instead of goals and that it takes 30 to 45 seconds.

Now see yourself as your own Zen master. See yourself dressed in a robe with an obi sash tied around it.

You have with you a golden bow and a golden quiver that holds one golden arrow.

The target is in front of you.  You arrange yourself now to shoot the arrow at the target.

You set your left shoulder perpendicular to the target.

Your rear foot is pointed in the same direction as you are standing.

Your front foot is turned 90 degrees, to face the target.

Your posture is quite straight. You sense and feel yourself tall and erect.

You are breathing evenly and regularly.

And you now remove the golden arrow from its quiver, which is slung over your shoulder.

You take the arrow and you turn your bow in a 45 degree angle upwards and put the golden arrow into the bow.

You set the end of the arrow into the string of the bow, hold the wooden frame of the bow very tightly, and pull the string back with your right hand, very tautly and tightly, with great strength.

Then, you set the bow at a 90 degree angle facing the target. Still maintaining the same posture, you turn your head to look at the target.

You turn left. You look directly at the bull’s eye.

Breathe out one more time. You are there in front of the target.

You are about to release the arrow, and just before you do, there in the image, close your eyes so you no longer see the target, and release the arrow.

Then breathe out and open your eyes in the image to see where the arrow has landed.

See what happens. Breathe out and open your eyes.

Kabbalah For Inner Peace,
Gerald Epstein, MD

Andrew Weil’s Relaxing Breath

Andrew Weil’s Relaxing Breath

Weil’s technique is shockingly simple, takes hardly any time, and can be done anywhere in five steps. Although you can do the exercise in any position, it’s recommended to sit with your back straight while learning the exercise. Weil explains to “place the tip of your tongue against the ridge of tissue just behind your upper front teeth and keep it there through the entire exercise. You will be exhaling through your mouth around your tongue; try pursing your lips slightly if this seems awkward.” This is followed by the five-step procedure listed below:

1) Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound.

2) Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four.

3) Hold your breath for a count of seven.

4) Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound to a count of eight.

5) This is one breath. Now inhale again and repeat the cycle three more times for a total of four breaths…After awhile you can increase the cycle to eight breaths if you like.

Weil emphasizes the most important part of this process is holding your breath for eight seconds. This is because keeping the breath in will allow oxygen to fill your lungs and then circulate throughout the body. It is this that produces a relaxing effect in the body.

This procedure can be useful to try before you go to sleep at night. It can also be used before you decide to meditate or visualize (imaging in your mind). It can also be used before reciting some affirmations or mantras you would like to try.

The Four Planes of Existence: Vertical Causality

The Four Planes of Existence: Vertical Causality

In Visionary Kabbalah, the physical reality of the world and our bodies is, in a manner of speaking, at the bottom of the totem pole of creation. Causality, in the perspective of Kabbalah, goes from top down – not as we commonly think of it and as the natural sciences of the physical world say it operates – from the bottom up.

There are four planes of existence in Kabbalistic cosmology, each giving birth to (causing) the plane below it. This is called vertical causality, and all four planes operate in both the cosmos and our individual lives. Cosmologically, the top plane is what Visionary Kabbalah calls emanation or invisible reality, which gives birth to (causes) creation, which gives birth to (causes) formation, which gives birth to (causes) action – the realm of the physical world and the physical body. Each of these four planes is reflected in our individual lives. Emanation in our lives is the realm of the will, or spark of life. Creation is the realm of ideas, beliefs and concepts. Formation is the realm of image. Action is the realm of experience and emotion. Just as emanation (invisible reality) leads to creation, which leads to formation, which leads to the physical world – in effect, to us; will, the spark of life, leads to ideas, which leads to image, which leads to experience and emotion. The same vertical causality that operates in the cosmos operates in us as well. As the invisible reality creates the visible world, we create our experience.

In the physical world in which we live, experience has the qualities of volume, mass, and duration, which means that it is susceptible to being measured, calculated, or otherwise quantified. Experience gives us an opportunity to know what is going on inside of us. At the same time, it can be actively and consciously created by us, from inner to outer, through a working or re-working of our inner concepts and images. As we have seen, formation gives birth to action in the physical world. In this world as we live it, our images give birth to our experience. Thus, by changing our inner concepts and images, we influence, shape, or reshape our outer reality. The beauty of this is that in terms of the creation of physical existence, we are at the bottom of the totem pole, yet we have the tools – our concepts and images – to create and recreate our lives and lift ourselves upward to the world of Spirit. We come from what is higher, and through our images and concepts, we can rise back up to that which is our true being.

Invisible.....Impulse..................Emantion

....................Idea........................Creation

....................Image....................Formation

Visible........Physical World......Action (experience, emotions)

Kabbalah For Inner Peace,

Gerald Epstein, MD

Imagery As Prayer

Imagery As Prayer

All spiritual tradition speaks about two worlds: the realm of visible reality and the unseen invisible realm. The world of visible reality is the world of time, space, and physicality: that which can be measured and objectified. It is the world of material reality.

The invisible world is a different order of reality operating under different rules. It is the non-space, non-time, pandimensional or multidimensional world.

In the western spiritual tradition, when we speak of Spirit we refer to the presence, the influence, and the priority of invisibility in our visible world of objective material reality. In this tradition, every image experience is a prayer sent up to invisible reality. Practitioners of Visionary Kabbalah understand that we actively participate in our own physical and spiritual well-being when we engage in our image-prayers. Prayer is not a casual process – “God let me win the lottery!” It is an act that involves judgement, discernment, decision, and clarity – the four meanings of the Hebrew word for prayer – tefila.

But these image-prayers are not always fulfilled in ways we desire. We cannot control the world and its outcomes. We certainly cannot control the invisible reality. But we can take charge of our intentions. And so, we set forth our intentions – we aim toward something desired via image-prayer. Yet even as we do this, we recognize that the outcome, result, goal, or endpoint is in God’s hands, not our own. From the perspective of Visionary Kabbalah, whether or not an image-prayer is fulfilled, the invisible universe provides us what we need at every given moment.

When we are aligned with truth and have faith in the invisible reality, we receive what we need in the form of support. When we have no faith and veer from the truth, we receive what we need in the form of experiences like pain or other imbalances that show us the error of our ways and give us the opportunity to correct them.

Kabbalah For Inner Peace,

Gerald Epstein, MD