Practical Kabbalah Schedule - 15 Feb 2010

Here is a schedule of events for the 2nd Kabbalah with Jacobus class:

1. Surrendering ("Book of Self Creation" — page 174f )
2. Body Awareness ("Book of Self Creation" — page 174f)
3. Mother Breath ("Book of Self Creation" — page 193f )
4. Toning and Tuning the Body ("Book of Self Creation" — page 175–178)
5. Spontaneous Song ("Book of Self Creation" — page 175–178)
6. Invocation of Subtle Energy ("Book of Self Creation" — page 221–223)
7. Yichudim: Aligning with Cosmic Foces
   A. The Universal Yichud ("Book of Self Creation" — page 320–346)
   The use of this Yichud in this specific manner, aligns the head, throat, heart, solar plexus (called the "liver" in the old terminology), and lower bowel/genitals. These positions are understood to be respectively representative of the "Middle Pillar" on the Etz Chayim (Tree of Life).
   
   a. Head — Keter/Crown;
   b. Throat — Da’at/Knowledge;
   c. Heart/Chest — Tiferet/Beauty;
   d. Liver/Solar Plexus — Yesod/Foundation; and
   e. Lower Bowel/Genitals — Malchut/Kingdom.
   
   The five vowels employed in this special Yichud are related to the body in the following manner:
   
   

   Vowels	Associated Bodily Part
   U (OO) O (OH) A (AH) E (EH) I (EE)	Lower Bowels, Genitals and Anus Solar Plexus (directly below the breast-bone) Centre Chest (Heart) Throat and Neck Head (from the Nose and Cheeks to the crown)

   Primary pronunciation of the Ineffable Name with vowels in related bodily parts:
   
   YA–HA–VA–HA in the HEART
   YE–HE–VE–HE in the THROAT
   YO–HO–VO–HO in the SOLAR PLEXUS
   YI–HI–VI–HI in the HEAD
   YU–HU–VU–HU in the GENITALS

Here it is important to extend the chanting of each name over an entire exhalation, and pronounce each name in the exact spot in your body indicated by the respective vowels.

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As you can see there are pages numbers that refer to The Book of Self Creation. The first 3 points form that basis of Practical Kabbalah. They cultivate body awareness, a quality that our modern lifestyles lack. My life is a prime example, I spend 8 hours a day in my head - my work is extremely mental, and it often drives me mental! I sit and sit and sit goggling at a computer screen. If I move it's because I saw a mosquito sit on my arm.

Perhaps the best way to begin summarising Monday's class is to begin at the end, the time between people leaving my home for their homes at about 10pm. My body feltvery revitalised and energised and felt supple even though I never left my chair. This is the power of toning, spontaneous song and dance. Well, I danced in my fashion.

Preparation began with breathwork by breathing in to the Aleph and Mem, out to the Mem and Shin. Toning these Hebrew letters while breathing is called the Mother Breath and balances the Energy-field and physical body (through resonance). Aleph = Air Element, Mem = Water and Shin = Fire. Earth is excluded since it is considered a passive element. The Aleph, Mem and Shin require our active participation. When we rest in the prana/chi (or whatever) invoked, that is Earth.

Then to continue this process of body awareness we "smiled" and visualised each body part smile back. During the day we smile at our friends with our mouths but I experienced my body "smile" by relaxing and sort of glowing. After all, that's how I respond when a pretty girl smiles at me... then I had a chuckle when I saw my anus smile back!

Chuck, laugh, weep, cry. All this could be responses we have when becoming more aware of the physical body. This is because the body is said to store memories; thoughts and emotion cling to the nervous tissue and we can experience them again when the body relaxes and releases them. This is especially where there are places of stress and tension, where the blood-nervous energy cannot circulate easily.

Along with the smiling was inhaling using the Mother-breath then exhaling and humming to that specific body part, accepting it exactly the way it is - that's what a smile is about. After the humming then resting. The humming, when done on the physical body, progressed into spontaneous song. Initially lead by Jacobus everyone in the room hummed then sang how they felt. This resulted in the most ecstatic chanting, all of us in harmony - much like Red Indian Shamanic ritual. It was special and extremely beautiful.

With the song came lessons in spontaneous dance, beginning in awareness of the hands and the sense of prana in and around them. The more awareness and attention on the hands the more there is a sense of energy until the point one is sensitive to the flow of prana in the energy-field and around us. One moves to this sensation then dances to it.

Toning (part of the Yichudim - Unifications. Universal Yichud above)

I like the way the toning is an extension of natural sounds we and animals make in response to the world around us. This was how the toning was explained at first and I could see it manifest in creatures, our responses to something beautiful or the MOO sound a cow makes with their entire body and especially all the way from the anus (yes, I used that word twice now!) Kabbalistic mantra has developed them further and united them with what it calls Names of God, like Yahweh or YHVH (Yud Heh Vav Heh) yet without losing that connection with these natural responses.

I can understand how Kabbalah may have developed out of millennia of observation of the natural world, from a time when people were more in touch with physicality, not holed up like us in an office driving from A to B. In a word I can say our classes in Practical Kabbalah are Shamanic. I don't mean Shamanic in the sense of primitive but in the sense of primal; a getting in touch with the basics of creation, its very building blocks - and I love it!