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    Ecstatic Kabbalah
    Ecstatic Kabbalah
    Ecstatic Kabbalah
    Ebook107 pages1 hour

    Ecstatic Kabbalah

    By David A. Cooper

    3/5

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    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateSep 1, 2005
    ISBN9781591798699
    Ecstatic Kabbalah
    Author

    David A. Cooper

    Rabbi David A. Cooper (1939–2020) was a leading teacher of Jewish meditation and a lifelong student of the world's great spiritual traditions. He is the author of many books, including Entering the Sacred Mountain; A Heart of Stillness; Silence, Simplicity, and Solitude; and Renewing Your Soul. His most recent book, God Is a Verb: Kabbalah and the Practice of Mystical Judaism, was highly acclaimed and nominated for the National Jewish Book Award. Cooper and his wife, Shoshana, led Jewish meditation retreats nationwide throughout the year. They resided at the Heart of Stillness Hermitage in the Colorado mountains near Boulder until Cooper's passing in 2020.    

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    • 3/5
      Last week, I finished reading and working with Rabbi David A. Cooper's Ecstatic Kabbalah. Cooper is a rabbi of some note, having also written such works as Three Gates to Meditation Practice and God is a Verb. If I remember correctly, he may also be profiled in Stalking Elijah. Ecstatic Kabbalah is a guide for meditative practice. It's a short (less than 100 page) book with an audio CD one plays at certain points in the text. It's useful in that it assumes no prior knowledge. It's a bit frustrating, however, for that very reason -- it doesn't even use Hebrew letters, and doesn't really explain how the meditative practices sit within the context of Kabbalistic teaching, which makes it harder to integrate it into what one might already know of Kabbalism. At times it's also hard to know how useful the book would be to someone with no knowledge of Judaism. For example, the book has a page-sized aleph in the middle of a section on meditation on letters, but has no caption to tell the reader he is in fact looking at an aleph. That particular section leaves one wondering why it was even included, since how to meditate on the letters is not even addressed; Cooper just takes a few valuable pages of what is already a very short book to say people used to do it.It's also hard to tell what here is received, and what here is Cooper drawing on modern creative visualization. Only one set of exercises is given a source, Isaac Abulafia's breath exercises. I know it's my own drawback, but I lose patience with creative visualization. When someone tells me to imagine I'm walking through a field, it does not relax me -- it makes me anxious and then angry. I'm very interested in learning about received Kabbalism; I'm not interested at all in creative visualization or even mash-ups which have proven useful for 60s survivors.Also, its chapters are very uneven. Each chapter should be read in a sitting, but some are less than ten pages and have only a three-minute audio clip, while others are longer -- and, indeed, one chapter is more than ten pages and has two audio clips, each of more than ten minutes. This is like trying to take a class which sometimes lasts ten minutes and other times runs for more than an hour; it's very hard to prepare oneself for.Like most meditation, it's very hard to tell whether this just relaxes one (like any other creative visualization) or really opens one to the Godhead. Perhaps if I used the Abulafia breath exercises daily, as the book suggests, my feelings would be different. I feel like I need some kind of escape, or feel some longing for something out of this world, and this wasn't what I was looking for.

    Book preview

    Ecstatic Kabbalah - David A. Cooper

    Introduction

    Kabbalah has long been perceived as a secret teaching available only to an elite group of people. While it is true that in the past one needed to have a working familiarity with Hebrew to study Kabbalah, the teachings have always been accessible to students who were interested in learning them. Moreover, during the past century, a large number of translations have been made available to readers with various backgrounds, and the mysterious wisdom teachings of Kabbalah can now be found in bookstores around the world.

    There are two forms of kabbalistic study. One form continues to be dependent upon the Hebrew skills of the student, as it involves esoteric manipulations of letters, words, and phrases in an attempt to search out hidden secrets in the Bible. The other way does not have special prerequisites, for it is a method that directly links the interested student with his or her own inner wisdom. This direct experience can be accessed by anyone willing to undertake simple meditative practices. It has been used for thousands of years and is known today as ecstatic Kabbalah

    Ecstatic Kabbalah is built upon the principal that the infinite light of universal truth is always present at all times. This ever-present light is not something that we need to acquire. That would be like trying to fill a bucket that is already completely immersed in the water. However, if the bucket has a tight cap that seals it, then it will be able to hold the water out. This example is appropriate to the kabbalistic teachings. We are always standing under an intense beam of light; however, we are sealed tight in our own sense of a separate self, and thus we experience an inner darkness and fail to realize that we are actually immersed in this light.

    From a kabbalistic perspective, the body and mind of every individual have the potential of holding large amounts of the infinite light. Most of us, though, are not careful about what we bring into our minds and bodies, and we persist in a continuous ego inflation that keeps us sealed beneath veils of self-delusion. However, we can discover our inherent potential by undertaking fundamental meditative practices that quickly strengthen the body and mind in a way that the pervasive light immediately becomes sharper and more focused. A dark room can be lit by a single candle.

    This book and its accompanying CD are designed to help individuals discover for themselves the power that lies within. The practices described are built upon techniques that Kabbalists have used for many centuries. They are quite powerful and yet can be undertaken by anyone who is sincerely committed to personal spiritual development. The simple Hebrew words or phrases that are used in some of the practices are easy to memorize and do not require any background. The benefits of working with these extraordinary practices will begin to reveal themselves fairly quickly. If you are willing to undertake a daily practice, the benefits will become increasingly stronger in a matter of months.

    A sixteenth-century kabbalistic sage, Moses Cordovero, said: The ancient Jewish mystics had special methods of concentration which showed them how to cast off [the sense of] their physical bodies, and thereby strengthened their subtle minds in such a way as to apprehend the sublime, heavenly realms. This was the experience described by sages who practiced thousands of years ago. It continues to be available to us today.

    Cordovero also said, If one wishes to acquire knowledge of God, he or she should concentrate in a special way ... and will then come to understand the hidden secrets of spirituality and will merge with the Divine—attaining oneness. The goal of our practice is this oneness, the recognition that all of Creation is interconnected. This is an idea that is expressed in many ways, but it must be experienced deeply for anyone to realize its true meaning. Merging with the Divine goes beyond thoughts and concepts, but it is something that can be touched in the heart.

    A teacher from the late thirteenth century, Rabbi Shem Tov ben Avraham Ibn Gaon, said that one’s concentration can lead to discovering the secrets of the chariot, [the mystical vehicle that carries one] to have visions of God ... and he will look into his [own] mind like one who reads a book in which are written great wonders. Thus we are instructed to work with these methods with the promise that we can attain profound inner visions. The secrets are not something we learn from outside of ourselves but are to be discovered within our own minds.

    There are dozens of hints in the writings of Jewish mystics that they engaged in contemplative practices to attain altered consciousness. Some of these writings go back millennia. There are Talmudic passages, written over two thousand years ago, that refer to the mystical holy chariot mentioned above by Rabbi Shem Tov, and that have restrictions as to who was qualified to receive these teachings and practices. While we know that there were many learned practitioners, it is also clear that there were warnings to keep practices secret, not to be taught to the

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