Beginning Again

In the Garden... Fred the pheasant puts us in touch with the Nefesh.

On September 21st 2011 the Wednesday evening Kabbalah group started a new term of meetings. We were glad to welcome both new and familiar faces and to start together a deep and slow journey through the extended Tree of Life, also known as Jacob's Ladder.

So we are beginning again at the base!

Here are Joyce's notes from the evening:

"What is the purpose of Life" asked Sam at the beginning of our first meeting of the Autumn term.  A silence fell on the room as each of us pondered the enormity of the question, and for me, the struggle to verbalise any coherent answer! We all eventually gave account of our personal picture, which as always was very thought provoking.  Sam took us on a quick tour with questions and answers down through the four worlds to the Malkut of Assiyah, the physical world, where we were to start our study up through the Tree.  Sam then guided us through a meditation focusing on our bodies starting  with our breath, moving up the body from the feet and finishing with the heart. A period of reflection followed and an opportunity to write our thoughts in our journals.  I personally appreciated the time and space which allowed me to contemplate the extraordinary complexity of my body and the myriad functions it performs without my consciousness, which I find both awe inspiring and sobering.

 and Eddie and Doreen's:

The body meditation was most helpful to me and l have lain in bed before sleep and early morning and repeated the exercise. Also, just to be studying Kabbalah, the Hebrew one, is really wonderful and takes me back to times of bible study and the' getting nearer to God.' feeling. Thank you. Being in your gardens among the natural world both outer and inner is very lifting. Both Eddie and l look forward to our next meeting and to meeting up with our new and old friends again. 

The Gardens of the Soul

The Tree of Life School started its new term of study with a day retreat on The Gardens of the Soul on Saturday 17th September 2011.

During the day we explored teachings about the five levels of the soul in the Hebrew tradition and related these to the Five Gardens on the extended Tree of Life/Jacob's Ladder. Our main method was through meditation, punctuated by beautiful harp music from Abigail. Below is a brief description of the five souls from our study notes:

The first Garden of the Soul, at the top of the Tree diagram, is called in Hebrew, Yehidah, and the diagram symbolises well how it exists at a pure, divine level. It is like a divine spark that exists in every living thing and it cannot be harmed or destroyed. Each divine spark is completely at one with every other in a unity of consciousness and being. All mystic traditions speak of this and many people have experienced a glimpse of this in what is often now called a 'peak experience'. Trusting in this level of our being and trusting its existence in all other beings can be a powerful practice.

The second Garden of the Soul is called in Hebrew, Chayah. In the diagram we can see how it represents a meeting of divine and spiritual consciousness and as such has both a sense of oneness and a spiritual sense of Self. This level is sometimes described as 'living essence' or 'pure light' and is associated in the Hebrew tradition with archangelic powers, which are traditionally called on before sleep…another powerful practice!

The third Garden of the Soul is called in Hebrew, Neshama, and sometimes called the breath of God. It is the most significant level for Kabbalistic work, because it bridges the psychological and spiritual worlds, which is the cutting edge of consciousness for most of us. Committed meditation or similar spiritual practices  can alter our state of consciousness and give us access to this level in a way that enables spiritual energy to infuse and transform our psyches and physical lives to the benefit of all.

The fourth Garden of the Soul is called in Hebrew, Ruach. This and the next level are coloured by our experiences and how we think, feel and act, and as such can be hurt or lost…and also healed and found! At this level the psyche and the physical body are interconnected. We all have experience of this and how physical experience can affect how we think and feel and vice versa. Psychological and physical therapies mostly work at this level and in Kabbalistic terms are engaged with healing the soul.

The fifth and final Garden of the Soul is called in Hebrew, Nefesh, and often described as the animal soul. We can see from the diagram how it exists fully in the physical level. It is an expression of our vitality and physical energy for life and can be nurtured or neglected. Honouring our animal soul is important, as is connecting it to the deeper levels of soul.

The Nefesh, Ruach and Neshamah are all mentioned in the Torah, while the deeper levels are explored in the Kabbalistic classic, the Zohar. We can work practically to awaken the gardens of our soul in many ways, including through meditation.

Four Worlds in Community

Our dear friend Hilda.

In the Toledano Tradition we often focus on the Kabbalistic Teaching of the Four Worlds. I like to think of these four dimensions of life through the metaphor of an apple...

The fourth world, the material one, is like the skin of the apple. In conventional Western culture we tend to focus on the surface of life, on the outer, physical aspects. We assess  people by how they look or what they do. We give much time and energy to material well being and to dealing with practical issues. This is a bit like eating the skin of the apple and ignoring or throwing the rest away.

The third world, the psychological one, is like the flesh of the apple. It may be sweet or bitter, unblemished or bruised and once we get below the skin, it's tempting to get very preoccupied with this vast inner world and forget to look deeper.

The second world, the spiritual one, is like the core of the apple. It is the essential structure that underpins every apple, no matter how different it seems on or just below the surface. Religious traditions are like apples...they can look and taste very different, but often core spiritual principles are the same.

The first world, the Source or Divine one, is like the seed within the core of the apple. It contains everything to create a new apple tree and endless generations of apples. Every human being has the potential to tap into their divine, creative Source and find their inner seed.


During the Introductory Course, one of our distant learning companions, Hilda, was travelling Britain and reading Kabbalah and Scott Peck. She sent the following thoughts about his idea of different levels of community, which seemed to resonate with aspects of the Four Worlds teachings...

Peck: Four stages of true community:

Pseudo community – Can we see here the superficial ‘niceness’ of the basic physical world?

Chaos:  Is this where we begin to be aware of the underlying tensions of our world, where conflicts begin to be felt, but we don’t always know how to deal with them; where relationships become confused; where received modes of dealing don’t always work; where there is a feeling of being lost as superficial strategies fail…?

Emptiness: As we learn to discard ‘nice’, but superficial, ways of relating to each other, is this where our understanding of psychologically flawed pathways leads us into deeper waters - a more spiritually aware realisation that there is a different level of authenticity more in keeping with the divine purposes of our creation? 

True community: Allowing ourselves to be overtaken by this power of honesty – authenticity – is it here that we enter into a truer understanding of our inter-connectedness with each other and the whole of creation? Does this mean giving up our superficial niceness, holding more honestly to the variability of our relationships, and trusting ourselves to divine glimpses of the true potential of being in harmony with the divine purposes of LIFE?

There is no suggestion that there is a clear ‘progression’ through the various stages towards true community – but rather that it is helpful to be aware that these are stages which, if recognised, help to affirm and stabilise our growth from the superficial niceness of pseudo-community into the disintegration and re-building that underlies moving towards true community.  Neither is there any guarantee that we will not regress, preferring the relatively easy ways of being nice, to the often painful  path of accepting our own, or others’, authenticity.