Kabbalah For Inner Peace.pdf

KABBALAH FOR INNERPEACE:

Imagery and Insights toGuideYou Through

Your Day

Gerald Epstein, M.D.

ACMI PRESS : NEWYORK

5021-text.qxd:5021-text 6/19/08 12:17 PM Page 5

Copyright © 2008 by Gerald EpsteinCover art copyright © 2008 by Gabriel Molano

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced orutilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,including the internet, photocopying, microfilming, recording,or by any information storage and retrieval system, without per-mission in writing from the publisher.

This book is not intended as a substitute for medical advice ofphysicians. The reader can consult a physician in matters relat-ing to his or her health and particularly in respect to any symp-toms that may require diagnosis or medical attention.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataEpstein, Gerald, 1935-

Kabbalah for Inner Peace : Imagery and Insightsto Guide You Through Your Day / Gerald Epstein.p. cm.LCCN 2007907049ISBN-13: 978-1-883148-08-9ISBN-10: 1-883148-08-1

1. Cabala--Health aspects. 2. Imagery (Psychology)--Therapeutic use. 3. Mind and body. I. Title.

RZ999.E67 2008 615.8'52QBI07-600260

Printed in USA.First EditionACMI Press, 2008351 East 84th Street, #10DNew York, New York 10028Tel: (212) 369-4080www.acmipress.org


Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION. — page 11PRACTICING MENTAL IMAGERY IS

PRACTICING KABBALAH

CHAPTER 1. — page 25LEARNING THE PRACTICE OF MENTAL IMAGERY:

THE TREATMENT THAT OFTEN TAKESONLY SECONDS

CHAPTER 2. — page 38THE KABBALAH OF MENTAL IMAGERY:

WORKING WITHOUT A GOAL

CHAPTER 3. — page 46EXERCISES FOR BRINGING FRESHNESS

TO THE DAY

CHAPTER 4. — page 54ABOUT BALANCE AND PATIENCE

CHAPTER 5. — page 60MALADIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE: ANXIETY AND PAIN

CHAPTER 6. — page 77MONEY WORRIES, MONEY TRAPS

CHAPTER 7. — page 85WHEN WE LOSE OUR FOOTING: SELF-DOUBT,

INDECISIVENESS, DISQUIETING FEELINGS

CHAPTER 8. — page 93SURVEYING OUR BODY’S HEALTH


CHAPTER 9. — page 97DEALING WITH PHYSICAL AILMENTS:

INFLAMMATION AND MUSCLE SPASMS

CHAPTER 10. — page 103IDENTIFYING AN AILMENT’S SOURCE

CHAPTER 11. — page 113COMBATTING INNER TERRORISTS:

THE KABBALAH OF ACTION

CHAPTER 12. — page 124HEALING THE PAST

CHAPTER 13. — page 137SLEEP TIGHT: IMAGERY EXERCISES

TO BRING SLEEP

CHAPTER 14. — page 141AWAKENING TO SPIRIT

CHAPTER 15. — page 151FINDING SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

CHAPTER 16. — page 155LETTING IN THE INVISIBLE UNIVERSE

Appendix — page 161NOTES ON HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN

IMAGERY

Index of Exercises — page 172

About the Author


Introduction.

PRACTICING MENTAL IMAGERY ISPRACTICING KABBALAH

The Relationship Between Spirit and the EverydayWorld

There are two major ways of understanding the rela-tion between Spirit and the everyday world. In oneapproach, you find Spirit by drawing away from theeveryday world. This is the approach of the East,and it is the approach that many popular books offerto those yearning to bring more spirituality intotheir lives. While these books don’t say that youneedn’t worry about the chores, tasks and challengesof everyday life, they pay little attention to everydaymatters. In these books, what is central is adoptingthe attitudes and perspectives that take you closer toSpirit by focusing your mind quietly away from thetravails of everyday life.

The other approach to the relation betweenSpirit and daily life is that you move toward the spiri-tual by bringing it into the everyday. In thisapproach, mundane life is not a hindrance to Spirit; itis the path to Spirit. You do not turn your back on thechores, tasks and challenges of the everyday, butrather use them to open yourself to Spirit. This is theapproach of the West – the approach of “reaching forheaven on earth” – and it is the approach in particu-lar of the path I follow, the path of VisionaryKabbalah. Visionary Kabbalah tells us that to movetoward the transcendent we must first gain masteryover our everyday concerns and difficulties.

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It is here that we begin to see the conection betweeninner peace and Spirit. To gain mastery of ourselvesin daily life with its bottomless well of challengesrequires that we establish in ourselves the innerpeace that comes from balance and order. In thisway, gaining inner peace prepares us to open toSpirit. At the same time, the practice of Spirit culti-vates inner peace.

The beauty of Visionary Kabbalah is that itoffers us several easily available practices that doboth – help bring us to inner peace and, at the sametime, to the experience of Spirit. Its central practiceis mental imagery. Through mental imagery, weenter the realm of the timeless, spaceless Divine, arealm that is always present and available to us, ifwe only ask. This realm, called the invisible uni-verse, consists of many worlds of reality and beings,e.g., angels, archangels, cherubim.

In this book, I move through typical events andcommon challenges of an ordinary day and showhow mental imagery can help us master our con-cerns by drawing on Spirit, the source and theessence of our being. In this way we gain innerpeace. Not only do we live healthier, calmer, moreassured, and more moral lives; but we also put our-selves on the path that leads to transcendence.

I should explain that the Kabbalah I practice isnot the Kabbalah that has become a kind of pop hitof the moment, whose study and practice has gainedmany adherents, a number of them well-knowncelebrities. This variant is called Ecstatic Kabbalah.About two thousand years old, Ecstatic Kabbalah isbased on chanting combinations of Hebrew lettersduring a meditational state with the aim of bringingthe chanter to the transcendent experience of reach-

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ing out and up toward union with God. In thisunion, one escapes the bondage of conditioning andthe enslavement it brings in the time-space physicalreality that we usually, mistakenly, think of as theonly real world. In other words, in this approach toKabbalah, one strives to leave behind the ordinari-ness of human life and leap into the transcendent.

In contrast, Visionary Kabbalah is four to fivethousand years old and derives from the ancientWestern spiritual tradition of the prophets. TheseBiblical seers from Abraham onwards describe therevelatory experiences which came to them in theirvisionary practice. In this practice, visions of theDivine and the transcendent are transmitted via thesacred language of image. Put another way, image –and imagery – is the language of the Divine. Godspeaks to us through image, and we can reach Godthrough image. It is a mutual process.While Visionary Kabbalah is the language of theDivine it does not mean that the language of imagemoves us directly into transcendence. Quite thecontrary. In Visionary Kabbalah, we cannot moveinto transcendence until we balance our lives onearth. Thus, in Visionary Kabbalah, we use image, aninner hieroglyph, to make God’s presence immanenton earth. We use image to draw on the knowledgewe need to live a healthy, happy, and balanced life.By applying the revelations that come throughimagery, we transform both our personal lives andthe world around us. Once our inner balance issecured, we can proceed up the ladder of self-masteryto make our way first to personal illumination andthen to union with the Divine.

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Why do I say that image is the sacred languageof the Divine?

In Genesis (1:26) it is stated that we are made inthe image of God. Image in this context representsthe indestructible immortal seed we are as createdby God. Thus, we bear a cosmic imprint and areopen to receiving a continuous influx of Divine ener-gy, which includes information, messages, and light.These influxes come from the invisible world, whichis the true reality. Those of us who practiceVisionary Kabbalah know it is a science of revelation– revelation that is designed to give us peace, com-fort, health, and general well-being, from the sim-plest aspects of our lives to the most complex.To make God immanent on earth is to bring to eartha new therapeutic impulse that allows us to create anew life, free of conditioning. By transforming ourconditioned servitude into freedom, we transformthe suffering that usually characterizes daily exis-tence into a life of healing and wholeness.

We can see this process of transformation in thefamiliar story of Abraham and his encounter withGod, about 4,200 years ago in a part of the world thathad many tribes, all practicing polytheism – the wor-ship of many gods. People sacrificed fellow humansto propitiate one or another god for whatever bene-fits the god presumably controlled – rain, crops, cat-tle, and so forth.

Abraham’s encounter with God consisted of hisperceiving a great invisible being who in effect said:“I will give you everything that you need on thisearth to sustain, fortify, and satisfy you, includingeternal health and well-being. All I need in return isyour love and devotion.”

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1 In the Western spiritual tradition, the woman holds thekey to love, which the man learns through her, and sobecomes complete.

Mental imagery is akin to Abraham’s revelatoryexperience, which became the basis for themonotheistic tradition. Imagery puts us in touchwith the invisible and thus, according to Abraham’srevelation, with what we need in everyday life.Through mental imagery, we access the innerknowledge that helps us heal and brings us back intowholeness; we remember ourselves in a new way,bringing ourselves back to life from the sufferingthat is wearing us down.

Remembering Ourselves Into Wholeness

What does remember ourselves mean? It essential-ly means coming back to life – re-membering. We seethis in the vivid story from ancient Egypt, where Isis, thegoddess of wisdom, re-members her husband, Osiris. Asthe god of the netherworld, Osiris weighed the souls ofthe dead to determine where each soul would go.Osiris’s brother, Seth, was so jealous of Osiris’s powerthat he murdered his brother and then cut him into four-teen pieces, burying them all over Egypt. When Isislearned of this, she scoured Egypt to find the pieces, andafter collecting them, she put together all but one ofthem, restoring Osiris to life.1 She re-membered him.She put his members back together, a process of cosmicreconstructive surgery. Because she recalled him whole,through an act of remembering, both physical and men-tal, she brought him back to life.

In mental imagery we re-member and restoreourselves from the fragmentation we experienceboth internally and externally from the disturbingsituations that surround us. We bring ourselves backto life by aligning ourselves with the truths thatcome to us from the invisible universe. This sacredrealm knows what we need and is always availableto us through mental imagery.

The revelatory way of the prophets, the system-atizers of Visionary Kabbalah, is alive today in theuse of mental imagery for purposes of both healingand spiritual realization. This book endeavors toshow readers how to invigorate their lives in thespirit of Visionary Kabbalah. In a modest way, thebook aims to give everyone the means to become apracticing kabbalist.

A Personal Note

In 1989, I published a book on mental imagery,Healing Visualizations: Creating Health ThroughImagery (which, I am happy to say, is still in print),without a single word about Kabbalah. Many bookson mental imagery take no notice of Kabbalahbecause the authors either have no spiritual interestsor are unaware of the unique connection betweenimagery and Kabbalah. In my case, I did not discussKabbalah because I thought then that placingimagery in what to me was its true and deepest con-text would ask too much of readers. HealingVisualizations is very much a nuts-and-bolts hand-book of imagery treatments for various disordersfrom acne to worry. In 1989, it seemed enough tome (and my editors) to maintain that imagery couldalleviate physical, mental, and emotional disorders.

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The world has changed. The use of imagery hasgained increasing acceptance. Discussion of the spir-itual realities behind the physical realities that cometo us through our senses has gained a wide audience– even making some inroads in the medical commu-nity, which has begun to study the possible effects ofspirituality or belief in God on health. In HealingVisualizations, I told only one piece of the story ofmental imagery – the story of application. InKabbalah for Inner Peace, I am telling the wholestory – that mental imagery is the way that we canaccess the invisible reality; that our first aim in ask-ing for assistance from this invisible world is to bringbalance to our human lives, physically, emotionallyand mentally; and that when we do this, in effect, wemake God immanent on earth. We have then pre-pared ourselves to reach out to the transcendent.

Imagery As Prayer

All spiritual tradition speaks about two worlds: therealm of visible reality and the unseen invisiblerealm. The world of visible reality is the world oftime, space, and physicality: that which can be mea-sured and objectified. It is the world of material real-ity.

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

In the Western spiritual tradition, when wespeak of Spirit we refer to the presence, the influ-ence, and the priority of invisibility in our visibleworld of objective material reality. In this tradition,every image experience is a prayer sent up to invisi-

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Index of Imagery Exercises

Name Purpose / Page

The Room of Creativity Creativity / 26Ice Cubes Hypertension / 32Self-Restoration Turn to Spirit / 34The Marriage Tree Bonding Couples / 40Zen Archery Working w/o a Goal / 42Question Mark Freshness to the Day / 48Centering Confidence and Vigor / 50Job Patience / 57Room of Silence Anxiety / 66Desert Storm Anxiety / 68American Indian Anxiety / 69Elevator Anxiety / 70Net of Anxiety Anxiety / 70Prisoner of Pain Purification / 73Sander Pain / 73Crystal Pain / 74Red Circle Pain / 75Sweet Fruit Frugality / 81Stream of Money Prosperity / 82Hot Air Balloon Prosperity / 83Beggar Miserliness / 84Serpent’s Curse Self-Doubt / 87Mummy’s Wrappings Indecisiveness / 89Wiping the Mirror Clean Disquieting Feelings / 90Lake of Health Physical Health / 95Field of Health Evaluation / 95Fireman’s Hose Inflammation 99Muscle Expansion Spasm / 100

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173

Name Purpose / Page

Flushing Inner Terrorists / 120Key to Prison Door Inner Terrorists / 120Correcting the Memories Correcting the Past / 125Burying the Past Correcting the Past / 130Retracing the Past Correcting the Past / 132Closing the Door on the Day Insomnia / 137Flowers in the River Insomnia / 139Sandman Difficulty Falling

Back to Sleep / 139Children and Sleep Fear of the Dark / 140Turning from Our Errors Repentance / 143The 10 Commandments Moral Nature / 144Rising with the Sun Awakening to Spirit / 146Joining the Divine Claiming Your Spirit

Nature / 149Three Freedom Exercises Freedom / 153Anger, and Other Emotions Dealing with Unwanted

Emotions / 163–164


About the Author

Gerald Epstein, M.D., is one of the foremost practitionersof integrative medicine for healing and transformation.He founded and directs the American Institute for MentalImagery (AIMI), a postgraduate training program forhealth professionals and an educational center for thepublic. Dr. Epstein is Assistant Clinical Professor ofPsychiatry at Mt. Sinai Medical Center (New York City)and has taught at Columbia University’s College ofPhysicians and Surgeons. Initiated into VisionaryKabbalah by his teacher Colette Aboulker-Muscat, he is aleading exponent and teacher of the Western spiritual tra-dition and its application to healing and therapeutics. Dr. Epstein has authored five books and recorded twoaudios. He maintains a private practice in integrativemedicine in New York City where he works with individ-uals, groups and children. To contact Dr. Epstein, AIMI, orlearn more about Visionary Kabbalah call 212-369-4080 orvisit: www.drjerryepstein.org.

Photo:Scott O

sman


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