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Skill To Gain: Become a Kabbalah Expert

By Micah Redding
January 8, 2009

Kabbalah is associated these days with Madonna and Britney Spears, and some funky red cords. And that was all I knew about it - in fact, I didn’t even know about the red cords. But I suspected that there was something more to it than all the hype. So I decided to investigate.

Kabbalah for DummiesMy first step in learning about Kabbalah was to buy a $3 Kabbalah-for-young-readers type of book at a Borders clearance sale. After perusing that, I decided that Kabbalah might be worth studying.

But WHAT is Kabbalah?

In my totally un-substantiated opinion: I think it is a way to diagram and analyze what is going on inside your head, so you can be more peaceful. Kind of an abstract psychology.

That was enough to motivate me to try this stuff out. So my next step was to go to Kabbalah.info and study all their videos. Since my motto is: “Judge a book by its cover, because how else will you judge it before reading it?”, I carefully paid attention to how “cool” and “hip” their explanatory videos were. They passed the test.

Fortuitously, an online class was starting up right then, so I signed up for the free course.

Last night was the first session. After some technical difficulties, I was able to get live, streaming Kabbalah coming into my living room. I had a temporary moment of vertigo as I realized I was studying an ancient secretive tradition on live webcam.

The first session basically consisted of two instructors telling what Kabbalah was NOT - it’s not a religion, or mysticism, or something where you tie red cords around your wrist. All while the rest of the class kept following up with questions like, “But what kind of religion is it?”, “is mysticism really for me?”, “can you talk to the spirit of my dead grandmother?”, and “where can I get a red cord?”

There was even a touching moment when the two very serious instructors, wearing yarmulkes, put their arms around each other and said, “Buddies!”

It was great. Since this is a 24-week class, and I’ve completed ONE week of it, I guess I now know 1/24 of Kabbalah!

Posted in Skill To Gain.

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