I admit I still didn't read, “God is a verb.” It is on my shelf. I hope I will get to it and not just because this is Rabbi David A. Cooper's most famous work, but also because it promises new concepts in the study of spirituality and Kabbalah. Meanwhile I dipped my toe into the rabbi's work by reading and listening to his Ecstatic Kabbalah. As I already confessed one thin, might as well confess another one. The book, but particularly the CD was intended to be used for meditation. Reading the book from beginning to end and listening to the CD in a similar way has no chance to bring the expected results.

The ten sessions on the CD (totaling 80 minutes) range from 15 to three minutes. Yes, in this decreasing order as the first session is the longest, the second one is the shortest and the rest is in between. (There are prompts in the book, telling you when to close the book and turn on the CD to meditate along with.) They are all spoken words by Cooper, there is no music. “Spoken word” is not best expression to describe them, as he sings, hums, resonates, vibrates, sooths and guides you along the sessions. It is as if you'd have your personal meditation guru in your living room. Along with the echo. This was not a compliment: I found his voice harmonic but the recording sounds like it was done in a too large empty chamber, making it harder to feel intimate with the voice.

The book is short but beautifully designed. Following the five page introduction comes the 8 main chapters on 83 pages. The volumes is rounded up with an eight page appendix (on sounds, breathing techniques and practices) and a single page about the author. I found the historical perspective on the development of ecstatic Kabbalah in the introduction providing a useful framework for the rest of the book. In the first chapter Cooper defined, compared and contrasted of enlightenment and ecstasy. Next he takes on Kabbalah itself: “ a collection of methods and teachings that are used in an attempt to understand the nature of the universe.” It was refreshing to discover that this understanding very much coincides with mine. Chapter four is devoted to one of my favorite kabbalists, the de facto founder of ecstatic Kabbalah: Abraham Abulafia. (We consider him the “de facto” founder as the works of others of his and previous eras who might have developed similar techniques were lost.) Chapter four we learn (and start using) Abulafia's practices. In chapter five comes a favorite topic of many kabbalists and non-kabbalists: the names of God (and how they can be utilized through chanting). Presence” the topic of the next chapter may be familiar for those who are familiar with the Buddhist mindfulness concept. But here we go through a six phased approach to gain a deeper sense of our own presence. Next we depersonalize ourselves by trying to see through God's eyes. In the final chapter the thirteen attributes of God play the central focal point for the spiritual exercises.

I am still more interested in academic/scholarly Kabbalah than practical or meditational. But for those who are looking for a practice that can help them this seems a wonderful resource. Cannot speak from first hand (or is it first breath) experience though. But even for academic perspective this is a useful book of resources on the topic.

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. ( )