Tree of Learning: Prelude Sketch

Qabbalistic Mind Sketches

Like most curious apes, I fell asleep in school often. Although this crushing indoctrination program forces children to deal with an institution that attacks their natural curiosity on a daily basis (under the smiling-promising guise of “looking out for your future”), the depth of humanity's innate urge to tinker is too deep to kill. 

The o-so-long-ago uttering of Mark Twain still applies: “I never let schooling get in the way of my education”. The free flow of information and the internet in particular, with its webs of limitless information, make education simple. The main obstacle is structure --- how can I organize all these disparate bits of information into something meaningful? Being someone drawn toward knowing a little bit about a lot but not very much about little, an eclectic wide-ranging map that provides a comprehensive view is what my mind wanders toward. 

The Kabbalah is an ancient method and system of thought aimed at helping an initiate learn how her/his finite-bounded self is related to an infinite-unbounded divinity. In less religious terms, it's meant to establish context...and all meaning arises in context. This was done by studying the tree of life diagram, which splits human experience into ten static sephirot connected by twenty-two dynamic pathways. Through studying this, a psycho-spiritual evolution could occur. 

Luckily for those of a more pragmatic orientation who are not interested in esoteric illumination, the versatile structure of the kabbalistic tree of life can be tweaked so that one can better grasp the interior and exterior conditions of the modern human experience. For more on this, visit ifdawn.com

Beginning on Wednesday (10/03/12), I will post a weekly mind-jazz sketch for each sephirah until I've reached Keter on the tenth week. Below is a sneak peak of what you can look forward to...

Malchut: geology, earth science, economics, anatomy, existentialism

Yesod: sex, animal behaviors, dreams, surrealism

Hod: critical thinking, mathematics, NLP, right speech

Netzach: music, expressionistic art, love poetry

Tiphareth: golden ratio, self-actualization, neurocardiology

Gevurah: politics, mathematics, obedience studies, law

Chesed: praise rituals, mystical love poetry, sufi "wine intoxication"

Binah: world soul, korzybski's map-territory distinction, gaia-sophia

Chokmah: the fool tarot card, Leary's 7th and 8th circuits, Tao Te Ching

Keter: zero point field, mystical literature, implicate order