SESSION 1 || Chesed: What Love Makes Possible 

Loving Kindness as a Foundation for Spiritual Growth and Possibility

What is love? The timeless question of mystics and poets and extremely-catchy songs for millenia. But what does it mean for us, day to day, as we live our contemplative practice? 

For our opening session, we’ll introduce a few aspects of the course - the Sefirot, the flow of the class, and you, the participants. We’ll then explore a teaching about the Sefirah of Chesed (Lovingkindness) and reflect on what love makes possible when it sits at the foundation of our lives. What can our sages teach us about the role of brokenheartedness in living from love? How does living from a well of love give us the grounds for moral courage? Through guided embodied practice and time for reflection, we’ll ignite an ongoing practice of feeling love and belovedness in our day to day life and seeing what becomes possible when we do.

SESSION 2 || Gevurah: Boundaries and Desire 

Boundaries and Strength as Allies to Yearning, Desire, and Connection  

How might boundaries be a gateway to freedom? We often think of boundaries as keeping things away, but what else do they make possible? How do sturdy and strong boundaries relate to our deepest yearning and desire? Perhaps they are closer than they seem. In this class we’ll explore boundaries and desire together, and understand what our Jewish sages teach about how we guard and how we engage, as a model for embodying gevurah.

SESSION 3 || Tiferet: Complexity and Compassion  

Kindling a Life of Balance By Expanding our Capacity for Complexity and Compassion 

As we dive into Tiferet, we’ll explore how we find balance and spiritual integrity in fractured times. Balance can often be thought of as even scales, but perhaps a more apt concept of balance is the quality we need when surfing a wave, when finding a foothold on an ever-changing ride beneath us. 

How might we find inner balance and meet the ongoing uncertainty and complexity around us? How does this expansion of our capacity for complexity, inherently link with our expanded capacity for compassion and care, for ourselves and others? Together we’ll explore themes of complexity, compassion, and moral imagination. 

SESSION 4 || Netzach: Sacred Endurance 

Cultivating the Sacred, Soul-driven Endurance to Persist as the Path Unfolds.

In our class on Netzach, we’ll explore themes of sacred persistence. Together with our guest teacher - Rabbi, Chaplain, and black belt martial artist Ben Perlstein, we’ll hear how an interweaving of Jewish mysticism and martial arts provide a map for how we can stabilize our core and endure through challenge. Connecting to the mystical qualities of Netzach, we’ll examine how this inner sturdiness and persistence can provide a foundation for faith in uncertain times.  

SESSION 5 || Hod: Awe, Gratitude, and Expression  

Seeing Beauty and Letting Gratitude Guide Us Home

Gratitude can be more than a statement of appreciation - in practice, it can become a way of changing our sensory reality and experience of the world. As we gather for a contemplation of Hod, we’ll tap into the ways gratitude can be a deep homecoming. We’ll practice resting in a sense of wonder, both zooming into the microscopic beauty of our day to day and zooming out into an expanded way of seeing and being in and with the world.

SESSION 6 || Yesod: Connection and Relational Integrity  

Mindful Relationships, Interweaving Connection as a Foundation for Life 

Our lives are inherently relational. Neuroscientist Matt Lieberman writes about the ways in which we’re social beings, with areas of brain activity reflecting the way we mirror others, empathize with the pain of loved ones, and experience the pain of social disconnection. Poet David Whyte often speaks to the “conversational nature of reality,” expanding our concept of relationality beyond interpersonal and into the realm of relationship with life itself. Our Jewish tradition teaches that we are co-creators in life, through our intimate relationship with the divine and with the divine in each other. 

In this mindful exploration of the relationality in our lives, we’ll encounter both how mindfulness can deepen and enhance the human relationships in our lives, and how our practice helps us taste the true nature of our relationship with life, the divine, herself.

SESSION 7 || Malchut: Embodiment, Leadership, and Becoming 

Becoming a Vessel for Light

For our final class of the series, we’ll gather together for a deep reflection of our journey, our pathway to revelation. We’ll acknowledge the ways we have unraveled, the skin we’ve shed, and the ways we are becoming anew. Cultivating the quality of Malchut, we’ll invite in an embodied experience of leadership and of becoming the vessels for light to shine into a stormy world.