28 Spirituality Studies 10-2 Fall 2024 2.4 Jewish Mysticism and the Map of the Self Ideas from Jewish mysticism present useful expansions on the idea of the Self. While ultimately connected to greater relational experiences, as described in later detail, there are particular capacities and functions of the Self that are worthy of exploration in this delineation of the internalized processes of a Self from the perspective of Jewish spirituality. To put two thousand years of Jewish mysticism in a paragraph is itself a difficult task, as is summarizing some basic tenants. Put succinctly, mysticism involves an effort to have a direct experience with divine presence and/or deeper layers of reality. The encounter with the authentic Self in mysticism is something to be experienced more than understood cognitively. Kabbalah, a term often used to refer generally to Jewish mysticism, also refers specifically to a spiritual movement that surfaced in twelves-century Europe, with origins in France and Spain. The kabbalistic tradition characterizes the “ultimate reality”, Ein Sof (He. The Infinite), as a source of radiant spiritual light that is itself truly unknowable, though in moments can be experienced through the connection to subtle divine emanations called sephirot. Kabbalah was greatly influential on subsequent forms of Jewish spirituality which, like most types of mysticism, derived their understandings of authentic reality through personal experience and the contemplation thereof – or traditions passed down through lineages of those who experienced and then spent time considering their encounters – rather than cognitive speculation as a primary route of discovery. These sets of insights, practices, and approaches evolved over many centuries with particularly notable schools emerging in Safed, Israel in the sixteens-century and eighteens-century Ukraine and its surrounds. Teachings from this latter school known as the Hasidim emphasized the ecstatic experience of true existence as a “bonding” or “attachment” (He. dveikut) to the ineffable and unknowable Infinite. In this paradigm of Jewish mysticism, Ultimate Reality is found both “beyond” the practitioner and also within. In this way, the true Self and the ever-unfolding and paradoxical Infinite source can be understood as one and the same. The Hasidic teacher known as the Apter Rav describes a stage of the mystical journey in which the seeker awakens the subtle inner awareness that enables him to view the world in the same way that Ultimate Reality did before the world was brought into existence (Ponak 2022, 46). Through an interweaving of experience and lineage-based transmission with traditional symbols, imagery, and language, Jewish mystics create schemas for understanding and charting various layers of reality and the Self. One such map is the various types or layers of the soul. These levels of soul include, according to Isaiah Horowitz (1698), a bodily, animating, sensory component (He. néfesh), an emotional, willful component (He. ruaḥ), and a cognitive or thinking component (He. neshamah). Each level of soul can be correlated with sephirot, a plural noun taken to mean emanations or qualities of the divine. All together there are ten sephirot, variously understood as a “ladder between the finite and the Infinite” (Green 2004, xlvi), or as “pure virtues” (He. midot) found both in Ultimate Reality and in the core of the human Self (Cordovero 1584, 22:2). Each sephira has particular capacities, and we are capable of both reflecting upon and experiencing the energy of these (Zohar 1:103a–b). These concepts of the structures of the Self in and of themselves have a high degree of utility. Rather than a diffuse idea of the Self or disparate affects or developmental experiences, it is quite helpful to conceptualize a particular quality of the Self as something with an inspired connection to a “greater force”, Ein Sof. Much like Jung’s archetypes, these emanations carry particular qualities that are helpful to visualize in various ways and can appear in particular dreams. A 51-year-old high functioning female client with lifelong access to the sense of Hesed or “lovingkindness”, discussed her difficulty with a different quality, that of Gevurah or “strength”, often understood as “boundaries”. After a review of various current and past difficulties embracing this energy, she had a dream in which a woman covered herself in blood by hacking at her arms and wrists while singing a repetitive song. She awakened with a strong sense of electrical vibrations coursing her body coming and going for nearly a minute. She was then able to use this image and associated tune and energy in calling up a component of the Self that had been more distant in the past. She associated this image with her mother and others she had felt compelled to care for or save psychologically over her life, and the embodied sense of electricity and associated hymn provided an increasing development of Gevurah with energy of the Divine. She saw this as a developing capacity in which she began to define herself beyond the capacity of saving another to have value or esteem, realizing that this was an impossible task, and began to experience a new sense of self regard. While these contributions of the map of a Self helps one to build a relationship to one’s personal attributes and experience, this still implies a sense of a static, fixed Self. Equally important is the idea contained within most mystic tradi-
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