MYSTICISM IN JEWISH KABBALAH

 There is a prevailing view in Religious Studies that those involved in academic studies need to be completely objective.  Consequently, too many academics exploring religions are atheists and want to explore topics like ritual and ceremony from a distance which seems ludicrous.  That's like a medical doctor dissecting a cadaver that he thinks will be his model for family practice.  Because our society is so heavily secularized and works from a language as developed by "Tyler/Frazier" that such practices are naive and superstitious.

My thesis would have centered on practical applications for mystical paradigms.  The example I'm using comes out from Native American practices as shared by Jim Northrup, an Anishinabe soldier coming back from Vietnam with PTSD.  Northrup began traditional therapy and when he wasn't healing he began using Native American spiritualities of sweat lodges, trickster stories and pow wows. There are two issues we’re facing.

1.  Native Americans do not appreciate non-tribal people utilizing their spirituality without a guide.  There's protocol to ask for such things, and it has been difficult finding what that protocol is.

2.   (the nurse practitioner) tells me that we have to be careful about how we view dysfunction.  She gave me the example of 2 young sisters, pregnant with the same man's babies, whose mother it is suspected gave them to this man for drugs.  Nobody would be able to investigate for criminal charges, nor would  anything be proven.  But the point is this man is a source of revenue for  their family and apparently has a strong bond with one of the girls.  This is "hypothetical" though I'm sure there's more truth to it than would admit.  Families form under extraordinary circumstances and we don't have all the answers.  My interest is finding how to create opportunities where young people in crisis can form a meaningful community that honors their own forms of bravery.

 I am also 56 years old and a good deal older than most of the other students.  The issues I'm working on has more to do with the fact that mystical meanings can have practical application in our society and to simply pass them off as fairy tales for bedtime stories might be short sighted.