Traveling through the Tree of Life - Part 2

For a few years now I have been looking for a way to connect with the Kabbalistic Tree of Life in meditation. I was hoping to connect with these spheres of light in a psychic meditation, like we used to do in my weekly intuition and clairvoyance class.

But I wasn't sure how to go about it, who would take me there? It wasn't until recently that I stumbled upon a technique known as Kabbalistic Pathworking and I realized I already knew my guides: the Archangels and the planets. Modern tarot decks have also been designed with this in mind…

But first, what is the Tree of Life? 

The symbol below is known as the Tree of Life; it was first described in a book called the Sefer Yetzirah. It represents the Kabbalisic theory of creation. It starts with the Big Bang, telling us that before the Universe was created, all we had was nothingness and pure light. Just above the glyph you'll find three lines with the words Infinite Light. 

In Hebrew, these three layers of light are known as Ain, Ain Sof, and Ain Sof Aur, which essentially translate as exponential sources of limitless light. It’s God before God existed if that makes sense. And before that spiritual light exploded in a Big Bang style, creating 10 dimensions - the first of which corresponds to what we understand as God (Keter) and the last is our physical universe (Malchut). 

The remaining eight spheres represent intermediate levels of divinity and spiritual substance, with increasing density as you approach our physical universe. It was all said to happen in a fraction of a second, with Keter creating the second sphere, that one creating the third and so on until we get to number 10.  

Each of these 10 spheres corresponds to what you might call an aspect of God: Light, Wisdom, Understanding, Mercy, Power, Beauty, Victory, Glory, Healing, and Physicality. Each sphere is seen to be an individual dimension of light, though they do transcend each other's space. 

In the lower-most 10th sphere, we can only see the physical universe with our five senses. The energy of the upper 9 are hidden. Meditation gives us access to those spheres on cosmic and personal levels. Self-healing involves bringing your personal tree & its faculties into balance. 

Today I will share a summary of the 10 Spheres of Light, looking at the themes for each, as well as the correspondences that I have found to be useful. Each of the 10 spheres has a planet and an archangel that relates to its energy. Tarot cards can also be mapped out on the Tree as visual prompts; modern tarot was designed with the Tree of Life in mind. I won't go into that here but there are plenty of books on the topic. 

On a personal level, we connect with the spheres to get a glimpse of their energy and bring those qualities into our lives.

The Divine Archetypes

These three Spheres of Light, together with the Limitless Light, represent what most of us traditionally call God, whether you believe in One Supreme God, a Divine Feminine and a Divine Masculine or even a pantheon of deities that add up to one Supreme God, as is the case with Hinduism today. The Tree of Life is quite interesting that way, it can account for all belief systems, even Atheism. 

1) Keter: This is the Crown of the Tree of Life, in Elizabethan times Keter was referred to as Prima Mobile, the Divine Cause or the First Cause. Keter's light is the fuel that keeps the rest of the Tree of Life going. Archangel Metatron is the Archangel of Keter, and it would make sense that he sits at the very source as Metatron is also the scribe of the universe, making note of our shared and individual histories in the Akashic Records.

2) Chokmah is where that Divine Light starts to take shape as Wisdom. It is linked with the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac, and with Archangel Raziel, the Keeper of Secrets and the angel that guides mystics. Funny enough, it was in one of my angel channeling classes where we connected with Raziel, that the Tree of Life and astral travel started coming to me as messages. 

3) Binah is Understanding. Representative of the Divine Feminine, she takes the wisdom from Chokmah and puts it in terms that we can understand. If you're struggling to find your path in life, connect with Binah to get a glimpse of your big picture. Archangel Tzaphkiel is associated with Binah, helping us understand our struggles from compassionate and spiritual perspective. Binah also corresponds to Saturn energy, the planet of earthly limitations, reality checks and growth spurts. 

 The Creative Spheres

This is where the  abstract energy of Keter starts to take shape in a more defined way. We're introduced to the notion of Right and Wrong, as opposed to pure love and light. This is where it starts to get real: how do you react when things go wrong? With anger and judgment, or with mercy and forgiveness (or both)?

4) Chesed is synonymous with compassion and mercy. Archangel Zadkiel is one of the sweetest angels we can connect with when we want to work with the energy of forgiveness and love, also associated with Chesed. The planet associated with Chesed is Jupiter. In traditional astrology, Jupiter is known as the Greater Fortune, blessing us with luck, abundance and also spiritual growth and expansion. When we pray for a miracle, it is Chesed's energy that we are appealing to as its forgiving and non-judgmental. 

5) Geburah is about strength, power and judgement calls. Things are black and white when we connect with Geburah's energy and every action has a consequence. If we rely too heavily on Geburah's strength we may be too hard on ourselves and others. Ironically, Archangel Chamuel (Camael) is the angel of Geburah, and as the Angel of Love he can give us tough love, but he can also infuse us with softer, healing love to soften hard edges. The planet associated with Geburah is Mars (war, ambition and conflict). 

6) Tipheret is the first Sephira on what's known as the Middle Pillar, the balance between the left-handed Sephira that tend to be more karmic (corrections), and the right handed Sephira that lean towards blessings. Tipharet takes the qualities of wisdom, understanding, power and mercy and combines them all in one beautiful sphere of life that I see as the "Heart of God". Tipheret is sometimes seen as the child Chokmah and Binah, from a Christian point of view, you could say this is where Christ Consciousness is, as its halfway between the Physical and the Divine, and capable of reaching both of them. It's planet, the Sun, and the Archangel associated with Tipheret is Raphael.

The Foundation Spheres

  

Though still in the spiritual realms, here we start to see the blue print for our physical universe. I also believe this is where we find our angels, our spirit guides and our visualizations before they take shape physically. 

 7) Netzach follows on nicely from Tiferet. This sphere of light is about Victory: the triumph of light over dark, health over sickness, joy over sadness. We can connect with Netzach for healing and also to work with Venus, known as the lesser benefic of the plants. Venus is the planet of love, material comforts, victory in wars and friendship. Archangel Haniel is linked to Netzach, and we can also work with her for healing and intuition.. 

 8) Hod represents Glory, but in all honesty I haven't connected with this energy so much so I am not sure how else to describe it. Ironically, Hod's planet is Mercury (which rules my birth chart) so I should be familiar with it. And its Archangel is Michael, one of my favorites. I can understand Hod's energy if I think of Archangel Michael: courage, forceful movements and a sword that triumphs. But the concept blends in with the previous sphere of Victory, so I am still figuring this out. Mercury rules words and communication so that could be another theme to look at. 

 9) Yesod is the last Sphere of Light before we cross the veil that separates the Spiritual World from the physical universe. It is associated with the Moon's intuitive, magical and healing energy. When we talk about the Law of Attraction its also Yesod's energy that we are drawing on, as our  creations take shape in this dimension before manifesting here. Archangel Gabriel is the angel of Yesod, which makes total sense as he is the angel of speech and communication (we create with words) and also the angel of pregnancies, creativity and giving birth to new life. 

The Physical Universe 

 10) Malchut is the final stop on our tour: known as the Kingdom. All of God's creative work in the upper realms comes to rest in the Physical Universe, where we live. We could call it the Kingdom of God, but I think we also need to accept our own role in the Earth's state of affairs. If we connect with the Tree of Life, we start to see its creative power in each of us, manifesting through the currents of energy that we tap into. The angel associated with Malchut is Archangel Sandalphon, and he is also said to be the angel of prayers, music and nature. He listens to our prayers and the desires that are in our hearts, though he also have visibility of the big picture and our Highest Good. We can ask Sandalphon for guidance on what to pray for. Follow this link for a post on: How to Connect with Archangel Sandalphon, including one of my favorite meditations!

The Tree of Life is usually depicted as shown above, with 22 pathways that connect the different spheres. Kabbalistic Pathworking involves meditating on the individual spheres, the pathways, and using those pathways to journey from one to the next. What's the point, you may ask? The more we work with our intuition and with the Tree of Life, the more magical and mystical secrets will be revealed to us. These could be concrete self-healing techniques, or even a greater understanding of how consciousness shapes our surroundings. We can also work with the planets if we have a basic understanding of our natal charts, and that will help us integrate energies that could be deficient (for example, I hardly have any planets in fire signs, and connecting with Tipharet, Chesed and Geburah can help me integrate that energy into my personality). 

Let's begin by connecting with the Archangels and accessing our intuition. The energy of the Sefirot is strong and it helps to have solid grounding. I have grounding meditations on YouTube HERE. 

One Last Thought ... 

I am studying Renaissance Astrology and this theory of connecting with the spiritual worlds through the planets resonates. Renaissance Astrologers believed that between our Physical World and the Divine World of Archetypes, was an intermediate Celestial World where the Archetypes are expressed by planetary and zodiacal energies, which then cascaded those Archetypes down to us. The two systems have a lot in common if we think of planets as conduits for energy.

Reiki hugs, 

Regina 

ps ... I updated the diagram in 2023 to reflect the version used by Lurianic Kabbalists, with one path to Malchut. 

> Suggested Reading: Finding Unity in the Tree of Life 

***

Regina Chouza is an energy healer, angel medium and the author of A Personal Guide to Self-Healing, Cancer & Love and Chakra Healing & Magick. Blogging at Diary of a Psychic Healer since 2010, her passion is bringing the qualities of love, joy and empowerment to healing pursuits. Read her books to unlock your intuition. 

Instagram ~ Facebook ~ Youtube

> Español: @AngelMedium33

Image: canva.com (added 2021) 

Traveling through the Tree of Life - Part 1

  

Back in 2010, one of my Psychic School teachers suggested that we keep a journal of all of our experiences in class. That journal could help new students down the line as you tend to forget what its like for a beginner, and more importantly, it keeps you from forgetting things! A few months later this blog was born and if you start  here, you can read my entire journey! Keeping notes also came in handy because I can be thickheaded, and even if the answer is right in front of me, the message will make sense years later. This was the case for me with the Tree of Life, a glyph that summarizes the Kabbalistic theory of creation and our relationship with the spiritual world. 

Eons ago the Big Bang happened. Before the universe was created all we had was nothingness and light. That emptiness exploded into an abstract sphere of light (Keter) that cascaded down through nine more spheres, the last of which became the physical universe. Each of these spheres is an aspect of what we call God: wisdom, understanding, compassion, judgement, mercy, etc. The last sphere represents our physical universe. In between we have the spiritual realms, where angels, loved ones and other beings reside. I first discovered the Tree of Life at the Kabbalah Centre and later at my psychic school; it was often mentioned in my angel channeling classes, as each Archangel is linked to a sphere of light. A few years ago we were connecting with Raziel, one of the more magical angels and I kept getting the same image: a book that was full of incandescent light. Raziel is also the angel of Kabbalah & the so-called keeper of secrets. It felt like he wanted me to connect with the individual spheres but I didn't know how. A few weeks later I signed up for classes at the Kabblah Centre, and though I really enjoyed them, there was no class were you "astral traveled" to the spheres and my teacher gave me a funny look when I asked her if we could go there ourselves.

All of this was in late 2012, early 2013. At the time, I actually found the answer in a book called Magical Qabalah for Beginners, but I only realized that a few months ago when I finished reading the book. It teaches something called Kabbalistic Pathworking, were you use clairvoyant meditations and astral projection to move up from the lowermost sphere. Each of the spheres has an angel and a planet and get this, the pathways between the spheres can be linked to Tarot Trumps (the 22 Major Arcana). For those of us who aren't familiar with the Hebrew alphabet, tarot trumps and archangels may be the easiest way to connect with the Tree of Life. Geek that I am, I went on to read three books on the  subject, the one pictured was easiest to understand. If I'm not mistaken, the correspondence between the Tree of Life and Tarot was developed by a group of English magicians in the 1880's known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. One of its members was A.E. Waite, the creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. The group is said to have imploded thanks to their big egos, and I am not comfortable with some of their techniques, but the path-working concept is exactly what I was looking for.

My next post is going to be on the Tree of Life, the Angels and Tarot, focusing on how we can use the Major Arcana cards in meditation to connect with the energy in the Tree of Life (or at least to become familiar with it). I won't focus on Astral Projection so much because I've only tried it very recently, but if you're interested check out Astral Dynamics by Robert Bruce. We should also famliarize ourselves with the Tree of Life and Tarot, you can get a head start by reading this fun post on the Major Arcana in Cinema. I love movies and as the Tarot Trumps are based on major archetypes, its  easier to link them back to movie characters and get a feel for their energy that way. Stay tuned for more! 

READ PART 2 HERE!

 
 

***

Regina Chouza is an energy healer, angel medium and the author of A Personal Guide to Self-Healing, Cancer & Love and Chakra Healing & Magick. Blogging at Diary of a Psychic Healer since 2010, her passion is bringing the qualities of love, joy and empowerment to healing pursuits. Read her books to unlock your intuition. 

Instagram ~ Facebook ~ Youtube

> Español: @AngelMedium33

  

Giving & Receiving with Grace

One of the things that strikes me about the Holiday Season is how we all spend it in different ways. For some, it is still a religious holiday, though more and more it has become an occasion for gift giving and connecting with family. Though some may lament what appears to be an increasingly commercial spin on a religious day, giving and receiving gifts teaches us an important lesson. 

On a physical level, everything we do consumes some of our personal energy. This includes eating, thinking, working, and even taking time to help others. It's important to to rest and recharge your batteries, especially if you are generous with your time and energy. 

Helping others also uses up our energy, and many healers do this at their expense. This is when fatigue sets in and we become susceptible to cold and flu bugs (for example). If the energy leak is prolonged we may be stopped in our tracks by an illness; this is how our body often asks for rest and self-care. By learning to give, receive and rest (giving to ourselves) we look after our physical health. 

On a material level we attract abundance into our life by sharing. When you give with joy and with the knowledge that there is a lot more where that came from, you send a message to the universe that allows you to receive more. The size or price of the gift doesn't matter, what matters is giving without feeling any stinginess or pain (at spending too much). I was one of the stingy ones.. but those feelings tell the Universe that we don't have enough, and that message is reflected back to us with a reduced flow of financial and material blessings. We can give our time, attention and love as well as material gifts. So when you give this holiday season, give with joy, and receive with joy and appreciation. 

Appreciating all kinds of gifts opens us up to receive even more good in our lives. Receiving with grace tells the Universe that we will welcome its gifts gladly. We also grow by celebrating the blessings in other people's lives. 

Reiki hugs, 

Regina 

***

Regina Chouza is an energy healer, angel medium and the author of A Personal Guide to Self-Healing, Cancer & Love and Chakra Healing & Magick. Blogging at Diary of a Psychic Healer since 2010, her passion is bringing the qualities of love, joy and empowerment to healing pursuits. Read her books to unlock your intuition. 

Instagram ~ Facebook ~ Youtube 

> Español: @AngelMedium33

Image: canva.com (added 2023)

We have no neutral thoughts (ACIM 3)

This is the latest in a series on A Course in Miracles, the self-study program that teaches us to view the world in a more forgiving light. The object of course, is create Inner Peace by doing away with those pesky thoughts, fears and imaginings that stir us up. You can follow the entire class at the ACIM website here. 

Today I will post my general impressions on the last week, rather than go through of the lessons one by one. There was one lesson that grabbed my attention: 

We have no neutral thoughts

This phrase takes me back to the concept of optimism and how tempting it is to force negative thoughts out of your mind and keep only positive ones. Can we do away with one false reality without getting rid of the other? This week, A Course in Miracles tells us that all of our thoughts lead to either fear or love - there are no neutral thoughts. If fear and love are two sides of the same coin, ACIM might have us throw it out. What do you see when the filters for optimism and pessimism are gone? Hopefully peace.

My favorite lessons this week was "We have no neutral thoughts" with "I am determined to see things differently" coming in a close second. I'm hoping ACIM will have us choose the loving thought. At this point I'm not sure where it leads. If you're not familiar with A Course in Miracles (ACIM), the class consists of 365 lessons that you study for a year until you miraculously change your outlook. Gabby Bernstein has written loads on ACIM and she highlights the benefits of choosing love and forgiveness so I hope that is where we are headed. We can choose to see peace instead of what we think we see.

 

Please join me below 💜

Amazon / Facebook / Youtube 

Thank you, Regina 

Do assumptions get in the way of our Intuition?

A few years ago I attended a fantastic Medical Intuition workshop. It was during my student days at the School of Intuition and Healing and our tutor, Sue Allen, taught us how to connect with the Chakras and the organs. It sounds crazy but the body has messages for us - most of the day we carried out hands-on-healing sessions where we would silently chat with our classmates body. So for example, you could ask the liver what their diet was like and if they had too much (or not enough) of a particular food. The cool thing about this, was you could check your answers with your classmate when the session was over. I sensed that she didn't eat red meat and her liver craved it, only to discover that my classmate was a staunch vegetarian during the feedback session. She reacted strongly to the suggestion and we left it at that.

Then she tuned into my energy, and it threw her off completely. Believe it or not, my favorite foods are cheeseburgers, potato chips, salads, and veggies. When she asked what I had too much of, she saw brown liquids like coffee and Coke. Her assumptions about me as a "Healer" kicked in and she thought - no, Regina can't eat like this! One more food item came up as a question mark: tomatoes. Was I supposed to stop eating tomatoes? We laughed about it afterwards because I really do love veggies and chips in equal measure. I used to drink loads of coke and coffee and I love tomatoes. The tomato threw us off - it's a veggie and why would it come up as problematic? It had both of us stumped. 

Four years later I finally have the answer. I went to the doctor with a chronic sore throat thinking I'd have my tonsils removed. Instead, I have been put on a diet to calm down my digestive system: no more coffee, no spicy food (torture for a Mexican), fizzy drinks, fatty or fried foods, chocolate, nuts or nut butters, citrus, oranges, grapefruits, and no raw tomatoes. The funny thing is I walked past Starbucks on my way into the doctor's office and had planned on grabbing a latte when I was done. Its been a month now and I'm getting used to my bland diet. I used to carry either chili powder or hot sauce with me everywhere I went, so I'm not all that surprised. The thing that made me laugh were the tomatoes, of course. I finally understood my classmates vision, who knew?!? Anyhooo, read about the Medical Intuition class here. Tomorrow I'm attending an astral traveling class, so next week's posts should be fun!

***

Regina Chouza is an energy healer, angel medium and the author of A Personal Guide to Self-Healing, Cancer & Love and Chakra Healing & Magick. Blogging at Diary of a Psychic Healer since 2010, her passion is bringing the qualities of love, joy and empowerment to healing pursuits. Read her books to unlock your intuition. 

Instagram ~ Facebook ~ Youtube 

> Español: @AngelMedium33

Image: canva.com (added 2023)

Week 2: A Course in Miracles

Welcome to the second in a series of posts on A Course in Miracles! If you missed last week's entry, ACIM is a self-study program that  teaches your mind to view the world in a more forgiving and peaceful light. It consists of 365 lessons that we meditate on every day for a year. Two years ago I tried going through it on my own but I got lost. 

Now I've joined a study group with a great teacher, so fingers crossed I'll be able to see it through  - all 365 days of ACIM! 

With that note behind me, I should confess that I didn't follow any of the lectures during the week and instead of studying them one day at a time, I am going through them now. I know, it's  awful, ACIM works best in bite sized chunks. But anyhow, let's get started with Week 2. 

The quotes are on the A Course in Miracles website but the interpretations are my own. If you missed my first post READ IT HERE. Here are highlights from the week. 

Day 8: My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts. 

Last week we ended with the concept that wherever we look, we see the past whether it's pink nail polish taking you back to your first school dance, tardiness taking you back to a mom who was always running late, and even happy memories like icing on the cake reminding us of birthdays. Our experiences start to condition our thoughts and our expectations, so that in time we look at a person's appearance and make assumptions about them. Our thoughts lend a voice to those assumptions and for this reason, our mind is preoccupied with thoughts about the past. We can remove this filter by taking a step back and realizing that our thoughts about X, Y or Z are really about the past.

Day 9: I see nothing as it is now. 

One of the things I love about energy healing, is how each session is unique. I tend to tune into my client's energy field clairvoyantly to get a sense of what needs to be healed or cleared. The impressions come as pictures, feelings or even cartoons, illustrating the world that they live in. Every healing is a surprise, it's own movie starring John or Sally. Pretty soon it also becomes apparent that we all have different filters, based on our experiences. Some people see love through rose colored glasses, other have a cynical filter. We can each be presented with the same opportunity and nevertheless have completely different reactions to it: hope, excitement, cynicism or apathy. We don't see the world objectively; instead we see what our experiences led us to expect.

 

Day 10: My thoughts do not mean anything. 

I could interpret this one one of two ways - my study group is tomorrow so we'll see what the teacher has to say about it. The more obvious meaning (pardon the pun) is that our thoughts don't have the significance we think they have, because we're viewing the present through the lens of our own assumptions.

Let's give an example: 

Your friend Mary cancels dinner plans yet again and you think "oh, she always has something better to do" But maybe this time, her babysitter  did cancel last minute. Or she's been so stressed at work that her social life has been put on the back burner, it's not personal. 

We don't know the reason for things, so our thoughts about those things are at best irrelevant and at worst, damaging. This brings me to the second way of interpreting today's phrase: are our thoughts significant? On any given day, the average human has 50-70 thoughts. How many of them are significant? How many of them are true? How many of them are products of the subconscious?

Day 13: rephrased but, a random or uncertain world creates fear.

 

A few years ago I applied for a job as a Global Brand Manager. The interviewer told me that in order to do well, the candidate had to feel comfortable with high levels of uncertainty. In their environment plans changed all the time, projects were abandoned at the last minute, goals would change. You'd never know if the thing you were working on today would be useful or meaningful tomorrow. The only solution was to accept that uncertainty and live with it. Today's phrase reminds me of that interview (I didn't get the job). If living in a chaotic world is stressful, your best bet is to learn to live with it and find a way to trust. Otherwise we end up anxious, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. A Course in Miracles tells us to trust that there is a reason, one we don't see. 

So that's a wrap! 

Come back next week for the third installment on A Course in Miracles. You can read the whole course for free on the ACIM Website Here. It's worth doing for a whole year so that you get the full benefit. I’m going to blog about it just this month.

Study groups help a lot, though there are also plenty of online videos and interviews explaining ACIM. Reiki hugs, Regina

  

Image: canva.com (added 2023)