Introduction

The Tree of Life at the Center of the Cosmos; How to Use God's Blueprint to Fulfill Your Every Wish

If you are planting a tree and someone arrives and tells you that the Messiah has come, you should first finish planting your tree and only when you are done go out and see if the Messiah is in fact there.

-- The Talmud

We travel the Milky Way together, trees and man.

-- John Muir

Bridging heaven and Earth, I stand, as always, awaiting your embrace. Hug me, climb me, use me; and I will make your wish come true. A tree is all you need. I am the Wish-Fulfilling Tree. The Tree of Life. The Tree of Light.

Trees endure as the ultimate symbols of egalitarianism. They provide the same amount of oxygen, shelter, and shade indiscriminately to rich and poor, sinners and saints, caterpillars and humans. Virtually every culture on every continent has treasured the tree as the centerpiece of its mythology -- from the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden to the Bodhi Tree of the Buddha; the Dreaming Tree of the Aborigines to the Native American Sioux's belief that the first man on Earth was a tree that learned to walk. Such universal reverence among peoples so diverse and disparate indicates that trees brandish immense power. All these cultures cherished different gods and rituals; they devoted themselves to clashing diets and socioeconomic systems. And yet all these traditions exalted the Tree because each intuitively understood that trees stand for more than shade from the hot Sun. Deep down, every human being recognizes that the Tree is in fact the ultimate tool of creation. The Tree creates oxygen. The Tree creates life.

Kabbalah is a mystical, universal interpretation of the meaning and mechanics of life that has been preserved for thousands of years chiefly through the teachings of Judaic seekers and scholars. This ancient theosophy instructs that God uses the Tree as the everlasting blueprint for the construction of the universe. Everything -- you, your dog, Julia Roberts, the Taj Mahal, and the constellation Gemini -- emerged from the ten life-giving energy forces vibrating through this magnificent cosmic tree.

What few of us realize is that these primal forces didn't just assemble the universe and then vanish, abandoning us to cope as best we can. They live still and always, available this minute to every human being. In one of most famous lines of the Bible, God said, "Let us make man in our image" (Genesis 1:25). This sentence promises that humans are nothing less than reflections of God, imbued with a godlike gift and desire to create. In other words, each of us owns the ability to fashion all kinds of stuff seemingly from thin air. All it takes is to retrace the same steps that God took to create the universe. Dust off the master builder's template, and you can breathe life into your fondest dream right here and now.

You start by making a wish -- any wish, from earning more money to finding your true love, from renewed intimacy with your spouse to a bigger house or a smaller waistline. Then you simply follow God's recipe, surfing the Tree of Life from one archetypal energy to the next. Each chapter of this book will immerse you in one of the ten spheres that make up this Tree of Light, the ten archetypal energies inherent in everything and every person. Kabbalists have given each of these ten spheres an official name -- translated here from Hebrew -- which corresponds to the multilayered energy it generates: Crown (will), Wisdom (intuition), Understanding (discipline), Mercy (compassion), Severity (strength or action), Beauty (love), Eternity (relationships), Splendor (communication), Foundation (sexuality and death), and Kingdom (practicality). By devoting one week to each of these singular cosmic forces, you will transform your wish from a dream to a reality.

A journey through the chapters of this book will make you a partner in the Tree's resplendent mystery. We too possess a marvelous talent akin to photosynthesis -- which is the miraculous ability literally to manufacture life through Light. This inspired impulse is our chief reason for being, and the Tree offers a plan that will enhance personal creativity in every area of your life. It will also spur you to internalize the central Kabbalistic mandate to balance giving and receiving. A key side effect of wish fulfillment is learning to be a better giver, and the Tree's program will endow you with a new capacity to balance and repair your personal relationships.

But this book does more than supply a ticket to the procurement of your worldly desires. Working with these archetypal energies simultaneously fulfills the higher calling of the human soul. It will transform you into a warrior of Light, a spiritual torchbearer who, by absorbing and applying the timeless axioms of the Tree, will have helped to heal the universe.

A Spiritual Icon for All

Though the characteristics of the Tree of Life have been documented and debated over the centuries primarily by rabbis and Kabbalists, you will fast discover that the Tree's lessons embrace every denomination imaginable. Every chapter blends myths and theologies from all over the globe to illustrate the Tree's universal reach. The truths embodied in the Tree of Life are not only Jewish but central to every religion. Though all of these distinct traditions employ different names, stories, and metaphors to portray archetypal precepts, at heart each describes and venerates the same essential truths.

This book trusts in myths from assorted cultures not just to inspire and entertain, but because God planted stories at the core of human existence. The first line of the Sefer Yitzerah (Book of Formation), the oldest and most fundamental Kabbalistic text, states that God created the universe with story. In other words, God did not construct the universe in a single stroke but is instead continually narrating the cosmos into existence. Every person harbors his or her own myth. Sometimes we call them diaries. Sometimes we relate the story of our day over coffee. We greet our friends with "What's your story?" as a way of asking how they are. Ageless myths are merely personal tales blown up large. Recounting the exaggerated antics of gods and heroes enables us to scrutinize minute human behaviors with heightened precision. Myths function like microscopes, enlarging invisible molecules so that we might understand their structure. If, for example, we magnify a routine tryst between Venus and Mars into mythic melodrama, we are then able to more keenly dissect and decipher the intricate mysteries of love and romance.

In the same spirit, this book assembles myths from civilizations across the globe to illuminate the secrets of Creation. It draws from the ancient scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Paganism, and tribal lore as well as from personal stories of today; it explores the enduring mythologies of ancient Greece, Egypt, Europe, and Native America, as well as documented historical events. Heroes and traditions as varied as Hermes, the Buddha of Compassion, the Passover Exodus, Christ, the Ramayana, Celtic Oak worshipers, The Egyptian Book of the Dead, ancient Phrygia, the Yoruba of West Africa and the Caribbean, Lao-tzu, Charles Darwin, Mother Goose, and Indiana Jones all find a home in the Tree of Life.

The Tree welcomes everyone in its quest to propagate creativity, healing, and fulfillment.

How to Use the Tree to Fulfill Your Wish

This book invites you to read it at your own pace as an innovative guide to world mythologies, Kabbalah, and ageless spiritual tenets. But if you also want to make use of its life-tested blueprint for wish fulfillment, all you have to do is spend one week basking in the radiance of each of the Tree's ten archetypal energy spheres, one after another from the top of the Tree to the bottom.

Ten spheres. Ten chapters. Ten weeks. One wish.

Based on workshops conducted by Gahl Sasson in the United States, Mexico, and Israel, the teachings and techniques outlined here have helped thousands of people to manifest their dreams. They constitute a spiritual thrill ride designed to activate dormant but powerful facets of your essential nature that will foster achievement, growth, and a magnified sense of both peace and purpose.

Start your journey of transformation by reading all the way through the introduction. Then select a specific hour on a specific day -- Wednesday at 7 P.M., for example -- that you will devote to each new energy. Treat this day and time as a vital appointment that you will not miss for anything. Sit down at that hour and read Chapter 1, which details the fundaments, mechanics, and myths of the sphere called Crown. For the next seven days, you will marinate your life in this one archetypal force. Spend time every day tackling the chapter's Wish Maker exercises. These tasks will amplify the resonance of the weekly vibration and bring your wish to life. It is most critical to set aside several minutes every day to meditate as instructed, chanting the appropriate secret name of God as your mantra to arouse the magic of that sphere in your daily existence.

When Wednesday 7 P.M. -- or whatever day and time you set as your weekly changeover -- rolls around again, proceed to the next chapter. Read it through. Then dedicate that subsequent week to the new sphere, the new exercises, and the new meditation. When your changeover day arrives again the following week, advance into the energetic realm of the succeeding sphere. You might be tempted to skip ahead -- to dig for information or stories that suit your beliefs and disposition more snugly. Simply remember that in Kabbalah, the accomplishment of any goal and life itself are processes. Everything you want, everything you do, requires all ten cosmic energies. Try not to shortchange any of these majestic forces. Each is a gift from the Light. And this journey works best when we pay the requisite respect to each and every one.

As you progress through the ten weeks, you will discover that the Tree operates within the enchanted world of synchronicity. Over the ages, Kabbalists have discerned that every sphere corresponds to a color, a planet, a number, a part of the body, and various real-world talismans. Mythic personalities and folklore from myriad cultures spring from each cosmic force as well. For example, Beauty, the sixth stop on your voyage through the Tree, represents the heart, Christ consciousness, the folktale of the Beauty and the Beast, the colors gold and yellow, roses, the number six, and the Sun at the center of our solar system.

Hunt for the ambassadors of each archetypal energy as you conduct your business in the world that week and recall your dreams each morning. Synchronous brushes with these emissaries of the spheres are likely to relay messages critical to the realization of your wish. In Chapter 1, you will be urged to initiate a journal to help you to track and make sense of these signs, symbols, and the ten-week journey as a whole. This ongoing record of your triumphs, fears, insights, and coincidental encounters -- this snapshot of the interconnectedness of your every step and triviality -- will spur you to view your life through a vibrant new prism. It will rouse you to think and feel in a brand new way.

The Tree of Life recounts the Hero's Journey of the Light as It transfigured the infinite possibilities of heaven into every material thing that we know and imagine. Making a wish casts you as the hero of that same miraculous journey. You possess the power to emulate God. You are a Creator. Climb aboard the Tree and create your wish come true.

Copyright © 2003 by Gahl Sasson and Steve Weinstein