Contemplative Session: Ancient Hebrew Sound Meditation

In the ancient Hebrew tradition, sacred sound is utilized as a primary contemplative practice to shift consciousness into a state of greater presence and expansion. In this session, we will explore the contemplative dimensions of the “Shema”, an ancient Hebrew chant that comes from the Hebrew Bible and that serves as one of the most important prayers in traditional Judaism. In the Jewish mystical tradition, this chant functions as a sacred-sound technique to awaken the consciousness into an embodied state of nondual experience, one which sees no division in the fabric of reality. In this mode, the formless is recognized as the form, the transcendent as the immanent, the unmanifest as the manifest, the spiritual as the material. The contemplative function of this chant includes harmonizing and revealing that all contradictory forces in one’s experience are dynamic elements of a single unified whole.