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    Blessings of the Cosmos: Wisdom of the Heart from the Aramaic Words of Jesus
    Blessings of the Cosmos: Wisdom of the Heart from the Aramaic Words of Jesus
    Blessings of the Cosmos: Wisdom of the Heart from the Aramaic Words of Jesus
    Ebook125 pages1 hour

    Blessings of the Cosmos: Wisdom of the Heart from the Aramaic Words of Jesus

    By Neil Douglas-Klotz

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    About this ebook

    Aramaic—the language of Jesus and his disciples—has captured the imagination of seekers from every faith and spiritual tradition. Since the publication of his bestseller Prayers of the Cosmos, Aramaic scholar Dr. Neil Douglas-Klotz has become a foremost expert at uncovering the rich layers of meaning found in Jesus's native wisdom sayings.

    Now, in Blessings of the Cosmos, this renowned author presents a collection of all-new translations of Jesus's best-loved benedictions and invocations for peace, healing, divine connection, and more, including:

    • "Come unto me, all ye that labor"—blessings to renew and rededicate your life's sacred vocation
    • "Ask, and it shall be given you"—discovering your origin in the source of Love itself
    • Jesus's parting words to the disciples, from the blessing of greater works to the many mansions teaching to the great commandment on love, and more
    • Jesus' Beatitudes in Luke—blessings for our inner being
    • Plus an 80-minute CD with 20 guided Aramaic body prayers, similar to the traditional Middle Eastern practices that Jesus himself used to generate spiritual energy and insight

    Whether for personal inspiration or for communal worship and rites of passage, Blessings of the Cosmos offers you a heart-opening prayerbook that offers guidance and encouragement toward an ever-deepening daily experience of the Divine.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSounds True
    Release dateMar 1, 2006
    ISBN9781591798750
    Blessings of the Cosmos: Wisdom of the Heart from the Aramaic Words of Jesus
    Author

    Neil Douglas-Klotz

    Neil Douglas-Klotz, PhD, (Saadi Shakur Chishti) is a world-renowned scholar in religious studies, spirituality, and psychology. Living in Edinburgh, Scotland, he directs the Edinburgh Institute for Advanced Learning, and for many years was co-chair of the Mysticism Group of the American Academy of Religion. He is also co-founder of the international Network of the Dances of Universal Peace. A frequent speaker and workshop leader, he is the author of several books, including Prayers of the Cosmos, The Hidden Gospel, The Genesis Meditations, The Sufi Book of Life, Blessings of the Cosmos and The Tent of Abraham (with Rabbi Arthur Waskow and Sr. Joan Chittister). Known also for his citizen diplomacy work, in 2004, he co-founded the Edinburgh International Festival of Middle Eastern Spirituality and Peace. In 2005, he was awarded the Kessler-Keener Foundation Peacemaker of the Year award for his work in Middle Eastern peacemaking. For more information on communities worldwide in which his work is shared, visit The Abwoon Resource Center.

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      Book preview

      Blessings of the Cosmos - Neil Douglas-Klotz

      NEIL DOUGLAS-KLOTZ, PH.D.

      B L E S S I N G S   O F   T H E

      C O S M O S

      BENEDICTIONS FROM THE ARAMAIC WORDS OF JESUS

      For Nur Jehan, who reminds me how much

      unexpected blessing and joy life can provide.

      ENHANCED CONTENTS

      Track One (5:17)

      Invocation of the Light

      Track Two (5:29)

      The Way of Snake and Light

      Track Three (4:37)

      Making a Decision / Releasing Unripeness

      Track Four (2:28)

      Returning to Ripeness

      Track Five (3:28)

      Touching Emptiness

      Track Six (2:48)

      Discovering a Fluid Self

      Track Seven (3:29)

      A Particular Bad Day

      Track Eight (4:10)

      Food for the Journey

      Track Nine (4:36)

      A Breath of Loving Warning

      Track Ten (3:57)

      A Voice from the Heart

      Track Eleven (2:24)

      Shifting Priorities

      Track Twelve (2:20)

      The Gifts of Light and Darkness

      Track Thirteen (4:34)

      The Renewal of the Holy One

      Track Fourteen (4:36)

      Following Desire to Its Source

      Track Fifteen (3:54)

      Opening to the Next Step

      Track Sixteen (1:54)

      Creation and Service

      Track Seventeen (2:17)

      Original Peace

      Track Eighteen (4:26)

      The Love That Created the Universe

      Track Nineteen (2:54)

      Dedicating Work and Life

      Track Twenty (2:47)

      The Rebirth of Sacred Purpose

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Enhanced Contents

      Introduction: Hearing Jesus with Aramaic Ears

      How to Use This Book

      1.   Permission to Shine

      AUDIO: Invocation of the Light

      2.   Snake and Dove: The Blessings of Holy Wisdom

      AUDIO: The Way of Snake and Dove

      3.   A Blessing of Impermanence

      AUDIO: Making a Decision / Releasing Unripeness

      4.   The Beatitudes in Luke: Blessings in Unexpected Places

      AUDIO: Returning to Ripeness

      AUDIO: Touching Emptiness

      AUDIO: Discovering a Fluid Self

      AUDIO: A Particular Bad Day

      AUDIO: Food for the Journey

      AUDIO: A Breath of Loving Warning

      AUDIO: A Voice from the Heart

      AUDIO: Shifting Priorities

      AUDIO: The Gifts of Light and Darkness

      5.   Blessings of Work and Rest

      AUDIO: The Renewal of the Holy Land

      6.   Permission to Desire

      AUDIO: Following Desire to Its Source

      7.   Yeshua’s Last Blessings on His Disciples: How to Hitch Your Soul to a Living Comet

      AUDIO: Opening to the Next Step

      AUDIO: Creation and Service

      AUDIO: Original Peace

      AUDIO: The Love That Created the Universe

      AUDIO: Dedicating Work and Life

      8.   The Blessing of Gabriel: What Mary Heard

      AUDIO: The Rebirth of Sacred Purpose

      Bibliography

      About the Author

      About Sounds True

      Copyright

      INTRODUCTION

      Hearing Jesus with Aramaic Ears

      Sixteen years ago, I published the book Prayers of the Cosmos, an attempt to reinterpret and translate the Lord’s Prayer and the Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew from the standpoint of the Middle Eastern spirituality as found in Jesus’ native language of Aramaic. The approach was simple: because Aramaic, unlike Greek or English, allowed for a much greater range of meaning than a simple word-for-word translation could offer, I rendered each line of the prayer or Beatitudes five to seven different ways in poetic form. Surprisingly, the book is still in print and has sold more than a hundred thousand copies worldwide, mostly through word of mouth.

      Using the same format, this book aims to present Jesus’ best-loved benedictions and words of encouragement in new translations derived from the Syriac Aramaic version of the Gospels called Peshitta, the same source I used for the original collection. Blessings of the Cosmos includes sayings like the great commandment on love (John 14), the Beatitudes reported in Luke, Jesus’ farewell talk with his disciples in John, and a number of other well-loved invocations of light, joy, peace, and faith. As readers have used my earlier book, they can also turn to this one for both personal inspiration and as a resource for communal worship and rites of passage.

      In the sixteen years since Prayers was published, a great many developments in both the Christian theological and scholarly worlds have supported an Aramaic approach to the spirituality of Jesus.

      On the side of Christian theology, many mainstream and liberal theologians have expressed the view that a majority of Christians are much more interested in spirituality, that is, religious experience, than they are in creeds or theological concepts. Those who find a friend in Jesus are much more interested in how he prayed and what he did—spirituality and social justice—than they are in a catalog of beliefs about the virgin birth, the crucifixion, and the resurrection. They are less interested in what theologians call high christological concepts than they are in how each person can become a son or daughter of God, living in wisdom and compassion, as Jesus did. In this arena, my own work has also received much wider acceptance, and I have been invited to speak at many theological schools and churches on the spirituality of Jesus as viewed through his native Aramaic language and culture.

      In the scholarly world, a number of developments have radically shifted the view of Jesus and his times. first, several other scholars have published research maintaining that no person can be labeled a Jew or a Christian either during the lifetime of Jesus or for up to 300 years thereafter. One Christian scholar stated simply, There are no Jews or Christians in the Bible (Pilch 1998). The Jewish scholar Daniel Boyarin has proposed in his most recent work (2004) that what we presently call Judaism and Christianity both emerged from an enmeshed hybrid identity that lasted for hundreds of years. Neither faith fully individuated from this twinned state until the time of Constantine, three centuries after Jesus, when the first Christian creeds were written as a charter for the now-Christian Roman Empire.

      The word usually translated Jew in the Gospels is a mistranslation of both the Aramaic and Greek words that should read Judean, a person living

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