The ancestral field has its own magical magnetic pull on us. It compels us toward it like a riptide with both the unworked trauma and the accrued wisdom of the past. So you might find yourself doing things that make no sense at all in the context of your own life, be drawn to certain pass times or people, or have a hidden compulsion that riddles your health…until you discover that you are following the pull of an earlier family member, an ancestor's unfulfilled dream, or undigested tragedy.

Despite the astonishing efforts I made to deny them, my ancestors were incontestably alive within me—with all their foibles and fears. Just as my grandparents' values had coiled down the twisted ladder of their DNA to me—love of the written word, Jewish education, and heavy food—so had the pain and injury of being a Jew been transmitted to me.

Throughout the Zohar we have this profound and radical idea: that God—though infinite, the totality of consciousness and more—is not quite whole. One main reason: God is masculine seeking His feminine, feeling side. You might say this is a projection. Or you might say that we humans reflect the Creator's own cosmic imbalance.

Understanding Kabbalah in the light of depth psychology has been a lifetime pursuit for me. Both draw upon a simple premise that beyond the physical reality shown to us by our five senses there exist unseen dimensions, or force fields that exert their gravitational pulls upon us.