about the author
Jinen Jason Shulman’s recent inspirational bestseller, The Instruction Manual for Receiving God (Sounds True, 2006), was a finalist in the prestigious Books for a Better Life Award. He is also the author of Kabbalistic Healing: A Path to an Awakened Soul (Inner Traditions, 2004) and numerous other books, monographs, and music CDs. His work has been published at various times in various ways by Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Grove Press, among others. He writes under the name Jinen Jason Shulman. He is a modern Kabbalist and a recognized Buddhist teacher and Dharma lineage holder. He founded A Society of Souls, a school based in New Jersey and the Netherlands dedicated to the awakening of the human spirit through the work of Nondual Healing, the Work of Return, Impersonal Movement, and the Magi Process. He has served as a faculty member at the New York Open Center, Esalen Institute, and Omega Institute. He has been a member of the Professional Advisory Board of the Center for Spirituality and Psychotherapy at the National Institute for the
Psychotherapies in New York City.
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Starting A New Job
Jinen Jason Shulman
In Anna Karenina people are always saying things
in public, doing things in public that should only be
done in private. Things are out of joint, falling apart.
Small things, glances, blushes,
a turn of the head
or body. They can’t help themselves.
The same way a poet I just got to know
wrote a book about her brother’s life and death:
this is not a book to be read by anyone I said
to myself. It should have been written and tucked away
in a drawer. But she couldn’t help herself.
I was born to do this but I can’t anymore,
showing to learn not to show.
Now I am being born into something else,
small as a pea, slow as a snail.
No music, muscle, mineral
mind sharp as feldspar clear as glass.
In Anna Karenina murder accompanies
the cuff’s unanticipated
emergence from the sleeve.
You can see why Horace was often concerned
about the appearance of things: he knew
how a bit of lace, a belt or decorum kept
the lid on mayhem.
Maybe tomorrow.
For now, the rug, the divan
and the insistence on ruin and havoc.