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> Colette Aboulker Muscat

Centenary of a Birth

Appreciatively… your student, Ursula

“I live in time and out of time 
By inner experience….” 
        So writes  Aleithe, Beatrice, Colette, ABC.

The 28^th of this month January 2009 is the centenary of the birth, in Algiers, of  Colette Aboulker-Muscat, doyenne of image generating. She passed away a handful of years ago in Jerusalem.

Between Algiers and Jerusalem , she narrates,  perhaps paradoxically, an unimaginable and courageous journey,. Colette lived next to the "macolet". on Rechov Shimoni, in the house with the blue shutters and blue squeaking gate. Blue reminds us of sky, of the heavens and by association of Creator, the One.

From her home  Colette welcomed hundreds of students and bade us farewell from there on our journeys with the customary splash of water blessing.

From there Colette with precision and humor, endeavored to unveil a path to One.

Colette developed and gave over generously imagination directed  exercises; short, sharp, seconds-long "shocks" triggering images. Being in the no time, these quick images create and reverse, in a moment, one’s reality .

An upright uncrossed posture was demanded before embarking on an exercise.

Upright because imagination differed from fantasy by being vertically aligned, (evoked through our erect spine,) to infinity. Fantasy, conversely, was a function of an horizontal time related finite trajectory.

Visiting Colette’s home out of interest was acceptable, coming out of curiosity was disdained, as were erroneously connoted words such as; confusion, spirituality and negativity.

Enunciation created reality. The world is created through words associated to images. It was inculcated in us to be precise and intentional in our articulation because without beginning without end we constantly create.

Imagination exceeds the limits of intellect and attunes to the song and warmth of the universe.

The Chassidic master the Sfat Emet says that in the era of our father Avraham a song called Lech lecha resounded in the universe.

Only Avraham heard the song and obeyed the command of lech lecha. He journeyed with surrender to the place the Creator shows him. The place is called “I will show you”. Colette through her exercises I feel, directed us to reject what we adore without regard or regret and to surrender to this unique present place in each one of us.

It requires, like Avraham, a willingness to accept uncertainty and a readiness to leap into the  unknown.

She often blessed us with Bon Courage!

The exhale prior to inhale protocol prefacing an exercise, opens a central inner channel and facilitates a change in biochemistry  which washes the heart with light. This space provides a propitious screen for images! 

Colette always took care to guide us back from expansiveness of imagination to the seats or cushions in her salon. From there we had departed seconds, perhaps eons ago.

We open our eyes to a familiar small salon maghreb-ly colorful, with myriad saga-ful paintings,  rosewater scents,  patisseries with napkins, and enchanted awe.

We, her students are now scattered worldwide,  as then were scattered, the cushions in her salon.

There is no official edifice to her memory. Some independent adapted writings are in  publication .

There is though within us a shared familiar precious point called El-Palpito which has a scintillating celestial quality of stars.

I suggest that this spark, palpitating in our hearts, more than all else, unites us, her students, as Colette’s living legacy to the world.

May we have the courage, the precision and the lightness to nurture and spread this vivacious unifying spark and may we realize, alone and together, as we leap from peak to peak, that the Impossible surely IS Possible.  

ursula71il@yahoo.com 
Please write to share your own experience.