| The Kabbalah's new spokesmodel The EDGE Interview with Roseanne Barr by Rita Gallagher Rosenberg Roseanne Barr, who revolutionized the sitcom by portraying the lives of a working class family in her successful TV show, "Roseanne," is now helping to revolutionize the way childhood abuse victims heal by teaching and lecturing about Kabbalistic meditation. She has also started a foundation called "The Roseanne Foundation" to fund practical solutions to childhood trauma and dissociation. We did the following interview by e-mail about the Kabbalah, healing from abuse and the many other changes in Roseanne's world. Roseanne considers Kabbalah "the last hope for the world." Could you define Kabbalah? Roseanne : Basically, Kabbalah is a discipline that teaches you how to stop trying to fix anything in the world but yourself. When you do the meditation, you can feel change. To understand that you have the power to change yourself is the deepest and most healing and most liberating knowledge that exists. In changing, and coming into a sense of peace, joy and fulfillment, you feel the world around you change, too. Are you like a Kabbalah evangelist? Roseanne: I study at the Kabbalah Center in L.A. and my teacher has written several books that are excellent...his sons, and his wife, also write books on these many subjects...and they have a website -- www.Kabbalah.com -- where lots of information exists for anyone looking. I like to talk to cynics/searchers/nonbelievers and also advanced students, and I do a lecture at the center several times a year. I also have spoken in New York City, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. I teach/share, because when you are able to receive the information, and do the work required to open your mind and your heart, you bring more peace and more hope and more love from above to the world here and now. You say somewhere that the Kabbalah is "cheaper and deeper" than therapy. I know you were in therapy for multiple personality disorder from childhood abuse. Could you share some of your experience in self-healing with the Kabbalah? Roseanne: I combined intense 13 years of therapy and eight years of Kaballistic meditation in order to integrate my dissociative identity disorder. I DID the work before I TALKED about doing the work...a great lesson for me. I am going to lecture to psychiatrists soon...starting next year with my psychiatrist -- about healing from trauma and dissociation. I started my own foundation to promote healing meditation for young kids...I believe it is the greatest thing I ever found. This is what I'd like to know: If a young woman came to you, who had nightmares every night, flashbacks of abuse, dissociating all over the place, the whole array of symptoms incest victims have, what would you tell her she needs to do? Roseanne: I would tell her to do the work, to see it through, to withstand the pain and not to numb up, to be brave and keep moving toward the Light. To know that the dark night of the soul leads to a beautiful bright morning, but you can't give up when waiting for the morning gets too hard...that is precisely when you must double back and do the work again, even more seriously. The morning comes at the exact perfect time...DO THE WORK! The hardest thing is to realize that you do have the power to heal, and that it can be done. A bit off the subject, though not entirely: I interviewed a right-wing sort of "new age" radio guy a while ago and I notice that a lot of Republicans seem to have much better personal boundaries. I heard somewhere that you are now a Republican. Are you a Republican and does the boundary thing have anything to do with that? Roseanne: I'm everything and I'm nothing...but I agree totally about the boundaries thing, and also, that left-wing/liberal compassion is just simply hateful bullshit. If you don't know that you have the power within you to change your own life, you go around trying to change everyone else, and everything else. You do not see that you have power, so you see yourself as a victim and you see everyone as victimized. You spew about justice while you feed hatred in your own soul, and justice and hatred simply do not mix, ever. My studies and meditation have helped me define for myself which is the evil voice, and which is the righteous voice. Being an example simply means a lot more than being an advocate or a mouthpiece. Decoding which voice means negative to the world from which voice means health and love is a long trip.... To lighten up a bit, I saw Michael McDonald on your show, backing up Phoebe Snow. Are you a Michael McDonald woman? And are you still really funny? What kind of funny are you now -- a new kind? Roseanne: I would get on Michael McDonald and not get off him until he made me. I would love to sing with him...meditation has also helped me sing better. I'm funnier now because I'm braver and less full of hate, so everything is even more ridiculous than it was before. What's Hollywood like for you guys who are into the Kabbalah? Can the Kabbalah actually be "mainstreamed" and still remain potent? Roseanne: I have never been a Hollywood type, and don't really know anything about it. Kabbalah was "mainstreamed" 6,000 years ago...and became Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Is there anything else I should ask you about? Roseanne: I think that's all I have to say for now, but go to Kabbalah.com, if you want real non-occult info and good luck...me gone. Contact Roseanne Barr and the Roseanne Foundation to fund practical solutions to childhood trauma and dissociation at roseanneworld.com. Contact Kabbalah Center's website at www.kabbalah.com. Rita Gallagher Rosenberg is a writer and freelance journalist and an Account Executive at the Edge. She can be reached at (612) 338-8904, toll-free 1 (866) 776-9090 and at rita@edgenews.com Copyright © 2003 Rita Gallagher Rosenberg |
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