One of the most important spiritual questions of our day and ages past is, “Where is God?” Following catastrophes, holocausts, and the traumas of ordinary life, there is no perfect answer. Yet I have slowly come to realize that God is right here! Just here! Wherever you are!
Heroes and Heroines
The heroes and heroines of the Hebrew Bible are painstakingly imperfect. Like me – and perhaps yourself – the heroes and heroines of the Hebrew Bible are often ordinarily unheroic, flawed, and deeply human. These are not just the stories of peoples and ancestors long ago. They are our stories! We live in their lives, as they live in ours.
Abraham nearly murders one of his sons. Sarah banishes Hagar and her son Ishmael to perish in the desert wilderness. Isaac is blind to one son’s ambitions and withholds blessings from the other. Rebecca plays favorites between her boys and conspires one against the other. Jacob steals his older brother’s pride and love from their father. Leah fights against fate and her sister’s beauty. Rachel is stricken by jealousy and betrays her father’s ideals.
Heck, even God is imperfect! In a fit of rage, God condemns the entire city of Sodom and all of its inhabitants. Yet, Abraham feels able to speak up to God, and God is able to hear Abraham’s challenge and cries for compassion and redemption.
Jealous, impulsive, and angry as often as kind, caring, and fallible, God of the Bible is indivisible – terribly and wonderfully human in character. But what the Bible teaches me now is that God – however imperfect – is vulnerable and unflinchingly accessible.
Jacob’s Ladder
After stealing the birthright of his elder brother Esau and their father’s blessings for the first-born son, Jacob feared for his life and ran away from home. Before renamed Israel by God, Jacob stopped along his journey and slept for the night, placed stones on the ground for his pillow, and had a dream.
Sometimes – often times – we have to take a pause and rest. In those moments when neither running away nor running toward helps – we can neither run away from others nor ourselves – we must simply stop, rest, and take a pause. After six days of creation, even God rested and took a breath! This is the practice of meditation!
Jacob dreamt that angels were going up and down a stairway to and from heaven. Tomes and volumes of writings and exegesis have been written about Jacob’s ladder, though we can see it just as our rising thoughts, feelings, and sensations in meditation. Acknowledge, pause, and return to your breath.
For the practice of Zen it is imperative that you pass through the barrier set up by the Ancestral Teachers…. Make your whole body a mass of doubt, and with your three hundred and sixty bones and joints and your eighty-four thousand hair follicles, … keep digging into it…. It is like swallowing a red-hot iron ball. You try to vomit it, but you can’t. Gradually you purify yourself, eliminating mistaken knowledge and attitudes you have held from the past. Inside and outside become one. You’re like a mute person who has had a dream—you know it for yourself alone (The Gateless Gate, Case 1, Mumon’s Comment, translated by Robert Aitken Roshi).
There will be moments when we are afraid, yearn to run away, and can neither swallow our reality nor spit it out. In these moments, we inhale, exhale, make a pillow for ourselves, and take refuge in the promise of our rocky, earthen home.
God’s Promise
When asked the question, “Where is God?”, you may often hear others respond, “In heaven” while pointing to the sky. Like the Tower of Babel, Jacob dreams of angels going up and down the stairway from the earth to the skies. In a world filled with uncertainty and life’s struggles, this is comforting and certainly important.
We may think that God is otherworldly, though this is not necessarily the case. At other times, you may hear others respond to the question, “Where is God?” with a resounding, “Everywhere.” But if God is everywhere, how can he be just right here?
The Hebrew Bible teaches that we are all made in the Divine image:
“God is near to All who call on Him, to all who call out to Her in earnestness” (Psalms 145:18).
In the Islamic tradition, it is written in the Koran:
We did indeed create man, and We know what his soul whispers to him; and We are nearer to him than his jugular vein (50:16; The Study Quran).
Jacob’s dream teaches us to transverse the gap between the human earth and God’s heavenly abode, a gap diminished by way of a promise made by the Divine and a holy covenant. “Your descendants shall be as dust of the earth. You shall spread out to the west and the east, to the north and south.”
What fascinates me here – among many things – is that in the original Hebrew, God commands Jacob individually – not his descendants – to spread out to all four directions. God is not only speaking to Jacob. The Divine is speaking to us all and each one of us.
In one of the major collections of Zen koans called the Blue Cliff Record, there is an important and relevant koan:
A monk asked Joshu, “What is Joshu?” Joshu said, “The East Gate, the West gate, the North gate, the South gate” (The Blue Cliff Record, Case 9, translated by Katsuki Sekida Roshi).
Zen Master Joshu was a 9th century Chinese Zen master and is considered one of the greatest Zen teachers to have ever lived. Legend teaches that Joshu was named after the walled city where he lived, taught, and lived life fully exposed.
Jacob’s dream and awakening are echoed in the Koran and Joshu’s teaching. It is always just here that we find God. There is no separation! Each step is a doorstep through heaven’s gate.
The Gate of Heaven
As a psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapist and psychologist, I should be excited about Jacob’s dream – and I am – though, for me, the greatest gift this dream bestows Jacob and to all of us is not its images and symbols, but in Jacob’s realization upon waking up.
Jacob woke up! As Prince Siddhartha did 1,000 years later, Jacob really woke up! Jacob awoke from his slumber and said, “Surely, the Divine is here in this place, and I did not know.” Jacob was in awe and then said, “How wondrous is this place.” This place! Right here! “This is none other than the house of God. And this is the gate of heaven!” Just this! Where you are!
The Great Way has no gate;
There are a thousand different paths;
Once you pass through the barrier,
You walk the universe alone.
(The Gateless Gate, Preface, Mumon’s Verse, translated by Robert Aitken Roshi)
Jacob recognized the wonder that is always in front of and beneath us. He heard Allah’s whisper and realized that Allah is indeed closer to him than his own jugular vein. Jacob woke up open to this possibility and was in awe.
How easy it is to forget! God is here! In this place! In our very life! Always! God is present in the ups and downs of our life. God is present in the running away, running toward, and staying put of our lives. Nothing is excluded! The gate of heaven is here! Now and wherever you are! Enter! Please do enter!
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Adam Fogel
www.mindfuljudaism.com