Mystic Echoes: Jacob's Ladder

In the post-Eden exile of humanity, people seem have a much harder time seeing the divine among the mundane. Instead of God and humanity walking and talking together in the garden, God now has to find new ways to speak into the illusory world humanity has created. Now, rather through burning bushes or psychedelic dreams, God is trying to give humanity a peak back into the true nature of reality where heaven and earth are one.

One such dream is given to Jacob, the grandson of Abraham and the family through whom God is attempting to restore the world to its true nature and purpose. Just as the Cain and Abel story seems to be playing out again between Jacob and his brother Esau, their mother sends Jacob away before Esau has the chance to kill him. Out in the wilderness, sleeping with his head on a rock, Jacob has a dream in which angels are ascending and descending a ladder that connects heaven and earth. God reassures Jacob of his purpose and Jacob wakes up saying "Surely God is in this place and I did not know it!"

Jacob, through his altered state of consciousness, now sees what he could not see before. He immediately begins building a small shrine to God calling this place the "house of God" and the "gate of heaven". Here, with nothing more than a rock for a temple, God shows Jacob that Eden is still right here, just beyond where our eyes are focused.

We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time. God manifests everywhere, in everything - in people and in things and in nature and in events. The only thing is we don't see it. I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere. - Thomas Merton