Looking For Paradise

A four year old child lost his mother in a crowded shopping mall and became hysterical. The store's security guard brought the child to the manager's office and together they attempted to console the child. They told him that his "mommy" is certainly not lost and that she will return to him very soon.  As nice as the store employees were, the boy was not consoled by their smiling faces, gentle words and even the lollipop that they gave him. It's his mother's face and voice that he was desperate for. His cry was a fervent prayer that his mother not abandon him and that he be spared the indescribable  pain of losing his mother and her love forever.
 
Most of us realize that there is a G-d in the world, but we don't know with the clarity of the child in this example just how rejected and abandoned we feel by G-d. Our denial of how hurt and lonely we are leaves us vulnerable to our enemy who will exploit any weakness that he sees in us.
 
We are living at a time when G-d is concealing himself and we don't know why. We are suffering with the existential anxiety and dread of not knowing how to deal with separation and loss and especially of what we perceive to be the ultimate loss of death itself.
 
What is it that we are actually looking for and how can we find it?
 
There is nothing more compelling to a developing child than his mother's loving face. Studies have proven that the configuration of the human face is more fascinating to infants than any toy or object that you put before them. When given the choice, infants will turn to look at even a crude picture of a face (two dots for eyes and one dot for a nose) before they will look at anything else. It is though a child's loving and blissful connection with mother's face that he feels soothed, secure and hopeful. Of course, the oneness of the child's symbiotic attachment to mother is reminiscent of the deeper connection that he shared with mother in the womb and before that with G-d in Heaven.
 
Even when people "grow up" there is a part of them that yearns for the blissful oneness, the paradise that was "lost" long ago. It's crucial that we know this, because our enemy knows how frantic we are to re-connect with what we've lost and offers us a plethora of false-connections that are meant to frustrate us and take us further away from what is real.
 
Do you think that the terms EYE-phone, EYE-pad, and FACE-book were selected randomly? These terms and these products seek to seduce people into a false connection by exploiting their most vulnerable anxiety of being separated from and "abandoned" by the face of mother and G-d. How pathetic it is that masses of people who know how to read no longer wish to read anything because they are so busy looking at electronic faces night and day in a futile attempt to regain what they feel they have "lost," or engage in even more dangerous behaviors to achieve the same purpose.
 
What it is that drives the gambler to keep betting when he has already lost so much? It's a mistake to think that his lust is just for money. What's most exciting for him is the fantasy that "LADY-luck" will reappear; that the loving face of mother and G-d will come out of exile and pull him out of the mess that he's made of his life. The exhilaration of the big "win," is that the gambler feels at least temporally reassured that G-d's face is still shining upon him with loving-kindness and that he himself is still worthy and lovable in G-d's eyes.
 
That's what people are looking for; but how can we find the bliss and oneness that we all need so much?
 
We struggle with so many questions about G-d: "Why is there so much evil and suffering in the world?" Why does G-d allow such things?" "Why does He continue to hide his Face?" "How much longer will He let us suffer?"
 
The answer is that we can learn to connect to G-d's constant loving kindness and pure goodness even without looking into His face. In fact, none of the prophets even Moses, the father of all of the prophets, was capable of looking at G-d's face.
 
We panicked in the wilderness and built a golden calf (a physical face upon which to gaze) as a rebellion against G-d and Moses. Still Moses was able to obtain G-d's forgiveness for us because G-d saw that Moses could only see goodness in us despite what we had done. G-d knew that if mankind didn't have at least a glimpse of His pure and loving goodness, that we would have no way out of the predicament we're in today.  So when Moses asked G-d to reveal Himself, G-d agreed to pass His goodness before Moses in a way that Moses saw that G-d's goodness and mercy can be found everywhere, anytime and in anyone! Moses passed this knowledge down to the leaders of every generation, and even today our great leaders are showing us the secret of how to regain what we have "lost."
 
The secret to paradise is in confessing to G-d, like a child would, about everything you've done wrong and then loving yourself and finding no more fault in yourself at all! The key to eternal joy and happiness is in seeing all of your G-d given beauty and good intentions just the way Moses saw it and by refusing to look at anything bad in yourself at all.
 
We can learn about our inherent goodness by imagining how precious and worth saving we were in the eyes of Moses and G-d, and how valued we are by the righteous leaders of our generation.  The use of thought and visualization techniques are critically important tools for us in this respect. When we are no longer able to be physically present with those  people, places and situations that we yearn for, we can connect to them even more powerfully though the spirituality of thought. This is the highest level of psychological and spiritual development and one which our great rabbis tell us we can all achieve.
 
In our present exile, we still have many unanswered questions about G-d, yet with faith we know that all of our questions have excellent answers even though we presently don't know them. We still cannot see G-d's face and yet with faith we are learning to connect to the smaller particles of G-d that are all around us. We can connect to G-d through having good thoughts about ourselves, good thoughts about others and good thoughts about the world. By learning to retrieve the "lost" good and bright moments of your life you are gathering up G-d's holy sparks in a cohesive form that you can cloth yourself in at all times.
 
In the merit of your loving yourself enough to gather together all the pieces of G-d that you can find in your life, and keeping them close to you at all times, may you be amongst those who will very shortly see the face of the Messiah and the rebuilding of our Holy Temple. Amen.