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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

The Image of God, Male and Female:

Why Your Deepest Yearning

is the Voice of the Universe

Proclaiming Its Truest Cosmic Message

Part III

return to the main-page article on "God"

a vast cosmic matrix of breaking one into two

Kabbalah ("receiving") is a branch of Judaistic mystical and Gnostic thought. Consider the following research of Jewish scholars, Shokek and Leavitt, in their Kabbalah and The Art of Being: The Smithsonian Lectures:

"According to the Hebrew Bible, beginning with the first chapter of Genesis, the creation of the world signifies a unique process. It signifies a 'breaking' of the One into the Two: In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth... and God divided the Light from Darkness... and God called the light, Day, and the darkness he called Night...

"This formula of the creation, i.e., the 'breaking of the One into the Two, established from the dawn of history the 'opposite couples' of every existent thing... it also established the duality of the human being... God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; Male and Female He created them (Gen. 1: 27)"

Shokek and Leavitt offer a brilliant insight regarding the philosophical basis for the System of Duality that we see everywhere in the universe. Allow me to add that, in addition to Male and Female, halves in a generic sense, the dualistic subdivision runs deeper, with halves in a specific sense: Male-Twin and Female-Twin; however, as we shall see, Man and Woman are synonyms for these latter terms.

The authors point out a Hebrew word that literally means "gluing." It is found in Gen. 2: 24:

For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined [i.e., glued] to his wife; and they shall become One [Person].

This Hebrew word is found elsewhere in scripture, indicating Humankind's joining - gluing - to God - which metaphor signifies the primal human desire and need for Oneness with Divinity; however, since this concept of "gluing" is employed in reference to love relationships, toward both God and Twin, I cannot help but wonder if the subtle implication here might be that we are to find God through the romantic interaction with a Twin.

why is the cosmos metaphorically presented as a Grand System of Halves

Man and Woman each seek for a specific Half in order to experience wholeness, oneness, completeness.

Why would the universe be designed in a such a manner? My sense is this: I think that God is essentially unknowable and resides beyond our 3-D cosmos. We can know things about God, and even, mystically, sense God, but it may be true that we cannot directly know God, not in an absolute sense, nor shall we ever. 

If this is the case, then God may have designed the universe as a matrix of Halves, a clash of mirror-opposites, to serve as a kind of mashal-teaching aid to produce understanding. The greatest of the dualistic halves is the male-female duo.

"she is my better half"

The Jewish authors explain that the meaning of "gluing," in the Hebrew, does not primarily speak of the bonding found in physical union - which nexus merely points to something more profound - but,

"a yearning for reunification of the Two parts that broke from the One. It is a concept asserting that the two parts of the whole, the 'Halves' that broke during the creation, the Heaven and the Earth, the Man and the Woman, and even the Masculine and Feminine aspects of the Divine, desire to return to their pristine condition to become whole again."

what is the nature of this "gluing"

"All created things are 'Halves,' and all created things realize by their nature that they came from the One and broke to the Two and the many. Since the consciousness of all 'Halves' urges them to recognize that they are incomplete, and since completeness is the end that all things yearn for, all things depend on the One, wish to imitate the One, and yearn to return to the One.

 

the search for the other half: neither peace nor tranquility until found

 

"In other words, all things seek gluing by their nature... Man and Woman seek to cleave to one another, seek gluing, not because they are ordered to do so, nor because it is an accepted custom of society, not even because of procreation (Gen. 1: 28), but because gluing is inherent within their own nature. The two parts known as Man and Woman seek their authenticity that can be found only in their return to wholeness.

Man and Woman can find their authenticity, a sense of wholeness and completeness, only in mutual relation to a specific other.

Why did God, before creating Eve, ask Adam to name everything?

In this guided-discovery activity, God would help Adam understand that all creation, for him, is divided into two camps:

(1) the many "not like me"; and

(2) one creature, Eve, "just like me" 

Adam had surveyed all of creation, had named everything (Gen. 2:19, 20). In this process of naming each entity, each time he did this, he discovered, within himself, the disquieting evaluation, "This one is not like me!" How do we know this to be true? At the end, he was met with a deep sense of isolation and aloneness - there was none, in all of God's creation, "suitable" for him, not one thing was like him.

• Editor's note: Consider the Genesis phrase, whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name (2:19). Notice Divinity's easy acceptance of Adam's designations - whatever he decided was ok, as if all the universe were for him. See this corroborating note from the Jewish Haggadah: "The world was made for man... This was design." 

But Adam would name one more - and, this time, there would be no sense of aloneness. At the arrival of his Soul Twin, reeling from his new-found sense of completeness, Adam gushes with overflowing boyish joy and wonder... You are Woman! meaning, You are just like me! – You are ‘bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh! – You are just like me!

the implications are profound

“Woman,” in the Hebrew, in the context of the story, essentially means, “you are just like me.” Woman is more than female. “John and Mary” in the world relate to each other as male and female, but, according to the Hebrew text, not as man and woman.

“Woman,” here, in context, essentially means, “female Twin Soul.”

for each man, there is but one "woman" in the world - all the rest are merely female; she, too, enjoys her own exclusivity

She was not just another entity in God's creation; she was not even simply another of his own kind - she was he, himself, in another form.

Adam and Eve do not represent mere generic beginning of the human race. This is not the story of any man meeting any woman, any John and Mary entering into domestic partnership for mutual comfort. These specific Two, these Twin Souls, were not simply created - but, were created for each other - physically, spiritually, cosmically; as Gibran states, You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore; [your souls] quiver with the same music.

"For this reason (2: 24)," as the scripture says - because of who She is to Him; because of the overwhelming sense of "you are just like me"; because they are Twins, designed to love each other for eternity - they are to “travel on” together, growing in spiritual awareness and Oneness.

Understanding all this, what is revealed about God?