December 2, 2011: Emotional Intelligence and Spiritual Awareness

Emotional Intelligence and Spiritual Awareness

As a hospital chaplain, I help the patient bring her own spiritual resources to bear on her situation. I seek to frame her experience in a theological context—her theology, not mine. The goal of the pastoral encounter is for her to develop senses of connection, comfort, and guidance—in short, to become spiritually aware. However, before I can facilitate any of that, I must first engage her on an emotional level.

We need to know what we are feeling before we are able to know what God is saying to us. If we try to force an interpretation upon personal circumstances before we are ready, we are left unenlightened, or, worse, alienated. As religion professors Killen and De Beer write in The Art of Theological Reflection: “Our human drive for meaning is so strong that it can disrupt reflection. Our habitual interpretive process can lead us to misinterpret our experience by too quickly putting a meaning on it.” (p. 29-30) Job’s so-called comforters err when they frame Job’s illness as divine punishment, not so much because their message is wrong, but because they deny Job’s true outrage at the injustice of his suffering. We, too, often deny the true nature of our feelings, because we deem them inappropriate or shameful. We formulate judgmental thoughts about our moods: “It’s wrong to feel this way,” “ I have no reason to feel this way,” “I’ve got to snap out of it,” and so on. However, true self-awareness can only come from what neuroscientists call “metacognition,” from what psychoanalysts call “the observing ego,” and from what Buddhists call “mindfulness”—a nonreactive, nonjudgmental attentiveness to our inner state of mind.

It is self-evident that the opening scene of this week’s Torah portion, Vayeitsei, portrays an epiphany. For the first time in his life, Jacob develops a sense of God. He envisions God in a dream, wakes up, and exclaims: “Surely, God is present in this place, but I did not know it.” (Genesis 28:17) Afterwards, he anoints a pillar and offers a prayer to God. So much is clear. Less apparent than his spiritual awakening, but equally significant, is Jacob’s emotional development at Beth El.

A close reading of the Biblical text reveals the dramatic conversion of Jacob’s emotional state from insensibility to passion. Last week’s Torah portion, Toldot, describes Jacob’s machinations—bartering a bowl of stew for his brother Esau’s birthright, stealing Esau’s blessing of the firstborn—without any description whatsoever of his feelings (in contrast to the Torah’s vivid account of Esau’s emotions—alternately angry, tearful, grudging, and vengeful). Jacob’s scheming actions appear to be entirely divorced from guilt, resentment, or any other feeling one might expect. The classic Rabbinic portrayal of the young Jacob, based upon the epithet “dweller of tents,” (Genesis 26:27) corroborates the image of a dispassionate intellectual. In one Midrash, he spends fourteen years studying Torah, cultivating his mind but not his heart. (Bereishit Rabbah 68:11)

Once Jacob arrives Beth El, his emotions begin to cascade fast and thick. He awakens from his sleep, and immediately the text reads: “Jacob was afraid.” (Genesis 28:17) Shortly afterwards, the Torah narrative intimates and the Rabbinic literature fleshes out Jacob’s violent mixture of shock and revulsion when, on his wedding night, Laban deceives him into marrying Leah, whom he hates. (Genesis 29:31) However, Jacob’s most complex amalgam of emotional response centers on Rachel: “When Jacob saw Rachel, he kissed her, and wept…. And Jacob loved Rachel.” (Genesis 29:11, 18) Commentators marvel that Jacob bursts into tears at the moment that he beholds Rachel for the first time. Bestselling author Daniel Goleman coined the phrase “emotional intelligence” to denote the ability to recognize and manage feelings effectively. The capacity to experience two strong and opposing feelings simultaneously—in this case, love and sadness—is the sign of a high degree of emotional intelligence. What’s more, later on, Jacob experiences anger at Rachel as well: “Rachel said to Jacob: give me children or I shall die. Jacob was incensed at Rachel, saying: can I take the place of God, who has denied you fruit of the womb?” (Genesis 30:1-2) Is guilt the basis of Jacob’s ire, since he cannot fulfill her longing for children? Or is it jealousy, since her longing for children is more important to her than her desire for him? Goleman groups all human emotions within eight primary categories, “the blue, red, and yellow of feeling from which all blends come.” The primary emotions are: anger, sadness, fear, joy, love, surprise, disgust, and shame. (p. 289-290) Within the space of a few lines of Biblical text, Jacob feels them all.

Jacob’s journey from intellectual to emotional awareness mirrors my own. I wrote the following on my application for Rabbinical School: “I was a bright student, engaging all my teachers with my probing mind and insatiable curiosity. I approached Jewish studies the same way I approached mathematics. My connection to religion was cerebral at that age.” There is a crucial difference between precocious acquisition of knowledge and deepseated exploration. These days, I try to open both my mind and my heart to wisdom and insight. Furthermore, I have come to realize that mind and heart are compatible. As Goleman observes: “IQ and emotional intelligence are not opposing competencies, but separate ones.” (p. 44)

Jacob’s encounter at Beth El represents a watershed in emotional maturity. First of all, the mere fact that it is a dream indicates a readiness to experience the unpredictable world of the unconscious, which is usually held at bay through the controlling mechanisms of the conscious mind. Dr. Avivah Zornberg points out that the young Jacob’s legendary wakefulness has prevented him from apprehending holiness until this point. Only when he lets himself fall asleep at Beth El does he open himself to the “possible gifts of unconsciousness, of knowing and dreaming [of the Divine].” (The Beginning of Desire, p. 190) Similarly, Killen and De Beer discuss imagery as an important step in theological reflection. Creating images allows direct access to affective experience, circumventing the rational mind’s attempt to control it, suppress it, or predict its meaning. (Killen and De Beer, p. 38)

Bearing Killen and De Beer’s technique in mind, I would like to forge and contemplate an image of Jacob’s dream. My image combines two Midrashic accounts. According to the first, Jacob’s body lies upon the ground while his “icon” (spiritual essence) is engraved in the Throne of Glory on high. The angels upon the ladder leap upon and scoff at Jacob for sleeping while his glorious counterpart reigns in the supernal realm. (Bereishit Rabbah 68:12) The second Midrash depicts the angels trying to land upon the supine Jacob, but God stands over him and shoos them away as if they were pesky flies. (Bereishit Rabbah 69:3)

As I contemplate the composite image, it seems to me that the sleeping Jacob symbolizes the physical body, which is the seat of our unconscious emotions. The supernal Jacob symbolizes the cognitive mind, which is the seat of our conscious thoughts. The figure of God symbolizes “metacognition,” which is closely involved with our experience and yet remains a little bit detached from it. The pesky, scoffing angels symbolize all the judgmental thoughts that inhibit direct access to our true feelings. The nonreactive Self (“God”) shoos them away like flies, clears them like so much static. Once the ladder is wiped clean of interfering angels, it presents itself as a new image—a charged current running up one side of the rungs and down the other. The electric circuit symbolizes a free flow between feelings and thoughts, a tight interconnection between our apprehensive and comprehensive minds.

The insight that arises for me from this dynamic image of Jacob’s dream concerns the nature of insight itself: clarity comes to us when we are in touch with our true feelings. If we want to hear God’s message to us, we must first set aside our mental distractions and listen to what our own bodies are telling us. At the end of the Jacob’s process, God declares: “I am with you. I will protect you and guide you, and I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised.” (Genesis 28:15) God’s promise includes connection, comfort, and guidance—in short, all of the elements of spirituality. Spiritual awareness is the grand prize for achieving emotional intelligence.