Jacob awoke from his sleep. Jacob: the awakened one. Once, the original Buddha (buddha simply means "awakened one" in Pali) awakened from the long night of ignorance -- from a dark dream-like world of veils obscuring the reality of the divine One. Awakened, Jacob stands from the ground of BEING on which he slept (he was able to be, but not to perceive) and exclaims his changed awareness. Rashi says the "place" beneath Jacob was all of the Land of Israel that had condensed to fit under him. The place in which he found G-d, then, is everyplace. The world is his very stone. By finding G-d here and now, an awakened being finds G-d everywhere and always. If G-d is not everywhere, G-d must be nowhere. More: this "place" is the very gate of heaven, cries Jacob. The awakened perspective sees not only the unity of the world in all things, but the essential unity of heaven and earth here and now. The fourteen years Jacob worked for Rachel were a few days in this mind, as he was simply present in the wholeness and holiness of every moment.
Sit still, straight, and breathe freely and deeply. Deepen your breath so that you feel your whole body settle and relax into your position. Sit and breathe for a single minute, with nothing more in the world to do except sit and breathe. Find this moment, let your breath bring you deeper into it as you follow its rhythm. Open yourself fully to what this very place and moment have in their simple and pure being. This is the moment and place you can find everywhere and always…in you, "for this place is none other than the house of G-d, and this is the gate of heaven."