JACOB
Isaac’s blessings: Isaac, the shaman named after woman’s laughter, redeems our doubts. His blindness means he sees all. In disguise, with mock venison, Jacob comes to grab his brother Esau’s place, usurp his inheritance. Like God talking with Adam, Isaac clearly knows Jacob is lying, and lets him blaspheme (“God caught the deer so quickly”), swear falsely, dishonor his father and mother, steal, perjure and covet, before giving him the blessing. The message that Jacob took the next decade and a half to decipher: What you seek is already yours, you don’t have to con people; it’s yours, even if you think you stole it; it’s yours no matter your human efforts, for by grace you’re Self-complete. “Come ye blessed of the father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” You’re always loved and forgiven.
Esau as a child was tricked by Jacob into “selling” his birthright for a mess of pottage. Now he tries to buy back the blessing, replacing the mess of pottage, but gets a pot of message: You can’t at all buy it back. Why? Because it’s never left you, you’re already full.
Both brothers learn their lessons. In reaching this sense of Identity as supply they attain great wealth and they also begin to open their hearts to each other, they stay on each other’s minds at great distance, but this progress can only hold good if they go on to reconcile completely. And Jacob must forgive himself for what he did to his brother and his father:
Bat
Blind
by the echo of my own voice
I shoot to the bounds of the walls
straight at but never touching you
Brother Esau
black and hairy
you fear me for I fly
Wrestling with an Angel: When the young Jacob stole Esau’s inheritance, he felt he was a supplanter. During fourteen years of exile, he developed his awareness of his sure Supply and likewise established a family. Yet when he finally returned, he was terrified that he would lose not merely his goods but his family’s lives, to the vengeance of his justly aggrieved brother. In the long night of his struggle, he fully uncovered the love between him and his brother, and beyond that, was able to receive forgiveness for his own sorrowful faults, admit holy compassion for his missteps, drawing blessings upon us all.
There wrestled a man with him until the ascending of the morning. And Jacob said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. And he said, thy name shall be called no more Jacob the supplanter, trickster, crooked, but Israel the God wrestler, Straight-to-God. And Jacob called the place Peniel, Face-of-God: for I have seen God face to face, and my life has been saved.
The next day he and Esau embraced. Although Esau had accumulated his own large fortune, Jacob was so secure in his dispensation that he gave him an enormous gift, to help make restitution for his trespasses. So the key to his Self-realization, without which the rest would have collapsed, was making peace with his brother and building the bridge of love.
We struggle with our twin, believing we need to climb on his back, gain a leg up in a grinding physical melee. Remember, we’re a full vessel already; then when we outflow, there’s space for circulation, for new relationships pouring in. When we find the basis of supply as the giving flow from within us, then we have brotherhood. Conversely, when we find sacred relationship within our one Life, this assures receiving our reliable supply. For our provision is our sense of God’s care, Appearing As the Other.
My enemy is really my brother: Jacob and Esau heal the sibling conflict passed down from Cain and Abel through the generation of Ishmael and Isaac. A realization of love, forgiveness, compassion, of the divine brotherhood of all life. This reconciliation is the fulfillment of the seeming laws of separation, the unveiling of Grace.
Encountering the Particular Angel
“I will not let you go except you bless me.” Don’t worry about whether we’ve sufficiently seen through a problem in meditation---it will obligingly resurface as needed.
“I will not let you go except you bless me.” It is also I the human (God in this world) who all unwillingly will not let the problem go, until extracting the blessing of increased Love.
“Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his charity; and all these things shall be added unto you.” Through spiritual practice we dissolve the specific sankaras, the conditionings, which we carry. This correction is among the “added things.” The added things expand from the practice of inner contact, necessarily following it, not optional, not windowdressing. Our conditioning, our problem of any kind, is Jacob’s angel---When we complete the wrestling, the embrace of Love, then we enter the great peace, and we get the treasures that our angels are, the guiding messages.
O the Ladder
1 My soul bends with the beach grass
green tongues who can only live in hardship
each branch splitting acutely
yammering under endless salty blasts
the whole beach creeping seawards
behind these fingertips
2 All that is going to live
must first go down
under umber ulsters
brown black sleep close sleep
drunkenness trusts so deep
3 Of all the chains who toil up from joyous sleep
no one is ever lost
We are angel children of the Lord
beings singing
O the Ladder! O the Ladder!
How it pains us, shifting in the O
our brothers and sisters falling
in the reins
and those rumored distilled
to homeopathic exaltation
4 Leonardo’s Masterpiece
The great art of the world
is seldom seen
Much translates into family work and love
Some floats up in prayer
some in madness sinks
Some art is wrought but never bought
Plus Da Vinci’s masterpiece
The Resurrection
in its Alpine hall
so sublime we usually
forget it’s even there
Pitfalls---pitfalls---these steps we take each day. A step is controlled falling.
Jacob’s ladder: We live in the middle. “Ascending and descending”: the Divine is both above and below and also with us, everywhere. With the emphasis on the ladder.
Hidden Angels
Driving along the coast, a policeman is following me for miles. Then I think, he’s my angel. Immediately he pulls me over and tells me that my tire had gone flat.
We bring a ripped suitcase to the airport counter. An abrupt, testy worker says, the bag’s over two years old, we won’t repair it; but you can have a replacement bag from the back. He gets one, and hurling it at us, says that’s the best we can do! It’s a new, muchlarger and better valise. We start leaving before we wake up and run back to say Thank you. Hidden angel.
At the shopping center, a young hippie angrily yelling, “Don’t you own this shopping center? I’ve been looking for a job two months and no one wants to talk to me!” The lady yells back, “OK, come to the office Friday at 9 o’clock and you have a job!” He shouts: “9 o’clock? I’ll be there! Have a nice evening!” She stomps off, a hidden angel.
We all must be about our Father’s business. Without impoverishing or despoiling ourselves or the Other, everyone can give, and can receive all we ever need, for that which I am seeking I already Am.
The Talking Bird
In this Sufi story from the Thousand and One Arabian Nights, the Talking Bird is like Jacob’s problematic angel, like our dread that divine loving Grace could somehow be an antagonist. We notice, every element of the tale conveys a deep meaning. A small part:
The heroine Princess Parizade is seeking the world’s greatest marvels, among them the Talking Bird. A strange old man gives her a bowl to cast down the road, and she rides her horse after it til it rolls to the foot of a mountain. A plethora of unseen voices cries frighteningly upon the slopes and she knows that once she starts up, if she turns around, she will change into a stone. Indeed, the mountainside is already strewn with such boulders.
As the Princess begins her ascent, roaring voices threaten and challenge her, deride and cajole. Up on the peak, she sees the Talking Bird! But it thunders at her, “Retreat, you fool!” However, Parizade has adopted a stratagem, she’s stuffed her ears with cotton that mutes the screams. When she finally reaches the summit and takes hold of the Bird, he immediately reveals himself as her mentor and protector.