East of Eden
For spiritual breakthroughs, eyes are not enough
When Jacob left his father’s house he is described as traveling “kedma,” eastward, to the house of Laban: "Jacob resumed his journey and came to the land of the Easterners"
Jacob was not the first person in the book of Genesis to travel eastward. There are six other incidents before Jacob in which biblical characters journey east. Going in that direction invariably signals a spiritual fall. Adam and Eve were exiled east of Eden:
"He drove the man out, and stationed east of the Garden of Eden……"
Cain, after murdering his brother, was sent east: "Cain left…..and settled in the land of Nod, East of Eden".
The builders of the tower of Babel came from the east: "and as they migrated from the east…"
Lot, upon separating from Abraham, traveled eastward: "…and Lot journeyed eastward"
The sons of Abraham’s concubines, who were not to inherit with Isaac, were sent by Abraham to a land east of his own: "but to Abraham's sons…and he sent them away from his son Isaac eastwards, to the land of the east."
And of course the name of one of Ishmael’s sons is Kedma, meaning eastward: "Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedma (east)."
The pattern is clear.
Thus, when Jacob traveled eastward to his uncle in the story it signals two things to the reader. Firstly, Jacob had fallen, having just deceived his father and taken the blessing due his brother. Second, Jacob was in enormous spiritual danger of being read out of the story.
No one else in the book of Genesis had ever returned from the tug of the east. To be east is to be east of Eden - that is, east of the natural habitat of your sacred autobiography.
Would Jacob be able to break the kedma pattern and return to the Land, the Genesis symbol of his spiritual story? If he succeeded, he would be the hero of the book and a people will emerge from him. If he failed, he would disappear from the story. The essential question is, can Jacob become the hero of his own life?
For 20 years at Laban’s house, Jacob worked as a shepherd for his cheating uncle, chose to avoid his wider responsibilities, and ignored his dreams of angel-laden ladders touching the heavens. Jacob -we noted above- had become a slave. The word used repeatedly in the text by both Laban and Jacob to describe their relationship is eved, the Hebrew root for slave.
This is a more subtle form of slavery than that conjured up by images of the Hebrew slaves building pyramids beneath a taskmaster’s whip. Yet slavery it was, and no less insidious for its subtlety. So deadening are its effects on the human soul that the entire biblical story might have ended then and there.
After marrying one of Laban’s daughters and fathering children, Jacob had an opportunity to return to the land and to the house of his father and felt the first stirring of his long-dormant soul print. Laban, however, offered him a business proposition that could make him a wealthy man. Laban’s world operated on mercantile, I-it principles, contravening everything biblical myth stands for.
He said to Jacob: "Name the wages due from me and I will pay you" - Name your price for giving up your dream of Canaan and I will pay it. I need you to run my business.”
For Laban, there were no dreams that could not be bought. Laban had no notion of family beyond business and power relations. His daughters were pawns in his transactions with Jacob. Jacob, his close kin, has no place in his home unless Laban could gain measurably from his presence. Bereft of his own truth, oppressed by values contradictory to his own, exiled from his own authenticity, Jacob is trapped in the wrong story.
After the fall
Having fallen so far and wandered so far from home, how could Jacob find his way back to his story?
Finding our way home to our soul print story is not always easy. Our heartstrings are tugged by tales of people who somehow wound up in a story not their own, unsure of when, if ever they will find their way back to the authentic inner place they started from.
Inner-face
What moved Jacob to finally leave Laban? From where did he derive the strength, in midlife, to reclaim his story?
The turning point came through a subtle but important shift in perception, when “Jacob saw Laban’s face, and behold it was not with him as it had been previously.”
Behold, Laban’s face
“Jacob saw Laban’s face, and behold, it was not with him as it had been previously.” The plain sense of the text would seem to indicate that Jacob sensed Laban to be envious of his nephew’s newly found wealth. Those who have recent fortunes often sense that they are being looked at differently; the evil eye of envy all too often begins to cast her darting glances in their direction.
However, as we have seen, the image of face sensitizes us to a deeper, altogether different resonance. Jacob came to Laban’s house as a young man, imbued with a sense of personal mission and profound spirituality. He was a man with a dream, someone who had seen the ladder connecting heaven and earth, and he was possessed of certain earthly goals - marriage, economic stability, and not least, refuge from Esav’s fury.
He intended, however, to take the first opportunity available to return to Canaan to fulfill his dream of personal destiny.
When Jacob first saw Laban’s face he was taken aback. Laban’s panim was initially repulsive to the young man. Laban represented corruption, complacency, and manipulation, all values alien to Jacob’s father’s house and to his own self-perception.
Then he married and had children. Two decades passed, until it was time to go home. Jacob’s dreams waited at the gate going west.
However when Laban makes him an offer he finds difficult to refuse, Jacob wavers but in the end gives in. He is seduced. After succumbing to Laban’s business plan, Jacob found his dreams starting to fade.
His accommodation to his new life was slow, gradual, almost imperceptible. It was also inevitable and deadly. Jacob was almost unaware that he was losing himself. He no longer dreamed of “angels ascending to Heaven” but in a striking textual parallel he now dreamed of mating sheep – “sheep ascending on other sheep!" Material accomplishment was not only the stuff of his daily life; it had become the stuff of his dreams.
One morning after a period of feeling ill at ease with himself, Jacob woke up and looked at Laban -“and behold, Laban’s face” looks. . . perfectly fine. In fact, Jacob thought, Laban looks - remarkably - like me.
The notion struck Jacob like a thunderbolt. He remembered how he felt when he first saw Laban, 20 years ago as a young man with a dream. He recalled his initial repulsion, how Laban seemed to be antithetical to all he held sacred. Now Laban looked fine.
“What has happened to me?” asked a middle-aged Jacob. The answer is painfully clear. He had forgotten his dreams. He had lost face.
Coming to our senses
Laban had not changed. It was Jacob’s perception of Laban’s face, of his father-in-law’s true self, that changed. Jacob gained fresh eyes. For spiritual breakthroughs, however, eyes are not enough. Vision and perception involve how you perceive your external reality. You also need fresh ears.
Indeed, in the very next verse, Jacob heard a divine voice! For the first time in twenty years, a voice was urging him to return home. God was with Jacob, encouraging him in his choice to return to his story. His ultimate soul print was pulling him westward, back to the truth of his story.
Jacob was able to break out of his old set of perceptions; his ears have become sensitive to his true inner voice: The voice of God. He began the transition from being Jacob to becoming Israel. The very name Israel means “one who sees divinity” – shur-el, to see God. And one who sees God in himself. Jacob, who had been lost and blind, now embarked on the path to becoming Israel, the One who Sees.
This is perhaps the subtext of that most famous of biblical myth verses, “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”
According to the myth masters, Israel does not refer, as is popularly assumed, to any particular people. Rather, God calls Jacob to his higher name, to his soul self, Israel.
Jacob has come to his senses. Jacob for the first time is able to hear. Hear O Israel. Jacob the Lost Deceiver will be called to be Israel the Seer, and Israel the Seer will be called to also be Israel the hearer.
Jacob at last began the journey home, to his place, his highest name, his story, his realized soul print. Upon his return to the land he was greeted by angels. The myth masters suggest that these were very same angels that Jacob saw in his dream when he left the land. Because he was able - in midlife – to reclaim his dreams, Jacob became a hero.
Rabbi Mordechai Gafni - Teacher and student of Torah; Leader of Bayit Chadash Spiritual Community and Movement; Chair of Integral Kabbalah at Integral Institute of Ken Wilber
The "Bayit Chadash" website: www.bayitchadash.org
