Send Yourself Home- Parshat Vayishlakh

Where have you been?

This week’s reading, Parshat Vayishlakh, opens: “Vayishlakh Yaakov malakhim lefanav el Eisav akhiv- Jacob sent angels before him to his brother Esau…”

Jacob had been away from Esau for twenty years. After Jacob had tricked their father Isaac and stolen Esau’s blessing and birthright, he fled for his life from his brother. Now, as he prepares to return to Esau, he sends angels to deliver gifts and bring back information.

Esau is an ish sadeh- a man of the field- a hunter and trapper. In other words, Esau represents the physical. Jacob is a yoshev ohalim- one who “dwells tents”. According to tradition, this was the tent of learning, of the mind. Esau and Jacob, then, represent the spectrum of human existence- from the physicality of our bodies to the inner worlds of mind and thought.

Our bodies generally serve our minds, to our detriment. If our minds served our bodies, would we poison ourselves with toxic foods and stress? It is easy to take the body for granted, to make it serve our intentions, as if the mind is the adult and the body is the child. The truth, however, is that the body is older; the body is the “first born”. Only later did the mind develop. And yet, the body is often ignored, except to gratify it. We tend to live in the mind, in the world of time, not in the real world of the body that lives in the eternal present. Our minds have “stolen the birthright” of our bodies.

Like Jacob, we flee the present world of the body into the mind in order to manipulate and control, just as Jacob used his mind to outsmart the trickster Laban. But at some point, we must return home to our bodies or we become stuck in the world of lies, the world of the mind with its calculations and projections. We must return to the eternal present, to the world of truth, to the physical. The irony is that in returning to the physical, we discover the spiritual, for that which is aware of the physical is itself spiritual. But if we stay preoccupied with the mental, awareness becomes stuck in the world of thought and separation.

So what is the solution?

Like Jacob- send the angels of your awareness all the way down into your body. Let your body feel the sun, the air, the rain, the whole natural world. Pour your awareness all the way down to your feet. Take off your shoes, let your heels touch the earth. In fact, Jacob’s name means “heel”. As long as Jacob is stuck in the mind, he is paradoxically a “heel”- a manipulator. But as he prepares to meet and honor the physical, wrestling on the dark earth with his mysterious foe, he receives the name Yisrael- meaning one who “strives for" or "wrestles with the Divine”. His name is not changed; he is still Jacob, but now he is also Israel. Rather than being a "heel" in the negative sense, he becomes like the bodily heel- supporting the higher structures of the mind through full connection with the earth and the present. 

G-d is ever-present, but are you present? Send the “present” of your awareness into your body, and receive what your body has to tell you. In this unity of presence with form, of awareness with the body, the Divine reveals Itself: The basic and simple Oneness of Being, manifesting in the gorgeous and awesome miracle of this moment…