Calling Forth Jacob; Pain is Our Birthright

Recently I have encountered a situation in my life that has gotten so ugly and so painful, I could no longer turn away and ignore it. I stand firmly in the belief that what we focus on we manifest in our lives. So I have worked with positive affirmations, meditation, and observing my own behavior, thoughts and words whenever the subject came up. It seemed to bring me to a clearer and more solid place in my relationship with this situation, but to my surprise I did not squelch the problem, instead it grew to enormous proportions! Because of this troubling situation, and the magnitude of it, I realized that it had been my instinct my whole life to run from painful things. In this particular instance I found out just how detrimental that running could be. I began to consider that perhaps the size of my painful old problem had ballooned in order to get my full attention. Finally I said to God, “Okay, I get it. I really have to dig into this stuff and find out why I have allowed this to manifest so largely in my life.” I knew I could not rest until I had fixed what was ailing me, and I had to make it my utmost priority until I became successful.nnI began to examine my relationship with pain. Not just the source of my current pain, but rather, plain and simple PAIN, in all of its shapes and sizes. I looked at the pains of my past and what I have learned from them over the years. I looked at my parent’s pains, my brother’s and his family’s pains. I examined my partner’s and her family’s collective and independent pains, and I realized something I always knew, but never fully grasped before. Our ability to feel pain is not a bad thing, it is a gift that we must relish if we are to truly reap the benefits life has to offer. We are who we are not inspite of our pain, but somehow partly because of it.nnConversely, as a society, we tend to run from our pain in any way imaginable. We have developed elaborate systems of avoidance within our lives, cultivating hidden corridors of trap doors and caves. We have television with all its paths of escapism, cable, satellite dish, Pay-per View, Tivo, Direct TV and On Demand. We have the Internet, an intangible web of pathways and synapses leading us out of the material with information based mostly on the material, that one can access through any variety of connections depending on the need for speed to rush our attention away from the pain we would otherwise experience in life. The medical industry spends millions on research and the marketing of the perfect anti-depressant, anti-psychotic, anti-anxiety, anti-inflammatory drug, and ironically after creating a vast system of avoidance, we have drugs to combat attention deficit disorder. The whole world has turned anti-discomfort and by doing so, we’ve collectively created a world of pain of a greater magnitude than ever.nnSomewhere along the way we’ve forgotten how much strength we were created with. Our lives have become mostly about running away, or fielding what torments others might throw our way. We don’t dare try to find the reasons we are here, for fear that examining our current life path of running and hiding will reveal just how far off the mark we have gone from ever accessing our dreams, which could plunge us into even deeper depression. It would seem that avoidance is the easiest path to surviving. But what could be more difficult than living a life of quiet desperation?nnYou could trade in the constant running and hiding from pain to experience your life path, the true pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but you must embrace your pain to get there. This doesn’t mean you have to live the life of a struggling artist or the suffering servant. These are all manifestations of our fear of embracing pain. Collectively we believe there must be a price for having all that we want in life and the cost must be our sanity, our safety and our comfort.nnIn my journey into pain, I revisited a passage from The Old Testament that I have always loved. It just sort of beckoned to me from my bookshelf for what seemed no apparent reason, but upon examining the story of Jacob and how he comes to wrestle with God, I found out why I truly love this passage so much. Within this simple passage is a wealth of knowledge I have never quite understood before.nnFor those who may not be familiar with the story of Jacob and Esau, the two are twins born of Isaac and Rachel. The tradition of their day was that the first born was to be given the birthright of the father when he reached maturity. It was more of a metaphorical gesture but one taken very seriously. To be blessed with the birthright of the father was much like God granting dominion over the Earth to Adam. Success was sure to follow the first born. Jacob was the second of the twins to be delivered therefore the birthright would be Esau’s. As they grew older Esau was Isaac’s most beloved son, and Jacob had the favor of Rachel. With Rachel, Jacob conspired to steal the birthright by tricking a nearly blind, very old Isaac into believing he was Esau and convincing him to grant the blessing then and there. It was done and there could be no turning back. Of course when Esau found out he severed his relations with his brother and Jacob spent many years fearing one day his brother would seek revenge. The passage below begins at a time when Jacob has prospered with many wives, children and livestock. It is the night before he is to come face to face with Esau for the first time in many years since they broke. He encounters a mysterious being who tries to flee but Jacob will not let him go.nnThe following is an excerpt from The New Jerusalem Bible, Reader’s Edition:nnGenesis 32:26-33nThen someone wrestled with him until daybreak who, seeing that he could not master him, struck him on the hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was dislocated as he wrestled with him. He said, ‘Let me go, for day is breaking.’ Jacob replied, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’ The other said, ‘what is your name?’ ‘Jacob,’ he replied. He said no longer are you to be called Jacob, but Israel since you have shown your strength against God and men and have prevailed.’ Then Jacob asked, ‘Please tell me your name.’ He replied, ‘Why do you ask my name?’ With that, he blessed him there.nnIn the middle of this family saga, the story of Jacob wrestling with God seems almost as if it was an afterthought, thrown in at the last minute, but upon further examination we shall see that it holds a very significant message. I’m inspired by the idea that Jacob refused to relinquish his blessing in spite of the torturous pain of a dislocated hip.nnI suppose it would be easy to interpret Jacob’s dislocated hip as his sacrifice for a blessing he received, but I have a different interpretation. Isn’t it interesting that the mysterious troublemaker, who wrestles Jacob, wants to flee before daybreak? When we recall our pain and suffering we refer to them as dark times. As the old cliché goes, it’s always darkest before the dawn. To embrace the tapestry of God is to fully embrace all of life including the pain that we have vilified and fantasized as the very monster that steals life from us. Pain is in actuality one of our greatest allies, which can point us in the true direction of a full, enjoyable life. Jacob’s dislocated hip is really a message from God telling him he must tend to the source of this problem, to look inside and only there will he find his blessing.nnThis part of the story takes place when Jacob is about to reunite with his brother Esau, whose birthright Jacob had stolen. He was fearful of this meeting thinking that Esau would take bitter revenge, and for over 20 years Jacob hid from his brother because of this fear. It is also important to note that it is Jacob’s hip that is injured. Our legs are our mobility and source of independence. They enable us to move from place to place and also symbolize our footing or placement in society, the very thing that Jacob stole from his brother. It was now up to Jacob to acknowledge that he had wronged his brother, and he had to wrestle with his ego with tremendous pain in his hip, in order to admit it to himself, his brother and to God.nnPain appears as a guide on our journey to tell us we’ve made a wrong turn, or that we overlooked something we were supposed to pick up along the way. If we could look to pain in this way we would surely embrace her, and bless her appearance every time. Her purpose is not to cast you into a life of complete despair and agony, but to help you avoid such a life altogether. How ironic it is that we fear this persistent helper so much that we only perpetuate the seemingly negative aspects of her arrival by continuing to shun her, to run away with our fingers in or ears chanting, “I’m not listening! I’m not listening!” She knows you are not listening and she will never cease until you finally hear her call! It is her only job, her reason for existence and she will provoke you until your dying day, as your ever-faithful servant.nnWhen we place our hand on a hot stove, do we leave our hand burning and call a doctor to medicate the pain while our hand burns away to ashes? Of course not, it is a natural impulse to jerk the hand away and then tend to the wounds left by our misguided behavior. But when we stay in jobs that we abhor, cry ourselves to sleep on Sunday evening instead of looking within to discover what career would cause us to anticipate Monday morning with eager joy in our being, we might as well be climbing inside the oven!nnWhen we feel pain, and do not run, but rather face it, examine it and ask, “What is my lesson in this experience? Why am I hurting,” we always receive an answer. We can choose to act on the required change or walk away carrying the pain with us further on our journey as it grows, as any living being does, becoming heavier and more complex, a burden instead of help. But should we choose to heed her call, she will lead us to such riches that cause a life of true wealth and beauty.nnJacob felt his pain and saw this struggle, without fear, as his opportunity to enrich his life even further. And for his persistence and courage he emerged from the darkness of his pain into a new and prosperous dawn, with his brother’s forgiveness and a new found freedom.nnPain is our birthright. It is the nature of pain to allow us to grow stronger and wiser through her. I now look to pain in this way, and although her visits are fewer and farther between these days than in the past when I lived in avoidance, I will always open the door to her knock. I don’t seek her out, I don’t have to. Soon enough I will have strayed from my path and she will find me. She knows me better than I know myself. I bless life’s pain. I know that I have a treasure trove waiting for me each time she visits. Now when I encounter pain, I like to think of myself as Jacob wrestling with God. I will prevail every time.nn[An interesting foot note, (pun intended,) the name Jacob means “grabber of the heal.” As the second born of twins he was said to have entered the world holding on to his older brother Esau’s foot. This was a little biblical foreshadowing to say the least. Also Israel means,”wrestles with God.”]nncopy write 2006