The ‘Jacob series’
There are four episodes close together in Jacob’s life that can tell us something about his—and our—spiritual journey. The awakening that Jacob experiences in his ‘ladder dream’ (the subject of this post) fortifies him for his challenging face-off with Lavan (Jacob #2), which helps prepare him for the inner work he will need to do when he wrestles with the angelic figure at Yabbok (Jacob #3). That episode, in turn, helps him grow further spiritually. All this prepares him for the challenging experience of meeting his brother Esau after many years of estrangement (Jacob #4). The dream at Beit-Eil (Jacob #1) and the semi-dream encounter at Yabbok (Jacob #4) teach Jacob how to maintain a fully conscious God-connection and thereby experience God’s promised protection, and ensure a successful and peaceful encounter with Esau.
Entering the dream
Let’s take a closer look at this ‘ladder dream’ episode. This story is a key moment in Jacob’s journey towards spiritual awakening, and is rich in spiritual symbolism and teaching. The word makom, meaning ‘place’, and also a code name for God, appears six times; the word hineih (here! lo!) introduces moments of heightened spiritual significance where we must pay special attention, and happens four times in this story; the number four appears again in the four instances of the word rosh (head), the coded inclusion of the Four Worlds of kabbalah (Assiyah-Physical, Yetzirah-Emotional-Imaginal, Beriah-Mental, Atzilut-Spiritual), the metaphor of Four Directions (West, East, North, South), and four promises by God.
[Gen. 28:10] Yaakov went out from Be’er-Sheva and went toward Charran,
Jacob leaves Be’er Sheva, the ‘Well of Seven’ (seven being a significant spiritual number), and travels towards Charan, a ‘Crossroads’—a place where a change of direction is offered. This will prove to be a pivotal encounter for Jacob, where his God-awareness is deepened, and he chooses to embody this more.
[11] and encountered a certain place [makom #1]. He had to spend the night there, for the sun had come in. He took one of the stones of the place [makom #2] and set it at his head [rosh #1] and lay down in that place [makom #3].
Tradition tells us that makom, ‘the place’, is one of the most important names of God; and it’s mentioned three times in this verse. But at this stage, Jacob doesn’t know that this is a ‘place’ of God, so this moment doesn’t register with him as an encounter with God. Night dominates, the ‘sun’—light of awareness—is absent, and Jacob is literally and metaphorically in the dark. Jacob takes an Assiyah-Physical World stone, which, we are reminded, is from makom, God. Jacob puts this stone at his Beriah-Mental World head-rosh, linking Assiyah and Beriah, again in makom, God.
[12] And he dreamt: look! [hineih #1], a ladder was set up on the earth, its top [rosh #2] reaching the heavens, and look! [hineih #2], messengers / angels of God were going up and down on it.
While sleeping, Jacob has a Yetzirah-Emotional-Imaginal World dream. Hineih (here! lo!) signals that the storyteller is telling us to pay special attention to this as a moment of heightened spiritual significance. At this point, we can notice that three of the Four Worlds are now linked. In a sense, we could read this whole story as a shorthand guide on the work we must do to be able to attain higher levels of God-awareness and God-connectedness. Hineih then comes a second time. The three-worlds activation provides favourable conditions for flow between lower and upper worlds within Jacob, as well as flow between lower and higher awareness.
[13] And look! [hineih #3], YHVH was standing over against him. He said: I am YHVH, the God of Avraham your father and the God of Yitzhak. The land on which you lie I give to you and to your seed.
And look! hineih comes a third time, pushing Jacob, and us, to an even higher level of spiritual attentiveness. God is ‘standing’, taking up a position, ‘above’ Jacob. This is perhaps the world of Adam Kadmon, from where God oversees the Four Worlds. God explains that He gives Jacob the land, the material, Physical World, and this emanates from the highest possible place, so now three of Four Worlds and Adam Kadmon (the kabbalistic Fifth World) are connected in our story. The implication is that we can recognise the lowest and most material world as filled with God’s presence.
Connecting the Four Worlds
[14] Your seed will be like the dust of the earth; you will break through, to the Sea, to the east, to the north, to the Negev. All the clans of the soil will find blessing through you and through your seed!
God blesses Jacob with the Four Directions (West, East, North, South), a metaphorical description for all aspects of the self. By implication, this brings in, albeit obliquely, the Atzilut-Spiritual World (the last of the Four Worlds). We are reaching the spiritual ‘breakthrough’ moment for Jacob. God promises that this holistic God-connectedness will protect Jacob’s family, which we will see played out when Jacob and his vast entourage meet Esau and his forces in Genesis 33.
[15] Look! [hineih #4], I am with you; I will watch over you wherever you go and will bring you back to this ground; indeed, I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you.
With hineih coming a fourth time, the spiritual intensity of the encounter reaches its climax. God makes a four-fold, Four-World promise. 1) God is with Jacob—’I am here’ is a statement of ultimate and timeless presence (Atzilut). 2) God will watch over him wherever he teileich-‘walks’—halachah (same verb root) is how we ‘walk’ through life mindfully (Beriah). 3) God will ‘ground’ [adamah] him (Assiyah). 4) God will not abandon or forsake (azav) him—the word has a strong emotional-relational connotation (Yetzirah).
[16] Yaakov awoke from his sleep and said: Why, YHVH is in this place [makom #4], and I, I did not know it!
Jacob began this encounter without Four-Worlds awareness. Makom-place, the codeword for God, is now mentioned for the fourth time. And Jacob has clearly awoken to the fourth level, to full Atzilut-Spiritual World awareness. Rashi’s commentary on this verse is that Jacob is really saying, “If I had known, I would not have slept.” And the Hasidic commentator Ben Porat Yosef wrote: “If Jacob would have known that he was experiencing an aspect of spiritual smallness and ‘sleep’, he would have unified his experience, and it would no longer have been called ‘sleep’.”
[17] He was awestruck and said: How awe-inspiring is this place [makom #5]! This is none other than a house of God, and that is the gate of heaven!
This moment of enlightenment leads to true awe-yirah. And makom-place (‘God’-codeword) appears a fifth time; I imagine this as a nano-second of sensing the Fifth World Adam Kadmon (not a place where we mortals can survive). God is the ‘place’ of the world, and, as a beit-house, contains all of existence, all places and all things at all times. Even in this ecstatic, revelatory state, Jacob is not in heaven, but only at the gate of awareness. There are countless gates for us to pass through.
Grounding the dream
[18] Yaakov started-early in the morning, he took the stone that he had set at his head [rosh #3] and set it up as a standing-pillar and poured oil on top [rosh #4] of it.
With morning comes light. What happens after a moment of enlightenment? In Jacob’s case, now that he recognises that even a stone is—paradoxically—contained by and filled with God, he elevates it from his head-Beriah to Atzilut-spirit, sacralising it by reframing it as an altar and pouring oil on it. Note the echo from verse 11-12, where the base of the ladder is near Jacob’s head-rosh and its head-rosh reaches to heaven. On waking, Jacob’s first action is informed by a Four-Worlds consciousness.
[19] And he called the name of the place [makom #5]: Beit-El / House of God—however, Luz was the name of the city in former times.
Having honoured God through a physical ritual, Jacob commemorates his transformative experience by linking the place to a name of God – Eil. Perhaps this sixth mention of makom-place unifies the five mentions of makom in the Five Worlds. In a postscript, we learn that this place was also known as Luz, a name associated with the almond tree, and traditionally, “vigilance and the fulfilment of God’s promises” (Strong’s concordance 3869).
Acting on the dream
It has been a profound journey for me to reflect on this story in this way. Sitting with it continues to expand my perception. At the same time, there is a more immediate ‘take-away’ for me, just as I imagine there was for Jacob:
do the (lifelong) work to widen and deepen my God-connection and God-consciousness (albeit accepting that I’ll always have the potential to move higher and lower on the ladder of awareness), and
I will experience everything differently,
I’ll move through the world differently, and
I’ll experience God’s protection and benevolent presence in the world.
I should add, that ‘protection’ is at a spiritual level, and can represent my maintaining mental and emotional health and equilibrium in the face of possibly intense adversity in my material experience. Similarly, despite my experience at the material level, I can learn to search for and perceive God’s loving presence in all times and places. Again, that’s the work of a lifetime.
Continuing the work & dreaming awake
As I said at the start, this ladder dream is an important stage in Jacob’s spiritual journey. But in itself, it’s not complete. It’s one thing to have a great spiritual ‘aha’ experience, with a dramatic expansion of awareness. But ecstatic experiences and flashes of intuition (Atzilut) are of little use, unless they are integrated in the personality, and transformed into new understanding (Beriah), emotional maturation (Yetzirah), and greater fluency in right action (Assiyah) – in other words, learning how to ‘dream awake’, and act with full awareness. Jacob will have more work to do. To learn more, we go next to how Jacob resolves his significant relationship problems with his father-in-law Lavan.
>> Next in the Jacob series: #2 Jacob and Lavan – learning to make a good ending