ESSAY: Our Feelings Are Angels (Parashat Vayetze)

Maybe our feelings are angels, divine messengers sent to help us heal and grow. 

This parsha begins with angels (the ones  in Yaakov’s ladder dream), and it ends with angels.  I’d like to focus on the less well known concluding angels.  After Yaakov leaves Haran with his family to return home, Lavan chases him in search of stolen idols.  They make a peace treaty, sleep the night, and in the morning, Lavan gets up and goes his way, and Yaakov goes his way: 

וְיַעֲקֹ֖ב הָלַ֣ךְ לְדַרְכּ֑וֹ וַיִּפְגְּעוּ־ב֖וֹ מַלְאֲכֵ֥י אֱלֹקים׃

Yaakov went on his way, and angels of God encountered him (Genesis 32:2).

Who are these angels and what have they come to do?  One clue is what immediately follows this incident: in the beginning of next week’s parsha, Yaakov sends malakhim, that same word, messengers, or angels, to make contact with Esav and begin the process of reconciliation. It is as if the angels that come to him here, in the end of our parsha, are asking him to do something – asking him to pay attention to this unresolved issue, do the work of reuniting with his estranged brother. 

Perhaps, then, when the Torah uses the word vayifgiu , a word that can mean “encounter” or “meet” but can also mean “attack” or “strike,” perhaps the meaning here is that the angels did something to him that suddenly awakened him to the necessity of turning towards this issue.   Yaakov is going about on his way, unperturbed, and they – perhaps in the form of a bout of anxiety or restlessness  – came upon him, attacked him, forced him into paying attention. The angels of God here are the feelings that “met” or “attacked” Yaakov at this time, feelings of nervousness and trepidation and a sense of unfinished business.

Maybe our feelings are angels, sent from God to help us heal and grow.

The Torah says that Yaakov sees them and recognizes that they are angels, saying – oh, this is a machaneh Elokim, an encampment of God.   What would it feel like to turn towards whatever you are feeling – fear or anxiety or anger or sadness or whatever it is – to turn towards it and say – oh, you are a malakh, an angel from God, sent to help and guide me in some way, to turn towards what we are feeling and, instead of trying to get rid of it or judge it or diminish it, instead to honor it as sacred?

These are angels of healing, like Refael.  They have not come to hurt us but to remind us of what is left for us to do in order to be whole.  There was something deeply unhealed in Yaakov about his relationship to his brother Esav, something that needed attending to.  The angels came and met him there on his journey in order to help him begin to heal. 

Listening to our own internal angels, listening to what they want us to know and feel and attend to, we can ask:  What is this feeling coming to tell me?  What is it asking me to pay attention to?  What is this angel asking me to do?  These melakhim are often there to propel us to do some melakhah, some sacred work, either internally or externally.  Yaakov understands this, and immediately after this encounter with the angels, he makes a move to reconcile with his brother, perhaps sending those very same angels, melakhim,  out to accomplish their purpose, their melakhah, the work of reconciliation.  

Our angels, too, are asking us to do something.  It may be external or it may be internal.  Often it is work precisely of the sort that Yaakov was doing, the work of reconciliation, of returning home, of bringing back together people or parts of ourselves that have long been estranged, a reunification that needs to happen in order for us to become integrated and whole.  These feelings that come to us of unease and fear and anger, they are angels asking us to do some work of healing. They activate us in order to help us take action. Something inside us has not been resolved, some internal or external action has not been completed, something is stuck in a wounded or traumatized state in our bodies that needs healing and release.  Our pain is an angel asking us to do this work. 

This is hard, and it can also be unclear.  We may not be able to see what the work is and that’s ok.   It is enough to just take the first step of not dismissing the feeling, of recognizing its angelic quality, of trusting that it needs to be here, that it has come to help in some way, even if it is painful, and as yet unclear.   

There is a famous midrash that says:

 אָמַר רַבִּי סִימוֹן אֵין לְךָ כָּל עֵשֶׂב וְעֵשֶׂב, שֶׁאֵין לוֹ מַזָּל בָּרָקִיעַ שֶׁמַּכֶּה אוֹתוֹ, וְאוֹמֵר לוֹ גְּדַל
Rabbi Simon said: Every single blade of grass has an angel in the sky 
that strikes it and says to it – grow!  (Breishit Rabbah 10:6)

We are each a blade of grass needing and wanting to grow to our full potential. There are angels that come our way and strike us –  makeh or poge’a – sometimes it hurts, but it is all a process of growth, all a way of calling out to each of us, saying – gedal – grow!  Become big!  Become whole!  Become your fullest self!   Each feeling we have, the fear, the anxiety, the sadness, each feeling is an angel striking us and asking us to grow.  The angels inside you, the hardest things you face right now, they are a divine call to growth, to transformation, to full emergence.   You can trust them.  You don’t have to resist them or judge them; each feeling, each angel, is an ally in disguise.  

This is sacred work, this avodah, this melakhah.  Yaakov saw the angels and said – oh, here is a machaneh Elokim, an encampment of God.   And then he called the place Machanayim, a double encampment, as if to say – these angels that came upon me, they help me understand and feel how we live in a Machanayim, a double universe, where the human and divine planes are parallel and connected, like our two legs, our raglayim, our two hands, our yadayim, like Yerushalayim shel malah and Yerushalayim shel matah, the heavenly and earthly Jerusalem.   

Yaakov understood, when these angels came upon him, entered into his human plane, that actually we don’t live in a walled off human world, but in this doubled camp.  Our hearts, our bodies, our feelings, are where the two camps meet.  Right inside us, each feeling is a messenger from the other world entering into ours. We are not separate, alone, but humans with the divine acting through us, flowing through us, wanting to speak to us.  Living with this double consciousness, understanding our own Machanayim essence, a double encampment right inside us, helps us see this work as sacred, approach our emotional work as truly the work that God has sent us to do, for our own healing and for the wider healing of all brokenness and estrangement in both worlds, above and below.   

Photo by Somya Dinkar at Pexels