Yaakov’s Dream
Yaakov, fleeing a vengeful brother, leaves home and, reaching a certain place, hamakom, by nightfall, lies down, goes to sleep and dreams of a ladder with angels going up and down from earth to heaven and God standing (nitzav) above (Genesis 28:10-13).
Your Breath
If we, too, pause for a moment and get into a restful position, as if lying down for sleep, maybe we can sense our own ladder of angels. Your breath – going up and down in your body with each inhale and exhale – is like a stream of angels on the ladder of your diaphragm, creating a constant cord of connection between you and heaven. This is the divine breath inside you, God breathing you, God sending angels at each moment to keep you alive and connected to the divine life source. Each breath is a thread of that connection, an energy current.
Always Right Here, in “This Place”
We spend a lot of our time running and searching – searching for rest, for peace, for safety, for God, for happiness, for connection. And yet what we are looking for is always right here, in our breath, at every moment. The Torah says that Yaakov is in hamakom, the place, when he has this dream, and when he awakens, he says – oh, wow, God is in this place, hamakom hazeh, and I didn’t realize it (Genesis 28:16). That’s the way we are. We don’t realize God is in this place, hamakom, wherever we are, as close as our breath, while we are running and searching. When we rest in hamakom, in this place we are in, we come into contact with the ultimate Hamakom, The Divine Place, another name for God. Hamakom is always in hamakom. God is always right here, in this place, in this breath.
Maybe you can notice in yourself the tendency to run every which way, to do this and that activity, always searching for an elusive something to fill an unquenchable thirst. Yaakov, too, was on the run, and the midrash says that the world turned into a wall before him and stopped him, forcing him to lie down and be where he was (Midrash Breishit Rabbah 68:10). Sometimes we, too, are gifted with such walls. They may feel like obstacles in our path, an illness or a crisis or even the natural process of aging, something that forces us to pause and slow down our usual frenetic pace. Or sometimes we have to create our own temporary walls, to stop the running for this moment and rest here. Because what we are searching for is always right here, as close as our breath. As the Christian theologian Augustine famously said, “Our heart is restless until it finds its rest in You” (Confessions). We can pause all the running and rest in God, right here, in hamakom, in this place, in this breath, exactly as we are.
Ladder of Connection, Not Progress
We think we need to climb a ladder and get somewhere else. I love the image of the ladder here because it is for us normally a symbol of progress and success and ambition, of needing to use all our effort to climb rung after rung to achieve something. That is the normal sense of the ladder, and maybe you can feel that in your body, the urge to climb and reach and move – not judging that, we need that urge as well in our life. But notice this ladder image that Yaakov was shown – the angels were going up and down it in a continual stream, not climbing in one direction to get somewhere. What this image evokes is not a sensation of progress but of connection. The stream of up and down movement is more a current of connecting energy than a uni-directional success story. We think we want progress and achievement, but maybe what we really want and need is primarily connection, both to God and to ourselves and each other.
How do the parts of you that like to climb the ladder react to the energy of connection? Maybe you can see them in their endless pursuits, running forward, climbing, striving, so much constant effort. Surely they are exhausted and also perhaps a little despairing at how they never actually get what they are aiming at, how each new achievement does not yield the peace that they and you seek. You can see them climbing and ask them to come lie down with you on the ground for a moment with Yaakov, and, instead of climbing, to feel into the stream of connecting energy in this moment, to feel into how, without any efforting at all, you are lying there breathing with angels going up and down inside you connecting you to God. Let them rest their weary selves, your weary self, in the bed of that connection, in hamakom, in this place, in this moment, inside you.
Not Joining the Ladder
There is a makom, a place, inside you, where you are always at peace, always with God. It was this makom that Yaakov was being shown as he began his journey, this capacity to return to his internal place of divine connection. I want to invite you again to imagine Yaakov lying there on the ground with a ladder of angels going up and down, but this time becoming aware of how Yaakov is actually not on the ladder but only watching it, lying still on the ground observing the angels moving about on the ladder, without joining them. Indeed, there is a midrash that says that Yaakov was invited but intentionally refused to get up and climb that ladder (Midrash Tanchuma Vayetze 2:1). Normally, this refusal is viewed negatively, as a lack of faith, but the Sefat Emet suggests that on the contrary, it was because Yaakov understood that the ladder of up and down angels was not the same as the resting place of God within him, and Yaakov preferred the God who stood still, nitzav, to the moving angels on the ladder. He preferred Shabbat to the six days (Sefat Emet Vayetze 5649). He preferred the restful place of God, hamakom, inside him, to the restless angels on the ladder. And it was for this reason that he refused to join the angels.
Metaphor For Meditation
I want to offer this image as a metaphor for meditation. We can lie on the ground, rooted in our internal makom, our internal connection to God and our deepest selves, steady with the God who is nitzav, who stands steady and steadfast with us. We can lie or sit with God in that place of rest inside us and merely watch the angels of thought and e-motion that are constantly in motion inside us, continually climbing the ladder of our minds. We all have this perpetual stream of thought and feeling running through us. Through whatever motion they bring, whether it be joy or sorrow, through the roller coaster of our internal and external lives, we can stay steady and rooted in the ground, like Yaakov, just watching it all, preferring the ground, preferring hamakom, the place inside us where we are always at rest with God.
Maybe you can imagine yourself lying on the ground and root yourself in the ground and in that hamakom place inside you. It is a place of great depth and stillness, like the very bottom of the ocean. The top of the water may experience turmoil and unrest, with large waves going up and down like the angels on the ladder, but you stay still in the depths with God. Getting yourself situated in that deep place of rest with God and anchoring yourself there, in the depths of the sea, in the depth of your being, perhaps your belly, sitting with God there and watching up above as the thoughts and feelings come and go. Each one that comes, letting it pass overhead, letting it come and go. If you find you are getting hooked on one of the thoughts or feelings, that you have the urge to get up and climb into that boat or climb up that ladder with that particular thought angel, then saying gently to yourself the word Hamakom, and letting that word carry you back to the place of rest with God deep in the seat of your being.
If a thousand thought angels come to climb that ladder, noticing them on the ladder and just letting them ride their course, up and down and out, staying in your seat, like Yaakov, not joining them, returning to your place without judgment. The return itself is the motion we practice, a continual teshuva, a continual return, to our deepest selves and to God, to this place inside us where we meet.
Moving Again, But From This Place
From this place of rest, when we do get up and move, we move differently. We move and act in the world out of rest rather than restlessness, from the place of our deepest truth rather than from the temporary but seemingly urgent waves of the angels that are always going up and down the ladder of our minds. After this vision, the Torah says vayisa Yaakov raglav vayelekh. Yaakov lifted his legs and went on his way (Genesis 29:1). Rashi here explains – nasa libo et raglav, his heart carried his legs and it became light and easy for him to walk. He was moving now from his heart, not from a place of restless desperation, but from a place of rest and connection, and so his legs felt lighter, the path before him easier. As we move out of this meditative space and back into a world of movement, taking with you some of this peace and connection, and moving and acting from that place, with new ease, clarity and security on your path, knowing that you are always anchored in hamakom, in this place of connection to the divine deep inside you.
