Jacob's Gift: An Inner Peace Practice

Neville's Inner Vision

Jacob is a state of consciousness that chooses appeasement to an imagined threat. Esau represents the fear in your mind that the next moment will condemn you; the gift that goes before is your imagination actively blessing the coming scene. When he says, 'thy servant Jacob is behind us,' he is naming a position of the self behind the story, where the I AM can go ahead with a gesture of forgiveness. The night lodging is the quiet of awareness in which the mind becomes still long enough to let the act take root. The effect is not to change Esau outwardly first, but to alter your inner weather so that the future meeting is already seen as accepted. In this light, reconciliation arrives as you hold the inner attitude that love has already won, that grace travels before you. The outward procedure is symbolic of the inner practice: imagine the best possible outcome and breathe as if it has already happened. Then look for the face you meet in the waking world as the face of mercy.