The Yoke of Esau

"In our modern time Putin and the Russian people have the chance to manifest this consummation of Esau's fate and salvation."

 

"Hunger Games" And "Resolution"

Spiritually-historically we are playing out the confusions of the relationships between Isaac, Esau and Jacob, respectively the wishes and manipulations of Rebekah as the female protagonist on behalf of the collective female will.

Isaak is Sarah's son by Abraham. As a child he experienced the loss of his older half-brother Ishmael and Hagar, the woman, who carried his older brother, due to irreparable strife. For the child this must have been a traumatic loss, despite the fact that he himself belonged to the "winners" in the quarrel,  and a lesson about the power of his mother Sarah.
This experience made him into a man, who, as an adult, went obediently to the tribe that was selected by his family to provide him with a wife. He did not even choose, but was chosen by Rebekah, whom he accepted without demur and never confronted her with the same situation that had rattled his father's tent: Rebekah remained his one and only wife throughout his life time.
Like Isaac's mother Sarah, Rebekah also did not get pregnant for a long time. While his father's first offspring needed to find home with another woman, Hagar, before the reproductive powers opened Sarah's womb for the seed of Abraham, Rebekah - after much prayer - conceived twins, but of a similarly unequal nature. One of whom, she disliked and one of whom, she favored. Rebekah is similar to her mother-in-law in her choice of desirable male characteristics, but in direct opposition to the preferences of her husband Isaac, who loves Esau, the ruddy first-born son, who is most unlike himself, but we can assume that Esau manifested his father's suppressed, secret desires: Esau later takes multiple wives and chooses women, who give grief to their mother-in-law. (some relevant biblical quotes at the end)

My younger sister once told me: "I was aware from a very young age on that I was only showered with love and affection by our mother at the cost of not being like you." My father's preference for me was an obvious fact, yet he denied it most of the time to remain on the good side of my mother. Only, when he felt the desire to give her grief, did he fill the stony silence in the house, which he used as a means to punish my mother, with long conversations with me. Sitting at his deathbed, an hour or so before he passed away, I silently remembered one of the most prominent recurring patterns in our family life: My mother endlessly treating me to slander, unfair accusations, insinuations of bad will on my part and my father aloof and unmoved. I looked at his old face, dry and hot, his breath labored and thought, how he never had risen to my defense. Suddenly he opened his eyes, looked straight at me and said - despite suffering from the effects of multiple strokes and normally unable to find words: "Yes. We never said anything there."

In family life, there are two main lines of judging what is right and what is wrong: One is the traditional "right" of lineage and position in the family, the first-born over the last-born, man over woman or woman over man, elders over young ones and the other line is the ethical consideration, what is "right" or "wrong" in terms of conduct. -
The first is objective and beyond debate, the second is a matter of negotiation between the members and genders. What do parents like about their children, what do children like about their parents, what does a woman like about a man, what does a man like about a woman. 
Lastly there is the matter of insight and experience, what will create a peaceful and harmonious family life. Here both members and genders may find some of their own previous un-reflected desires at odds with true wisdom.

We learn that Isaac loves meat and game, is therefore fond of Esau, the embodiment of the male hunter, the taker of life, the killer. - We may imagine the character traits, his attitude in life, that may be inferred from this. Surely his mother does not like it, she favors Jakob, the scholarly type, who loves reading, study and art. 
But the situation is not so clear cut. She was the mother of both boys and she had been given foreknowledge of their conflict, so it was wisdom to bind the stronger one under the yoke of the weaker. I believe, therefore she was permitted by the spiritual realm to carry out her deceit.

Yet Rebekah is not an embodiment of wisdom. She is not even handed. She is a woman, who does not want to surrender and contend with an alpha-man. She initiated the marriage, she chose Isaak, the obedient son of Sarah, who must have appealed to her. Yet Isaak's suppressed male aspects resurface in Esau, to Rebekah's dismay, she prefers Jakob, whom she can influence and manipulate with her mind and her words.
We learn that she, the mother, even receives knowledge of the thoughts of her sons, whatever they even say to themselves within the privacy of their own minds.
We learn that Esau, the alpha-man subdues his mother by the strength of his choice of women. So she draws on the women of her own lineage to cross out the influence of her first son's wives by sending Jacob into marriage with Leah and Rachel, another disaster in the making. Esau responds with reaching back into ancestral lines as well and marries into the line of Ishmael, Abraham's first-born, whose fate is somewhat similar to his own.
We also learn about Esau's own superficial materialistic attitude, giving more importance to his immediate desire for physical food, than to the desire for spiritual food, the blessings by his father's line. This may not only be a result of a momentary pang of hunger, a brief slip of reason, but a more general disdain for his fathers personality, whose mind and senses are weak and firmly in the grip of his wife. Esau responds to the hunger game that his mother plays with him, by finding food elsewhere. He is the lone hero, the stubborn macho, who uses women to fight women as a response to a woman, who uses men to fight men.

As a consequence of many factors, the blessing Esau receives from his father, first manifests as a curse: He will be excluded from the bounty of life, live by the sword and in service to his brother.  Only when he becomes "restless" with his fate, will he be able to shake off this yoke. Yet, "life by the sword" was the choice the alpha-man Esau had made for himself in many respects, even before this choice was confirmed by his fathers pronouncement and life in servitude is the mere consequence, the wisdom of his father, who says: "Son, I tell you, if you don't buckle down before your mother, she will leave you high and dry. Take it from me, I know it. You have a long road ahead of you and in the end you will feel dissatisfied with yourself, none of your resources and habit patterns will suffice to give you a moment's peace. You will need to change something." - Yet there is also an undertone of: "You need to slay a demon that was beyond my power to slay, beyond the power of all our ancestors to slay. Yet I can see that you will succeed, I just don't know how. In the end there will be no more yoke between brothers."

Before he can throw off this yoke, Esau needs to grow "restless" with his choice, he needs to understand that all victory is temporary and vain. He needs to generate the volition to lay down his weapons. But first he needs to understand the nature of his weapons, not only the physical armaments, but especially the emotional and spiritual powers he wields. He needs to comprehend the power of the alpha-man, the independent, self-sustaining lone and still-gong-strong, male hero, who embodies the hope of the father for the future, a future without the yoke of favoritism, of hunger games on all levels.

Hunger. The experience of absence. The greatest Paradox of Existence. The strength of the chain that binds us to the wheel of suffering. The glue that holds illusions together and makes them look like a coherent real image. The power in the whip of the demon.

Hunger. The threat. The menace. The sword that shatters the mirror, splits the mind into a blabbering, spineless, boot-licking groveler and a warrior, bent on defying death itself, at all cost and be it with the help of the devil.

Hunger. The ultimate weapon, forged by distortion of time and perception, a single freeze frame hovering in the limbo created by the opposing will of two different movie directors. Yes! No!

Hunger. Is there a laughing third party? And if yes, who is it? Can there be a winner at all? Or is it a not-so-merry-go-round, where no-one will ever win, really. - Who moves the cogs of the wheel of the hunger game? Who looses and who looses even more?

The Sarahs/Rebekahs/Rachels win subservient and devoted husbands. The Abrahams/Isaaks/Jacobs win an easy life. The Esaus win pride and prowess and the faintest of hopes for holding the key of salvation. Is that all? What about the Hagars and Leahs, the many anonymous women, taken, used and left empty? Is not their hunger the greatest of all, with the least prospect of bounty?

Esau's sharpest sword is the sword of division between women, the pattern he uses to fight the power of the single woman, the mother. She gained dominance over him by using her sharpest sword, the weapon that is her mind, her telepathic narrative, seducing his brother, bribing him with favors of affection and plentiful rewards. He retaliates by refusing to be like his father, hitting women, where it pains most, withholding his love and attention to a one-and-only, making them interchangeable and reducing them to chattel.

Yet Jacob is by no means the good and peaceful guy in the story either. He is just as ruthless a competitor for dominance, only not on the overt, in-your-face level like his brother, but in the covert, secret, plotting and scheming game of female power-play. He uses female tools, deception, stealth and secret knowledge. The price he pays is high also. He gets taken for a ride by his father-in-law, is as a leaf in the wind, easily seduced and somewhat emasculated, enslaved by his sexual desires, putty in the hands of his female companions and the ancestor of forever warring and ambitious sons. To me he is the archetype of the male addict, who buries his head in diversion and substitutes, similar to his brother he also seeks happiness, where no happiness can ever be found, accumulating ever more material wealth and power, enjoying the ever less satisfying fruits of his dominance over Esau. Jacob is the ancestor of the sociopaths in charge of this world.

The solution and salvation comes through Esau, not through Jacob. It is the alpha-man, who will evolve first, not the manipulative, intellectual sociopath. It is the man, who suffers and transcends his suffering, that will break through to salvation, not the well-adapted player, who has enjoyed the good life and the "favor of God" for so long. Esau stands for all the ones excluded from the secret halls of power, for the uninitiated, the "others", seen from the viewpoint of the "chosen".

But salvation and the shaking off of the yoke cannot merely be a role-reversal, neither between the brothers, who play out the conflict between their father and mother, nor between man and woman as such.
Before Esau can transcend, he has to purify the sins of men as his own, as well as heal his and his gender's wounds. Before he can do that he needs to become aware in detail, what those sins and wounds are.

In order to become aware of a wound, one has to feel and accept one's vulnerability. This is especially difficult for men, since it entails the recognition of their helplessness. One cannot be wounded, unless one is helpless and defenseless. Therefore, in an instinctive reaction, the awareness of the vulnerability and the memory of the wound are suppressed and replaced with an illusion of omnipotence and an acquired pattern of behavior that contains the defense mechanism.
In the case of Jacob, the defense mechanism was subordination, Esau however opted for rebellion. Jacob's healing balm were favors and perks, Esau's was alpha-power, pride and psychological independence. Yet both have the same wound and between them Esau holds the key to healing, since he suffers more than his brother. He will grow "restless" with his fate, his brother is far too comfortable to undertake the laborious task.

Before one can purify a sin, one has to identify it first. This is not always easy. It's not only a matter of knowing intellectually, from scriptures that something is supposedly wrong. One must see the destructive effects directly. This requires a state of empathy with the people, who we sinned against. The law of Karma is the result of our observation, that recognizes in certain situations that we are on the receiving end of the very same things, we did to others. That can be a great help, but it doesn't take us all the way. We know that our actions are wrong, we even know that we hate it and suffer, when it happens to us, but we still cannot stop. Or we stop for a while and then we "fail" again. Or we numb our sensitivity and pretend it's not a sin, only a rumor, an error of previous teachers. Or we become experts in the hunger game and live on the strength of always hurting others more than they can hurt us, always taking more than we give and survive on the difference. Or we justify our hurtful actions, give them a mantle of righteousness, pretend they are in accord with the law of God and the rest of the world has to buckle under. - What makes us so attached to our habit patterns? Are we really evil by nature and unable to generate the strength that could tip the balance of power in favor of genuinely good action?

Jakob cannot resolve the riddle. Only Esau can, because he is the one, who suffers. His wound is the key. Empathy is not selective. If we lack empathy for others, we lack empathy for our own deep wounds. The child that hurts within us, is separated from our awareness, just like we are separated from others. The hurt child is like a stranger, another person, whom we have no empathy with. Yet this child is the access point, remembrance of this child's vulnerability is the portal to healing for the self and others simultaneously. Esau, the powerful underdog, the rebel, the rogue, who makes his own law, lives by his own primal male energy, the one, who cannot win but will not lose either, the Guerrillero, the hunter, Robin Hood, Dr. Faust, as well as Don Juan needs to grow "restless" with his chosen path and discover the wound that he shares with his brother, the helplessness he so despises. 

Anyone, who has ever gone through this kind of work, has ever touched into such deep and buried pain has felt the surge of a most frightening feeling, a primal wrath that has draped itself across the wound, sealing it, yet not healing it, but fueling all the defensive patterns that our mind invented to keep us going. We cannot let go of our sins, as long as we need them to cool the fire of our wounds. Yet the tragedy is, that the wounds we create with our sins in others, come back to us as further blows that deepen our own pain. - 

Anyone, who has ever crossed the fire belt of wrath shielding the inner sanctuary of the wounded child, has passed undeterred through its rage and roar and looked behind the flaming curtain, will have died and been revived, died once more and sunk into an ocean of unabated grief, a sadness, so all-encompassing: the deepest truth is sadness. When all resistance has worn itself out, all rebellion been left behind, all defenses and revenges abandoned, there is only pure and simple sadness and floods of tears. Hot tears, cool tars, torrents, rivers, loud or silent, some stream across the face, some drip like pearls of light from inside the brain run down in front of the spine and spread through lungs and heart, make you sigh, sigh and sob, sigh and whimper, sigh and wail, sigh and cry until you notice that all this flowing has been the flow of love, the kind you had forgotten, the kind that had been locked and buried here. You remember the kind of love a child feels for its mother, for its father. You remember how it should have been, but was not and no amount of wrath or power can ever make it right. It is the truth of paradise lost, before it was even found. 
And once again you understand, why you locked this place away and never wanted to enter here again. 
But let me tell you of the magic forest, where friendly spirit folk have seen you coming and observed your every move, but you, of course, were unaware. Here you run and there, until you finally sink down and cry for you no longer can deny that you have lost your way. You're helpless, so you sink onto an old tree trunk and your tears begin to flow, you don't know, what to do. There is nothing you can do. Once you have understood your helplessness, you sigh, you cry and sink into the magic space, where the worlds mingle. Your mind comes to rest, perhaps you fall asleep, but out of the deep folds of your expanded mind images and understandings will rise that open your perception, change your patterns of reaction to others, you begin to see the people in your life in a different way, your empathy for them flows in the same way you have let it flow for yourself. - And you will simply not do things anymore, as if without effort, you have changed in an irreversible way, you have made an evolutionary step. Your actions become beneficial for others and in the same way as your empathy engulfs others also your discipline radiates outward and it becomes impossible for you to excuse or tolerate destructive behavior. However, your wrath is not uncontrollable and revengeful as before, but becomes the source of your inspired intelligence, the sword of your awareness sharpened and your words become your weapon. 

This Esau, is your path to undo the yoke that separated you from your brother, the way you will mend  the shattered mirror.  You will understand your brother's loss of dignity and your own prideful revenge as two sides of a coin, flicked into the air by the hand of a sinful and divisive mother, yet minted into enduring form by your own and your forefathers' sins.
And finally you may heal the hurts of the Hagars and Leahs, the many anonymous women, that you would not surrender to, for the inherited errors of your paternal line were galvanized by the defensive fire against the evil one, the domineering and possessive mother, who threw you and your fore-fathers into the abyss of your powerlessness.

Then you will see the dreaded sacrifice of your male privileges, the perks you got attached to, as the greatest gain.
You will feel grateful, because a woman's power cannot be subdued by man and therefore all your attempts to dominate your female companions only led to greater resistance, increasing your pain and eventually forcing you to transcend the fire of your wrath, tear down the walls of your conditioned mind and free yourself and your brother from the yoke of karma.

Your hopes and dreams for the good future of your and your brother's children will safely rest upon the restored trust in the superior and infallible nature of a good creation. Paradise regained, the vision restored, love of your brother and yourself manifested at last, equality of woman and man confirmed, unconditionally, melting all thoughts of comparison and degrees of super- or inferiority, the infamous question of who has the lead, who is better, who is lesser, the question that first rose with the sinful pride of your father, then rose again with the flick of the coin by the hand of your revengeful mother, for which each and any answer leads to suffering and strife, abandoned forever, instead abiding in joy and awe about each others unique personalities.
Then we re-write the narratives in our minds and teach our children the language of sharing, equality, justice and mercy, humor and humility, forgiveness, lightheartedness and honesty, courage, yes, respect and dignity.

In our modern time Putin and the Russian people have the chance to manifest this consummation of Esau's fate and salvation. In theory, also the Muslim community have this chance, but you judge for yourself, you know far better than I, how great or small the chances would be for Muslims, to disavow physical violence and actions of war, to not be provoked, to transcend the wall of fire.

One of the greatest and most terrible and infuriating corrupt teachings of the cunning female whisperer in men's ears is the doctrine of "justified self-defense". This leads to "attack is the best defense" , then to theft and robbery to equalize economic injustice, to using all sorts of methods from lying to deceiving to plotting in order to gain dominance over one's foe and ultimately to the idea of spreading the word of God by coercive means, be it "fire and sword" or political, tactical or economic pressures. It has become a self-fulfilling prophecy in the shape of ISIS, DAESH and the like, where really only military action, which is murder and bloodshed, can save us. Now, by pragmatic reason we must do, what we never were supposed to do.
As long as this doctrine is upheld, Jacob will win, Esau must carry the yoke, for it is the nature of the ancestral blessing that in such conflict, Jacob is given dominion over Esau. Only when the brothers unite, refute the faulty doctrine and together subdue and dry out the manifestation of their self-fulfilling prophecy, will the world see a peaceful and prosperous future.
The evil whispers of the corrupt teachings originate in the cunning mind of the woman, who uses her adepts, her men, her sons to gain domination. Women are the creators of language, men are the priests, who hear the voice. The inferiority of women is the narrative of the evil woman herself, who hides her true power and flatters the male ego. These were the means by which the Prophet of Islam himself was misled and therefore he set the most unfortunate example. -
Yet there could not have been another way. Even the best of men is powerless against this evil of the conditioned mind, the thoughts, he thinks - and thinks they are "his own", but are the narrative of the mother. No need for shame. - It only serves to prove the fact.

Only, when the suffering warrior becomes restless enough in his heart, suffers deeply enough to question his fate and finally transcends the barrier of his conditioned mind, finds his sins as well as  his sadness, his errors and his pain, his powerlessness, his healing, his humility and his freedom, directly perceiving, accepting and respecting the power of women and therefore able to understand the abuse of this power, will he shake off the yoke of his forefathers and his own, undo the karmic yoke of life by the sword.

Some relevant quotes:
21 Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was childless. The Lord answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant. 22 The babies jostled each other within her, and she said, “Why is this happening to me?” So she went to inquire of the Lord.
23 The Lord said to her,
“Two nations are in your womb,
and two peoples from within you will be separated;
one people will be stronger than the other,
and the older will serve the younger.”
24 When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb. 25 The first to come out was red, and his whole body was like a hairy garment; so they named him Esau.[d] 26 After this, his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob.[e] Isaac was sixty years old when Rebekah gave birth to them.
27 The boys grew up, and Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was content to stay at home among the tents. 28 Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.
29 Once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country, famished. 30 He said to Jacob, “Quick, let me have some of that red stew! I’m famished!” (That is why he was also called Edom.[f])
31 Jacob replied, “First sell me your birthright.”
32 “Look, I am about to die,” Esau said. “What good is the birthright to me?”
33 But Jacob said, “Swear to me first.” So he swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob.
34 Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate and drank, and then got up and left.
So Esau despised his birthright.
When Esau was forty years old, he married Judith daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath daughter of Elon the Hittite; and they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah. (Gen. 26:34-35)
38 Esau said to his father, “Do you have only one blessing, my father? Bless me too, my father!” Then Esau wept aloud.
39 His father Isaac answered him,
“Your dwelling will be
away from the earth’s richness,
away from the dew of heaven above.
40
You will live by the sword
and you will serve your brother.
But when you grow restless,
you will throw his yoke
from off your neck.”
41 Esau held a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing his father had given him. He said to himself, “The days of mourning for my father are near; then I will kill my brother Jacob.”
42 When Rebekah was told what her older son Esau had said, she sent for her younger son Jacob and said to him, “Your brother Esau is planning to avenge himself by killing you. 43 Now then, my son, do what I say: Flee at once to my brother Laban in Harran. 44 Stay with him for a while until your brother’s fury subsides. 45 When your brother is no longer angry with you and forgets what you did to him, I’ll send word for you to come back from there. Why should I lose both of you in one day?”
46 Then Rebekah said to Isaac, “I’m disgusted with living because of these Hittite women. If Jacob takes a wife from among the women of this land, from Hittite women like these, my life will not be worth living.”
28 So Isaac called for Jacob and blessed him. Then he commanded him: “Do not marry a Canaanite woman. 2 Go at once to Paddan Aram,[a] to the house of your mother’s father Bethuel. Take a wife for yourself there, from among the daughters of Laban, your mother’s brother. 3 May God Almighty[b] bless you and make you fruitful and increase your numbers until you become a community of peoples. 4 May he give you and your descendants the blessing given to Abraham, so that you may take possession of the land where you now reside as a foreigner, the land God gave to Abraham.” 5 Then Isaac sent Jacob on his way, and he went to Paddan Aram, to Laban son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, who was the mother of Jacob and Esau.
6 Now Esau learned that Isaac had blessed Jacob and had sent him to Paddan Aram to take a wife from there, and that when he blessed him he commanded him, “Do not marry a Canaanite woman,” 7 and that Jacob had obeyed his father and mother and had gone to Paddan Aram. 8 Esau then realized how displeasing the Canaanite women were to his father Isaac; 9 so he went to Ishmael and married Mahalath, the sister of Nebaioth and daughter of Ishmael son of Abraham, in addition to the wives he already had.