The wrestling of Jacob was the wrestling of the soul with the ego. That awakened soul looks about and asks: "Who is my enemy?" And while the ignorant soul thinks: "It is my neighbor, my relation, who is my enemy," the awakened soul says: "It is myself; my ignorant ego is my enemy; and it is the struggle with this enemy that will bring me light and raise me from the denseness of the earth."

Night is, symbolically, the time when the darkness of ignorance causes confusion; one feels sorrow, loneliness, depression; one sees no way out; one is burdened on all sides, chained; there seems no freedom for the soul; for this is the time of night. But when the soul can fight the ego, then it rises above the chains and attachments of this world.

As it is said in the Bible, first Jacob left all his belongings; he came away from them. This means that he was indifferent to all to which he once felt attached. The Sufi looks at this from another point of view. He thinks that to leave all he possesses, and to go to the forests or mountains, is not true detachment; the true detachment is in the heart of man. One can be surrounded by beauty, comfort, wealth, position, love -- all these things -- and yet be detached from them; be no slave to them; rise above them.

Jacob left all and came to the solitude, into the silence; and there he wished to fight the deluded self, the ego, which blinds man to the Truth. And what was the result? The daybreak came, and that man, or angel, who had fought with Jacob, wished to depart. This means that the ego wanted to leave; there was no more ego, no more I; but with the daybreak a new light, a new inspiration, a new revelation, came. The very ego which Jacob saw as his greatest enemy, in the daylight he recognized as God Himself. The One with Whom all night he had fought, he bowed before Him, he asked His blessing; he asked His Name, for he saw then: "No longer I, but Thou." And the name could not be told, for that was the unveiling of the Unity of God and man, and in this realization names and forms are lost.