Jacob is the inner self that overturns the given facts by the power of imagining. He is the supplanter, the one who quietly takes the place of what already seems settled. The speckled and spotted cattle are the outcome he wants, singled out and claimed as his own before it exists in the field. He does not wrestle the flock into a new shape. He fixes his attention on the marked animals and holds them steadily in his mind's eye.
A person becomes what he persistently beholds. The desired end held within and felt as already yours hardens into outer fact. It came to pass just so with Jacob, whose striped young answered the marked rods he set before the flocks. Right thinking is nothing more than this, the felt certainty of already possessing what was asked. Whatever a person dwells on inwardly is what he eventually owns.