This parsha discusses great events of Jewish history, such as the acquisition of meoras hamachpelah and the marriage of Yitzchak to Rivkah. Hidden within the crevices of this story of the nation of Israel, is the story of personal redemption of Eliezer.
Eliezer was a scion of Canaan, the first person to be cursed. It happened when Noach woke up from his drunken stupor, and realized what Cham had done to him, he cursed Cham's son Canaan that he become enslaved. Eliezer was among the progeny of Canaan, and thus from the cursed family. Though Eliezer was very close to Avraham, he could not break out of that curse, and thus when Avraham was looking for a suitable wife for Yitzchak he rejected Eliezer's daughter out of hand, saying, "my son is blessed and you are cursed, and cursed one can't join a blessed family" (Rashi 24:39.)
And yet, in our very parsha Eliezer becomes redeemed! Lavan calls out, "come in, the one blessed by Hashem" (24:31). The Medrash Rabbah (60:5) says that the words "blessed by Hashem" had been put in Lavan's mouth by Hashem, and indeed he had become blessed. What caused such an incredible transformation?
Let us first explore the concept of "cursed". While we think of a "curse" as being a generic term for failure or evil, and "blessing" as a generally positive term of good being bestowed upon a person. But those words actually have a more specific meaning. They are measures of productivity and fecundity. "Blessing" is the ability to bring forth a lot more than was put in, and "cursed" produces no more than that which was put in. Thus when the earth was cursed in the wake of Adam's sin it would no longer give forth fruit easily. On the other hand, Yitzchak was blessed, and he had reaped a hundred times the seed that he had put in (Breishis 26, 12) .
What is the personal quality most associated with beracha, and inversely with klala? We are told in Mishlei (28:20), "a trustworthy person is full of blessing." Why a "trustworthy" person? Doesn't a "trusted" person only retain what he was given? Why would he be blessed (i.e. produce more than given)?
This requires a bit of rethinking on our part regarding where blessing emanates from. We tend to think of our efforts as producing wealth, but in fact our efforts can only reorganize that which already exists. For example, I can take a tree, saw it into planks, and make a table, but I have merely rearranged the wood. Producing more than I invested is not the product of human effort; planting one seed and producing a tree which yields hundreds of apples is achieved by tapping into "blessing", a force beyond our world. Similarly, when a person starts a business, the earnings commensurate to the effort invested can be described as being the result of his industriousness, but the extraordinary wealth that a successful business can generate is a blessing sourced from somewhere outside of us.
Imagine a pipe that is a conduit from a reservoir to a sink. The more absorbent the pipe is, the less water flows out to the end; the less absorbent the pipe, the more water will flow through. The more a person sets himself up to merely be a conduit, the more he merits that Hashem will channel benevolence through him.
Canaan was cursed because he attempted to divert - and subvert - the blessings that Hashem had intended for the world as a whole to himself (see Rashi 9:25). He therefore became a slave, someone who has that which is needed for subsistence, but never more.
Eliezer displayed integrity to his mission (Midrash, ibid.) He could have tried to take Yitzchak, the prize catch, for himself. Instead, he acted with total integrity, removing himself from the equation totally. When he acted in completely good faith, relating to his mission as its executor and not trying to profit from it, he reentered the realm of the blessed.
This is one of the most counterintuitive lessons of the Torah. We instinctively grab in order to have more and more. The Torah, however, teaches us that the honest and the faithful become the conduit for the blessings of life.