April 14, 2004

Aaron: Good evening. My blessings and love to you all. I am Aaron. I want to speak to you tonight about something which relates more than peripherally to your work here, but may at first sound like a divergence. With the recent observance of Easter and the film, "The Passion of Christ," about which so many people have asked me, I have wanted to speak to this question.

I can't tell you what Jesus' experience was; only he could tell you that. I can only tell you my understanding of the crucifixion and resurrection, including whatever brutality there was, and certainly there was brutality. I will then connect this back into our class work, for what Jesus brought forth in his death and resurrection is one of the higher trainings, perhaps we could say the highest training.

What I wish to speak about here is not a Christian story. I would like to put it in a much larger context. Christianity developed based upon these happenings. But Jesus, of course, was not a Christian, and his intended purpose was not to found a religion to be called Christianity. With the deepest respect for this great master, and reverence for him, I do want to carry this into a bigger perspective.

The world of that time was not too different than the world today in that there were people who were filled with fear and hatred, and there were people who were deeply loving and able to bring forth that love in the world. Those who feared, those who dwelt in what I call negative polarity, were centered on the self. on the needs of the self, and what we might call the extended self, the personal family and loved ones. But they did not see themselves as part of a great interconnected network because they did not recognize that Divine Spirit, that awakened nature, in themselves.

In the world in those days, there were beings who had developed deep spiritual practice, what are sometimes called esoteric practices. I find that a bit of an odd name but it's a conventional label. Those are the people who were steeped deeply in these trainings. There were the so-called mystery schools in Egypt. There were the various Essene communities. On another continent, there were the Druids. These groups were not identical, but what they shared in common was a deep experience-based understanding of the unity of all being, and the existence of what we call Christ-consciousness, Buddha-nature, or simply, awareness.

The word Buddha means "one who is awake." Buddha-nature then means "awakened nature." The Christ is the one with realized divinity, the God Self. This is the essence of every being.

You have 4 bodies: the physical, emotional, mental and spirit bodies. This pure spirit body without even the mental body as part of it, this is the Divine Self. It cannot be distorted. When you add the mental body, you come to what we call a higher self, mental and spirit bodies together. The mental body can carry distortion, and so the higher self can carry distortion. The traditional Christian term "soul" usually refers to this combined mental and spirit body, and that is why the soul is seen as having thought, memory, intention, and so forth.

People confuse the soul and spirit body, and then they get lost in the argument, "Is there soul? Is there not a soul?" At first glance, we believe that Christianity says yes and Buddhism says no because Buddhism says there is no "self." But this is not so. Buddhism says there is nothing of an ultimate nature that is separate, as a separate self. Buddhism does not deny the existence of the mental body, nor of the aggregate of the mental and spirit body, nor even of the spirit body. only it does not hold that up as the self. What is it then?

In the pure spirit body, there is no self; there is no mental body, and thus no memory, no thought. How can there be a self, without consciousness? And yet, there is still awareness. I cannot clearly articulate the difference between consciousness, which comes with a mental and/ or physical body, and awareness, in which no mental body is needed. We've talked about this at times, but you really have to experience it for yourself. The fortunate thing is that most of you have thus experienced, you have experienced at least moments of pure awareness, those moments of full presence when there is no thought, or thinker.

Since the pure spirit body cannot give rise to intention, we need to train the mental body and purify its expressions. This is much of the work we do in a class like this and at Deep Spring: the learning of how to rest in awareness and watch the arisings of the various bodies, without attaching to them and getting hooked into their stories. This was the foundation of work of all of those ancient, advanced spiritual groups. What they had in common was a deep experiential understanding of the nature of pure presence, pure awareness, and that this was the essence of everything and everyone, that this core of divinity was literally birthless and deathless, that it did not depend for its existence on conditions.

This insight is what set these spiritual communities and the teachings, apart.

Judaism does not speak about a soul. It focuses deeply on life on earth. One prays for one who has left this earthly plane, but for the Jew, the prayer is not that he go to heaven rather than hell, but simply the offering of loving wishes, thoughts, and memories in regard to that departed one. This leads to a very helpful focus on living one's life with as much love as possible. If this is our only opportunity, we will hope to do it right, not to avoid punishment in an afterlife, but because of the deep compassion and generosity of spirit; simply because of love. If all beings were basically positively polarized, such a teaching perhaps would be all that we needed in earthly existence. But because there are beings who are so deep in fear, and because the human experience enhances fear, it is not dependable to expect people to simply live their life for the good of all beings. Some people don't.

If we are finite beings, and that's all we are - physical and mental and emotional bodies and that's it - then there is no divine essence to us.

If we are without that core of divinity, then it's easy to split into a positive polarity that simply does the best it can with the remaining 3 bodies, or into a negative polarity that acts only in its own self-interest. And yet the masters of many great religions all come to the direct experience of that divine essence. Beings living far apart on the globe and in time, one century or another, have come to this experience.

It was into this world that the one you know as Jesus took birth. He grew up with the trainings that I have enumerated for you. His prayer and meditation led him into a deep experience of his own divinity and the divinity of all that is. He came to teach love, but even more than that, he came to teach the sacredness of all life, the unity of all life, and that this essence of pure spirit body is eternal. One of the great areas of fear for the human has always been death. Jesus came to teach many that even though the body might die, spirit does not die. This, in my mind, is the meaning of the resurrection. He came literally to demonstrate that if one moves deeply enough into that pure spirit body, and releases all sense of the duality of dharmakaya and its nirmanakaya expressions, if I may phrase it that way, then one can ground deeply in this gathered essence, the non-dual spirit body and its expressions. What does it mean to live this non-duality?

Cells can be regenerated. Nothing is separate so what could "die?" There still remain some very small and isolated cultures in which a serious injury is literally sung into healing. By that I mean that if somebody breaks their leg, they don't expect that it will take 6 weeks or 3 months to heal. His comrades gather around him and, using harmonics and energy, they literally sing, creating a vibrational frequency in which the cell tissue is almost instantly knit back together. The leg is really strong enough to walk on in a few minutes, but because of the overall trauma to the body, that person will usually rest overnight. This is not a miraculous skill, it's a skill that modern beings have had and lost. Not entirely lost, as it was part of Jesus' training.

"The Passion of Christ" - I have not seen this film so I base this on what we have heard of it - shows terrible brutality, and certainly any kind of crucifixion is brutal. Any whipping is brutal. But this film uses fear to deepen the sense of the separate self, which further deepens fear. Rather than foster knowledge of our eternal divinity, it fosters fear and separation.

I want to point out that I speak here only from my own experience; I cannot claim ultimate authority. If what I say diverges from your experience, I would ask you only to look at it again, to consider deeply what is true for you. But I do not ask you to take my word for any of it; your own experience is your own ultimate authority.

My experience of it is this. In order to demonstrate the resurrection, that is, the eternality of the divine spirit in each being, one needs to die in the body. What is required is no different than the experience of the caterpillar who must literally die as a caterpillar before he can emerge from the cocoon as a butterfly. It is no different than the release of identity as a separate self, the release of the ego that is asked of each of you in order to know your own deepest divine nature. What makes it difficult is that there is no duality, as we have been talking about week after week. Dharmakaya and nirmanakaya are not here and over there; the ego is an expression of the dharmakaya, as is the form body. What dies is not the ego but the self-identification with ego, that becomes so enraptured with the small personality self that it completely turns its back to its true nature. Ego is a useful tool, but we don't need to identify with it. The body is a useful tool. It's not helpful to be overly identified with the body; one must simply take care of the body. There is enormous suffering with over-identification because the body will age, will develop illness and change in appearance.

So there is this movement. The structure of the caterpillar literally falls away. For example, the butterfly doesn't have all of those legs that the caterpillar had. The butterfly doesn't have a fuzzy outer skin. Jesus' demonstration was just this. His enormous love and courage was in the willingness to go through this process, this demonstration, to bring forth the reality of the eternal nature of the divine essence of being.

A number of you have asked me, how did he do this? Again, I caution that what I say here is merely my understanding of it, and you're free to accept or reject this understanding, although my statement is based not just on concept but on my own direct experience of these trainings. . Among the higher trainings, that of literal cellular regeneration is not too different than what I described to you with the broken leg, but there would be a very stable ability to enact that process. It usually was not done alone but with the support of others, holding the energy and the space, often with sound as part of the healing process. People moved into a trance, the body held in various fluids, while energy through light and sound brought forth regeneration of the cellular tissues. Please note that the resurrection is not merely cellular regeneration, but that practice serves as a starting point.

There is today in the world and was for Jesus the ability to literally move out of his body. I don't mean simply astral projection, although that in part. For cellular regeneration, one must be present with his body. Jesus could not simply astrally project out of it and still work with the practices necessary for resurrection. But he was at a space, really much like those who walk on hot coals experience, able to experience what the film shows as the brutality of the crucifixion without overwhelming pain.

He had the training to enter into a space that appeared to be death. Now, I want to speak here with one more reminder, this is the way I understand it. But if what I say here is difficult in terms of your religious beliefs, I ask you only to consider possibilities.

Jesus did not literally die during the crucifixion. I understand that this is a seemingly heretical statement. With the energy input and help from his disciples, from Mary, from others, he was able to work with the trainings that he had been taught, literally restore the body, and yet the process was so clarifying for him that the heavier bodies were very, very thin, and the spirit body immense and radiant.

When he appeared with that statement "He is risen," this was still a living being, but only partly of the earth plane, because the heavier bodies were so completely purified. He had no need to maintain those heavier bodies. My experience in those days was that he did make a number of appearances, coming at times when we did not fully expect him. Not quite physical and not quite a ghost, as you might put it. If you reached out to touch him, the energy was so strong you could not really take his hand. You could not hug him. But there was an energetic presence to him, and there was still a personality.

And then came what one might call the ascension, the further release of the 3 heavier bodies. It was a demonstration asking each human to consider the possibility of their own divine essence and how to live their lives in expression of that divine essence. And to ask each human to also consider that that divine essence, not mine and yours or that of Jesus,, simply divine essence, was present in everyone and everything, and to live their lives in respect to that divine essence everywhere, which is the ultimate expression of love.

What I see here as I consider my experience in those days, and the story this movie presents, is the ongoing, let us euphemistically say "dialogue" between light and darkness, between fear and love. A film like this incites fear. It incites anger. Yes, it opens the heart and leads one to a deeper realization of how much love and courage this man had. But it does not take it the necessary step to truth. In its incompleteness, it deepens the separation rather than teaching people that what he did, we can do. Perhaps not literally, but that each being is, at core, that divine essence, that the figurative crucifixion as the caterpillar experiences it, and the resurrection and ascendance is a part of each of our paths. We ascend into this place of expression of our divinity, as we release the lower and heavier energies. Yet we must do this with no duality that believes these heavier expressions to be anything other than the Ground itself.

Perhaps you can already understand by now how this connects with the work we are doing here. It is important to learn to center ourselves in awareness so that right there with fear or anger or greed is that which is not angry, fearful, or greedy. As you become skilled in that process, you also find that that which is not cut or broken is right there with the break or cut. Working with the physical body helps to enhance the needed skills.

But beyond the physical and emotional body, what we are learning here in this class and here in this incarnation is to dissolve the sense of duality between the pure divine nature and its expressions, to attend to and purify the expressions as best as is possible, to be responsible for the expressions, but never to lose this divine essence. This is your ascension, literally; it is your path to knowing the divine self and becoming that divine essence that you are. It takes much love and courage.

We have an hour. I would like to take about 15 minutes of the large group's questions, and then have you divide into small groups to discuss the homework assignment, to go deeper with the exercise you did last class, with one in the center with some physical distortion, the group as a whole working energetically with that to find that fulcrum point that I spoke of last class. We spoke of a seesaw and the point where it rests. Perfect, no distortion, and then distortion. I spoke of the importance of finding that place where it splits, where the Ever-Perfect suddenly expresses distortion.

Some of you have worked with me on this before-- you will find that the Ever-Perfect has a kind of a film over it. For example, if you go down underwater into the pure spring, you cannot see the stream, you cannot attend to the stream when you're underwater in the pure spring. If you're in the stream a few miles down, it's very easy to forget the pure spring. There is that point where the spring breaks through the surface, where figuratively your feet are in the spring and your head is looking downstream. You're touching both. This is the point at which all healing must begin.

So in your small groups I'd like you to discuss and be sure you're clear on what I mean by this, and to practice energetically seeing if you can be in that place where there is the full Ever-Perfect, and the outer expression of injury. In a sense what you are doing is reintroducing the injury to the Ever-Perfect, which has always been there but has been misplaced. The process of what we are calling cellular regeneration is almost a tuning in, feeling the healthy cells and the injured or diseased cells. You work with the whole mass and also with one cell at a time. In a sense you become a very tiny figure moving literally into the cells, looking around you, seeing the diseased cell and holding up for it a mirror of its innate perfection and inviting it to come back to its innate perfection. This is hard to say in words, as there is really no where to go but into what has always been. No distortion; no perfection. Yet there is the experience of distortion on the physical level. Holding the space for distortion to release. There is a simultaneity in which you do this both cell by cell and with the entirety.

In a future class, next month, we will take this process into the healing of emotion. I find it easier to begin with the physical body because it's easier to directly see and experience the distortions, for many people. I pause here. We'll spend a small amount of time with the large group and then break into smaller groups. Thank you for your attention. I do welcome your questions about anything I have said tonight as well as the contents of the last class. That is all.

Barbara: Aaron would welcome your questions about last class's or tonight's talk, or the exercises.

C: I remember Aaron talking about this and using an image which I found very helpful. He mentioned it briefly tonight. He told us to simply hold the image of the whole body, the healthy body, and use it like a mirror. Reflect that image to the distortion and bring them together. It seems like that has frequently been helpful to me. Is it accurate?

Barbara: Aaron says yes, that is one part of the process he wishes to impart. I'm paraphrasing him. He says if you have a child with skinned knees, the child is crying, he has just fallen off his bike, he's upset. In part we want to go right to the knees but first you have to hold the child. You have to comfort the child. And then when he's ready, you can wash off his knees. He says, here, this is linear, you hold the child and then you attend to the knees. That what you actually do energetically is to do both at the same time. But that we have to be aware of the whole being and the small area of distortion, on both the distorted level and the Ever-Perfect level.

Any specific questions for Aaron? He says, do you have a sense of where this is going, and what he is trying to impart here?

Q: I find it easier for me to simply offer the energy to the entire being and let the energy go where it is needed. Is Aaron saying that I should also try to focus on the distorted area as well?

Aaron: I am Aaron. I thank you for this question, it's an important one. Let me reply in this way. The most skillful work comes from a place of no self, no doing. You are one with the one who is suffering from this distortion. You are in a sense holding a space for the natural healing to occur. Within that process, any sense of a doer trying to focus on this, to do that, checking off a list, is not helpful. It is most helpful when you can trust your ability to hold that space without there being anybody holding it, to just let the healing energy move through.

Sometimes when you are doing that you will feel directed into a minute, cellular level of work. As long as there's not somebody with a checklist saying, "Now I should do this," then it's helpful to be both on the larger level and on the cellular level. This happens naturally. In directing you to try to do it, I of course am creating the situation of a doer. And yet, the doer has to happen for some people before it falls away, just as the person learning to play tennis has to learn certain skills, how to hold the racquet, how to swing. But he doesn't stand on the tennis court in the middle of a game with a checklist of how he will move next and what he will do. It all begins to flow. If it is already flowing, forget all my instructions and just, as you described, hold that space.

If awareness watches the process, I think you will see how in holding the space as you describe, the healing is happening both on a larger scale level in the body and on a precise cellular level. You are not focusing it; you're holding the space where the energy itself, the healing itself, let us say the cell can heal itself. Does that answer your question? I pause.

Q: I think so. I find that when I try to be the doer or focus, I move farther into a separate self.

Barbara: Aaron says that perhaps the self first needs to step in with a statement of intention, and then the self is released. There's just awareness holding that intention, allowing healing process to proceed. He says, if we could hold that space perfectly, we wouldn't need any of these detailed instructions. The detailed instructions are to give us guidance to get started, and then as we feel it flowing, we release the sense of a doer and a self and any sense of do this, do this, do this, and just hold the space.

C: My thought is that when one is working with an injury, knowing the anatomy, knowing how it is when it is well, is very helpful because it allows one to hold a clear image, and that clear image is powerful. So, if one does not know the anatomy, one can still hold the being in a state of wholeness. It is also powerful. The focus of information is helpful but not ultimately necessary. Learning the anatomy helps if that is your life work, but all of us can hold energy of healing.

Aaron: I am Aaron. Knowing the anatomy helps if this is your life work, but you come to a much more minute cell by cell and cluster of cell by cluster of cell level of healing. Here what will be predominant will be the unbalanced kyo or jitsu energy. One may or may not have the ability to see the anatomy and the healthy cell and the precise nature of the distortion, but one can feel the imbalance in energy.

One of the primary areas of work, then, is holding up not the image of the perfect cell, such as a bone that's broken and the two cells as they would be if they were not pulled apart, one can simply feel the jitsu energy coming from the cells involved in that break. One can hold the pattern of the Ever-Perfect balanced kyo and jitsu.

So at that point, the knowledge of anatomy is not really necessary. It is helpful for one whose work this is in everyday life, but it's not necessary. Simply attend to the balance or imbalance of energy. Does that help to clarify? I pause. Q: Yes.

Barbara: He says we get more and more precise as we understand the anatomy, but we must balance that with not bringing in a doer.

Q: In last time's teaching, Aaron said to repeatedly go back to the Ever-Perfect for it, and go over the point of injury and into the distortion side, repeatedly. For me, that involved a lot of doing. My question is, what was the purpose?

Barbara: I'm paraphrasing Aaron. He's saying, it's very hard to give instructions here because you're each unique. If it involves a lot of doing, then don't do it! He says, it's like sanding a board, when you've sanded some areas more than others. You feel the wood and see where it's still a little bit rough; over here it's perfectly smooth. Too touch there gives you a sense of how it feels when it's perfectly smooth; then come back here. You can tell this is the point right here where it starts to move from well-sanded into slightly rough. This is where I need to attend. And then here in the sanding process, we sand down that which is rough. But working with the human body, he says if there is something to figuratively sand down, such as a cut that needs to have pressure put on it, we do that. That's the attendance to the physical body. But on another level, what we're doing is simply feeling where it's smooth and coming to that point, it's the point of imbalance, the point where it shifts into an imbalanced kyo and jitsu energy. And just at that point we can feel, here's where the Ever-Perfect is. It's the closest place of reflection. So you're not reflecting from here or over there, you're reflecting right from the fulcrum, as we would call it. That offers that closest place of reflection. He says, but for some people such as you, there is a natural sensing of the fulcrum. If you naturally sense the fulcrum then you don't have to go back and forth to find it. He's saying, let him use a different example.

If you have 2 differently sized people at either end of a seesaw, and there is, some seesaws have a different centered place, you can move it back and forth - here, there - so it's got a different place where it catches. You put the people on the seesaw and see it's uneven, ah, just adjust the fulcrum. But if you look at the people and from experience at balance you say, "Hmm, it will be here," then you don't have to go back and forth and have them go up and down to find the fulcrum, you already know where the fulcrum is. So the going back and forth is just to find that place, it's the place where the distortion just bursts out. Okay?

I want to leave us a half an hour for groups so let's stop here.

Aaron's assignment for the April 28th class.

I am Aaron: (Channeled on the computer to mail out to the class as assignment for April 28 class when Barbara is away.) My blessings and love to you.

You begin to see how much difference it makes when you relate to the small wound of the body with an open heart. Now I would ask you to extend this practice. In your small groups, after you have discussed your experiences with this practice and the physical body, please bring one into the center who is sad, afraid, hurt, or angry. Invite that person to take the center seat, and to briefly share the nature of their pain. The details of why the pain is present are not needed, just the direct experience of that moment. Those who surround him or her, see if you can deeply experience the non-sadness, non-hurt, non-fear, non-anger, right there with the emotion. Acknowledge the free will of the person to hold on to the distortion for as long as they wish. Hear their statement of readiness to release it. You do not release it for them. You hold the space into which it can release. You hold the mirror of joy and ease, of well-being, of absence of fear, of non-anger, so that they may remember and return to that balanced state. Be aware of the nature of balance here, knowing the contraction (even feeling it expressing from the one in the center), and also of non-contraction, or balanced contraction.

Please remember, you are not "fixing" nor even "doing", only holding the space and the mirror.

Since there will be ample time for group activity next week, please try to allow each to be in the center for some period. This one is just to be present with his/ her mind state and emotions. He/ she will invite him/ her self to open to the mirrors of innate perfection, and to the loving mind/ heart energy of the circle. Please do not attempt to work with the energy in usual ways with which those of you who are energy/ body workers are familiar. In other words, do not energetically, with hands, try to shift the energy field and patterns in specific parts of the body, but just hold the space with a loving heart and with intention to hold the mirror of the ever-healed. Move into that space in yourselves. It is the clearest way to hold it for another.

What do you experience in the center/ What do you experience on the outside? With the tragic events of hatred playing out in the world, how do you each become a holder of peace and loving kindness?

We will discuss this question in depth in the following class. 

Copyright © 2004 by Barbara Brodsky