November 10, 1999

Aaron: I am Aaron. Good evening and my love to you all. I had an intended talk for this week. Actually my plan was to begin what could be construed as a new series building on the foundation we have laid earlier this fall, a work that will continue intermittently over many weeks.

However, this morning this instrument attended a very interesting darshan. There has been some request from her and others that I speak about it. So I'm going to do that first. I will not try to blend these talks together as they do not really connect. But I think this will interest many of you. Rather than put it off into the question period, I'm going to speak about it for a bit.

Several weeks ago, this instrument received a phone call from C remarking that a Hindu teacher would be in town for several days, which fact had come to her attention through another friend. C and this instrument went to Germany a number of years ago and spent a week attending darshan with Mother Meera, who is said to be an incarnation of the Divine Mother.

They went with no expectations at all, both of them feeling settled in a spiritual practice, not seeking anything. This instrument was invited by another friend, who offered her a plane ticket and said, 'Please come with me," and C decided to go also. So off they went. Through Mother Meera, they met what I would call the Mother energy directly.

The woman coming to Ann Arbor this week to offer darshan is named Ammachi and is also said to be an incarnation of the Divine Mother. Well, when the Divine Mother comes to your back yard, why not go? Others of your sangha were also there.

This instrument asked me a number of questions revolving around the fundamental question, what is the Divine Mother? Are there many incarnations of this mother? Is there a difference between the Divine Mother and the Father? If we are all expressions of the One, how can there be a difference between Mother and Father? How do these Mothers work? Are they connected in a conscious way or not?

The darshan was very joyous. It was held in a large arena, with people seated on a flat floor. It was organized so that people in groups of fifty lined up and one at a time came up and received darshan directly from Amma. Her darshan consisted really of a hug, a deeply loving hug. Different than Mother Meera who looks the devotee directly in the eyes. While Meera works in silence, with Amma there was joyful laughter and singing, much talking. And yet all within this sangha who attended found themselves deeply moved, feeling that beneath the outer movement and laughter and singing there was a very deep spiritual chord, a very high energy.

What is the Mother? First, on the ultimate level of course there is no separation between Mother and Father. They are two expressions of the Divine. There will be a masculine and feminine expression because your earth plane is divided into these masculine and feminine attributes. Ultimately you are all androgynous. The soul is not masculine or feminine. Certain attributes like kindness are neither masculine or feminine. Strength is not masculine or feminine, nor is gentleness.

The distinction I see in the masculine and the feminine, and I ask you to take this just as my own perspective and not as any absolute truth, the feminine as I perceive it is more concerned with intimate detail, one to one. The feminine is concerned with each flower and each leaf, each ant, each human. It moves deeply into the nurturing of each individual element of the whole. It sees the whole, of course It knows the whole, but it moves itself toward the individual, knowing that as the individual is nurtured, the whole is nurtured. The feminine knows that the whole is-I want to phrase this carefully, the whole is much more than the sum of its parts, but one aspect of the whole is the parts. When the parts falter, there is, on the relative plane, a distortion of the whole. So feminine energy is a deeply individuated nurturing energy.

Masculine energy honors each individuation of the Divine but is more concerned with the whole spectrum of the Divine. It does not ignore the nurturing of the individual but at times it may seem to turn its back because its effort is into cohesion of the whole, balancing of the whole, bringing it all together in harmonization. Each does both sides of the work, of course. But these are what I see as the specializations.

Since each of you is a mix of masculine and feminine energy, each of you will and must both nurture your loved ones, yourself, in an individual way and find balance, harmony and integration of the whole.

Since each of you, while being androgynous at heart is here with predominant masculine or feminine attributes, your work will tend in the direction dictated by the dominant attributes, encompassing the whole or lifting the parts. It's very likely that one of the reasons that you moved into a male or female body was to bring this balance to your overall work. That one who has been too deeply enmeshed in the individuated soul might chose a masculine body so as to work more with the overall picture, and vice versa. This is only one part of the choice of body, of course.

So these Divine Mothers, and yes there are many of them, literally incarnations of the Mother-I'm not hereby verifying that Meera or Amma is such an incarnation, people believe them to be; I will neither affirm or deny that but let you make your own decisions about it-but these incarnations of the Mother each have their own special kind of energy and way of working. But the overall effort is to nurture each individuated expression of the Divine and lift it up, upraise its frequency vibration, hold it in the light, bring in joy and openheartedness, faith, delight.

This, let us call it faith and devotion mind, is essential to the wisdom mind. Wisdom without faith and devotion becomes sterile. The masculine is perhaps more concerned with the wisdom mind because it is within the wisdom mind that transcendence originates. Then the faith mind, the devotion mind, deepens that transcendence, allows one to explore the nooks and crannies of it, to open the heart, to work from the heart.

This instrument also asked me, if there is a Divine Mother can we say there is also a Divine Father? And what about the image of Mother Earth, is that an aspect of the Divine Mother?

I would say that what we call Mother Earth is not identical to what we are calling Divine Mother. The Earth shares these feminine attributes, nurturing and cherishing each individuated expression of itself, and so we think of it as mother. The Father energy we see in the great masculine masters of all your religious traditions-Jesus, the Buddha, and so many others, I do not state here that any of these great men lacked in compassion or open heart, nor that they failed in any way to cherish each individuated expression, but their attention was on the whole. For the Buddha, focus was on teaching beings the realization of cessation of suffering, on literally liberating beings from this cycle of birth and death. He had enormous compassion but always the wisdom mind was behind it, pushing toward freedom. We think of Jesus as the heart of mercy and lovingkindness. Certainly he touched individuals with his love. But he came with an overall plan: to shift the world back from where it had gone astray, from this eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth mentality into the enormous pathway of mercy, of forgiveness.

I will offer one more example here, a more modern-day example. Let us look at the distinction between Gandhi, who was focused on non-harm, non-violence, and freedom, caring deeply about each individual that he met but seeing each individual's work as part of the whole. And Mother Theresa, who sought to offer healing, to attend to poverty and illness and pain, but worked most directly with the individuated expressions of the Divine who came to her.

You ask me, which of these is greater? Neither is greater. Can the front of the hand be greater than the back? Can the right side of the face be greater than the left side? They are a part of the whole. They're both necessary. Each of you will have a tendency to walk what I would consider a more masculine or feminine path, and this is fine. Keep it in balance, though. Wisdom must always be balanced by the open heart, and the open heart balanced by wisdom.

During the question period I would be glad to answer any questions you might have about the darshan with Amma or about this whole talk on masculine and feminine.

I will shift here, letting go of this talk and moving on.

We pause for one moment …

(Long pause.)

I want to pick up a thread that we left off with the book, Awakened Heart. That book was a commentary of sorts on Shantideva's 'Way of the Bodhisattva." At the beginning of that series of talks I stated that for many years I had been teaching, and emphatically teaching, that as long as you are in a human body, physical sensations will arise and emotions will arise. You do not find freedom by trying to control sensations and emotions. You can't deny a pain in your body or a pain in your heart. You have learned that you do not need to act out these pains. You don't have to deny and suppress them, you don't have to fling them out in the world but can be more openhearted with them.

The difficulty is that as openhearted as you may be with them, they still arise, especially the heavy, difficult emotional states. Once certain conditions are present, anger will arise. When conditions cease, anger ceases. Likewise with jealousy, greed, pride, and so forth. Even if you're not enacting these emotions, the fact that they keep coming up is painful.

So at a certain point, one does need to look into the conditions. In the book, Awakened Heart, I enumerated a very specific practice for working with these conditions. It's a very precise and full practice but it is only one piece of a giant toolbox. Tonight I wish to begin the exploration of other tools, to expand your toolbox. Remember you are not attempting to get rid of heavy emotions. Rather, you are wondering, what makes this keep arising?

If you have a weed in your backyard that makes you sneeze, you don't have to go out there and hatefully hack it to pieces. You acknowledge that it has some beauty to it, that certain kinds of insects perhaps are attracted to it, even find it very wonderful, but for you it's a difficult weed. So without hatred, but with kindness, you go out and dig it up by its roots because if you just cut it off it will simply regrow. You have got to get at the roots. If it comes up again a month later in the same spot, you know that some of the roots still remain. It doesn't do any good to curse the plant. Just go out and dig again to get whatever roots remain.

I want to teach you tonight a very simple visualization. I think you'll enjoy it. There is a preliminary step, so we'll start there, establish the preliminary step and then go on to the visualization itself tonight or another week.

For the preliminary step, I would invite you to bring-I don't want to say your mother, because you may not have had a loving relationship with your mother, or may not have known your mother, but each of you has had somebody in your life who has had the role of mother, one who has loved you unconditionally. One with whom you feel safe, cherished. It might have been a relative. It might even have been a pet, a dog. Bring this being to your mind. Reflect upon how cherished you felt by this being. If it is literally your mother, think about how this woman fed you, perhaps from her own body, how she cleaned you, held you. Think even earlier about how she carried you within her body and then suffered the pain of giving birth to you. How at that moment of birth, her own pain was put aside and all she wanted was to hold you.

So work with the literal mother if you possibly can. This is best. But if you can't, then find a substitute. Feel yourself floating in that love. Put aside any later difficulties and just be an infant floating in that love, a young child, feeling cherished by the mother or the mother substitute.

Allow to come into your heart a feeling of gratitude, of deep appreciation for this mother figure and how much this being gave to you.

Reflecting on this dear one, realize that in this lifetime this one is the Mother, or plays the Mother role, but in other lifetimes other beings have been the Mother. There have been countless Mothers. While it may seem an exaggeration, allow yourself to consider every sentient being as your mother. Allow yourself to feel a heart filled with compassion at the suffering of sentient beings.

Reflect now that this being has suffered. Think about the ways this being may still be suffering, trying to control the world, constricted in fear, needing to manipulate because she feels so unsafe. She is never able to hold on to what she wants, what she loves, and to keep away what she does not want. The cycle is endless: births and deaths, births, deaths. No hint of freedom.

She does not yet have the wisdom to see things as they are and to understand the roots of her suffering. But you, you have attained some understanding. Not full realization yet, but you have some understanding of how things are. The deeper the understanding, the more you can be of help.

Allow yourself to deepen the resolve to find freedom for yourself, freedom and clarity so that you may better transmit these to others. This is the preliminary meditation.

Let's break it down into simple steps:

Bring the mother or mother image to the mind.

Gratitude toward the mother.

Awareness that all beings truly are your mother.

Awareness of the enormity of suffering of all beings.

And the resolve to do whatever it takes to help end this cycle of suffering.

This resolve is your foundation. Upon it we will build because the resolve gives you courage and faith. We're going to go into a difficult place in future weeks, that is, into the habitual tendencies where each of you is most stuck. I'm going to ask you to be fearless, to look directly into the heart of these tendencies and know, 'This is what holds me to this wheel of birth and death. This is what hinders me from being as clear as I can be, so that I may transmit this realization to others."

I will not force you, of course, to go into the heart of the deepest darkness. You can start with something easy. But I know you all and I know you're going to want to be honest with yourselves and to challenge yourselves-gently, as the foundation strengthens, to go deeper and deeper into the heart of the greatest illusions and delusions, perhaps the greatest of all of these being the delusion of a separate self, on an ultimate level. On a relative level, I grant, you are separate. Each of you is unique. But the delusion of the separate self on the ultimate level is the deepest held fantasy and is the grounds for so much of your anger and fear. Without that illusion, prejudice, judgment, hatred, jealousy, all dissolve.

For now I will ask you to strengthen this preliminary practice. I'll pause here for you to have your break and then will be glad to answer your questions, both about my talk and of a personal nature. I thank you very much for your attention and for allowing me to share these thoughts with you. That is all.

(Break.)

C: My question about Ammachi was the whole issue of divinity. I understand that every single one of us is a divine being. We have a higher self which is part of all that is. How does Ammachi or Amma or Maharaj-ji or Jesus differ? Is it simply in their understanding of incarnation?

Aaron: I am Aaron. Let me begin with a metaphor. You come into a strange house, walk very quickly in the front door, through and out the back door. You just get a glimpse of the main room. You do have a sense of what the space is like but you don't know it well. You come in again. The next time through you go through a different room. You see a different dimension of the house. The third time through you sit in the living room. It's daytime and you see the sun is shining through the windows. The fourth time through it's evening. It's dark outside the windows and a fire is lit. The next time through you have reason to open a closet. Slowly the house begins to reveal itself in its entirety.

If after the first time through-let's pretend this is a somewhat wonderful historic monument, an old house, perhaps a house like the stone house down the main road-you've visited it just once and somebody asks you, 'Oh, I've always wanted to go there. Will you take me on a tour?" Well, you know more than they do. You know where the front and back doors are. You know the main pathway through the house. But it's not going to be a very complete tour. But once you've become truly intimate with that house, have allowed it to fully reveal itself so that you know all its big and little mysteries, then you're going to be able to take your friend on a very fine tour. If they need a cup of tea, they'll know where to find it. If they have a headache, you'll know where the aspirin is. If they're cold you'll know where to find an extra blanket because the house has revealed itself to you.

The being who comes to the house once or twice and one for whom the house has fully revealed itself differ in a way. They both have the potential to know the house fully, but one does and one does not yet know it well. The same is true of incarnation. This is not just a matter of taking rebirth, it's a matter of doing the work during that birth. The ones to whom the nature of relative and ultimate reality have fully revealed themselves so that they have developed the fullness of wisdom and compassion, they are most capable of sharing it with others. You, all of you as what I call third density beings, you are similar to those who have come through the house many times and gotten to know it but there are still mysterious rooms and passageways that have not yet revealed themselves. You don't know what all the cupboards hold. You don't know where to find the spare blanket or the aspirin.

The being we call an avatar, and yes I would put Jesus in that category, certainly, but for the others, I refused to be pinned down and say, 'This one is an avatar and that one is not," the being we call an avatar is fully-realized. In terms of our metaphor, he or she knows every single mystery. There is nothing that is not yet revealed. Furthermore, this being has made the decision that now that all the house mystery has revealed itself, it will not go off and leave others to explore on their own but will come back and help others. In some cases that return is just once. In some cases it's repeated.

Such beings do not come back for karmic reasons. They have fully resolved any karma that would draw them back into reincarnation. They're usually sixth density beings, who could move on into the higher densities but who hold themselves at a sixth density level so as to be available to beings in third density. We do not call a being an avatar who is available simply on the spiritual plane, even though he or she may be fully available. The term avatar refers to one who specifically comes back into material form and by permitting themselves the experience of that form, they understand that they're opening themselves to all the pain as well as the joy of the third density experience.

There will be pain; it is likely they will suffer at first, despite their maturity. They are born without this veil of forgetting. They know who they are. Yet there may be some level of suffering while they acclimate in the new body, while they mature, because they're born as infants. Even though there's no veil there is still immaturity. They are not born with the ability to articulate what their past experience has revealed to them. First they have to grow up and form a vocabulary.

So certainly there is pain. That is a given, in the human experience. And some suffering. The pain is simply offered up to God. It is, let's call it a badge of honor that is borne based on this wonderful gift of service much as a farmer might wear callused hands as a badge of honor for the service that he does.

I said that some avatars may come only once and some repeatedly. Certainly these beings are in contact with one another as sixth density beings. They realize that on the ultimate level they are not separate. The left hand may be better at holding the fork, the right hand may be better at sawing with the knife. The left hand may be better at holding the paper still. The right hand may be better at holding the pen. But they're hands of the same body working together to eat or to write a letter. These avatars have an individuation both as third and sixth density beings. They have full realization of the relative resting within the ultimate, no confusion at that at all. They are fully able to express themselves where it's useful as third density beings while not losing even the most subtle contact with their upper density ultimate divinity. So they come to serve.

Just as one hand has certain skills and the other hand has different skills, each of these avatars which are sixth density beings has developed certain kinds of skills that are most useful to beings. There are no heroics here, no martyrdom here. While it is a very generous and courageous act to come into material form, they're not doing it to win praise but simply because this is where they are most skilled and how they can best serve. Those who stay on the sidelines, they do what they can best do. If you go to a baseball game, the players are out there playing and you see them but the coaches on the sidelines have had an essential role. And so is the groundskeeper who has prepared the field although no one may know that person's name. Just so, each avatar plays its part as a segment of the whole.

Does this sufficiently answer your question, C, or shall I speak further? And if so, can you specify your question? I pause.

Barbara: Others? I want to share just a little about what I experienced. I went in there with no expectations at all. She was the ultimate mother. People were coming up and she was hugging them, patting them, kissing them on the cheek, hugging …

C: With me, she said, 'Ma … amamamamamamamamamama."

Barbara: That's what she was saying? I should have told her I was deaf, maybe she would have signed it!

C: Very nurturing. Very musical.

Barbara: Just watching her with people, I just came back from a five day visit to my mother. I have a loving mother, a good mother. I know she loves me very much. Like all of us, she's not perfect. Clearly none of us is perfect. So her love is not unconditional. Sometimes being with her is challenging. I'm sure that for her, sometimes being with me is challenging. So during the weekend, Aaron had been teaching me the practice that he taught you tonight, and trying to get me to relate to the ultimate level of my mother. And Amma, I don't know her as a person, up close she might fail-Aaron said there's a Tibetan teaching that the ideal teacher lives five valleys away. You get different practices and teachings and initiations but you don't have to see their bad habits. So, who knows what Amma's like in person. I know some people have difficulty with Meera in person. But sitting there watching her giving love to these people … she was just the mother. I was very moved, watching her. More moved watching her hug than when it was my turn for darshan and being hugged. How about you, C?

C: I was moved by watching her but also moved by … I think the hearing was helpful. It felt very nurturing. It felt like being completely mothered.

Barbara: It's interesting because I experienced that kind of hug with my mother this weekend more than once. Later she was worrying, 'Now don't forget, you have to be back here at such-and-such a time," but for that moment there was just the complete mother love. And with Amma, I was able not to connect with anything negative, it was just the mother love. J, what did you experience with her?

J: For me, the sense of her loving presence with others from a distance. During our darshan not the same quality that I observed from a distance though afterwards, aware of energy shifts taking place within and continuing still. I have been immersed in very high vibration energy for six or seven days in a row, now. It also occurs to me of not experiencing mothering per se when growing up. So, like, 'Oh, this is interesting."

Barbara: The energy in the room from her and from everybody was very high. This woman hugged 500 people and there was no less energy at the end than at the beginning. When we left, she was up to the number 400 and there were still people coming up.

C: She still had a long line of people, a full line, when we left at 2:30.

Barbara: Just very selfless giving, very beautiful.

V: Where is she from?

Barbara: India. She will be giving darshan again tomorrow.

C: I think it starts at 9:30 AM tomorrow …

Barbara: OK, let's go on to other questions.

A: I am curious. Some divine presences experience some extended periods of illness, fever, unconsciousness, sometime early in their lives. And when this is over, their energy is changed so greatly they seem to have new powers or sensitivities. I am thinking of Ma Meera and Krishnamurti.

Aaron: I am Aaron. Think of a child perhaps three years old, old enough to understand that food must come from a store and must be prepared by loving hands. The child has sat in the grocery cart and watched its mother or father pick food off the shelves, seen the bunches of carrots and the head of lettuce, it's seen the parent wash and peel and slice. At some level it's aware of how the meal is prepared but it doesn't really think about it. All it knows is, 'I'm hungry." So one would say it has the realization by that age of where food comes from but the whole process seems separate from itself.

Then one day the mother is occupied doing some chore that she cannot leave off and the child is angry. The child knows where the bread is kept and where the jelly is, where the knives are, and so it gathers the things together and prepares itself a sandwich of sorts, or at least a slice of bread and jelly. It's hunger drives it into action and it becomes responsible for itself in whatever limited way it can. It's not going to roast a chicken, but it may get an apple from the refrigerator and wash it off. It may spread the jelly on the bread. He or she becomes responsible. It's either driven by pain or driven by a request from the parent, such as, 'Get me an apple and wash it first."

This is really the process, A. I said that these beings are born without the veil that is common to third density but they are still born as children. They may play in these brilliant colored lights, playing in various states of absorption and out of their bodies. They don't differentiate between the non-material being who is friend or teacher, and the material one. Oh yes, they know one has a body and one doesn't, but they don't really understand that everybody doesn't see the non-material beings the way they do. So they are on earth but still very much out of touch with the suffering of the earth realm.

Often but not always there is a physical catalyst. There's a certain necessary progression. It's very easy for such a child to wander off into ultimate reality and lose track of relative reality. They know why they came. But these lights and bliss states are so attractive and the physical realm so difficult. Imagine how hard it is for such a child to turn its back on these bliss states and look, truly look, at human suffering. Some seem more able to do this than others. For those who are finding it difficult, that traumatic body experience may be what draws them back into the realm of human suffering and gives them the renewed determination to apply their veilless realization to the human realm, rather than simply to hide out in the ultimate realm. For all such beings, if they do not come back fully into the human experience and ground in it, they will die. Literally. They cannot stay in that ultimate space and still be a third density being, nor was this their intention when coming into incarnation. Their intention was to serve. I pause.

Barbara: Others?

Aaron asks if you have more questions about the guided meditation we did. Does it feel like something you can practice? (Yes.) He says for those of you without an easy-to-draw-on mother image it will be more challenging but that you can find that mother and that, he says it may reconnect you to your own difficult mother in part to do so. He says don't try to make it the human mother if that's difficult. He says find a sister, a kitten, a best friend. Somebody who has cherished you.

K: I was surprised that I did pick my real mother, even though there have been many difficulties in that relationship. And I saw things differently and connected to what was truly positive in her relationship to me.

Barbara: So, it helped you open more fully.

K: Yes. A happy surprise.

C: I have been working a lot with the Brahmavahara practices because I'm teaching out of Sharon Salzburg's book. Tomorrow night we're doing a class on karuna, which is compassion. Each of those meditations seems very similar to this meditation, finding the suffering of the other person, the other being, then in those cases wishing them an end to suffering and an end to their pain. I'm wondering how this practice differs basically from those.

Barbara: He says, because it calls on the Mother image. I'm paraphrasing Aaron. The fact that each of us, clearly we're here, we're alive, whatever our mother was not able to give us, she did give us birth, first of all. She went through that experience of childbirth to give us life. At some level, she tended to us, she cleaned us, she fed us. He says the reality that infinite beings have been our mother, that if we really can develop that mother compassion, opening our hearts to our mother and her suffering, he says in the same way as opening our hearts to Mother Earth and her suffering, that we start literally to see all beings as our mother. A certain tenderness develops which makes it much easier to let go of aversion states.

Aaron: I am Aaron. I will say this myself. One could also do this with children, but the experience of having a mother is universal. Even of you have no conscious memory of your mother, you know you had a mother. But many beings do not have children. So it's more universally useful to work with the mother. It's the same practice.

It's useful because you are working not only with the ideal and perfect mother that few of you have, but with the difficult mother. Every mother has her idiosyncrasies. You learn to see that these are the result of conditions and not to condemn her so much for them but to offer gratitude for what she did give us, and then to develop the deeply loving heart that wishes her freedom from suffering. Precisely because your mothers are lost in their delusions and you see them suffering, precisely because you with your meditation practice have developed some clarity, you want to be able to help your mother find space around that suffering. But you have to see it clearly before you can help her. So it inspires you. The mother becomes all sentient beings. Gratitude and compassion become the ground out of which some of the more difficult work can be done, a sturdy foundation which offers motivation for courage, for faith, for persistence, no matter how difficult the practice gets. I pause.

Q: I have a very loving mother who I have always known has cherished me. When I thought of her caring for me when I was sick as a child, or just loving me, or the comfort that I got from her, I felt sad. I had a lump in my throat. And I'm not sure why.

Aaron: I am Aaron. I'm taking a stab in the dark on this one. The child felt safe with her mother, absolutely protected, but at a certain point you grow up and learn that your mother cannot protect you from everything, cannot protect you from misfortune or illness, for example. That could be one cause for your sadness. Another possibility would be a sense of gratitude or debt, a feeling that you cannot possibly repay her. Perhaps thinking of your own child, you wonder if you are able to be as cherishing with your child because you're aware of your own feelings of fear or greed. Certainly your mother also had doubts about her mothering. I don't know if any of these suggestions resonate for you. I pause.

M: My parents live in another state. When I saw them recently, they seemed much older, much more physically frail, so perhaps that was it, their decline …

Aaron: I am Aaron. So the sadness is based on the realization of the reality that you can't hold onto anything. You can't hold onto their love for you in the form that you experienced it as a child. Eventually the caretaker will be the one who needs care, and the child will be the caretaker. And eventually your own child will see you grow old. You can't hold onto anything, you can only live in this moment. Here is both sadness and wisdom. Sadness is different than fear, M. There is sadness that this is the nature of the conditioned realm. But there can also be a profound wisdom which leads you to deeply cherish the time you have with them. For you do not have yesterday or tomorrow, you only have today, in direct experience. I pause.

Barbara: He says in this way you can transform the sadness into energy and love. Others?

K: A thought I have been having tonight is that there are so many ways of teaching and learning on the earth plane. Hearing about the Divine Mother reminded me of how many ways there are. I wondered if Aaron would like to speak about that.

Aaron: I am Aaron. I understand what you mean when you say there are many different ways of learning, for each of you is unique. At the time of the Buddha there were said to be 84,000 Dharma gates, and they increase constantly. Some of you learn best by seeing and imitating. Some of you learn by reading and thinking. Some of you learn best on one kind of spiritual path, as a scholar, doing a devotional practice, performing service, and yet there really is only one way of learning on the earth plane, only one primary support for learning, and that is love. Fear cannot teach you. I know this runs contrary to what you've heard me say, we talk about fear as the teacher. But that doesn't go deeply enough into it, that statement. In the past I have chosen not to be quite so subtle. So we've said, for example, that pain or fear may teach you. But at a deeper level, fear doesn't teach you anything. Fear simply gets your attention. Once your attention is there, the loving heart begins to open, even if an almost imperceptible amount. It is only the loving heart that can truly learn because all that any of you can learn ultimately, is the ultimate truth of your being. Once you understand this divine essence of yourself and realize this essence, there's nothing else to learn. You still have to put it in practice. But that realization of who you are, that's what's most important to you. And you can only learn it through love.

Some of you seem bent on following a fear-based path and there are constant pains, obstacles and troubles. It's habit. Nothing but habit. Perhaps you are afraid of what you'll discover if you open your heart to the truth of yourself, and so you cling to your limits, your pain and fear. I pause.

Barbara: He asks if you have comment or question about that, K. (No.)

It's five of 10:00, we ought to stop.

(Joys and sorrows; Death of KW.)

Copyright © 2000 by Barbara Brodsky