October 27, 1999

Barbara: A question from K1:

'How do we perceive 'energy'? How is one's perception of energy related to perception of one's body?"

Some very good questions came in over the weekend after the retreat. One that I would be interested in hearing Aaron talk about. J brought up her concern with her husband snoring in the meditation hall and her old childhood background as the caretaker, not a highly functional family. She said she felt two things. She felt worried for him, if he's sleeping he's not getting this practice, he's not doing the work here. Wanting to wake him up. And also that his snoring was disturbing the group. Needing to stop his snoring so that nobody would be disturbed. And on the other hand, she knew that she should not feel responsible for him.

So she stated this and turned to me, and I said, 'I haven't a clue! I've been sitting here watching my own husband sleeping and trying to figure out what I should and shouldn't do!" I know many parts of this answer but I don't have any real clarity. I know to act from love and not from fear. Attend and not fix. But still, when it comes right down to concrete reality, I sat there in the meditation hall, uncertain. Should I go and tap him and ask him to stand up? When I did that once he smiled at me and he didn't get up and by the time I sat down he was asleep again. Really, I can't make him get up. So I'd like to hear Aaron's answer too.

K2, what would you like to know?

K2: In terms of what would I like to talk about tonight? (Yes.) The topic on my mind is about the place people go after death. And is there a suspended place where some go after a very quick or violent death that is sort of between the worlds. Questions about that area? Shall I state them now? (Yes.)

One question is, in general where does the non-physical aspect of the person go after death? Second, is there such a place like a gray in-between place where lost or confused spirits are, because they have unresolved issues or simply they just do not know what to do? And also, can we humans hold the deceased person back from their journey because we are not able to fully let go?

Barbara: K2 says the questions she asked were partially brought on by a movie she saw last night called, 'The Sixth Sense."

K2: It was about a child who could see these dead people still wandering around.

Barbara: I'm going to start here. I don't know if Aaron is going to speak to K2's question first but I'm going to start with a story related to this question.

For many years we spent our summer vacations on Nantucket. One year a good friend of mine was in the cabin that we rented, the two weeks before we were there. She and her husband and children were sharing the cabin with another couple and children. She wrote me a letter from Nantucket describing how in the middle of the night she suddenly woke with a sense of hair on the back of her neck standing up, a feeling of eerieness, discomfort. The dog was whining, very upset; the kind of whining he would do before a severe storm or when something frightening him. The friend's dog was whining. The children were whimpering in their sleep, restless. She got out of bed, hearing the children and the dogs, and feeling this prickliness herself, and came out to find her friend wide-eyed in the hallway saying, 'What's going on?" And the two of them sat there in the living room. She said they saw a face in the glass window of the door. They both felt very uncomfortable, although it was a very safe place to be, a place where we never locked our doors. This was twenty years ago, way out on the moors, no crime there.

There was this face and she had a strong feeling of its not being a human face, although it looked human. They both kind of said, 'Oh, there's a person out there." But it just somehow seemed not to be a person. And the dogs were very afraid and not barking as they would if somebody had been at the door. Finally my friend said to it, 'Who are you and what do you want? You're scaring us. How can we help you?" And she heard a crying sound, 'The children. I can't find the children." And her friend heard the same words, although not audibly. This is not a woman who was into channeling at all, and this was before I consciously knew Aaron.

She said, the children started whimpering louder. They were babies and up to eight or nine year olds. She said, 'These are not your children. You're scaring us. If we can help you, let us know how we can help you. But please do not frighten us and our children." And at that point the energy just disappeared.

She was very curious so she went into town the next day and looked in old newspapers of the year and asked the librarian, were there any drownings or deaths on the island other than natural deaths of people dying in old age? The librarian said somebody drowned out at Cisco Beach, which is where our cabin was, and she showed her the article. A man had been swimming with his two children and one of the children got caught in the undertow. Then the second child got caught. He went out to try to grab them and he got caught. They all drowned.

So I got this letter, and next week it's my turn to go to Nantucket! I was scared. I was nervous about this. So I went out there. And I did not experience this energy at all.

This was probably about eighteen years ago; jump forward to about eight years ago. Same cabin, same week. We generally went the same time every year. It was the week just after he and his children had died, two weeks after. I was in the cabin. It was night and I suddenly felt this energy. Prince was very restless and Hal and the boys were restless, tossing in their beds. I got up and sat, and I asked, 'Is this the man who drowned and lost his children?" and got a very strong 'yes" answer. I had a strong feeling that he had been searching for these children, that he was what Aaron calls an earthbound spirit.

We had a long talk. Rather, I just spoke to him. I explained to him that his children were no longer on Earth, that they had died, and either they had moved into new incarnation or they were on the spirit plane, and that he needed to let go of them for his sake and their sake. I said that he might be able to find them on the spirit plane but that he was looking in the wrong place. Three times during the week his energy came back. Slowly I felt it letting go, and letting go, and letting go. Then it was time for us to leave, although it felt unfinished.

In following years I did not feel his energy and I never asked for it, I didn't look for it. If he was gone, that was fine. If he wasn't, he would know I was there and could contact me. I felt that it felt not useful to try to contact him. Aaron is asking me to share that story, and I presume he'll say something more about it.

Aaron: I am Aaron. Good evening and my love to you all. We will begin with K1's question on free will, choice and pure awareness. During the retreat, the terms 'essence" and 'persona" were offered as useful terms, trying to talk about this Unconditioned or pure awareness mind, and what we sometimes call the ego self. I think these are useful terms because ego is sometimes misunderstood. The personality self, the discursive mind, these are all aspects of the persona. The physical body is also an aspect of the persona.

Pure awareness is joined with essence. It is the essence which rests in pure awareness. Resting in that pure awareness, the persona is present but not active.

For the persona, choice and free will are related to the comfort of the physical, mental and emotional bodies. Comfort is not necessarily selfish comfort. What leads to comfort could be a certainty that one is serving the needs of all beings. So for the persona, generosity, selfless giving, kindness, patience, may be what is chosen. Also, impatience, unkindness, and selfishness may be what is chosen. When these fear-based emotions are chosen, it is the outplay of old karma and perpetuates that karma. So it's the movement of continuation of various, perhaps we could use the term 'unskillful" or fear-based karmic streams. When kindness, generosity, patience and so forth are expressed, this is the movement which perpetuates the wholesome and love-based karmic streams. But it's still a karmic stream as long as it relates to the persona.

Resting in pure awareness, you cut through the karmic stream. There is no karma. The pure awareness mind may have a deep sense of what it most needs to do. This is not a persona or self at any level doing or speaking right. Rather, it is pure awareness itself speaking and acting. Pure awareness is not capable of selfishness or other fear-based action. The body and mind initiate action but that speech or action can be grounded totally in the pure awareness itself, in the essence, and not be even in the slightest way a voice of the persona. This is rare but it does happen, especially with highly experienced practitioners. It's simply the movement of love.

The persona-and here is where it becomes subtle-the persona has been presented as something separate from the essence but the persona is not separate. The persona is simply one expression of the essence. The essence is the Unconditioned itself. The persona is a conditioned expression of the Unconditioned. But it's based in the delusion of a separate self. The essence may recognize that there is a physical body and understand that that body is unique from any other body but it does not count the body as separate any more than the hand counts the thumb as separate from itself.

When you understand that the persona is an expression of the essence, then you can greet the arising choices of the persona in a very spacious way which knows that it does not need to act out a choice based on fear, nor does it need to despise a choice based on fear. Free will has the ability to say yes to fear-based choice and also to say no to fear-based choice.

This is background. At this point I would like to turn back to K1 and find out how this question resonates to you personally, K1. I know it is not simply an intellectual question. In what ways do you know the personal expression of this question? I pause.

K1: When I feel present and loving and clear, this feels something like acting from pure awareness.

Barbara: Aaron says, but there is still somebody who is being present, loving and connected. It borders on pure awareness, but it's what he would call that borderline place between very clear, wise, loving persona shifting into pure awareness, but it's not yet to pure awareness.

K1: And then, in practical situations, a stream of thought and intention about what work I need to get finished at my job, for example, will more and more dominate my experience, until I have lost conscious touch with that deeper sense. At one level, when I am doing my job, I am making many choices or decisions but I am out of touch with something very important. So I am wondering how I can come to remain centered and make choices from a centered being in touch with a deeper kind of reality.

Aaron: I am Aaron. There are two parts to my answer, K1. In the long run, there is aspiration to speak and move to a place of center. This is a discarnate skill, one might say. The fifth density being, for example, speaks and acts from that place of center. Some weeks ago I addressed the question, 'Can we get too smart too fast?" I made the observation that you are incarnate for certain learning, that while clarity is to be desired to assist you not to make choices that are harmful to beings, the complete dissolution of the veil is not to be desired. If the veil were to dissolve completely, you lose the primary teaching force of the incarnate state. Why had you entered third density experience? You entered this experience because there was confusion that needed to be resolved, usually confusion about movement from a fear base vs. a love base, and how to learn to relate to fear with so much spaciousness and equanimity that fear does not respond to fear but love responds to fear.

Thus, fear is a vital catalyst. And yet as long as fear pulls you into harmful speech and action, it perpetuates the delusion, perpetuates the suffering and adds to the darkness and negativity in the world. The ideal, then, would seem to allow the perpetuation of the Earth plane's catalysts, which you do not seem likely, any of you, to totally resolve anyhow, but to allow the perpetuation of these catalysts and regard them as teachers. With this in mind, you might ask yourself if what you wish is really to address the world from that place of essence which is totally beyond any fear or delusion of separation, craving, aversion, and so forth, or whether it is more fruitful in terms of the immediate soul work you are doing to address this catalyst from a place that is not yet fully in center, not yet fully of the pure awareness mind but is capable of making the choice that only a deeply loving, positively polarized being can make to see fear, rage, terror, and still not get caught up in it.

One example I could present here. If you and I both saw what appeared to be demons flying into the room, if you looked at them and they were horrible, like Milarepa's demons, hideous and stinking, and if right through your fear you were able to open to them in kindness and say, 'Come sit and have tea with us. Tell us about yourself"; if I saw those same demons but I knew them for what they are because I was not behind this veil at all, if I saw that what was there was simply frightened negative polarity attempting to be powerful and controlling, acting out its fear, and if I also said, 'Come, sit and have tea" but I was totally nonchalant and there was no fear, which of us, K1, is learning here? Which of us is doing the truly courageous thing? Truly deepening the ability for love and compassion? I'm not learning anything. There's no difference for me to say that than there would be for you if you were sitting in a meadow and a puppy appeared, to say, 'Come and sit." Even if it was a muddy puppy. Or a little bit nippy and barky. 'Shhh. Enough. Come and sit."

We talk a lot about moving into this pure awareness perspective, stabilizing it, learning to live from it. As I speak here I realize I have not articulated this with the best clarity because what you are learning, really, is to open to that pure awareness mind, see what's happening with clarity, and then come back to the fear which has been somewhat shattered by that clarity, but the edges of which still may be present. Pure awareness will find it very easy to say, 'Sit by the fire. Have tea." It is the persona that needs to learn to do that. What we are doing is allowing the entrance into the pure awareness self to gain that clarity and stability and then returning to the persona. It's the persona that's got to learn to do this, the persona that's got to learn to respond with love. It's the persona that shatters the karma. We seek integration of the persona and the essence; the thumb is part of the hand!

From the pure awareness level, there never has been any karma. There's nothing to resolve. That also is true. The pure awareness self, the essence, finds that clarity and instantly all the karma of eons is resolved. And yet this physical body, the mental and emotional bodies still carry these streams of karma. How can this be? But it is not paradoxical. There is no conflict there. The dense nature of the lower bodies holds onto the karmic movement even after it's been resolved. Think of the difference between mud and water. If you have specks of some kind of impurity in the water, let us say bits of leaves that have blown from the trees, it's easy to skim it out of the water because the water is thin, light. But if you have those same leaves stirred up into a big mud puddle then it's much harder to get them out because mud is heavy and dense.

Some would argue that once you rest in this pure awareness mind, there's no need to do anything at the level of the lower bodies. But I disagree with that. You don't have to do it, no. In fact, there's nothing to do, from the essence level; once you have fully grasped the nature of pure mind and rested there, you're free in terms of not needing to return to third density. But there are still things to be resolved which do not have to wait until the higher densities to be resolved. You can resolve them right here on the Earth plane. This gets ahead of the game, this discussion. For now, it seems sufficient to say that you first rest in pure awareness and then you come back to this highest level of the loving persona and attend to what has arisen from that level. Knowing that you are playing in the illusion, not buying into the illusion but knowing that you must act skillfully within the illusion.

I could liken that a bit to playing a game of hide and seek in a dark room. If we permitted the one who is 'it" to turn on all the lights, he would see where everybody was. If we leave the lights on there's no point to the game. If people are not allowed to move from their hiding place, he can just walk in and say, 'Here you are, and here you are, and here you are." If we leave all the lights off, he will stumble in the dark, perhaps ending up knocking things over, injuring people. If we flash the lights on for a moment so he can see where everybody is, can really see what the scene is and then we flash the lights off, then he's got to work to take what he has seen, the clarity he has had, and act upon it while he walks into that now-redarkened room. He knows the darkness is not the nature of the room, light is. He is agreeing to play the game in order to see how it feels to find these beings in the darkness, to act skillfully with the difficult catalyst of the darkness. This is why he is incarnate. The work is not just to turn the lights on. But one must also know when the lights are off and that 'lights on" is the nature of the room. I pause.

Barbara: He says, do you have further question?

K1: That was very helpful. There is a part of me that would like to take a flying leap out of all difficulty!

Barbara: Aaron says that we're just playing on a stage. We've put on our costumes and jumped in and agreed that we're going to play in the illusion. On the one hand, we can't believe that the illusion is real and lose sight that it's an illusion or we get so bogged down in fear that we start kicking and screaming. On the other hand, if we eliminate the illusion entirely then we eliminate the source of learning. We're playing on a blank stage, reading lines that have little power. He says, no matter what negativity approaches him, while he recognizes it may be very difficult and uncomfortable, he doesn't feel fear. So he says it's very easy to do it lovingly when there's no fear but there has to be some degree of illusion for there to be learning. But we must recognize illusion as illusion and not get lost in it, like the actor who knows he is an actor in a play yet moves deeply and convincingly into his part.

(Tape is turned.)

We need that catalyst. This goes back to getting too smart too fast. He says it's not likely to happen, but to keep in mind that all this time we talk about resting in pure awareness, the goal is not to maintain that pure awareness and hide out in it and negate the human experience but simply to touch base with that like illuminating the room. Know things as they are and then come back into the persona.

K1: Aaron's metaphor of our being players on a stage is one that I feel some fear about. A fear that I won't take things seriously enough.

Barbara: He says there are innumerable plays, and if you don't get it in this play you can come back and play in another play. He says that the wonder of it is that you can change parts and after you've played this character in one showing of the play you can come back and play a different character in the next show.

K1: From the human perspective, I keep in mind that these are all just metaphors of something that is beyond expressing.

Barbara: He says yes.

K1: I like it and have a special fondness for those times when Aaron says, 'Now the metaphor has broken down."

Barbara: Aaron says resting in this pure awareness mind, it's a way really to rest, to find joy and peace and when you do that regularly, it helps you not get bogged down and lost within the play. It helps you remember who you are and what you're doing without having to cling to the essence and deny the persona.

Let's go on to this question about death.

Aaron: I am Aaron. First, the non-physical realm is not a place rooted in time and space and with recognizable features. There is no heaven with certain kinds of architectural features or any other physical specifics. We're talking about a space here where there is non-linear time and where objects and energetic beings present themselves as energy and light, holding themselves into an intactness.

This being I am whom you know as Aaron, in order to be with you, to communicate with you, I bring my energy into an intactness. Think if you will of-let's give a round number-1,000 balloons, some floating high and some lower to the ground and some very low, spread out in the area the size of Michigan stadium, if it had a dome over it. Think of these balloons all being blue, and then there are red balloons, and yellow and green and purple and orange. And they're all spread out like that. Can you visualize that space? There is no cohesion amidst any of the balloons. They touch one another. If we could stretch the metaphor a bit and say that they all shined light. When two come into connection, a blue light and a red light might shine upon each other, and a few feet away there's another blue light, and a yellow and a green one. And over a bit there's a red one.

If we could give these balloons the attributes of an awareness, we would then say that they are aware of the presence, not of one another because there is no self or other at that point, simply aware of the pure presence of all of this energy. Now let us say that the red lights and the blue lights wanted to communicate to each other. In order for them to do that, the blue lights would need to collect, some movement of thought inviting the blue lights-the blue balloons in this case-to come together in a kind of intactness so that they begin to inform each other and work together. They don't become one solid body like a human body but they come together, touching and separating, touching and separating.

From that intactness they can begin to communicate on an energy and thought level not only with the red ones which have come together but with anything. They can communicate with the ones that are dispersed as well. To communicate requires integration. Reception can happen at a dispersed level, but it's received differently. At the dispersed level there is no self. The pure awareness which calls itself, in this metaphor, orange energy, receives the thought, each unit of orange receiving it. It cannot do anything with that information on a mental level until all the bits of orange come together. Pure awareness receives the message, awareness lacking the mental body which occurs only when the bits come together. When they draw together they create a different form of energy. The persona develops then, not as 'self" believed in as separate, but as tool which supports mental body.

Now I'm using colored balloons as a very simple example. Of course, each of your personal energies is not only of one color. But after making the transition on this non-material plane, Being A may either hold that intactness or move into a dispersal. And Being B may, and Being C may. But when they want to communicate something, they move into that intactness so as to allow the mental body to function. That's one of the ways in which this instrument perceives me, as a swirling light.

So a being who has made this transition, this knowing itself to be simply energy and light, and able to bring itself into a more dispersed state of resting or a more integrated state of tension and movement which gives rise to intention and action, this being learns how to do this 'dance," or remembers how to do it, more correctly.

Let's take this being that has just left its body. First, it will experience itself slipping out of the body, and a literal cutting of the energy cords to the body. It will know that the body has ceased, that the physical cells are no longer nurtured by energy but have begun the process of final disintegration. Here's the first divide in the path. For the being that has unresolved business on the Earth plane, it hovers over the body and doesn't leave. It becomes this earthbound spirit. It needs help to free itself, help either from the spirit side or the human side or both. The being who has done its work on the human plane, for whom there still may be some unresolved things but basically who has come to understand its nature as spirit and cut the deepest identification with the body and emotions as self, it will more easily let go of the past birth. It moves into a bardo state, a 'between" state. It is a resting place very much akin to slumber but a very deep and restorative sleep. If we want to measure it in linear time, it may stay there only a matter of minutes. It may stay there six weeks. I don't want to give the impression that six weeks is a specific time length, I'm using that in a loose sense.

After some period of space-time, it begins to awaken from that slumber, sometimes just to open its eyes and look around and see where it is, feel that it is safe and at peace and go back into the slumber. The length of that 'between" state will depend first upon the degree of trauma of the death, what restoration is needed. And second, the degree of clarity that the being has attained. If there is resistance when it opens its eyes, a sense of unclarity and fear, it will return into this slumber state almost as a hiding place, so it's restorative but it's also a place where it feels safe. If it opens its eyes and acknowledges, 'I've made the transition," or more correctly, 'This essence has departed from the body. The mental and emotional bodies are still present, though, and this whole mass has made the transition. I wonder who's here?" a kind of curiosity and interest helps it pull out of this sleep state. When it's ready, it pulls out. It's akin to the experience of the human moving out of general anesthesia.

It will then spend as much time as is necessary evaluating the past life. It will see almost like a blueprint with an overlay, the original blueprint of the incarnation and what was actually learned. It will see with much clarity karmic streams and then a deep knowing about what remains to be done.

On the other hand, we have the being who moves into this bardo state but is deeply immersed in fear. When it opens its eyes, instead of seeing the light and feeling the love that surrounds it, it sees only shadow, not because only darkness is there but because it has enclosed itself in a shield, and cannot experience the light and love that surround it because the shielding is so dense. It moves off into what we might call a limbo state, increasing degrees of grayness, darkness. Interestingly, some beings who did terrible things in a lifetime but felt self-righteous about them and did not consider them terrible, don't have any sense of guilt or self-hatred. They may progress out of this state of grayness faster than one who is consumed with self-hatred for some minor trivial hurts to others.

There are so many patterns here, K2, I cannot speak to them all in one sitting. The being who has done terrible deeds to others, acting on its own fear and negativity, and feels some pride in what it has done, he will emerge from that bardo state, review his life in this way. If he is negatively polarized he may be cheered by what he did. He moves off into what we would consider a negatively polarized field of being. He exults in the fear he caused others. This is a very different track and we will not follow it tonight. The being who on Earth exulted in his power and control over others but who is not deeply negatively polarized will awaken from that bardo state with some misgivings, seeing the ways that he caused harm to others.

There are so many different kinds of beings. One being may open to truth immediately, feel sadness and remorse for what he has done, a willingness to practice what he needs to on the non-physical planes until he and his guides feel he is ready to return and try again to live with more kindness. Another being may feel no remorse. He is not then locked in prison, in any sense. He is free to go out into the astral plane, just as any being is free. But if he finds himself surrounded by positively polarized energy and he is more neutral, we're not talking about negative polarity here, but feels more neutral, this positive polarity around him helps to smooth down the rough edges, to lead him increasingly into consideration of his choices and the ways they created harm.

The more familiar being, the being who has not created terrible harm for others, who has been locked at times in its own fear, done some harm, but basically meant well, this being will emerge into the space of experiencing himself surrounded by loving energy and light, begin to reflect on the past life, go through a training period, really, almost a formal training period with his guides, and consider where to go next.

So, the one that finds itself in this limbo state, this may be a being of relatively positive polarity or a being of negative polarity. It will be a being who has locked itself into that murky grayness because of its own fear of seeing what's beyond the grayness. Loving guides will always be with this being but he cannot tolerate the light at that point, he's not aware of them. He will stay there until he's ready to come out. We're using the word 'he" but of course these are male and female but essentially neither male nor female but the essence of both, androgynous beings.

The being immersed in this mist, this darkness, generally cannot tolerate bright light. Even if at heart it is a deeply loving being, its own conflicted attitude toward itself, its own anger and judgment, have drawn it into this darkness and light is not comfortable for it. It withdraws from it like a nocturnal creature.

Those who tend to such beings have the highest training, the ability very much to shield their own light, to try to give only the vibrational frequency that that lost being can tolerate, to always be there and accessible to any opening of the heart. How long will it take? Minutes, days, months, years, decades, centuries. There are beings who have been in that kind of darkness for what would be centuries of your time. They will come out when they're ready. The light is always available.

For those who have emerged into that light and finished this review of the past life, which those lost in the grayness will need to do, whether it's weeks or centuries, once they're past that point they move into, I can only call it a learning place. They gravitate toward their own spiritual families, their own work. I can only speak in metaphorical terms, but there are the equivalent of universities. There is an overall, let's call it a liberal arts curriculum, certain learning that all beings need, lending greater clarity. Learning patience and kindness, caring for others, offering themselves in service to others. But there is also a place to redefine one's specialties. Where, for example, musicians may gather to share their music. Physicians and healers may gather to share what they know. All the expertise that you can imagine is there. You draw upon that expertise as you are ready, and make the intention eventually to take those skills into a next lifetime. For some all you may choose to take is great patience or kindness or forbearance. Others may learn very highly defined and specific skills which they will then attempt to carry on into this veil of forgetting and remember.

I bring to mind here a friend who consulted us just once. We spent several hours with him. He was referred by another friend who was a psychologist that had been treating him. It turns out this was his first human incarnation and he had come for a very specific reason, as a highly articulate computer programmer. He had in mind many medical kinds of programs that could lead to much clarity and healing for many beings. Without any clarity as to his past, with no conscious awareness, he had trained himself appropriately. He needed just a bit of guidance to understand who he was and why he was here. Apparently he is now writing brilliant medical programs. At the time when he writes the programs, he says he really feels he's just channeling, but unlike this instrument he is simply channeling his higher self, opening the doorway so that that knowledge he accumulated on the astral planes can be brought into the Earth plane by the human he now is.

So you move into your own families and interest groups, perhaps both, spending time with your spiritual families and also time with your interest groups which may not be exactly the same thing, deepening the skills and knowledge that you will need in order to return to the Earth plane and carry out the blueprint you plan for the next birth. Does this sufficiently answer your question, K2 or are there other areas to which I may speak? I pause.

K2: When a being is in the bardo state or limbo state, can they still clearly communicate with humans? Or is that ability compromised while they are in transition?

Barbara: He says it depends. Those that have moved fully into the limbo state cannot communicate with humans but those who are earthbound spirits can bring themselves into a state very akin to the limbo state but different in a way. They can communicate with humans. He says the limbo state is just … its primary characteristic is a sense of unending grayness. Confusion, mist, mental grayness, visual grayness, hearing grayness, featureless. It's a hiding place, really. Hiding out from truth. Through kindness they begin to be able to be open to that truth and come back, if they're positively polarized. If they're negatively polarized then, Aaron says what you might call the opposition is at work with them, trying to draw them in further into that grayness and confusion and to solidify the negative characteristics. He says there is always loving energy there willing to help them draw out at the very last moments before they move from the limbo state into very negative polarity. He says for the being who is an earthbound spirit, they don't enter that limbo state, it's a different kind of hell realm, he says. This is where we find things like the hungry ghosts of Buddhist cosmology, the beings that are still attached to the Earth plane with greed, fear and desire. He says those in the limbo state are not really experiencing greed, fear or desire, they're experiencing just grayness.

K2: As compared to those beings that reincarnate, are the ones who do not incarnate more accessible to us?

Barbara: He says all beings who have not resolved their karma will incarnate again. He says high, clear, third density beings who need to come back for another incarnation, one of the things they may do in between incarnations is to be a guide to incarnate third density beings, that many of our primary guides are third density energies but they have … he says it's like the game we play where one being without a blindfold leads a being with a blindfold. They're both humans but without the blindfold, the one can see where they're going. So, he says of discarnate third density, they don't have to know everything about the terrain, just they know what the next step is, they can see it. Then if there's some confusion, there's a higher level guide they can talk to who, like the person up in the tower, can see a greater distance. That would be a fifth density being. He says fifth density beings are the next level of guides, fourth density beings are never guides, they are within their own energy groups within that fourth density experience. But the being moving out of that fourth density experience into fifth density may become a guide to a fourth density energy group or a guide to third density beings.

K2: Is it possible for the loved ones of a deceased person to actually hold the person back from their next steps because of heavy grief and not letting go?

Barbara: Yes, it is very possible. Nobody but the earthbound spirit is responsible to its situation. If the grief of its loved ones draws it back, the grief of the loved ones is not responsible, but the inability of the deceased one to deal with that grief. This is something unfinished for him. It's part of his learning, then. Being held back in that case is not a problem but is very difficult and uncomfortable. He will have guidance to help him deal with it.

More difficult for the deceased one than the grief from loved ones about its passing is a strong fear or helplessness and confusion on the part of those left behind, especially a sense of helplessness. If the ones left behind believe that they cannot survive without the deceased one and cling in that way, it's very difficult for the deceased one, even on a subtle level.

I would use our friend C as an example here. C had this orchestrated perfectly. He knew just what he needed, was able to use his energy in such a way to create what he needed. His family were with him the last afternoon and evening, only until a certain time and then they all left. He knew that if he was surrounded by their weeping and fear, he would not be able to keep himself as clear as was optimal in order to drop off the karma. He knew that he was not advanced enough yet to have perfect equanimity with their fear and grief. And so the optimal situation was that loved ones who will miss him and loved him but were not afraid or clinging in any way were with him during the night, able to offer him ongoing guidance.

He was able to have his last moments in a human body free of any contractedness, even of the pain and tensions of the physical body. The medication relieved the pain. Mine and this instrument's words helped to encourage him and remind him of the process he was moving through. There was no contractedness, nothing to hold him. Because of this, after leaving the body he moved through that rest period very quickly. The unconscious rest period … I have not been precise here, I see. There is first an unconscious rest period and then a conscious rest period. Each may be of undefined length. So he moved through the unconscious rest period very quickly. Almost immediately by my standards, within a day of your time. He came to a very deep awareness of who he was and where he was on the other side, and then spent as much time as he needed resting before he was ready to do the life review. But he did not move through the transition with any contractedness. This is an immense help. I pause.

Barbara: I'm paraphrasing Aaron. He says even after the transition, if the being comes into consciousness aware of the pain or fear of those he left behind, he's not necessarily an earthbound spirit. He's coming to consciousness on that second rest level, the conscious rest level, and is deeply aware of the fear and grief of the beings left behind. He may be clear or that pull may be very disconcerting to it, depending on his karma. Their pain can even actually draw it back to being an earthbound spirit. He says, on the other hand, if it's centered enough, then it can work with that pain and fear, but it's still difficult. He says imagine the situation of two army personnel who have been sent off to a country, where they were a kind of peacekeeper that we sent to foreign countries in the near past. One has left behind a family who supports his going, who lets him know that they love him and are behind him and will miss him but they are safe and okay. All they ask of him is that he attend to his work there and do the best he can to come back safely. And the other leaves a weeping, wailing family that says, 'What will I do without you? How will we do it, we can't survive?" He says, imagine the difference in the thoughts of each and how one's thoughts keep going back to that family because of the intensity of their fear. This makes it very difficult for him to focus on the work he came to do as peacekeeper. The other is able to simply focus on where he is and being present, doing his present work.

He says, but of course sometimes there is that kind of fear and clinging. The one who is deceased usually participated in that. If that attitude exists among his immediate friends and family it's because he was in that kind of relationship in the life just ended, and participated in creating that. And so his work, it's not that it keeps him from going on, it's that he's not ready to go on yet until he resolves this. Right here, from the level of his now deceased state of the body, is a place where he can first begin to address it and get insight into the negative codependency patterns that created this kind of fear, to acknowledge his own part in that and ask for forgiveness and offer forgiveness. And begin to let go and work with the resolve not to move into that kind of pattern again and to learn why it's necessary not to do so. It's not a negative situation, it's simply he is where he needs to be and it's an uncomfortable situation. He says eventually he will gain clarity even if the ones here on Earth don't.

K2: So if the people on Earth are clear then that can directly assist the deceased in their letting go.

Barbara: Yes. I've experienced this very strongly with my dad. He died three years ago. All through his and my lifetime together, we loved one another very much. There was never any abusiveness or lack of kindness, but there was a very different life perspective: mine, very strongly a sense of non-harm to beings; and his, a sense of 'You've got to be strong. You've got to control things," a more fear-based perspective. I had seen him as my father in several past lifetimes, but one I saw very clearly, in which this was a major difference between us. In this present lifetime, I tried countless times to talk with him about my world view and he could never hear me. He began to respect what I was doing but, I don't mean just the work with Aaron but earlier with peace work and so forth, but there was too much fear, largely fear for me personally that I would be hurt. He could not hear me.

After his death, first of all, there was some work to do. There was some anger toward him for not being able to hear me during my life, anger because my deafness was too painful for him. He never learned to finger spell. So I had to let go of that anger and find forgiveness for the situation we had both co-created.

And then within a month or two after his death, I really felt his presence strongly and his clarity, and that he could see how he had arrived at his perspective . It wasn't a statement of 'you were right and I was wrong," it was more a statement of, 'I understand the kinds of confusion we've had together" and a sense of blessing for my work, and a sense of his own newborn clarity but also his gift to me, the sense of a much deeper compassion for his fear and desire to control and be safe and the ability to see the seeds of that in my self better and how I'd denied those in opposition to him. I'd made it black and white rather than let myself acknowledge the seeds of his pain and fear in me.

So I felt able to communicate with him far better than I ever had during his life. Very much felt the long, long love and history of relationships between us and how we've been playing this foil to one another through so many lifetimes, teaching each other. And a very deep sense of mutual respect, no longer father and daughter but just two very loving souls.

After about a year, I felt him withdrawing. It wasn't a withdrawal from me in any personal way, simply he was moving on. At this point I think he's just somewhere further off, learning, having resolved the experience of this lifetime.

K2: So if someone has reincarnated, can we still communicate with the essence of who we knew them as.

Barbara: It's the same higher self. There's one person I know whose husband died years ago and has taken a new incarnation and she knows who the new incarnation is, and has a certain closeness with this young person. She would never try to tell this young person, 'Oh, you were my husband once," but is able to feel the higher self and the energy of the one who was her husband. There are many times when children come into an incarnation and say, 'Do you remember when I was your mother?" or something like that. There are many documented cases of this. The children remember who they were until a certain time, at two or three years old. There are many documented cases of the child saying, 'You're my mommy now. I was your mommy last time, do you remember?"

K2: (Asking about the death of two people she knew; private question.)

Aaron: I am Aaron. You need to consider, K2, why a child would come into incarnation and, I say this in a very specific way, let itself be killed by a car at age twelve. There are no accidents. In some way he participated in that. In some way he needed to leave. I will not betray his privacy to talk about why specifically he moved into incarnation. I would ask you to trust the whole process of his life and his death. I pause.

(More discussion of this private question.)

(Taping ends.)

Copyright © 2000 by Barbara Brodsky