December 15, 1999 Wednesday Night, Aaron's Christmas Stories

December 15, 1999  Wednesday Night, Aaron's Christmas Stories

Barbara: I just want to begin by saying what a joy it is seeing all these faces filling the hall, over twenty-five of you. That, “if you build it they will come." This is the first year we've had Christmas stories here in the meditation hall rather than in the living room. Last week we said we'd meet in the living room with a fire. And then this evening I started thinking about the people who had told me they were coming. I realized we were not going to fit in the living room. Aaron will talk out here and then tea and social time will be in the living and dining rooms. There's a fire burning in there and a box of decorations to put on the tree.

Aaron: Good evening and my love to you all. I am Aaron. As always it is a joy to be with you. Your joy and love for one another, and your energy, radiate out of this room, truly a beacon of light. It is a blessing and a privilege to share my thoughts with you.

In this last meeting before Christmas, I always share memories of that lifetime when the being I was lived at the time of the one you know as Jesus and at the place where he lived. When I use the word “I," please remember this is not Aaron but a karmic ancestor, one of a great multitude of beings which were the fleshed figures of this karmic stream, now dissolved. There is no karmic stream that continues, but this awareness mind has access to the memories.

In that lifetime I was a poor shepherd. I was not literate, not educated. When I say I was a follower of this great teacher, please do not place me among a select few. I loved him as did many. When he came near to where I lived, then I would leave my sheep in the care of a friend or of my son and I would go to spend a few days with him, walk on the road with him, because when he traveled it was a wonderful opportunity to be with him, just to walk and talk. While these days were very few compared to the many, many days that I did not spend in his presence, they were by far the most transformative days of that lifetime, filled with wonder and learning.

I do not want to present him to you as I, Aaron, see him from this perspective so much as to give him to you through the eyes of that shepherd. Each year I have tried to emphasize some special aspect of my experience of him, tell you a few stories to illustrate that experience.

I often call you “angels in earthsuits" to remind you both of the divine inner essence and of the earthsuit which you wear, the physical body with its pains and illnesses, the varied emotions, impulses, thoughts and confusion that pass through you. I remind you that you must find a balance, must attend to this relative body yet not get caught in an identity with it but remember who you are. But it is so hard for you to remember. Your lives are filled with catalyst. When there is great fear, anger and distortion, it seems natural for the energy field to become contracted, and when it does become contracted, it is increasingly difficult to stay in touch with this divine essence. This is the nature of human experience. When fear takes you, you feel cut off from that remembering, but here is the most important place for that memory of truth, as truth and love are the only things which can speak convincingly to fear. This is the work for which you take birth: to experience fully as a human and learn from that experience and also, through the human, to express the divine out into the world.

You cannot express that divine if you lose touch with it. When one can point out that essence to you, in effect circle it with a big red crayon and say, “Here it is!" it is ever so much easier to act and speak from that place. Jesus mirrored this divinity to those who followed him, as if he wielded such a crayon. Sometimes one would come along who, in contrast to his shining radiance, saw only his or her own darkness, and to that he would attend with love. But much more frequently one would see his radiance, and it would draw out one's own radiance so that one became capable of love and of kindness in situations where one had never thought one could express such feelings. He never shamed us for our fear or confusion, he simply held the mirror tight, allowing us to see what we could be.

Let me illustrate this with some examples. Leprosy in those days was much dreaded, there was no cure. Those who contracted this disease were cast aside, ostracized, forced to leave their families and their homes and go and live in their own communities where life was constant pain and struggle. The disease was contagious so people were terrified to come in contact with lepers. It was a deeply rooted prejudice taught early to young children.

One day as we walked, another man and I were right beside the Master, the others ahead or behind. There came a cry from high rocks that we passed on our left, a cry of a human in pain. She did not cry out to us; I doubt that she knew we passed. She just cried out. Without even breaking his stride, he turned off the path and headed up the steep slope from whence the cry had come. We two followed him, others behind us, up a path around a few boulders, up a very steep hill. There behind a rock was a very small cave, really just an overhang. Five humans dwelled there, all of them lepers. I had not known there were lepers in this area. We stopped, we froze in our tracks, all except for him. There was a mother with her daughter, both of them ill. The daughter was not even fully grown, just in her late teens, but already touched by this disease. Perhaps she had contracted it by staying to care for her parents. The daughter wept in pain and the mother held her.

He did not pause. I feel certain he had no fear for himself as we did for ourselves. He asked for water and clean cloth, but there was no clean cloth. They brought him water and again he said, “I need clean cloth." And as he said it, he looked me in the eyes. I know he would not have shamed me, he would not have forced me. But this direct eye contact drew me so deeply into him that my fear simply vanished.

Most of you have worked with this instrument on the practice of clear comprehension, beginning with clear comprehension of purpose. She asks you to reflect upon the question, “What is my highest purpose here? Is it to be safe, to be comfortable? To win the esteem of others? Is it to be an instrument of love?" When one acknowledges that one has fear, that there is the part of one that does want to run, does want to be safe, and there's no shame in that but one does not need to act out that fear, in this way one touches deeply into one's divinity and the essence of being which is the voice of love.

I would not say that my fear dissolved as I looked into his eyes, only that in that moment I saw that I did have a choice, that there was that in me that was far more fearless, more loving and noble than I had ever realized. I did then what was perhaps the first fully selfless act of that lifetime. I took off the soft cloak, the cape that I wore, which was quite clean. I not only brought it to him, but was able to stay there with him, of my own will for he would not have made me stay, I could have handed it to him and walked back to safety. He never pushed another beyond their limits but he invited each to explore his or her limits and extend them.

He saw my moment of hesitancy as I handed him the cloak. He gave me a beautiful smile, said “Thank you." And then again he looked into my eyes and again I saw the essence of divinity in him reflected back to me, and I knew that I also could make the choice to stay. Touching on that divine essence is the strongest voice to balance fear. It does not deny fear but says, “No, I will not enact my fear." I simply nodded to him and he said, “Cut it in strips." Someone gave me a knife. There was just a moment's hesitation, to take that knife from this maimed hand. And then I looked in the eyes of the one who gave me the knife, and in his face was such hope and beauty. I found it easy to take the knife, to cut the garment into strips to make bandages, to wash and bandage the wounds that were so painful.

This man could work miracles. I have no doubt but he could have instantly cured all of these people. He did not often work such miracles. He did not want to create a specialness around him but to demonstrate the power of human love, that which was possible for ordinary people and not just saints. He wanted to empower people, not to disempower people who would feel helpless before his great mastery.

I don't know what happened to those people. We shared food with them. We sat by the fire for some time. The young woman who had been weeping in pain, lessened her weeping. She came and sat next to him and he took her hand, not as man to woman of course, but as father to child. As her pain decreased, she also ate. My guess is that all of them began to heal, if not in the physical body, certainly in the heart.

But for me it was a magic moment. It was the first time in that lifetime that I was not ashamed of my negative attributes, not ashamed of my fear or selfishness. Finally I could see these as expression of the human, know I did not need to enact them in the moment but could honor the human feelings and still come back and act from my highest self. I have thanked him often for being such a mirror of human divinity.

This was my first direct experience with this mirror which he provided. Because of what he taught, some people did not like him, people who were afraid and felt that power was their only path to safety. In that world the predominant teaching was an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. If someone attacks you, fight back. To that he said, “Turn the other cheek." People who were consumed by their fear could not turn the other cheek. They did not want to hear his teachings of love. They felt shamed by him and they felt rage at him for bringing such a teaching to the world. He knew this, yet in his great mercy, he still offered his truth out into the world.

Again, we were traveling, another year, another place. We had settled for the night in what was somewhat of a wilderness. Some distance away we could see the firelight of the village but we were higher up in the hills. It was close to dusk and we were eating our supper when people approached. They were rough looking men. I guessed from their appearance that they were brigands. They saw us gathered there and one of them recognized him. “Ah! It is the one they call the teacher, the rabbi." The one known as Jesus sat there with bread in his hand. He had been eating. One of this rough looking band came up and grabbed him by his shirt and snatched away the piece of bread. He didn't take it into his mouth as he would if he were hungry, he just ground it into the earth. “Aren't you going to stop me?" he taunted. “Turn your cheek, that's right; turn your cheek."

And then his comrades began pulling food away from the others. Now, it so happened that in this group there were several children because there were people like myself who sometimes traveled with their sons. I regret to tell you that the world was organized in such a way in those days that daughters did not accompany their fathers on such trips. An injustice your own times thankfully have righted. But there were boys there including my own son, Mark. They pulled the food away from us, expecting a response, trying to get us into a fight, but of course none of us would fight.

The leader of the men then grabbed my son, who was perhaps a lad of 10, literally lifted him off the ground. I tensed. I felt Jesus' restraining hand on me. Jesus rose and approached this man who towered over him, a very tall and hefty man, holding the boy up in the air. He looked at him and said in a voice whose mix of command and compassion I have never heard before or since, “Put him down." He looked at this man, not with hatred, which would have only pushed the man further; not with pity, which also would have pushed him further into darkness; but he truly radiated the divine essence out of him so that none who were there, either his followers or the brigands, could miss it. “Put him down."

Have you ever seen ice melt when you pour hot water on it? First it's solid, then it begins to form holes and decayed spots until it's gone. This man's attitude of negativity dissolved in just that way. I never spoke to him afterward, I don't know what he experienced, but tears came into his eyes. He put the lad down gently. Before he could say anything, Jesus said to him, “Do not be ashamed. Lifting him in that way was your fear and anger speaking. Setting him down was your love speaking. And you have just proved to yourself which is the greater voice in yourself." The man only nodded. And they went on their way.

I know that somehow that man had gotten in touch with the divinity in himself, that again this great Master had been able to reflect that divine essence out to him so that perhaps for the first time in his life he had been able to break through his own fear and anger and touch that divinity, that innate goodness.

Before him I saw grown men weep. Not all; some would push on with their anger. They were not yet ripe to open. For a mirror to work, one must be ready to look in the mirror. He did not manipulate people. He did not force anybody to be where they were not. But for all those who were ready to choose love over fear, he provided the mirror.

One more story. I pause, it is hard to choose, there are so many. One day as we walked we heard loud voices and the sounds of scuffle in the road ahead. We came around a bend and found a group of men beating up several other men. The group who was doing the beating was far larger, perhaps seven against three if I remember it accurately. He didn't pause. He walked up and laid a hand on the arm of one, the other hand on the arm of another. “Why do you beat them?"

“They stole from us. They came during the night and they stole from us and we have just now caught up with them."

Remember, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

“What do you hope to gain by beating them?" he asked.

“They are thieves, they must be punished."

“Why would anyone steal from you if he was not terribly confused or hungry, fearful or needy? How would it be to you," he asked, for these were obviously comfortable men from whom the goods had been stolen, “how would it be to you if you did not have money to feed your families? If you did not have warm clothes to wear? If you had been raised to hatred and treachery instead of kindness?"

Those who were delivering the beating paused a moment to listen, but not for long.

“But they deserve beating. It's their fault they are afraid and hungry. They too could be prosperous if they lived differently."

“Could they?" he asked. “If you grew up without a trade, if you grew up without kindness in your lives, where would you learn what you needed to survive?"

And so the talk went, back and forth. He kept inviting them to open their hearts in compassion to these men. “Is not their suffering enough punishment? They came to you hungry and when they leave you they will still be hungry. They came to you feeling as outcasts and when they leave you they will still feel that. Is this not enough punishment?"

There is that in every human which wants power, which wants revenge, for in these things we feel ourselves to be strong and therefore safe. And there is also in every human the heart of compassion. Without that compassionate heart we would not be human, but so seldom do we touch that compassionate heart, we may forget that it exists. Two thousand years ago, it was invited to the forefront with much less frequency.

In his face shined compassion for both sides, for those who were needy and indeed had done harm to others, and for those who were afraid that their power, honor and safety would be violated, that if they let some tiny niche into that armor, it would begin to disintegrate and their whole lifestyle that had established safety to their families and communities, that it all would rot away.

“You want to be safe; all men want to be safe. Safety cannot be built with a closed heart, a hateful heart. Safety can only be built on love. Only in your true love for these men is there safety." He was starting to get through to them.

“How can we love them?" they asked. “Our anger is our strength and our protection."

“Do you know these men?" he asked the ones who had been robbed.

“We have seen them here and about. They live in shacks far beyond the village."

“Do they have families?" he asked. Nobody knew.

“Do you have families?" he asked the robbers. A few of them nodded yes. “Do you have means for support?" Nods of no.

“Since they are in need," he asked those who had been robbed, “would you be willing to give of yourselves to ease their need? Do not just give them food, give them a sheep, a sheep ready to bear young. Give them seeds and a bit of fertile land. Help them build a warmer shelter." As if inspired, he asked, “Who will do this with me?"

Of course we, his followers, all nodded. Two and then a third of the seven nodded slowly. He was getting through to them.

“Let us go and see what they need."

Now, the ones who were being beaten were quite uncomfortable. They were proud. They didn't want charity. So he had not only to deal with those who were defending themselves with strength but with those who were in need and felt they could only meet their needs through strength.

Looking at these, he asked them, “How would it be if you had a way to feed your family?" There was some looking at the ground and shuffling of feet. “You know you are capable men," he told them. “Do you want to live your lives harming others? I do not ask you only to receive; to support yourselves means an end to harming others, a true gift to all." And on he went, inspiring them to be the best they could be. In the end four of the seven accompanied us to the country far beyond the village where these men lived. They talked to these men's children. They saw the squalor in which they lived. They were filled with sadness that they had so much while others suffered. In all of these men, the ones in need and the ones who had much, he awakened a sense of their own deepest truth, to live together in love and cooperation, to touch within themselves that which was innately fearless, generous and kind, to touch within themselves that which was fearless enough to give and to receive, for both are equally difficult.

The beauty of it was that they never knew that he did it. And in effect, he did not do it, he simply invited the situation where it might happen and trusted the best in each. Inviting kindness to the fore so the others could see it. This was a great talent of his. He did not do in such a way as to be a doer; he never claimed a credit. He did not want others to bow before him or worship him, he simply wanted to invite their loving hearts to open, wanted to invite them to get to know this divine essence of themselves. And because he reflected it so profoundly, you could not be with him and escape experiencing your own divinity unless you were quite deeply enmeshed in negativity.

I think this is what eventually led to his crucifixion. He inspired hatred as deep as the love he inspired, for those who could not see their divinity reflected in his divinity experienced terrible shame. I do not say that this is his fault in any way. Rather, he had courage to do what was needed in the face of human fear and confusion. He opened a door. Many beings were able to walk through that door; others were not yet ready. Perhaps they needed to experience that depth of shame and look deeply into the shadow within themselves before they were ready to express the light. Herein is his willingness to die, without blaming others but having already offered forgiveness and asked forgiveness. He offered his own life as witness to the inner divinity of every being.

So many of those who opposed him were amongst the most shaken by his death, for they saw that this direct expression of divinity which had walked amongst them now had ceased, and that they would have to work harder to uncover that divinity in themselves. They saw the terrible loss. Thus many who had opposed him came to mourn him when he had died.

I have known many great teachers in my lifetimes and I am grateful for what each of them taught me. But I have special love for this one, for this man known as Jesus, for it is he who truly taught me that I am divine, that there is that of the divine in everything. He awakened that knowledge in me. I hope my stories will more deeply awaken that awareness in each of you. You do not need his physical presence. This divine energy is everywhere. If you cannot see it in yourself, turn and look at your neighbor. Each being has the ability to reflect that divinity, but to reflect it, you must first know it in yourself. And you must open your eyes in order to see it. And then you must have the loving courage to make the choice to enact that goodness in the world, even though fear, pain, greed or anger are present. In this way you honor him and what he came to teach.

When he said, “The way to the divine is only through me," he did not mean only through his personal, living human presence. To what does “me" refer? Not specifically to Jesus the man but to this Divinity which he carried, which each of us carries. The path to the divine is through this Christ Consciousness or Buddha Nature and the revelation of it in oneself. Coming to know that divine essence of the self, you are forever changed. Your negative thoughts and emotions do not cease just snap! suddenly. But they begin to lose their power. Each time you say no to the negativity that has arisen in you, you plant a new seed, begin a new karmic path, enhancing the way of kindness and love, and leaving behind fear.

I wish to each of you all the joy and beauty and wonder of this path. Each of you is a vehicle for the divine to express on the earth plane. If I might use a metaphor, the sun cannot come down onto the Earth and touch the Earth with its heat and light. If the sun collided with the Earth it would destroy the Earth. The sun must manifest its energy from afar. It needs some kind of vehicle to express its power and so it moves its energy through the atmosphere as warmth and light. Each of you is such an expression of the divine, of the highest and most beautiful in the universe. Each of you has the opportunity to bring that true nature into expression on the earth plane, and because each of you is unique, each of you does it in your own way. In this way, you bring light where there is darkness, love where there has been fear.

I thank you for your presence and for allowing me to share these thoughts with you. It always gives me so much joy to speak about this Master and the memories I have of that lifetime. That is all.

C: Through the stories Aaron has told us, Jesus has become much, much more clear to me in this lifetime. As he has spoken this evening, Jesus taught through awakening the divine nature in those who experienced him. These stories do help to awaken our divine nature simply by hearing them, hearing the stories.

I wonder if Aaron has any thoughts about other ways of calling to Jesus, of connecting to that divine nature in the one who is still Jesus, which I understand is also simply calling to our own divine nature. I'm asking for Aaron's words. I wonder if he understands my question.

Aaron: I am Aaron. First, in metaphysical terms, this being is of the highest sixth density, and would be able to move into seventh density if he so chose. From this density he would no longer be available directly to beings. Seventh density energy, of course, doesn't go anywhere. It simply becomes the drop of water feeding back into the sea, and informs the sea. If you put one drop of blue water into a clear bowl, all the water becomes touched by that blueness. If it is a very large and powerful drop of blue water, it can have a tremendous effect on the water of the entire vessel. His loving energy moving into seventh density would certainly touch all beings, but no longer in a personal way. For this reason, he has made the choice to remain in sixth density and thus available.

Other great masters also remain available, such as the one known as the Buddha. Each of you reverberates most closely to certain masters more than others, beings who have touched you most directly in past lives. So you must turn to the master with whom your energy most resonates and pray to him or her for help, help in expressing most clearly your own pure awareness self, your own clearest and purest essence. You do not have to experience the master consciously. Some of you may, others won't. But I promise you that if you ask, the guidance will come to you in some form or another. And always it is the doing of these great beings. Your asking opens the doorway. You always have free will. You ask for the door to be opened. Then you have the free will choice to step through or not to step through. They hold open the doors. But you must ask.

In the asking you strengthen the part of you that aspires to goodness, purity and love but you must be very careful not to create a duality that feels shame for the shadow aspects of the self. You must embrace everything. No teaching of love can be enhanced when any one part of the expression is touched with hatred or shame. So you must open your heart fully to everything in yourself. This is the difficult practice, to deeply embrace even that which seems unembraceable. You embrace it with compassion and make the promise not to enact that negativity in the world but to move beyond it and cut your self-identity with it. When you seek to do this, these great masters will always be present and ready to help as will your own guides.

My deepest love to each of you. Please remember him as you celebrate his birth, and feel Love with you, always. That is all.