Q&A with Aaron–under the Catalpa Tree
June 26, 2008 (afternoon)
Emrich Retreat

Keywords: Guidance from spirit, pure awareness/dzogchen, karma, service, mental illness, Aaron, moral awareness (sila) 

Aaron:…Once again, we are sitting on the lawn under the Catalpa tree… Someone is flying a lovely kite, very beautiful and light. This kite has a looong tail and a 6-foot wingspan, like a beautiful bird. Pink, blue, and yellow, feathers. A very beautiful bird.

You asked if you could go first. Please proceed.

Q: I’m wondering about the nature of beings in the spirit world and how we can hear them communicate with us. I understand Barbara’s communication with you because she tells us of the chatter between the two of you. I’m not tuned in to the spirit world in that way at this time, and I wonder especially about spirit guides, what they do and how I can hear them.

Aaron: I understand your question. First, there are far more spirit plane entities than there are incarnate entities, of course. They are of different densities. Those of the higher densities have a much higher vibration. This is one of the reasons why many of you connect with a third density guide whose vibration is closer to yours. Higher but closer to yours, as opposed to a 6th density guide whose vibration is very high.

If you turn on the radio and you want to hear classical music and there’s a rock station on, you turn the dial, turning the radio until you find that specific frequency that you’re seeking. In meditation you tune by stating your highest intention and by the work of purification that you do with the precepts, with sila, and so forth, living your life with as much love as is possible and consecrating your body and all its voices to service to the light.

That way, when you open to spirit, you’re not opening to a low level guide, you’re not tuning to the static; you’re tuning to a high, clear frequency. So, you bring your vibration up to that frequency. That’s step one.

Step two is simply learning the process to hear. The door is always open from our side but you close the door. Some of you close the door because while you say, “I do want to hear,” you don’t really want to hear. In the beginning Barbara went through this quite a bit because I was pushing her to let go of old beliefs. There was so much anger around her deafness, wanting to blame, “Why me?” She had to get past that. And she was attached to that anger; it gave her some sense of power and control.

Once you are committed, know that you are willing to hear and are doing the work to raise the vibrational frequency (interruption, group is smiling at falling blossoms) beautiful flowers… (speaking to transcriber) I want you to visualize the scene–we are sitting under an old, spreading catalpa tree, a very large tree. How many feet tall is it? (Group: 20, 25 feet) I don’t know how to measure in feet, I would guess more like 35. Seems bigger. I’m thinking of how many of Barbara’s almost-6-foot height would go into it: one, two, three, four–more like 35, I think, and a wide span. It has beautiful thin, broad green leaves and it’s filled with light/white blossoms. And as the wind blows it’s dropping these blossoms on our heads. And behind us there is a mulberry tree also dropping berries on us! Reach out one hand and there’s a sweet-smelling blossom, and reach the other out and there’s a mulberry treat!

When people are committed to meet their guides, to open that door, the process that I recommend is this. Take the note pad, a good-sized notepad. Let there be a question in your heart that you have not been able to answer. Not the question of, shall I buy the yellow car or the red car, but a deep meaningful question; something that has you a bit stuck. Simply ask out the question. Then make the statement, “I am seeking the highest level guidance here that I can stably hear.” State your highest values, your commitment to the light, service to all beings, to Jesus or the Buddha, to love, and make the statement, “Whatever comes in answer must share my commitments, must be harmonious with my deepest values.” And then just sit.

The pencil is in the hand. Normally when you write, you think of what you’re going to say and begin to write it down. You think of it sentence by sentence. Here you just wait for an impulse to write and you start to write. Don’t read what you’re writing. Don’t edit it in any way; just write as long as the impulse continues. It’s what some people call automatic writing.

When the impulse stops and the pencil stills, then read. It may be a sentence or a paragraph or a page. If it speaks to your heart as truth and feels helpful to you, use it. If it leads you to a deeper question, ask the next question. If it does not feel consistent with your deepest truth, immediately say, “This guidance feels like it’s pushing me further into blame or negativity or fear. This is not the kind of guidance I seek. Thank you but I put this aside.” Tear the page off, re-center yourself, state your highest values again and continue.

Because certainly that which is negative may say, “Ah, here’s a chance to push our way in.” It’s up to you to say no to it, with love. You can invite that negativity to listen. You can literally say to it, “Although this is not the nature of guidance that I seek because it feels negative and fear-based, I do invite you to listen while I invite a more positive entity.” If it wishes to learn, it will stay. If it doesn’t wish to learn, it will go.

Finally you will have connected with something that speaks in harmony to your own truth. Ask it questions; continue the dialogue with it. Then, before you close, you might ask it, "How can I connect with you again? Do you have a name that I can use?"

With Barbara, for the first 2 months of our relationship, I simply used the name "Teacher." I did not want to create any stories of any sort about "Who is Aaron?"; just Teacher. She knew nothing personal about me at all. If this is what your guide chooses, that's fine; please accept that. If it gives you a name, then that will be a name.

The guide will probably then begin to give you guidance about how to further raise the vibrational frequency. The first guide may be just an intermediary step, one that can give you practices, ways of working with different light and color, breathing them in, raising the vibrational frequency, chanting, and so forth. As the vibration becomes high enough, you can connect with a higher level guide. When I say. “Higher level guide,” a guide of a higher vibrational frequency and perhaps of a higher density. But if you connect with a third density guide, don’t just shrug and say, “No, I want a higher level guide.” The third density guide may be perfect for you at that stage. The only necessity for you who aspire to increased positive polarity, is that it be a deeply positively polarized entity.

Q: Will you know what the density is?

Aaron: No. Not unless it tells you. You don’t need to know. Eventually if you form a deep bond with this being, it will give you some information about itself and level–simply human between lifetimes, third density, or whether it’s a higher density. You’ll pick this up as you go. It doesn’t matter. If you were in that university classroom and really stumped, and somebody came in dressed and looking like a teacher and said, “You look puzzled, what’s the matter?” you might discuss your question with this person. She gives you very helpful answers. Before you accept them, would you say, “Well are you a TA or an assistant professor or are you a full professor; do you have tenure?” You’d just use the answers. Do you really need to make sure your guide has tenure! (laughter)

Does that answer your question?

Q: Once again, what was the first question to ask the guide?

Aaron: Before you open to the guide, you speak your own deepest truth and make the statement that whatever comes in answer to your question must be harmonious with this deepest truth. When you feel its presence, ask, “Do you come…”–whatever resonates for you. Barbara asks, “Do you come in the highest service of all beings, in the service of love and harmony and in resonance with Jesus?” This is her own highest truth. And anyone who does not come with that intention is not someone she wants to listen to. Each of you will have to find the question for yourself, what makes the most sense to you.

Then, ask whatever question your heart held. For Barbara, the first question she asked me is, “What am I going to do about my deafness and this intense suffering?” And I said, “Let us look at the suffering and how it’s different from the deafness.” And she said, “What do you mean, different from the deafness?” So we began to look at the nature of suffering.

Q: Thank you.

Aaron: You are welcome. Others?

Q: If there is no self, who has the free will?

Aaron: Another way of asking this question would be, once there is complete realization, is there such a thing as free will?

Q: Excuse me for interrupting, but there is more to her question. “If all things are conditioned, aren’t our reactions wholesome or unwholesome, also conditioned and therefore no self, no choice.”

Aaron: There are physical, emotional, mental, and spirit bodies. Each body has several levels of transparency or heaviness. The physical body at the heaviest level is very different than the light template, or etheric template, of the physical body.

The mental body is the one that makes the choice. It makes the choice through it’s conditioning. Resting in awareness, where there is no self, there is no sense of an ego. This is a more transparent level of the mental body. I would not say there is no free will because free will is being expressed through the choice to rest in awareness, in a place beyond any notion of self.

Yes, it is all conditioned, but of the many conditions that come forth in any moment, which will be predominant? And even if a condition is predominant, such as the conditioning to protect the self, if the conditioning to do no harm is also there, what balance will be expressed? In a related question, what aspect of being accumulates the wholesome or unwholesome karma?

If the being resting in awareness was suddenly stung by a mosquito and slapped it, the sensation of the sting would have pulled the human out of awareness and the everyday mind would be reacting. Resting in awareness, one could not slap at a mosquito and kill it. One might feel the tickle and brush it off. Here there is the free will intention to no harm, held at the highest level of the mental body. It’s the awareness level, free of self. So you cannot do harm from the level of Awareness because most beings cannot fully rest there and still do harm.

Thus, the positive conditioning resides more in the Awareness mind, and unwholesome conditioning resides more in the every day mind.

This becomes a bit esoteric, but here we have the distinction between the positively polarized and the negatively polarized being. A strongly negatively polarized being can learn to rest in awareness, grounded in a negative impulse, service to self. It does not see all beings as itself, it sees a distinction of self and other. The further into negative polarity it goes, the more it moves into a service to self that sees swatting the mosquito as the highest good. Killing somebody who is disturbing that self, taking a knife and plunging it in, is seen as a wholesome act.

This is why these teachings traditionally were never taught without the deep grounding in sila. It’s only in recent years that pure awareness practice, dzogchen and the related practices, are taught, in the past few decades, outside of long-term retreats and to practitioners with a deep grounding in sila and commitment to non-harm. But the world is at such a place that beings need these teachings, and there are enough of you who ARE thusly committed to non-harm who can benefit by them. So the great masters have released the secrecy of the teachings.

When you are in a place of pure awareness, non-dual mind, just completely open, no self or other, then the highest intention is service to other rather than service to self; but there is awareness, there is no self or other–“I can’t serve another at harm to myself and I cannot serve myself at harm to another” For that small bit of the mental body that still exists at this very high level, resting in awareness, there’s no self making the decision but there’s still the mental body. I have a mental body that I’m using to talk to you, but there’s no sense of a self here. That highest level of the mental body makes decisions. It has free will. It depends; if you’re resting in that place of emptiness of self with positive intention and through deep commitment to service to all beings, then you cannot create unwholesome karma. If you are NOT thusly resting, if there’s a small sense of the ego present, that ego can create unwholesome karma. If you are not thoroughly committed to non-harm and service to all beings, you can create unwholesome karma.

My advice is simply to watch the depth of your commitment to non-harm, which is profound. Trust that commitment.

So who or what has free will? The free will is expressed less in the outer form or action, and more in the commitment to non-harm. Despite all your conditioning to non-harm, there is still the choice, to kill or not to kill the mosquito. The expression of free will, here, means the conscious overcoming of fear by making a loving choice. And this choice conditions the future moments. Another expression of free will in that moment would be the decision, upon contemplating the choice, to kill the mosquito. That movement can come fully from conditioning that is, reactive, but it can also come from a reflective place that chooses to separate and harm the other, rather than allow its own boundaries to be violated. Perhaps there is an encephalitis epidemic being spread by mosquitoes. One may feel that the more loving choice is to kill the mosquito for the highest good of all. The karma is less in what is done, than in what brought forth that decision, love or fear.

Q: The question came from E. She could not come so she sent the question.

Aaron: She will read the transcript eventually. My dear one, trust your good heart. I’m speaking here specifically to E, but to all of you. Child, you do not trust the love in your heart and you become so easily alarmed by negative impulses that arise. Begin to relax and know those negative impulses simply as conditioned impulses and trust the goodness of your heart.

May I see the question? Let me read the whole thing.
(reading)

“If all things are conditioned, aren’t our reactions, wholesome or unwholesome, also conditioned therefore no self, no choice.”

The question doesn’t quite make sense, in the ways that things really are. All things are conditioned in the conditioned realm, and the pure awareness mind touches on the Unconditioned. Therefore when we act from the conditioned self, even with very high intention to do good, there’s still a self doing it. Thus, there is both wholesome and unwholesome karma just in the “self.” The person who gives millions of dollars to relieve poverty and sickness, there’s great wholesome karma there but if he then looks around to see who’s noticing, there’s then that thread of self and unwholesome karma, needing to be somebody who does good. It’s far better to be somebody who needs to do good than somebody who does harm, and it’s easier to release that aspect of the self.

Karma is specific. The doing good is wholesome karma. The somebody watching and seeking praise, that’s unwholesome karma. It’s ego and fear. They’re both happening together in that same act. That doesn’t mean you do not act. If everybody said, “I cannot act until I can do it with complete clarity,” nothing would happen. One simply notices that there is some ego moving through and commits oneself to do the highest good one can, the highest service.

This constant mindfulness, and the intention to purify what is unwholesome, is the expression of free will. There is always a choice!

Consider the example I gave last night, of the man who has the heart attack and the doctor cuts open his body; what if the doctor was able to save the man? What if he held back because he had a brief thought, “I might be doing this because I want praise; therefore I can’t do it.” And he lets the man die. That is one expression of free will, based on conditioning. If he observes this impulse and says no to it, opens his heart to the aspect of his self that seeks praise, and overcomes the conditioning, to save the man, that is also expression of free will. If there is ego, simply be aware of the ego and strive to release the self-identification with it and do what you need to do in service to all beings. That is your free will choice.

Q: So the millionaire man for his ego, he could continue to give money away and watch where the motivation was coming from…

Aaron: Yes, one would highly suspect that there was multiple motivation and that he was not just doing it for praise.

Q: So the same behavior just always needs to be watched to see what the motivation is for the behavior.

Aaron: If he gave money away there could be ego, and if he declined to give money away there could be ego in it. It doesn’t matter. If there’s going to be ego, just watch the ego.

Q: But he could learn to give money away with no ego.

Aaron: Yes. And he could also begin to ask himself, “Am I giving them money in place of giving in a deeper place of myself? What if I went to the foreign country where I’m giving the money and actually brought myself into that situation, face to face with the suffering? Am I using the money to protect myself in any way?” So that’s another area where there may be unwholesome karma. No matter what you do, if it’s coming from a place of self, there’s going to be some wholesome and some unwholesome karma.

Just address the unwholesome habit energies. Watch how they arise. Begin to see the patterns. Offer the commitment to release those patterns. That’s all. On this plane, none of you are going to express your energy in perfect harmony all the time. Relax! Trust, trust your good intentions and do the best you can and be mindful when negative thoughts arise. That’s all.

Q: It seems that your description of ego is relevant to the idea of selfishness.

Aaron: Not always. Part of it is simply the conditioning, that you think of the aggregates as self. There is a fact, the fact that you are a mammal, and that the instinct is to protect this mammal.

(Someone points at something) He is beautiful and he is very peaceful with all these people nearby. He is used to the fact that he’s safe. For the transcriber, what we’re seeing at the edge of the mowed lawn, there is a large wild turkey walking very casually, not hurrying…Now he has run off, a car came and startled him with its sound and he ran off across the road. Why did the turkey cross the road? (laughter)

You are here in this mammal, animal, body. There are the instincts to self-preservation. What the human and only a few of the higher animals have is the willingness to give its life in service to another, which goes entirely against the instinct of so many hundreds of centuries. A mother animal often will defend its young. Occasionally we hear of a dog that gave its life for its master. And the human will give its life where it’s necessary to protect others, even unknown others.

This requires deep work with the ego and the reactive response to threat, to protect and overly cherish the self, separating the self from others. But you must not move into the idea that it’s bad to seek to protect the self, only that you do not protect the self at the cost of harm to others. Then one must also ask, we’ve been through this many times: suppose there was a gunman in schoolroom with a machine gun and 20 young children. Perhaps before you came in, he had killed one, and he said, “I am going to kill you all.” You heard him say it as you crept in the back of the room. Because you saw him kill the first one, you knew he meant it and that the weapon could do it. You have a gun. He doesn’t know you’re behind him. Do you shoot him in the back? What is for the highest good? What part of this is ego? What kind of karma is there? What if you don’t shoot him and he shoots all the children and then shoots you? What if you step out and escape? In what way have you participated in his harm by allowing him to do this? So we have to look at the motivation, the intention.

From my perspective, the one who at that point shoots the gunman, he’s still responsible for killing but it’s much akin to the doctor who cut open the chest. With the doctor there was no intention to kill. Shooting the gunman, there is intention to kill. There is a decision, “I am willing to carry this karma of having killed a living being because my free will says I must do this for the good of all beings.”

Q: Could you just shoot him in the hand?

Aaron: Are you a good enough marksman to know you will hit the hand? What if you miss? Is it ego or self-honesty to believe, “I can just hit the hand,” and is it ego or deepest truth to refuse to ill, even in this situation? There is no absolute right or wrong here, just deep awareness of intention.

Q: How does karma attach to that act of killing?

Aaron: There is the wholesome karma of risking oneself and being willing to suffer the consequences of one’s act to protect these innocent children. If there is any hatred of this man, then there’s unwholesome karma of hatred. If one is truly able to kill him with love, there would not really be unwholesome karma, but very few beings can kill with love in that situation, so there’s a willingness–this is part of Gandhi’s satyagraha, the awareness, “When I act in some way, I realize that I’m creating a challenge for you, and that you may act back, doing harm to me or others. And I forgive you in advance for that.” It’s a different aspect of satyagraha. It’s the expression of, “I recognize as I act that I am taking a human life, and that I’m making this decision simply based on my understanding of the scene in the moment. I am fully responsible for this act of killing. I pray for this being whom I have killed, and I pray for myself, for the highest good for both of us. I ask him, even as I shoot him, for forgiveness.” At some level the act is merciful because it’s very bad karma to shoot a room full of 20 children. You have prevented him from taking on that karma.

The hard part of it is, when we get into a war situation and people are convinced, “We are right, they are wrong.” Go off to a foreign country, pull out their heavy weapons, and shoot or drop bombs with the conviction, “I am right,” while the opposition has the conviction they are right. Much terrorism and horror has been enacted in the name of this self-righteousness. Each being must ultimately decide for itself and will bear the result of its actions. The soldier who goes off to what it perceives to be an unjust war because it has been thusly ordered and believes it should follow the laws, I can only quote those early classics in your country of civil disobedience. Is murder wrong because it’s against the law or against the law because it’s wrong? If it’s wrong, then no act of government can tell you that it’s right. In what situation might it be right to go to war? I’m not saying that one should never use violent force–violent is not the best word–use forceful action that stops another or even kills another. But you all must understand there will always be consequences. There are consequences whether you act or do not act.

We’re talking about the man with the gun in the schoolroom. What about a man who has pulled together a large army of fanatics and threatens mass destruction in the world? How do you respond to such fanaticism? Barbara saw a newspaper article some months ago about a general in Iraq working in a containment area where young people, many of them simply teenagers, had been incarcerated because they were deemed as dangerous. And they were trading each other information so at the time they were released, they would be much more dangerous. And he looked around at what was going on and decided that what they needed was not the harsh military conditions they were experiencing but kindness, decent food, a chance for an education. He changed the conditions completely in this area and now most of the ones who are finally freed from there seem to be going back into society and working toward peace.

Karma is very basic. Is the predominant motivation for your action one of fear or love? Probably there will be some of each but is the choice you’re making in that moment mostly grounded in fear or in love?

Q: This may be a little easier. Where is Aaron when Aaron’s not in Barbara?

Aaron: Everywhere. Like the catalpa blossoms falling.

Q: Aren’t you also everywhere when you ARE in Barbara?

Aaron: Yes, I am. I am unlimited just as you are, but you have not yet felt ready to acknowledge that unlimitedness.

Some of you have remarked that I’m such a nice, kind fellow, that I’m cheerful and helpful and I speak with a gentle voice. There was a situation many years ago when Barbara was experiencing a strong negative entity. It was…(there’s that wild turkey again, it’s eating the mulberries), She had been working with a group in which there was a lot of skepticism and negativity and it brought up some negative energy in her. And after the group meeting, there was a strong experience of a negative entity.

I asked her to work with it in a certain way. She was afraid and I said there was no need to be afraid and she said, “But it’s such a strong negativity!” And I said, “You are also a strong positivity, as am I.” And she said, “But Aaron, you’re so gentle.” I brought my fuller energy into her consciousness, and said, “What you experience of me is one one-thousandth of my energy. I’m vast. I’m extremely powerful. I am a high 6th density being. You could not tolerate 1/100 of my energy.” I brought that in for just a few seconds and it almost knocked her out. It’s the first time she’s ever feared me, but she realized she had nothing to fear because all of that is very deeply positively polarized.

My dear ones, you are also powerful. The more you ground yourself in positive polarity, the more you allow your own power to come in. Then you will know that you are also everywhere.

Q: (About the turkey) He is not satisfied with the mulberries on the ground, he is jumping up to get them off the tree!

Aaron: (laughing) That’s beautiful. He is jumping 2 or 3 feet off the ground trying to grab the mulberries from the bottom branches of the tree.

Q: There are plenty on the ground.

Aaron: He wants fresh mulberries.

So where am I when I’m not in Barbara? There is a Council, we call it the Brother/Sisterhood of Light, and I am a member of that Council. Since I have this vast energy, only a small amount which is incorporated in Barbara, even when I AM incorporated in Barbara, much of me is grounded in the gathering of that Brother/Sisterhood of Light.

Many of you have felt my energy at times. I can be with many of you at one time. Some of you report being in a situation where suddenly you felt my energy supporting you. I have no problem being many places at once. I am in everything and everywhere–in everything of positive polarity and love. Since I have no sense of a separate self, there is just this love–God expressing itself all around us–and I am part of that, as are you. You have yet to fully realize it.

Another question?

Q: When we ask for the highest intention, who or what determines what is the highest intention?

Aaron: Your heart determines. What is your highest intention right now, for your life? You don’t have to say it out loud, you can if you wish, but just think it if you wish.

Q: To bring love and light into the world.

Aaron: Beautiful. Just hold that intention in your heart and let it guide you.

Something I’d much appreciated when we brought groups to Brazil. The Entities ask people, before they come up for their first meeting with whatever Entity is incorporated that day, to write out the intention for their visit. People sometimes start with, “To get rid of my back pain.” And then before that first meeting they think about it and they say, “To resolve the karma involved in the back pain, too.” And then they think about it a bit more and realize, “To open my heart with more love to the back pain while it exists, as well as releasing it and understanding the karma.” And then they start to think, “There are so many beings in the world with back pain–to use myself as a model to help all beings with pain, not just back pain but any kind of pain.” And then they progress into, all they can say when they stand there in front of the Entity is, “To bring love and light into the world.”

The Entity is aware you have back pain. The Entities know you would like to be healed. The question is, have you matured to that place where you’re able truly to wish for the highest good for all beings? Then you can begin to release the karma that holds you in individuated patterns and suffering. When the wish is only for one’s own self and self-benefit, the Entity will not turn his back, but the Entity will steer that person toward understanding that this pain is shared by many in the world, so deeper healing involves opening one’s heart to oneself and all beings who thusly suffer.

I honor your intention.

Another question?

Q: I would like to know how Barbara felt when Aaron first appeared.

Aaron: Bewildered.

Q: What did Aaron feel like to Barbara?

Aaron: I would have you ask Barbara that. When I leave the body, perhaps she can tell you that.

Signer?: You can share what she saw?

Aaron: She was very stuck. She had been doing vipassana practice for years. She was misusing the vipassana practice subtly as a way of trying to move herself away from the object that was creating pain and trying to create an artificially peaceful, still space.

She erroneously believed that if she only were not deaf, if only the deafness could heal, then there would be no more suffering, so she was not looking at the big picture. She understood that she was stuck. She prayed for help. She did not have the background that all of you have. She had never sat in a group listening to a spirit being channeled. She had never even read channeled material. She had heard of it. She knew it existed. She didn’t say, “I believe” or “I don’t believe” in it, she said, “It doesn’t concern me.”

So when I first appeared, I presented myself in a human image because I felt it would be easier for her to accept something that looked human than simply swirling light. Of course, I am not the image that I presented. I chose a past life, the lifetime in which I was the being Aaron, a lifetime 2500 years ago to 2000 years ago. Yes, Aaron lived over 500 years, as some beings did in those days.!

Aaron was a wise and loving teacher. He lived for many hundreds of years. He knew certain energy practices to perpetuate life, to heal the body. He let himself look his age–not to look over 400 years! But 80, 90, 100 years old. Long white beard, deep blue eyes. And because he was a very clear being, he radiated light. This was the image I gave her.

She was sitting in meditation and there was my image. And she thought, “Am I hallucinating?” She got up, she walked out of the room, got a cup of tea. She came back. I was very careful not to push my energy at her, just to rest in her presence until she was comfortable with my energy, and to send love to her. She felt that love and finally said, “Who are you? Why are you here?” I said, “You asked for help, and I’m here to help.”

For 3 days she did not talk to me. I sat there with her each time she meditated. She was aware of my presence and it took her 3 days to be ready to say, “How are you going to help me?” I simply said, “Let’s suffering. Let’s look at the nature of the suffering.”

Q: She was not afraid?

Aaron: It took her 3 days to be ready to trust her experience. She just sat with it, reflecting, “What is this that I have called forth, and can I trust it?” She held her highest intention for the highest good of all being, and asked whether some kind of demon had appeared. What was I? Feeling my love surrounding her, and trusting her own highest intention for non-harm, she decided to try it and listen to me.

As we conversed and she did the work and found healing and growth with what I was teaching her, her trust deepened. All along, I asked her to judge only the results of our work together, not to be concerned with the newness of the form. She saw that the results were good.

Friends began to ask her, “Can I talk to him?” She said, “I don’t know. I’ll go into meditation and see.” They said, “Can you channel him?” “What is channeling?” I said to her at that point, “Just listen as you do to me and say aloud what you hear me say.” So she began to channel. She had no intention to become a medium but she did have intention to serve beings to the best of her ability. And she saw from the help that she was finding in our work together that this might be helpful to others. And as it proved to be helpful to others, she allowed herself to continue it.

Q: You have shared, or rather Barbara has shared, that she knew that she was not hallucinating and she felt clear about that. I am curious about whether you feel there are mental illness diseases on this plane.

Aaron: Certainly. There are beings that are deemed mentally ill who are hearing a spirit guide but sometimes they’re hearing a negatively polarized spirit guide that’s trying to build up their self-centeredness, trying to push them further into fear. Sometimes they’re really hearing a positively polarized spirit guide but they’re not stable enough to hold it; their personality is too fragmented. Usually such a highly polarized spirit guide would guide such a person to help them stabilize the fragmented personality. But many of who are labeled as mentally ill are hearing negatively polarized entities. And there are beings that are hallucinating, who believe they are hearing something that’s not there. All of this is possible.

The question is how to know the difference. I hope your medicine will advance enough one day, to be able to trust a team like me and Barbara to interview such a person and give feedback to the doctor. Of course, I have no trouble telling whether they’re imagining it, working with a negative entity, or working with a positive entity. If it’s a positive entity, how can we support that work? If there’s a fragmented personality seeking to grow and connecting to a positive entity, how can we help them stabilize the personality and do the needed work? So there are many people needlessly in mental hospitals because they have not received the proper guidance. And there are people who are passing themselves off as mediums to whom hundreds of people flock and pay thousands of dollars, who are working with very negative entities in very self-centered ways.

It’s all about your discernment, your deep commitment to what is positive. If most of what you have heard here this week resonates with you and you have a deep commitment to love and light, to service to all beings, then you can trust that. If you came to a place where, instead, there was a spirit talking about the need to control others, the need to have power, and saying that many beings are stupid and so we must run the world, such words would not resonate for you. You’d say, “No, this is not how I perceive it. I think I’m hearing something negative. I need to turn my back on this.” Trust your own discernment. This is part of your free will and your growth. Nobody’s going to give you all the answers. It’s about you and your own discernment, free will, and growth.

Q: One of my intentions in coming on retreat was to develop enough backbone to admit to other people that the things that I hear here are worth talking about. I was very, I guess ashamed, to share that. When you tell people you’re listening to a medium…

Signer: So you’re saying you feel ashamed to talk about it…

Q: I did…. A full-grown psychologist talking about mediums and to spirits….

(back-and-forth between Aaron, signer, and Q, can’t hear/follow clearly)

Q: … because I see you in your heart and your funnybone!

Aaron: B, you have swallowed part of your truth for many years. I would go so far as to say your physical health has suffered from the holding back your own truth. Share it. Remember the statement, “Cast not pearls before swine.” Be careful with whom you share it, at least at the beginning; choose people that you feel will have some receptivity, as opposed to people saying, “You’re crazy!” You don’t need to hear, “You’re crazy.” Find people who are congenial to your own spiritual insights and share what you know, because you have a lot to share. You are a powerful teacher, if you will allow it to come forth. You will not necessarily be sitting in front of a group of 100 sharing it, one-to-one or -two is fine.

Q: They are hard to find.

Note from Barbara while reviewing the transcript. The questioner and others might like to read the book: Extraordinary Knowing; Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, PhD, Bantam Books, NY, March 2007. The following paragraphs are excerpted from the foreword of my new book:

In her book, Extraordinary Knowing, Dr. Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, a well respected psychoanalyst, speaks about coming to know something in a non-traditional way and the discomfort she felt in telling others of the experience. When she gathered a group of other professionals to talk about such experiences at a meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association, it turned out that most of them had had similar events that had touched them deeply but of which they had never spoken to others. She says, "We suffer from an underlying cultural disinclination for publicly acknowledging certain highly subjective, highly personal experiences." Our society debunks such experiences as delusional because they are not provable within the tools of our current science. Yet each reader has had the experience of knowing who was on the other end of the line before picking up the phone, or of thinking of a friend not seen in years just minutes before meeting them on the street.

Mayer goes on to say, "What happens when you have an anomalous experience, but you're afraid to acknowledge it? If you admit to the experience, you run the risk of being disbelieved or thought crazy. It's a profoundly destructive conflict, one that stops us as a society from looking for ways to discover and develop new knowledge. And one that stops us as individuals from embracing our reality."

Aaron: I don’t think so, B. Perhaps among psychologists!

Q: Among the people I hang with, they are hard to find.

Aaron: There must be journals that speak to the overlap of spirituality and psychology. Simply write a letter to the editor speaking something of what you wish to express and invite others who share your view to communicate with you. Look on the internet. Begin it with writing in that way. Start to connect with a network of those beings who can hear you and who can also teach you. Teaching and learning come together as you open your heart to others and they open their heart to you. There will be mutual benefit. Don’t let fear stop you.

There is need in the world for what you propose. Barbara had a close friend who as a classical psychoanalyst. He had known her for many years, knew her quite well. When she first began to speak with me and then to channel me, she wrote a long letter to her friend, describing what she was doing and said, “What do you think about this?” This is a man who taught psychoanalysis at a big university in New York City, and was highly respected. He said to her, “From a psychoanalyst viewpoint, I’d have to say you’re experiencing a schizophrenic episode, but from a personal standpoint I’ve never heard you sounding saner. Keep going! This is wonderful!” The discussion with him, the correspondence with him, and her visits, really changed him. He began to consider a very different possibility than he ever had before and actually bring it into his training material.

Offer it out.

It looks like it’s time to stop. Rain is coming down… raindrops falling on the head.

(recording ends)

Copyright © 2008 by Barbara Brodsky