October 10, 2011 Monday AM, Seattle Retreat

With this group of mostly Venture Fourth students, we are gathered around in a circle, to discuss a transcript with Aaron.

Barbara: I'm reading from the transcript, August 22, 2011, private, at the very beginning.

Barbara reading Aaron here, not channeling:

Aaron: ...I asked (JO) if he was experiencing the akashic field. He asked me more fully to explain the experience of the akashic field.

Here Aaron is summing up. He had been talking for half an hour and we had not recorded it. Then he asked J to go to the cabin and get the recorder, and he's summarizing.

Aaron: ...He asked me more fully to explain the experience of the akashic field. Was it the same as rigpa?

Rigpa is consciousness, citta. The akashic field is an object, an object of consciousness. Normally rigpa holds a field of expansive awareness. The akashic field can bob up and down into that field of expansive awareness...

In other words, the akashic field is an object. Resting in rigpa, many objects come. One is the akashic field. It is not a fully mundane object, but it is still an object.

Aaron: ...but here we are choosing to focus on just one object.

So, when the akashic field as object becomes apparent, we can hold a focus on to the akashic field. Like a zoom lens, big picture and then holding on to that object, centering attention on that object of the akashic field.

Aaron: The vehicle is a mix of rigpa, pure awareness, and mindfulness. I reminded Barbara and J of a self-retreat that the two of them did over a decade ago in upstate New York...At that retreat, I had instructed Barbara to do dzogchen practice in the daytime and then, late in the afternoon, to go into the meditation hall and do vipassana practice. This was in the early days when she still separated these two practices. The dzogchen created a lot more space. When she closed her eyes with the vipassana practice, light and space were the immediate primary objects. With these as primary object, the vipassana practice led her into a much more spacious place. It led eventually through those weeks into some very profound experiences-- cessation, and such.  

BB: I'm skipping here a bit, as Aaron says so. “(paraphrasing text) If you've had these deep vipassana experiences, that's fine, but don't strive after them. They'll come eventually.”

Aaron:  ...what you are after here now is to see the objects to which there is still attachment or aversion, with which there is still karma. To see the intention to release the karma around those objects, and to use this mix of awareness and deep mindfulness to see into the whole structure that's creating that karma.

Aaron is summarizing..

Aaron: I used an example of ponds that are fed by many streams. Some streams carry pure water and some carry more polluted water. The streams themselves come from various sources, such as snowmelt and rain, pure springs, a mix of other smaller streams. If you want the water in the pond to be pure, you will pay attention to the inflow into the pond, to what feeds it.

With your consciousness at the present moment as the pond, what is feeding that consciousness? We're not trying to get rid of the unwholesome streams; rather, we are looking to transmute them. What makes this practice unique is the transmutation aspect of it. Where there is an experience like apprehension, a kind of tension-- (giving an example).  That which is aware of tension is not tense. Within the vipassana practice, we see tension and the non-tension. We give loving attention to the tension, holding space for it. We also observe with gratitude the presence of non-tension. We do not yet experience them as simultaneous, only that we choose the non-tension and let go of the tension.

Here, within the akashic field, we see the ever-pure water flowing into the pond, as per my metaphor, and the polluted water, and we transmute the polluted water. As long as you are trying to fix something, you are creating more tension. When you hold space for it, you are not yet transmuting it, just allowing it gradually to dissolve. When we work within the akashic field, we literally transmute whatever has arisen that has any negative expression. We transmute the negative expression into light.

Aaron is asking us to pause there and ask, are you all with him so far? He says he thinks what he said is pretty basic.

Q: It's fairly easy for me to sense the polluted stream but transmuting into light, I don't understand that.

Barbara: Okay, Aaron says we'll pick that question up. Let us read just a little further. He says this transcript (that I am reading) is a summary of half an hour of his talk to me and J. Let us read through another few paragraphs of this and then skip a bit to something related.

Barbara continues reading from transcript:

Aaron:  ...We transmute the negative expression into light. This is the function of this work with the three channels...

The experience of the channels is not necessary, it's helpful. It's helpful because within that central channel is the possibility to rest in awareness, strong rigpa, and deep mindfulness, which is not often present with rigpa. The light and bliss channels on either side help to support that space... If you do not experience that central channel, it's okay... The experience of these three channels merely makes it easier to work in the akashic field.

I noted just now to Barbara and J that it is not essential to work with the togyal practices, and I'm probably presently not going to take it further than we have because they're so dependent on Tibetan visualization and empowerments. Rather, we are explaining a parallel path that goes as far as the trekchod practice and knowing these 3 channels, knowing all the body's channels and energy, as help to accessing the akashic field, and then working within the akashic field.

This is just a short summary.

Barbara: The difference between trekchod and togyal. We ask, what is it? It's cutting through the illusion of a separate object, immediately saying, “No, this loud sound is just a car backfire, has arisen out of conditions. There's nothing separate here.”

Q: Do we actually ask the question?

Barbara: You actually ask the question. You've worked with “Flight of the Garuda” a lot, and they ask in that, what color is it? Does it have a separate color? Is there anything separate?

So the trekchod practice is designed to cut through the illusion of separate objects and help us open more strongly into the awareness that everything is arising out of the Unconditioned and passing away into the Unconditioned, including the whole myth of the separate self....

Q: I guess I don't really ask the question, I just acknowledge it and come back.

Barbara: Is there an internal asking of the question? I think that you've worked with it to the point that you're not pushing the object away. So at some level, consciously or unconsciously, the question is being asked because you're not dismissing the object and you're not getting lost in the object.

Q: In my instructions in trekchod, the guidance is to simply look to the essence of what has arisen.

Barbara: That's why the “what is it?” question is so helpful.

Q: And that is empty?

Barbara: We get to the point where we don't have to ask anything, where there's simply noticing that one has gotten pulled out of rigpa through thought or sensation or through something. And there's nothing solid there, so we come back to rigpa.

Q: So I don't rest in rigpa but for a minute or maybe five minutes at this point in my practice, but it seems like there are times when everything is quiet and it's like I can see things beginning to bubble from a field.

Barbara: Aaron is saying, I'm paraphrasing him, that because of the depth of your energy work practice you are much more grounded already in the akashic field. You're doing a lot of your energy work practice from the akashic field and accessing the akashic field. It's not then necessary in terms of akashic field work for you to stabilize rigpa, although that's something you may want to do as an adjunct separately. But at this point, don't worry about it. He's talking about it with us, with me and J here, because that's been our route to the akashic field, but it doesn't have to be your route.

Q: What is togyal?

Q: When I rest in pure awareness, I see arisings as stuff. Is that trekchod?

Barbara: Let me answer what is togyal and then let Aaron come in. Togyal is the higher level of dzogchen practice. After trekchod is well established, it's working with-- I don't really know how to define togyal. I haven't worked with it in much depth in any traditional sense. It's working with energy, these channels... It's a way of jumping over the whole cycle of awareness and objects, awareness and objects, and leaping into the place beyond them. It's a very direct path.

When trekchod or vipassana mindfulness are solid, there's strong awareness of the spaciousness between objects and the unconditioned nature of that spaciousness; one experiences mundane objects just popping out like popcorn. One doesn't have to get involved in them at all. But, with the image of a still body of water, each place where the popcorn pops, disturbs the water. Instead of trying to quiet the water, one leaps over the disturbance to the place where the water is smooth and is perfect, and in a sense chooses that reality. It's not so much choice as one knows that as the ultimate reality, and that the rest is just all in process happening on the way to getting to that ultimate reality. One knows that patch of disturbed water will settle and just lets it be and leaps over it.

If there is the distortion, a splinter in the finger with pain, on the relative level one has to pull out the splinter, wash it off, and so forth. On another level, the splinter never happened. One simply moves to that place.

Aaron talks about this not in the Tibetan tradition but as an Australian aborigine, his experience with a broken leg. Somebody fell into a hole, broke their leg. Everybody would gather around him and just sing it whole, and it could happen in moments. Go into the place, leaping over all of the preliminary things and right into the place where the leg is and always has been whole. We don't have to fix it. We don't have to do anything with it. But through singing we attend to it, inviting it to resettle into the expression of its innate wholeness

Q: Leaping into the ever-perfect.

Barbara: Leaping into the ever-perfect but never as a way of avoiding the experience of the present conditioned experience.

Q: Seeing the appearance as the ever-perfect.

Barbara: Seeing in the appearance  the potential of the ever-perfect, but also if there's, for example, the broken leg, severe body pain, one cannot choose to see it all as the ever-perfect in order to avoid the experience of the pain; there's got to be spaciousness for all of it. So it's a very inclusive practice.

Okay. Aaron is going to come in.

(Aaron incorporates)

Aaron: I am Aaron. We're bouncing off this old dialogue with Barbara and J mostly because there's a small group of you here discussing these questions that Barbara and J were asking in August on the lake. But I don't want to restrict us to this material, I want to address your questions and speak freshly to them.

Barbara has read some background to get us started, and now I want to read about 5 paragraphs and then pass it to you for all of your various questions and comments and sharing.

(Aaron reading)

One of the skillful techniques taught to vipassana practitioners is to move your energy elsewhere, to let go of the apprehension, and rest in that which is not apprehensive. Very gradually this dissolves the apprehension because it's no longer being fed, but it does not allow you to use the energy of the apprehension to help it transform itself... Now we seek to transmute the karmically conditioned apprehension.

J had been talking about the apprehension he felt a day or two before. He was camped by the edge of the lake and a bad storm came up, rain pelting down, a very strong wind gusting over the lake; it was threatening to blow away his kitchen house, a gazebo or screened dining canopy. It was large, perhaps 10 x 15 feet, with a table in it and his camp kitchen and so forth. So he was on his hands and knees holding onto it, afraid the whole thing was going to blow away, that all his camping equipment would be destroyed. He believed that would end his retreat because he had no other place to prepare his meals and do his meditation.

Fear came up, apprehension. He spoke of how he moved into rigpa and saw how this apprehension had arisen out of old conditioning. He worked with vipassana to come to a place that had real equanimity with, “If it blows away, it blows away. I'm doing the best I can.” But he could see the habitual patterns of feeling out of control, of fear, and he didn't know how to use that energy for transformation. It is at this point in his story that we started to talk about working within the akashic field for that transformation.

Aaron reading again...

So here we seek to transmute the karmically conditioned apprehension by going into the experience of apprehension from a place of emptiness. Seeing it within the akashic field as simply all those streams coming down to the pond, conditioned. One does not then simply shift to where the apprehension is not, but finds within the akashic field the simultaneity of apprehension and non-apprehension. It's an experience more of energy and light. It takes you into the higher-self experience, the pure spirit experience, where there is not and has never been fear; fear is simply seen as energy, and the energy that remains when it's transmuted helps you move deeper into the vastness of non-contraction and non-apprehension, with love.

This is how it feels, then, to work within the akashic field. You are familiar with the Tai Chi pushing arms exercise, and many of those reading this have done this with Barbara or J. Somebody pushes you and instead of pushing back, you relax the arm and let their energy go past. But you do not completely release their energy; you then move your arm gently over and give it back. They push again. Again, you let it go past, moving your arm in such a way that their thrust carries them past you, and then gently you give it back. In a sense, that's an akashic field experience. We've never talked about it that way, but you can see that you are transmuting their push into light and energy, which is all it ever was, by not contracting around it, and then you are feeding it back.

Translating this, when the everyday mind pushes the pure awareness mind, the pure self, if the pure self gets caught up in it, it pulls itself into contraction. It's no longer pure self. When it experiences the push of the everyday mind, it moves back into a pure awareness experience, refusing to be touched by the everyday mind. It moves into an uncontracted place, but there's no healing of the everyday mind, there's simply escape from it. In this new approach, we are experiencing a push from the everyday mind, seeing the karmic conditioned nature of that push, and moving into the akashic field. Intention chooses not to escape that experience, and not to fix it, but simply to be present with it,  transmute it by that presence, and then bring the energy into the, let's call it the pure Self, and into that big mind experience. Finally all that's left is big mind.

The everyday mind may be darting around in there, and each time it does, there's an “Ahhh” spaciousness, and filling the contraction with light. Coming back to the 3 channels, if you're able to, drawing that reverberation of tension literally into the mix of these 3 channels, where it is necessarily purified and resolved without losing its energy, the transmuted energy, then, adds to the energy of the big mind, pure Self.

I welcome your comments.

Q: This sounds like my understanding of Tibetan tantra, transmuting everyday experiences into a pure realm.

Aaron: I think it's close, yes. Each of you will have your own pathway to understanding this. Each of you has the experience and capability to understand. Q, try to experience it through your energy work.

Q: When doing energy work and there is stuff that is not serving the client's purpose, something that is not negative energy but it doesn't serve a healthy purpose, and it can be pulled out or off or released, we ask for its transformation to serve its highest purpose, but usually it goes to earth or water or tree. And in a sense, we give it to nature to transform, though I don't really perceive separation from nature but that it is better equipped to transform. So I don't know how to do that in here.

Aaron: The point you're making and it's correct is that YOU are not transforming, no “you” in there. You are seeing the distortion, which is no other than the innate perfection, expressing itself differently and in a seemingly distorted pattern. And instead of trying to fix it, which gives it more energy, you're simply holding the space for it until it dissolves itself and begins to reflect the innate perfection that it always has been. You are asking nature,” which is simply one aspect of the greater self, to assist.

I want to use a very simple example here. About 15 or 16 years ago a large tree branch came down on the path between Barbara's cabin and the lake. She used pruners to cut the small branches off the path, to open the path, and left the big log and smaller branches there next to the path. For years, as she walked down the path, it disturbed her. She felt like it destroyed the beauty and symmetry of the path, that there was this place where there was this big dead piece of wood right next to the path. And I kept saying to her, “Let it be, let it be.” There is a policy in her nature preserve not to cut dead wood unless it's on a path. She wanted to go to the Board and ask, “Can I cut it?” Let it be. So now, 15 years later, it's all decayed into a very rich soil. That's all it ever was. Now lovely green things are shooting out of it.

That's what you're doing when you go into the akashic field. I speak of this later in this transcript, of the power of intention. You hold your intention for the highest good but you do not always know what the highest good is. You can just hold the intention for the highest good and trust your co-creativity with the universe to manifest that highest good. Then you see this, let's say beautiful, like the pictures Barbara showed you, beautiful mirror clear lake with some snarls of debris floating on it. Are you going to go out there in a polluting motorboat, hissing gas all over the lake, and try to grab up these weeds that you see floating there, or are you just going to let them be? Eventually they'll dissolve.

But you have to make a decision based on your intention. For example, there is milfoil in Barbara's lake and it is choking the lake. They have released some tiny insect called weevils that are eating the milfoil. It's succeeding. The milfoil is dying out but now there is dead milfoil floating on the lake. So Barbara goes out there in her boat and just lifts dead milfoil gently off the lake and brings them to shore to the compost pile.

This in a sense is an external playing in the akashic field. Can you feel the difference between, “Get rid of that!” by going out there with a motorboat or some other polluting machine and pulling up the milfoil by its roots, which would only spread the seeds, or letting it be, letting the weevils do their work, and then when there's dead milfoil, simply lifting it out?

You're attending to. You're going into, you're seeing that it's all perfect. And yet that perfection can be enhanced by your intention. You're seeing the vision of the innate perfection of the lake, crystal clear water, and the distortion that will inevitably express itself.

Taking this back to an emotion, you're in a very peaceful state. I'm using an image from Barbara's experience. She was paddling down the lake in her kayak and came around the bend. It was dawn. The lake was absolutely mirror still. She was in a deep meditative place, heart open, feeling deeply connected with everything, and as she came around the bend, she saw something big floating on the water. And as she approached it, she found it was a big dead stag that somebody had shot, probably an illegal hunter. The stag had rushed off into the water not dead and then drowned, and now it was floating ten feet from the lakeshore.

A sense of so much wrongness filled her. Rage at the hunter. Looking at what had once been this beautiful creature, living, vibrant, and a sense of the break in the field through its violent death. Immediately a fix-it energy came up in her, “What am I going to do?” And it was floating in her swimming area!.

She realized that she had to just sit there. She floated on the boat for about an hour, holding her heart open to the animal, to the hunter, to the lake, until she could see the whole thing free of distortion, part of the life cycle, and all conditioned by various karma, some of it unwholesome-- the hunter's lust to kill-- but until she could see the whole thing and hold the whole thing in her heart.

At that point it was clear to her what needed to be done. She alerted some of her neighbors. They came down and pulled the beast back down the lake with a rowboat to the dock where a truck could be backed up, and pulled it out. I don't know where they took it, but took it wherever it's appropriate to dispose of a dead carcass.

Because she was able to hold that field, she was able to help the others not go through that “Oh!” anger, outrage, and so forth, but just to hold blessing to this animal, blessing to this lake, and gently pull it out and move it to an appropriate place.

So when you're working in the akashic field, it has a direct reference to your everyday world. It's not just about some energy level field but about everyday life and how you respond to everyday life.

Something very similar could have happened if she had gone into her vipassana practice, just breathing, finding equanimity. But she would not have touched the energetic level of things. It would not have been transmuted in this way. She did not know at that point (this is ten years ago),she didn't realize she was working in the akashic field, only that she needed to go beyond the vipassana practice and into a place where energetically she could hold the whole scene and bring transformation. It's a wildlife refuge. People are not allowed to hunt in those several hundred acres.

Q: Is that the principal, holding the whole scene energetically?

Aaron: Holding the whole scene, yes. You must see the disturbance in the field and the whole field so that you recognize why it's a disturbance in the field. Know how the field  expresses itself before and after that disturbance, which is what you're familiar with in your energy work. When there's a disturbance in the body you feel how the energy was before that disturbance and how it will be after that disturbance, and then you invite the disturbance not only to dissipate but to lend its energy to the transmutation back into its wholeness.

Q: The disturbance to lend its energy back into wholeness?

Aaron: You don't want to just get rid of it; it's energy. You use that energy to transform the object back into re-expressing its wholeness.

Q: Yes, okay.

Aaron: (to different Q) You expressed some very powerful experiences of the akashic field to us this morning. Are you willing to share them with others? I think it would be helpful for people to hear that.

Q: I had two experiences, or two ways of working in the akashic field. The most powerful happened yesterday. I was doing vipassana meditation and suddenly a <lost as mic is transferred to Q, a panel?> appeared without me looking for it.

Q: How did you perceive it?

Q: As if it were another object arising in the field of awareness. Visually, like a straw. So I decided to meditate on it, what the heck! As I did it lit up like with white light, and I could see it came up behind the eyes, almost like a cross full of light and energy. I continued to meditate on it and as I did, I saw it was a doorway. So I set my intention to enter the doorway.

As I did, I felt a profound sense of the sacred, like, this is a very sacred doorway. I continued simply with my intention to enter the doorway. The light and energy grew until that's all there was. Beautiful... And then I thought, I will jump! Then my ego was trying to do something. So I let go and jumped. I let go and entered into a beautiful, loving expanse of spaciousness, and heard the words, “primordial purity”, the All Ground.

Then I saw a Buddha who (smiling) just happened to choose to manifest out of the All Ground for that moment. And I asked, “Who?” And I heard, “Amitaba Buddha“. Then, as if he was welcoming me, I also saw three Buddhas, one above the other two. I rested there in all this love and spaciousness.

Then Aaron said, “We can help people from this place.” So I asked, “Who needs help?” and my mother appeared. I saw her as energy in the field, so I asked for an energy that would serve the highest good for her and all beings. I saw a joyful, loving energy appear next to the energy that was here, and just watched.

A little while later I was resting in the field and suddenly it expanded into a place of great love and light, and I could hold that place at the same time that I was holding the conditioned realm. Like Aaron said, in both places at the same time. (demonstrating with hands and breath, tapping noises) But this (tapping, meaning the conditioned) was not separate from the love and bliss. So I was all things but able to be in both places at the same time. I burst into tears and gave thanks for the gift of that experience.

Aaron: I think you, Q, for sharing that. So here we have another example of, I don't even want to call it working, but playing, in the akashic field, experiencing the akashic field, and the co-creating in the akashic field.

(To another Q) I don't want to put you on the spot, here. I'd simply ask you to consider if you would like to share any experience where you have worked energetically and sensed the akashic field and the distortion, and how that has felt. You are not thinking of it in terms of akashic field, perhaps. But I think you could translate some past experiences into saying, “Oh, that was the akashic field.”

Q: I am so amazed by what you (Q) experienced, I feel speechless. That is so amazing, to be in both places, and also to have that experience with those guides or the Buddhas. That is a very high realm.

I have done shamanic journeying into the akashic field through a door, which is a traditional way to go. Some tradition uses the cedar tree but not the American cedar. The Middle Eastern cedar is a different species. I know that's just a detail. But in going through that door, I felt I was following an ancient tradition. In that space, I didn't see all light. I have had that experience of being in a ground of love and light, but this was different. It was like a purple, inky darkness with dots of light everywhere. Like stars but not. And I journeyed there to find a tool that would help me work in the akashic field without, like it can make you sleepy a little, and also I wanted to be grounded.

So I journeyed there and received a gift from an Egyptian, like a goddess, Nephthys. I was given a dandelion. I didn't understand at all. I came out of this and then it was explained that a dandelion can take roots in anything, even concrete. It's very grounded. So my work has mostly been working not so much with the higher guides from the akashic field but the animals and plant spirits in the akashic field.

I will share this one thing because there are so many things that come out of it. And in the shamanic tradition they become journeys with lots of symbols. But I was once working with a client who, when I went in there, we were at her heart center and it had a really hard crust on it, very protected. So we worked to just bring love in, and it expanded. But there was still the crust.

So I had worked with a guide before and just invited that guide. It was a horny toad lizard from Texas. It really needs a lot of protection and armor. It is very important to its species to have that. So we, me and the client, asked if horny toad lizard would like this armor, this crust. And it was so happy! And took it right off.

She felt this opening. However, this was only one thread of her healing. The rest is a strong karmic thread that keeps putting that armor on until she lets go of that. Now, I would love to know how to support someone to resolve their karmic learning...

Aaron: This is part of what we're learning here, how to be in the akashic field, supporting others, aware of their free will to maintain or release unwholesome karma, and able to see the karmic threads and support their release energetically when they, of their own free will choice, intend that release.

Q: But they have to choose.

Aaron: They have to choose. I want to come to a story. Some of you read this in Barbara's last journals, the man in his 40's who was lost in the Gulf of Mexico. Did you read that part in the journal?

Barbara received a phone call from a woman saying her nephew was missing in the Gulf of Mexico; can Aaron help? Barbara recoiled from that at first, thinking, “I'm not a lost person finder.” She told the woman on the phone, “We'll see. I'll talk to Aaron. We'll see. Nothing comes (to me) immediately but I'll call you tomorrow.”

So I said to her, is your highest intention service to all beings and to the alleviation of suffering? Is this man probably suffering? If you can do something to help, are you going to withhold that help just because you have the image, “I'm not a lost person finder”? Part of her was saying, “Rubbish, I can't do that.” And I said, “You don't have to do it, but you would need to participate with me. If you're willing to participate, that's fine. If you're not willing to, that's up to you.”  She said yes.

She went to sleep. She woke up at 4am with a very clear image of this man floating in a small dinghy. She could see that he had a small tarp pulled over him and there was some water there, and he looked okay, not in terrible shape. She said, “Is this real?” And I said yes. I asked her to go into the akashic field, feel his energy and feel the whole movement of what brought him there. And she could feel fear, anger, confusion. At one level, an intention to survive, at another level a lot of confusion. But the intention to survive was strong.

Then she was ready to fully participate, and she asked me, “Where is he?” So I asked her to find a good map of the Gulf of Mexico, and I pinpointed where he was. I was able to look in the akashic records and see what had happened to him, how his boat had been taken out from shore, where his boat was headed, and where he was in a small dingy. Later I saw his boat (without him) on shore on the Yucatan peninsula.

So she called the woman and conveyed where the boat was now and where I had located that dinghy. They found the boat exactly where I said it was. Unfortunately, at that point a big hurricane was brewing and they were not able to fly airplanes over where we had seen him in the dingy. Within that next 24 hours he disappeared.

Now, this was his choice. At some level he co-created to be captured, to be dropped off, to have that done at the beginning of a hurricane. If the weather had remained calm, he would have been found. At some level, his choice was not to be found. Whether he died or was simply washed ashore, we do not know. I must observe his free will decision to disappear, not to look for him further. If he wanted to be seen, he would have remained visible. Even if he went undersea I would have found that energy that he had been, and known that he had drowned. So it was his free will choice to remain invisible, to disappear.

The point is, this whole thing could be seen within the akashic field; there must always be respect for free will. And of course it was a learning experience for Barbara whose skeptical side came forth saying, “I can't do that.”

Within the akashic field, all of the various currents are coming together, and every single current and its origin is visible, and how it interweaves. It's like seeing a vast tapestry where the harmonious threads, or an occasional disharmonious thread-- you see the disharmonious thread and then you have to ask whether that is to be left there or whether it can be invited to remove itself and be rewoven with an harmonious thread. If the disharmonious thread needs to remain there for whatever reasons, you leave it alone. You're constantly attending to all of these currents, participating in the interweaving, everything interconnected.

But YOU cannot do it. You must move into that place of, let's call it emptiness of self, the place of no-self, of pure awareness, of higher self. THAT is what must attend. If there's any ego in it at all it will just create another ripple in the fabric.

Q: When I work with this energy work anymore, I don't really do anything, I just report, narrate, to the person what is going on and they think I am doing healing and I am not.

Aaron: Nobody heals. If you had a very densely woven fabric with some distorted threads, tangles and so forth, and you breathed space into it so the threads all moved apart, space... and then the person-- when it's all knotted they can't do anything, but when it moves apart, the person sees that there's the ability to untangle this thread. They can choose to do it or not.

When you work in the akashic field what you're really doing is holding the space, holding open the possibilities.

Q: With intention?

Aaron: With intention, with intention always to the highest good and recognition that you do not always know what is the highest good. As with this man lost at sea. We can't say what's the highest good for him.

I want to tell a story here but let Q speak first.

Q: I would like to check on what I did this morning. I was resting and I became aware of a young wounded part of myself. I felt love, compassion. Initially I held him gently, supportively, communicated feelings, “Okay, I am here for you.” He began to settle. I began working with tonglen with him and all others who were suffering in the same way.

In my experience it was a powerful healing process, sending light to darkness. And it was as if that revealed the light IN the darkness. From your perspective, was I working in the akashic?

Aaron: Yes, absolutely. You don't have to know you're working in the akashic field to be working in the akashic field, but the more cognizant you become of it, the more aware you become of..., - I want to use this fabric illustration again. Loosely woven fabric. If I am standing here and you're standing there, and I take a step onto another strand of fabric, it all runs through and will be experienced over there. Everything is interwoven. -

As you become more conscious of your work in the akashic field, you become more conscious, for example, that the healing that you experienced for the child you were, for that aspect of yourself, radiates out to millions of beings. It touches everything.

Barbara had an experience the first year that she met me consciously. She was working with the enormous suffering and isolation she felt from her deafness and the sense of abandonment, why isolation caused the feeling of abandonment and so much suffering. In meditation she began to see a young child, perhaps a 6 year old boy, standing on a rock, lava flowing past him on all sides. He was burned. He was above the flow of lava but had bad burns on his body. He was crying. He was alone.

I told her to go to him and hold him. She said, “How can I go to him? How can I hold him? He's me.” She understood it was an aspect of herself. She didn't know if it was a past life, a karmic ancestor, or what it was, but she went to him, as I asked her in meditation. She held him in her arms. She comforted him. He was clearly dying but she held him as he died.

It transformed her entire experience of being isolated and abandoned. It stopped the fear of it because instead of dying alone and frightened, he died embraced in love. What she did not understand then was that she touched that experience for millions of other beings as well. By being able to hold this being, she shifted something, transformed terror and grief in the akashic field into love, and made that accessible to others. So this is another way of working in the akashic field.

Q: Can you do this without a body?

Aaron: Of course. I am constantly within the akashic field. It's much easier without a body.

Q: It's nice to know that. Can we after we die also...?

Aaron: Let me explain something a little bit further. As humans you have free will. As spirit, I cannot interfere with your free will. I can work easily within the akashic field, but as a fully liberated being, I no longer have those old traumas. I no longer have my own ripples of disturbance to work with, and I may not work with your ripples of disturbance without your invitation.

Group: You're invited! You're invited!

Aaron: (lost to laughter) ... right now! Why do you think I'm here as your teacher! (laughter) I'm working within the akashic field and supporting you.

Q: I'm always asking for help!

Aaron: Barbara picked up a book on her way out the door as she was leaving for the airport. She was reading one book and she was ¾ through it and she thought, “I better take a new book so that I'll have something to read on the airplane.” It's a book she first read over 20 years ago, The Fifth Sacred Thing. It was a lovely book to her then, but she interpreted it more as science fiction than reality. She loved it. Rereading it, she's realizing what this book is about is a, it's a fictional work about various healers in a would-be future world who work within the akashic field.

Q: By Starhawk, who's a shaman.

Aaron: If you've not read it, I recommend it. It really will resonate for you.

(session ends)