May 2, 2012 Wednesday Afternoon at the Beach, Emerald Isle Retreat

Akashic field; lifejacket story; karma and release of karma; right/ left brain; free will; intention; two of Barbara's past lives related to karma;

Includes Ariel (Aaron's teacher and a very high 6th density energy) starting on page 10); earth history; path to liberation

(sound of surf and wind, speech not always clear or audible)

Barbara: Another beautiful day. The tide is perhaps just turned and starting to go out, or else perhaps it's just finishing coming in. I'm not sure which; maybe just high tide. Here is Aaron.

Aaron: My blessings and love to you all. So I think we're getting closer to an inside understanding of the akashic field. I was thinking of the image, earlier, have any of you ever played 3D tic-tac-toe? The board has three levels. So there's a regular tic-tac-toe possible on one level, but you place your marbles not only on the top layer but also on any layer. So you can get tic-tac-toe in any direction. So you're always looking in all dimensions, all directions. This is a very small example of the akashic field, everything moving in all directions.

Another example. If you add colored dye to water, it tends to slowly drift downward. That new dye that you put on the top influences everything from the top down. And then you put another color of dye in and that changes it again, and again. If we had a form of dye that also moved upwards or sideways or horizontal it would be a better example. This gives you some sense of the hologram of the akashic field.

Now, anything that enters in any place in that field touches everything, eventually. In a simple example, if I kill a mosquito that's on my arm, that mosquito can no longer be food for the bird. The bird may die of hunger. Lacking that bird, certain plants that are pollinated by that bird may die. When the plants die, all those who feed on those plants will starve, including the one who killed the mosquito.  And so on, one act spreading out.

What we're talking about within the akashic field are not just what we might call chance happenings (although nothing is chance, of course), but acts of volition, acts of choice, and how your choices constantly move outward and touch everything.

There's a useful example of karma that sometimes is given, as cattle that are huddled by a gate in a pasture. (something going on, laughter; Aaron is asking if the outer covering over the legs may be removed) Lifetimes in which I was a woman when it was wrong to expose the legs!

When the farmer opens the gate for the cattle to come and feed, if there is a boss cow, that cow will come first. All the other cows will back up. This is the predominant cow. He always shows up first. If there's no boss cow, the ones closest to the gate will come through first, edging the others aside in their eagerness to get to the food. If there's no one close to the gate and no boss cow, then whoever first hears the gate open will come through first. “Ah, the gate is open. Food.”

No boss cow, no one close to the gate, but one cow begins to hear it each day, and to anticipate by showing up close to the gate. And he starts to boss the others away, so this one soon becomes the boss cow. A certain kind of karma develops. If two cows are vying for that position, they'll fight with each other, or one will give way.

These are all simple examples of the flow of karma and the building up of karma. Now if you find yourself in the human equivalent of that cow situation, let's say up there with T's (cook's) good food. Barbara had the thought as she came to get her food, “Oh, the guacamole is all gone! I should have come sooner!” For Barbara that's not going to lead her to show up 5 minutes early for the next meal, crowding others out, but you understand the metaphor there. If one is not mindful, one will invite oneself 5 minutes early and 10 minutes early and the line will start at 5 o'clock, people standing there with plates, saying, “I'm going to get the first choice.” Then you build up a certain grasping kind of karma, self-centeredness, and so forth.

Or you might see that inclination in yourself and say, “No, I will purposely let everybody else have their food first.” So now we have a roomful of people at 6 o'clock and everybody is saying, “No, you, you first.” Some people will have walked out of the room.

It's not necessary to go to that extreme. The action in itself is not as important as the impulse behind the action. If it is driven by greed, it will plant seeds of greed, if not attended to, and will grow and grow and grow. If the action is supported by simply creating harmony and letting things flow, then that more wholesome karmic seed will grow.

If you plant a more wholesome karmic seed, to invite everybody to get their share of the food, the habit will flow in a harmonious way. If there is a subtle strand of, “I am least important,” or “I have greed and I'm going to conquer this greed by holding back,” that karmic stream will grow. So you may choose to be the last one because you're trying to conquer greed or out of joy to see others eat.  You create a different karmic stream because there is true generosity there also. What are you doing here? What is your highest purpose here?

We start with pure awareness. You cannot enter the akashic field from the place of conditioned mind. No matter how present you are, this observer in the conditioned sense cannot move into the akashic field. There has to be the spaciousness of pure awareness. Big mind! The conditioned mind can take a mundane object. It cannot take the akashic field as object. It can take mundane objects within the akashic field but not the field itself.

Within the akashic field I see the spaciousness in which certain things like jellyfish are cast up on the beach. I hold that whole process with spaciousness, sending metta to the jellyfish, knowing at some level they chose to allow themselves to be swept up on the beach. Perhaps it is time to move on to a new incarnation. But I do not herd jellyfish up on the beach or keep them in the ocean. I simply observe the process. From the perspective of awareness, there's nothing that has to be fixed. However, if a swimmer in trouble calls for help, I reach out for that swimmer. This is not fixing but co-creating.

From the perspective of mundane consciousness, I can see into that slice of the akashic field that can see the mundane object, jellyfish being tossed up on the beach. I might even be able to reach equanimity, because equanimity is both mundane and supramundane. But I can't see the bigger process because I am caught in the conditioned mind and not in the big mind.

If somebody slights me, says something abusive, or turns their back on me, the conditioned mind will observe the process and might be able to move into a space of forgiveness or metta around that process. But it's not yet within the akashic field. So it may observe the feeling of being slighted, a slight contraction, and intention not to enact that contraction. All this is happening within the vipassana practice with mindfulness in the conditioned realm.

Then I open into the akashic field. I open into awareness and awareness chooses, consciously or unconsciously, to take the akashic field as object. And I begin to see all the ripples of different beings slighting other beings, energy inviting and pushing away, and how painful that is, all over the world. From that place within the akashic field I can then observe any participation in those patterns in this human and simply let it go. Truly let it go. Just say, “I choose not to participate in this energy pattern.” That doesn't mean that it won't come up again but the habit starts to release..

Please draw a line here in the sand, a fairly deep line. One flat line. Okay. Now, certain conditioning comes up and you react. Deepen the line. And again. The dry sand does not cooperate so much, but you get the idea. The indentation deepens with repetition.

Then the same thing happens, but you're resting in awareness and you see the catalyst come up. Ahhh. Opening into the akashic field. Here is this again. It's like gently scooping sand back into the trench. It's not filled in yet. There's still a bit of a trench. If the next time it happens there's reactivity, you dig it out again. But then you see, halfway through, “Oh no, I'm repeating this whole pattern.” Stop. Open into spaciousness. And the sand fills in until eventually it's flat.

Q: Why don't we get it? I understand what you're saying, but when somebody on the road goes like this (abusive gesture) because I've done something...

Aaron: Let me give you an exercise, all of you, for the rest of the day. Those of you who are right-handed, I would like you to only eat and brush your teeth and do what you normally do with your right hand, with your left hand the rest of the day. Those who are left-handed, only use your right hand. It's a very simple thing. Watch how hard it is. It's so deeply ingrained that you use this dominant hand.

Eventually if you pay attention, you WILL get it.

A friend who went to India and who was left-handed was in the habit offering things, “Would you like some of my food?” -offering things with his left hand. And this is not done in India. You only offer with your right hand. You wipe yourself at the toilet with your left hand. Only the right hand offers. It took him several weeks to get over the habit of offering with the left hand because it was so deeply conditioned in him. “I'm left-handed. This is what I do.”

Multiply that a thousand-fold by all the little inclinations that come up over so many years, so many lifetimes. It takes a lot of mindfulness and strong intention to get it. When you move into the akashic field and watch, you really see the damage you're doing by holding to these old patterns.

Wtach very little things. Somebody who bites the fingernails, gets infection in the fingers because they bite them down to the quick. Why don't they stop? It's just so deeply embedded. Expand that to the kinds of habits that come out of fear and self-protection, pushing people away emotionally, energetically. Separating yourself. Putting on armor. Most of you have heard my lifejacket metaphor. Anyone who doesn't know that metaphor? (a few) 

We come to the lake on a hot summer day. Your friends are all out there swimming, but you don't know how to swim. I hand you a lifejacket. You put it on. I ask you to climb down the ladder and see how it supports you. It does. A little bit timidly, but you begin to doggy paddle out to where your friends are. “This works. It supports me.” All summer you swim with the lifejacket. Meanwhile, unconsciously you're picking up some swimming skills.

Ten years go by.  Every summer you strap on this lifejacket. I return ten years later and see you putting on this moldy, waterlogged lifejacket. “What are you doing?”

“You gave me this ten years ago. I'm putting it on so I can swim with my friends.”

And I point out, “It's waterlogged and rotting. It doesn't support you anymore. You know how to swim.”

“Oh no I don't. My lifejacket holds me up.”

So I ask you to climb down the ladder as you did 10 years ago, let go of the ladder, and see if the lifejacket brings you up to the surface. Instead, of course, glug, glug, glug, down you goes. You're pulled down underwater, you swim up, and you realize, “I do know how to swim, and this is waterlogged.” You climb up on the raft, and I say, “Okay, now you know. Take it off.” Not so easy, is it? Even though you know it's waterlogged and drowning you, it's still hard to take it off.

So the work has these various parts. Seeing how things are and knowing the reactions to how things are; knowing resistance; bringing in kindness and spaciousness.

The vipassana is sufficient but the other tools are very helpful. The whole Earth is going into a fast spin today, as we move through this transition into a higher vibration, into 4th density, and it needs more and more of you who are more awake, who have released a lot of these unwholesome tendencies, and are able to function at this higher vibration and non-dual consciousness.

Therefore, new teachings are being offered to you. The dzogchen teachings have been around for many, many centuries, but it is only in the past 20 or 30 years that they have been made available to people because the idea before was, these are dangerous, and unless people are ready to use them, they can be misused. Resting in awareness, resting in rigpa, you are out of the karmic field, literally. So the idea is, if somebody wants power for a self-centered reason and can master these practices, they can move into rigpa,  do great destruction and be karmically not responsible for what they have wrought. It takes great mastery but it is possible.

But the great dzogchen masters together have decided the world needs these teachings now. It's time to let people practice with it. And we hope to invite people who are sufficiently responsible and grounded in sila to use these teachings in a responsible way.

In a small group, Barbara said, “Trekchod is the first level of the dzogchen practice. It's akin to vipassana in that you watch objects arise and solidify, then inquire after them, “Is there anything solid here. What is it?” Based on your prior practice, you realize, no, it's just the arising of conditions. And like the balloon being popped—poof!—it dissolves. Often here at the beach we've had a bottle of children's bubbles. We watch them float up in the air and, pop, pop, pop, dissolve.

The togyal practices are the second level of dzogchen. Those of you who worked last summer with Barbara and me worked with the text Circle of the Sun, --a restricted Tibetan text, restricted in that it may only be offered to students by a Rinpoche or lama who has worked with those students directly on those practices. Barbara could not make that text available to you because she is not authorized to do that. But what she did was to work with the text with me and to type out notes and email those notes and smaller portions of the text to many of you.

The togyal practices are mostly energetic practices. They don't speak specifically of the akashic field but of working with the energy channels, the central and side channels that come up through the crown of the head and behind the eyes, and of feeling any distortion in them.

Basically this is a way of working within the akashic field. It's one entrance into the akashic field, which is helpful from the Tibetan viewpoint where they do many visualizations and empowerments. But you don't do visualizations and empowerments in your practice. So, beyond a certain point of introduction, the specific togyal practices are less useful to you. I'm not saying they could not be useful. If you went to an extended Tibetan retreat working with these practices, certainly you might find great benefit. But with your backgrounds it may be better to have a different entrance into the akashic field.

What we're trying to do here, then, is provide different entrances into the akashic field, helping you to access that field just by sitting in spaciousness, through your understanding that you must be resting in pure awareness to take the akashic field as object. You can take the mundane aspects of the akashic field as object with mundane consciousness, but Pure awareness is a needed foundation to open to the entirety of the Field.  

If you had a deep pure lake with some scum on the top, the human eye can see the scum on the top. Consciousness, seeing consciousness, can take that as object. But you can't see into the wholeness of the lake and all the influences that are creating the algae scum, and the pure water underneath, and the beaver dam off to one side, and the mud and silt that are blocking the outflow, and so forth. You need to be able to go through the surface, and you can only go through that surface with pure awareness. Otherwise it is like taking only the top layer.

How many of you have done some formal dzogchen meditation with me, Barbara, or John? Almost all of you, perhaps all of you. Some of you more than others, but you've all done some. Just sitting, eyes open. Mouth a bit open, ahhh.... Breathing out beyond any boundaries of self, and breathing the whole universe back into this body. Letting go of edges. Letting go of any idea of me and mine.

And then from resting in that place of awareness, arises the conscious or unconscious decision to take the akashic field as object. When I say unconscious decision, perhaps as you sit in that spaciousness and some insect lands on your arm, there's contraction. At some level there is noting of the contraction, as in the trekchod practices. What is it? Just contracting. Touching, contracting. Anything there that's not an expression of the divine? No. Letting it go.

But at another level, you note that that karmic tendency is still there. No matter how often you've done this, you contract when the insect lands on your arm. Then you can either come back into mundane consciousness and work with the Four Empowerments, metta, or a related practice, or you can move into the akashic field, moving back into awareness. At some level of conscious intention, choosing to work toward the release of this impulse.

Seeing all the different ripples of disturbance that reveal themselves as these  habits, seeing the whole field, opening to it in such a spacious way that the whole impulse to contract releases. It may not remain released when you come out of pure awareness. Coming back into everyday consciousness and the bug comes back, contraction. But if you keep practicing it, eventually that contraction resolves itself. And the ability to stay in Pure Awareness for longer periods, to live from that space, does develop.

So we work in this way within the akashic field as a way of helping you to do what you were already here to do, to find more freedom from those impulses, karmic streams, etc., that have limited you and perhaps sent out at least energetic ripples of disturbance, not reacting to the anger, even breathing skillfully with it, but still, angry energy pouring out.

I've said so many times to you, it is not bad to be angry. The work is simply to note that anger has arisen, to take care of the anger and not enact it in the world. At the same time, you don't want to spend the next 10,000 lifetimes doing that. Perhaps you're ready to find a much deeper release for some of these heavy emotions and old karmic patterns, to find that degree of freedom.

That is by way of background. Let me take some questions and then let's go into our exercise stage.

Q: How rare is this group?

Aaron: Each of you is unique and special!

Q: How many groups like this are there on the Earth?

Aaron: Many, each working in their own ways. Our vocabulary might be entirely unintelligible to them. There may be a few groups, I don't know, who have similar vocabulary. I'd feel certain there are. There are other groups working in different ways, with different guidance. At the Casa this is what the entities there are teaching too. It's a completely different vocabulary, but what they are teaching is the release of old karmic tendencies.

Q: Altogether, more than one million?

Aaron: I am not good with your numbers. I would guess yes. There are probably many millions. Not necessarily working in groups; maybe individually. Many millions through the planet who are deeply committed to moving into the highest possible vibration so as to support the earth plane in its transition into 4th density. And in that transition, to support the well-being of all beings, to shift the earth plane out of any negative polarity.

The Earth will either become a negative 4th density planet or a positive 4th density planet. Which do you choose? If you continue with your own karmic tendencies, saying, “It doesn't matter, it's just one mosquito I'm slapping,” or one middle finger in the air, but multiplied by millions, this is empowering negative polarity. Are you ready to stop empowering negative polarity by taking responsibility for your own karmic streams? And doing it with love, never with fear. With kindness, with gentleness.

Other questions?

Q: You talk about the karmic consequences of killing a mosquito. What about the killing of people that we are constantly at war? Many of those men and women feel they are doing this for their country.

Aaron: I'm going to return here to the story that John told here the other night, the Tibetan monk who had picked up weapons. He made a specific choice. In a sense, he was willing to take the karma onto himself of killing because he felt that that was the only way to prevent further killing.

An example I've often used. A man with a machine gun has broken into an elementary school classroom. He shot the teacher, shot one child, and is holding the gun on all of these children. Says, “I'm going to kill you all.” And they're five and six year olds. You are in an adjacent room.  You know he means it. He's already shot two people. You have a gun. He doesn't know you're behind him. Are you going to shoot?

If you shoot and your intention is fully free of anger and for the highest good, well, it's not kind to let somebody kill people. That's bad karma for him. In a sense, you're helping him as well as all these children. But you are also responsible for any killing derived from killing, even if the intention comes from the most loving and pure place. There may be a certain wave of feeling power afterward or feeling grief. Whatever it brings up in you, you are responsible for that karma. If you don't act and he kills all those children, you're also co-responsible for his killing all those children.

People through the millennia have tried to ascertain what the best way is of handling violence. This entity that Barbara is has through many centuries been deeply committed to non-violence. She's seen two past lives that have been helpful to her. One was a lifetime in which she was a Native American in a violent tribe that took over the land of the tribes around them, took captives, killed people, and so forth. They had captured an enemy, a “spy.” They thought he was spying on them.

The one Barbara was had just come of age into what was considered manhood. The enemy was tied to a tree and she was given a spear and told, “Now is the time to prove your manhood. Kill him.” And she looked at him and said, “No, I cannot do that. He has done me no harm. I cannot kill him. He is not MY enemy.” She was banned from her tribe. Her father was the chief of that tribe and she was to become the chief after him. But she was banned and went out to live in the wilderness.

All her life she had hunted. (When I say “she,” the one that she was.) But she saw that if she could not kill this man, she felt she also could not kill food for meat. She had to become a vegetarian. She didn't know how to survive that way. For ten years she struggled with this way of living and this morality. Finally she understood it was okay to take an animal that presented itself to her and thank it for the gift of its life to sustain her. But in the beginning she would not kill an animal.

She would not kill to protect herself. A bear came after her. She escaped into a deep crevice in the rocks, but the bear scratched her belly. Through weeks of fever, this wound festering, she looked at the whole question of, what does it mean to be violent? She began to find what she understood to be an inner violence, self-centered, service to self, and that this was the core of it, and that was not yet purified and released. She saw that could only happen by presence, compassion and forgiveness. Service to others includes service to self; it cannot leave out the self. She was trying to do so. But service to self does not include others and she  at that time had no compassion for service-to-self. The lifetime has more detail to it beyond that. But in that lifetime, she began to understand these issues.

There was also a lifetime in which she was a Tibetan monk, the abbot of a monastery. There were invaders who were taking over villages, demolishing monasteries. The people of the town asked her (the monk she  was), Would the monks (for whom she was the abbot) pick up arms with them to defend the village? And she said (again, when I say she, this monk that she was), she said, “No. I cannot do that. But I will defend the village in my own way.” She didn't say that immediately. She needed to meditate on it. When she understood what she needed to do, she invited any monks who could not join her in what would almost certainly result in death,  to leave and go up into the hills where the people were escaping from the village.

She has a very clear image of a parapet, a wall, a raised flat area, in front of the monastery above the village, the village just below and the monastery just above, and of hearing the invaders are coming, and seeing them ride up on their horses. This one she was and the other monks whom she had trained began to dance on this parapet, their big horns playing music and the monks dancing a very strong dance. The invaders, of course, began shooting arrows at them.

This one understood from a past life how to energetically encapsulate the arrow so that when it punctured, the damage it was doing did not immediately spread through the body. So she was able to hold the energy of those mortal wounds and literally to keep dancing. From down below the invaders could see a man, a pin-cushion, dancing. The enemy decided, “This village is protected by demons!” And they fled. And as soon as they disappeared over the horizon, she could not sustain that energetic encapsulating of the damage, and the body just dropped dead. But instead of picking up arms in defense, this was the way she chose to do it.

I'm not saying it was wrong for the monk John described to pick up arms. He made his decision as he felt he needed to and based on the skills he had. Perhaps he didn't know how to do what this Abbot did, and it's easier to encapsulate an arrow than a bullet. If people are there with bullets, machine guns, bombs, even, there's not much way you can protect the body and keep it going.

I'm telling you this because there are many choices. We look at the karma and understand the choices. And then we make decisions based on what we understand at the moment, without a fixed view, willing to open ourselves again and see, what are the new choices now?

In this lifetime, some of you have heard Barbara describe a Freedom Ride in which the bus was partially overturned. People were injured. The people who forced the bus off the road and into the ditch were on top of the side-turned bus, throwing bricks through the broken windows. Then the National Guard came and started shooting at the people on the top of the bus, or rather, over their heads, and they fled.

Barbara was left sitting on the bottom of the bus with many others, nobody seriously injured, but asking herself, “If my goal is peace and harmony, in what way did I co-create this mayhem?” And she realized she could not participate in that kind of non-violent demonstration again until she understood.

It's all karmic choice and karmic learning, and there's no right answer. A being learns at his or her own pace for his or herself.

Let me add one thing. Each of you who are exploring the ways of peace within yourself and within the world, have been doing this for many, many lifetimes, just as Barbara has. This is certainly not your first lifetime looking at these questions.

Q: So as I hear you, Aaron, talk about this, starting with Q's question, I have this sense of, how could I possibly do this? The sense of fear, the sense of being overwhelmed. And in doing that, I was able to see the fear and sit with it as you talked. But nonetheless, it still seems overwhelming to me, even in light of the words you just spoke about us having been doing this work in one form or another for many lifetimes.

Aaron: I am Aaron. Son, the first step is learning to love yourself. You have been doing this for as long as I've known you, step by step by step, breaking down the old walls of self-hatred, self-condemnation, unworthiness, and so forth, and opening your heart to yourself. This is all you are asked to do. As you heal yourself, you heal the world.

There's the old story of a boy walking down the beach picking up all the starfish that have washed ashore and throwing them back. And a man says, “What are you doing?”

“I'm throwing them back in the water.”

“But there are thousands of them. How can you make a difference?”

“I made a difference to that one.”

That's it.

We think of the big picture to understand the big picture, but as humans, it's important to just be where you are. You are not working within the big picture, you are working within this moment. What is it that asked to be healed? To be loved? To be opened to in this moment? That's it. And you're doing it.

“Overwhelmed” is just a weapon of what I call the loyal opposition, of negative polarity. Just say no to it. “No, thank you. I don't pick up your overwhelmed. I don't pick up your shame. I don't pick up your helplessness. No, thank you, negativity. No thanks.”

Q: We've all been aware of the sense of oneness, the sense of all that there is, for a long time. The akashic field seems quite similar, and I'm curious about how they're different, those concepts are different from the concept of the akashic field. Concepts of oneness, all that there is.

Aaron: There is oneness and there are the unique expressions of that oneness. The experience of oneness is sometimes entered into through your meditation practice or even just resting and present. It shows you the unification. The akashic field shows you all of the various elements and streams that participate in that oneness so that you can cherish each one in its uniqueness.

So now it is 3:30... (discussion of what to do next)

If any of you wish to do so, simply later after we finish here, sit here in the shallow water. The tide is receding. Sit so you're just in an inch or so of water, so when the waves come in they don't come up higher than your waist. And when they go out, you may be on bare sand. And simply experience it. Ahh.. Do the pure awareness practice, resting in awareness. Just be present with the water, the air, the sun, the sand, and let the ego self dissolve. Let the body dissolve. But if the body remains, enjoy the sensations of the body. Become the air, become sun, become the water, become the sand, and go to the place where they all come together.

That's all. For the rolling, what I want you to do is, simply lie down at the top of the hill, parallel to the top of the hill, and roll down the hill. When you reach the bottom, however you land, just lie there, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes. Feel the warmth of the sun on you, feel the breeze, feel the heat of the sand under you.

What we are doing in this exercise is watching how awareness can observe the ego self without being locked into identity with the ego self. So that the whole experience of rolling and the elements becomes the object upon which awareness shines its light, without pulling away from the body and spacing out into some ahhhh... grand space. Be really present in the body, but without self-identification with the body, so that you're learning how to balance between both everyday consciousness and pure awareness. Is that clear?

Go, then, and enjoy. (exercises)

 May 2, 2012 Wednesday Afternoon on the Beach, Emerald Isle Retreat (part 2; after the exercises; there is no Yoga planned today; we will continue here)

Aaron: It has been decided that we are going to continue talking here now for another 40 minutes. That's why I asked you if you had a question about the prior material before we stopped and moved on to rolling and sitting in the sea.

Q: This morning John alluded to the fact that his experience of the akashic field was feeling energetic. I was wondering what the other potential experiences are, such as more visual? More auditory? More kinesthetic? Is it different for everyone?

Aaron: In meditation, you move on from using the breath as the primary object to a spaciousness, nada, luminosity, even scent or taste; different people have different habitual ways of accessing the expressions of the Unconditioned. For some, energy is predominant. For some, sound is predominant, nada. For some, the visual aspect, luminosity, is predominant. They are all doorways into these expressions of the Unconditioned, and any one doorway will lead you into the field wherein you can access the various expressions of the Unconditioned. But one will remain predominant because that is your particular, karmically conditioned entryway, and that's fine. Some people, especially those with training in energy work, don't hear nada but they feel the chi energy of the Unconditioned.

So for John, the entry into the akashic field has been energetic. Barbara sees it more as an array of colors. She sees movement. It's like seeing energy moving and rays of light rolling together and streaking back and forth. Others may hear it. There's no preferred way.

Q: Can we have a felt sense of it? Is that a way to access the akashic field, just a feeling sense?

Aaron: I'm not sure I understand the question. Can we have a sense of it? Without fully accessing it?

Q: A felt sense.

Aaron: Touch, one of the senses. Touch, energy, sound, visual, taste, scent. Yes, you can enter through touch.

Q: My question to you, Aaron, doesn't so much directly relate to what we're talking about. In the The Aaron/Q'uo Dialogues book, in Session 8, Ariel is being channeled. He speaks about the Earth experiment, and that it is going well. And he says that faith and love are perhaps the most important qualities for we humans to develop. And as we do so, he says that as we move on into higher densities, we take that development of love and faith into the higher densities and, in doing so, at some point we end up helping to contribute to the, for want of a better word, the expansion of infinity. So when I read that, it certainly caught my attention. I don't know if you can elucidate on that.

(long pause, a minute of surf and wind)

Aaron: Ariel is going to come through to reply to you. Ariel is a very strong energy. He will attempt to tone down his energy so nobody is knocked out by it.

Ariel incorporates

Ariel: My sisters and brothers of Light and Love. You are all deeply courageous sentient beings who volunteered to come forth into this plane of what you sometimes experience as darkness and illusion, intending to break through the illusion with the light of your loving hearts.

So often you feel lost and in despair. But we are always with you and supporting your courageous and loving efforts. Within your-- I'm getting some vocabulary here from Aaron, within your vipassana practice, wisdom is valued. And we appreciate and value the wisdom, such as the understanding of how the mundane world arises out of conditions and is impermanent and not self. But that wisdom can be what you spoke of as spiritual bypassing, escape from the very hard conditions of human suffering, body pain, emotional pain.

It is your loving hearts, your compassion, that are literally changing the universe. If compassion was limited, could only go that high and no further, there would be no reason for this experiment. But many of you - I think of some Earth leaders like the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, but even you, who think of yourselves as just small and individual beings - your compassion is boundless. As you practice this compassion, you demonstrate to the whole universe the power of compassion that is called up by the heavy catalysts that you bear. If there were not this pain, there would be no ground for your compassion.

I'm not saying that you must experience pain and also suffer in order to learn compassion. But as you do experience pain and suffering in this human form, express gratitude for the pain and suffering that come to you and that give you the opportunity to expand in compassion. Think that there are infinite beings out there who do not experience pain, who do not suffer, and who do not know the power of compassion and who watch you, asking, “Am I brave enough to come into this earth field with my strong positive polarity, to experience the heaviness of this earth field and to bring the power of compassion to it; to learn compassion here?” What you are doing is literally touching the farthest reaches of your universe. You are loved. You are appreciated.

Is there further question for me? “Who is Ariel?” one of you has asked. I am Aaron's teacher. I am quite literally one of the guardian angels of the Earth. We came into the earth plane in the beginning with the intention to create a positively polarized ground for the earth plane, me and my brothers and sisters of light, so that this material plane, as with no other previous material plane, was strongly grounded in positive polarity. That does not mean there will only be positive polarity here. In fact, our presence as a ground was rather enticing to negative polarity who said, “Oh, let's see if we can defeat them here.”

But we are strong and confident of the power of love. We will never be shaken from our knowing of the power of love, and of the human's ability to ground in that power and shake loose all of the ties of negativity that sweep over you.

Did you have a question?

Q: I have been waiting for 20 years to ask this question of Ariel. (laughter)

Ariel: I am delighted! I hope I can answer it.

Q: How close is our understanding of evolution to the way life developed on this planet?

Ariel: Do you mean scientific ideas of evolution? (Yes.) Which scientific ideas? (laughter)

Q: The general scientific understanding that started with Darwin. And I know that there are variations, but that is the basic theory.

Ariel: It is close but limited. The Darwin theories of evolution are correct, that as a species is able to survive, it evolves. The species that is not able to evolve dies away. However, the species that evolves through violence and killing others eventually kills itself as well. The species that in a sense seems the meekest but is able to avoid the fields of violence may be the one that survives.

Q: Are predators considered violent?

Ariel: Predators who kill out of the impulsive reaction to kill, out of fear and to protect themselves, and to destroy others without needing to eat but out of fear, this is violence. Those who eat others for survival and prey on others—Aaron is better to explain this than I am. I do not know English well. He's feeding me words here as I send the ideas. He says it is what he was just describing.

If there is an impulse out of fear to strike out at others, or an impulse out of greed, “Let's catch 100 fish! We only need two of them to eat, but oh, the sport!”, that becomes a karmic pattern. When it's easy to catch too many fish and not be concerned about the life of the fish, then it becomes easy to shoot people almost as sport. When you hold the life of the fish sacred, you hold the life of your neighbor as sacred, so that different karma comes forth.

The predator who simply preys to eat but takes no delight in killing its victim, and will only kill when it's hungry, it's not creating a karmic stream of power, control, enactment of fear. It has no fear of its hunger, it simply knows, “Hunger. It's time to eat.” And generally when it asks, that which would choose to be eaten will appear. This is the ideal way of it.

There are what you think of as primitive societies, for example within Australian aborigines, also some South American tribes, the Native Americans of old, who understood how to sit quietly, envision the food that was needed, invite it to come.  One would move into that region of the valley where the deer had just appeared, and invite that one weakest deer that was not going to live anyhow to fall behind and give its life to support their lives. This is not killing from any sense of violence;  it is not predatory. It's simply that carnivorous life form needs meat to survive. It's a very different energetic movement than to prey on something with lust.

Does that answer your question?

The whole movement of fear has been what has destroyed life on many material planes where they finally destroyed themselves. The question was then raised, given the heavier vibration of the material form, can there be a sufficiently high consciousness to move out of fear and live a life of compassion while still living within this veil of forgetting of your true being? If you were all enlightened it would be easier. Can you do it without being fully enlightened, simply holding to the power of compassion and the intention of compassion?

To me, this experiment is succeeding exceptionally well, as I said in that place in the book; for me and many of us. This does not negate that there are those who are still extremely violent in your world. As the Buddha said, hatred never resolves hatred. You are slowly learning how to release the energetic thrusts of fear so they do not turn into hatred but instead become the catalysts for compassion. Aaron speaks beautifully about this in his book Presence, Kindness, and Freedom in a chapter entitled, “Anger as a Catalyst for Compassion”.

Q: You said you don't speak English. What is your preferred language?

Ariel: I could not even pronounce it for you. It is not really a language as you envision such. It is simply telepathic thought. I do not use language. There's no need for language unless I want to communicate with beings like yourselves. Aaron's vibration is not quite as high. I am 6th density also, at the upper edge of 6th density, but Aaron has held himself to a somewhat lower vibration because of his role as teacher, so as not to discomfort you.

I don't know if any of you were present at that session in which I spoke, in The Aaron/Q'uo Dialogues or in Barbara's living room once or twice. Do you remember everybody fell asleep?

Q: No, I don't, I was asleep! (laughing)

Ariel: I'm learning through Aaron how to bring my vibration down a bit. If I were to let it come up, I think all of you would pass out!

Those of you who go to the Casa see the entities working with some of you, doing spiritual intervention. And when Medium Joao touches the person and the entity is coming through, the person is rendered unconscious. So I am severely restricting my energy.

Aaron tells me it is time for you to move on. I have no idea what time is. Do you live your lives related to a passage of linear time? Can you not be here listening to me and elsewhereat the same time? No, I suppose not.

Daughter?

Q: What do you consider the end of the experiment on Earth?

Ariel: My preference is that Earth will move into a high positively polarized 4th density, and will progress from there to eventually be a 6th density Earth. Not in your present lifetimes, although you may choose to come back and see that happen. But that it will continue to evolve into a deeply stable ground for positive polarity, that the energy that exudes out from it is of such a high... (pause, I'm looking at the waves. The high tide is about to wash over our feet, I think.) ...such a high positive polarity that anything that is negative simply backs away because it can't tolerate that high positive polarity, and is thereby invited to look at its negative polarity and consider changing its polarity, because it begins to see the power of positivity. We are talking about beings that are enticed by power, that have not shifted into positive polarity. But the desire for power may shift it into considering positive polarity. And once it moves into positive polarity, it cannot continue its service-to-self negativity. And then will gradually move through the various densities as positive polarity.

So what I see for Earth is that it can become the ground in which this transition can happen for many different kinds of beings throughout the universe, drawing forth those beings that are on the margin, ready to consider a shift to positive polarity if only for reasons of wanting more power. And finding out that as they move into positive polarity, they have to let go of that service to self and the joy in that letting go. And then gradually make the shift into a true positive polarity.

Q: Do they have to take human form?

Ariel: Present on Earth they would have to, yes.

Q: --For 6th density.

Ariel: There are many negatively polarized 6th density beings. If they wish to shift to positive polarity, they need to backtrack. We talk about this, Q'uo and I, in The Aaron/Q'uo Dialogues, the need to backtrack. Sixth density negative polarity is a dead end. They've seen they cannot reach 7th or 8th density in that way. They must backtrack probably to 2nd density and then 3rd density, coming through into not 1st density but 2nd and 3rd density as positive polarity.

Q: But on Earth, do they have to become human?

Ariel: Unless there is a new life form introduced on Earth that is sentient and as capable of free will as you are. At this point, there is not. I cannot predict the future.

You'll have to make the decision, here. I am happy to stay and talk to you. Those who wish to go are free to go.

I see that some of you are using the hands to speak and some of you are not. This is not a common form of your language?

Q: No. Barbara is deaf.

Ariel: Why is Barbara deaf?

Q: She lost her hearing...

Ariel: ... I understand that, but why does she not simply choose to hear here in this kind of circle? Okay, Aaron is explaining it to me...

Q: She is working on it with the healing entities.

Ariel: I will work with her. It relates to this akashic field work she is learning.

Q: About a year ago, I heard a story you told Barbara called-- maybe I'm wrong. Barbara gave Ariel as the source of the story. It was a story about this Earth. The way I read it was that one angel volunteered to support this Earth. And ever since I read that story, every picture of any scale I've seen of the Earth, close up or far away, showing the enormous detail and richness of the planet and how that was supported by this intelligence, made me fall in love with him or her. The angel. I thought it was only one.

Ariel: You have misunderstood the stories. There were 5 of us that created this ground for the Earth. There was some negative distortion arising in what was originally a completely positive environment. Four of us were determined to trust the human evolutionary experience, and that negative experience, pain, confusion, and so forth, would in the long run create deeper compassion and love. We trusted that we did not have to fix anything for you.

The fifth was determined that we protect you from these things, that we not observe your free will to make decisions but prevent you from making decisions that could do harm to yourselves and others. We disagreed. He pulled himself out of being supportive of free will, wanting to go his own way, into a path of deeper and deeper control guided by fear. We kept reminding him it is just fear, don't be reactive to it, but he was reactive to it. So he shifted into a negative polarized path.

Now this is the one you think of as the fallen angel, Lucifer. That was not his original name, but he has moved himself into a high 6th density negative polarity, and he's still searching for a way to get to 7th and 8th density from there. He won't give up. More fear, more control. “If only I have more fear and more control, more power, I can do it!” So he still doesn't get it. We only have compassion for him. And we continue to say no to him, and to deeply observe free will choice.

See earth history transcripts. This is excerpted from Aaron, 930526WC

Let us begin at the beginning, or at least at the beginning of the human experience.  There have always been many places for growth in the universe, many different ways in which beings may evolve.  Each of you whether you have evolved on material planes or on non-material planes, each of you begins as what I call a spark of God.  Goddess, if you will. You are a spark of this divine and infinite energy.  Within that energy is the will to more deeply know itself, and to expand its light and love.  

I believe we have whole transcripts on the question: “Can an infinite God expand?” so I'm not going to speak to that here, only to say yes, of course.  The infinite expands itself by reaching out in every direction and in so doing it brings light to those places where there has previously only been darkness.  Love to those places where there has only been fear.  So this spark of the eternal that you are, comes to its first moment of self awareness.  It looks over its shoulder, essentially, and says, hey, how did I get out here?  And it can't get back.  Because with that first self awareness there is the illusion of separation, the first sense of self and other.  The other seems vast and magnificent.  This self seems very small and feeble.  That is not the way it really is, but it is the way it appears to that first moment of awareness.  Each being then moves on to its own path to knowing that it also is divine and eternal, its own path to manifest that divinity and infinite power and unlimitedness in positive and loving ways.  It may choose a material plane.  It may choose an immaterial plane.

Let us then skip some many millions of years.  There were material planes, but none that combined a physical body and an emotional body with the mental and spirit bodies just in the way the earth plane does, and that were also founded with loving energy.  Both parts are essential, especially the presence of the emotional body and that the foundation of this physical plane is positive rather than neutral or negative.

  There were beings who considered that the creation of a highly positively grounded material plane would offer an excellent opportunity for growth.  These were very wise and ancient beings that had evolved on the non-material planes.  They were already highly evolved; high sixth density energy.  Basically they agreed to pool their energy together and allow it to be a foundation of energy for the earth plane. The experiment seemed to be working.  We will skip very ancient earth history and come here to the civilization of Lemuria { pronounced Le-moor-e-a}, which preceded Atlantis.  

At the time of this civilization humans were fully open to their spirit guides.  They did not live behind a veil of forgetting, as you do.  They knew who they were.  In physical structure they were different than today's human, with a crystalline base to the material body. They were telepathic. They understood the uses of energy and the balancing of their energies. They did not experience lengthy illness, but knew how to bring distortion back into balance. If there was an injury, they had the skill to hold the image of  the ever-perfect and restore the injured part to that perfection almost instantly. They understood the truth of non-separation, and thus, lived in peace, for the right hand does now wage war with the left hand.

There came to that time some interference from those who were drawn to the learning possibilities of earth and the power of earth.  And wished to use it for their own good.  Earth is a very important piece of real estate.  It is certainly going to draw wide attention.  Those original founders, let us call them, of earth, had agreed to two basic rules.  One was a non-intervention policy.  No energy could come to or distort the earth plane unless it came through incarnation into this plane, or spoke through a being of this plane as I do.  In other words, according to this code of non-intervention, although I am perfectly capable of materializing and standing here in the middle of this room and giving a lecture, I may not do so.  It must be filtered through human energy.  The second law that they agreed to was that of free will.  This is part of your entire universe.  This is a universe of free will.  

Yes, there are other universes that work with different laws.  They soon saw that there was a contradiction because there were negative energies that wanted to use earth for their own reasons.  The law of free will said we must step aside - they have free will.  The law of non-intervention said we have to keep them out.  What they did was to form a force field of loving energy around the earth, of strong, positive energy.  Loving energy repels negative energy. Negative energy feeds off of fear and hatred.  Thus, the force field was sufficient to repel most strongly negative external energy.  

There were those whom I would call mischievous spirits, beings who were not very old or wise. They just wanted to get their hands in and tinker.  They believed, “ This could be made better and that could be made better.” Because they were not strongly negative, they moved easily through the force field.  They began to tinker and even to appear as the first extraterrestrials of that time period.  

The original founders of the earth, what are known in your mythology as the archangels, had some disagreement as to how to handle this energy.  Until that time there was no fear on earth.  These humans of Lemuria were totally open and loving.  Yes, there was some negative emotion, but it was not quite fear.  Its a bit hard to explain.  Let me put it this way.  There is joy and there is sadness.  On the human plane there is loss and sadness about loss. Such sadness does not grow out of fear, but out of love.  So there were the emotions of joy and sadness, but not the fear based emotions.  Until that time there was no fear on this plane.  

These original founders, these very loving and wise beings, loved that which they had a part in creating very much.  It brought them deep joy to see the learning that was happening on this plane.  They saw the potential for distortion through that which came in as extraterrestrial energy.  Fear arose in them as the first distortion of love.  It arose in wanting to protect that which was loved.  But seeing a need to protect can only come with division into self and other, a move into separation.  That was the first experience of separation on this plane at this time. We are discarding very, very ancient history for this talk.  

There was some disagreement among these archangels about how to handle this situation.  Some of those who strove hardest to protect moved deeper and deeper into fear.  The Lemurians mirrored their fear.  This was the opening of fear onto this plane.  It was not brought here by those mischievous spirits, but by those very loving spirits who sought to protect humans against those mischievous spirits. Their misunderstanding was that the humans were so fragile that they needed to be protected.  Those among those high beings who moved into this fear did not understand that humans could experience this external catalyst of mischievous distortion and not be moved to hatred or anger, that they could learn from that catalyst and deepen their compassion.

See original in archives for the complete transcript and several directly from Ariel.

Q: Do the five original angels still guard Earth.)

Ariel: Four, yes. Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, and myself.

Q: What do you do to support?

Ariel: Send love. Hold it all in love. Hold it all in a field of compassion.

Q: And all life forms here?

Ariel:... How could I love one life form more than another, or less than another?

Q: ...All life forms hear your love?

Ariel: Do all life forms hear my love? If they're open to it. Some beings are not at all open to it but deny it. Not closed on the 2nd density plane, but there are 3rd density beings that are completely closed to our love. I cannot force it upon them.

(commenting on dogs the group sees) They are not yet 3rd density but they are far beyond 2nd density.

Q: Can human beings move to 4th density on the Earth plane?

Ariel: Certainly. You are all doing that right now. Some of you have already done it. You are graced with such a beautiful planet and so often you take it for granted, these blue seas, blue skies, grass, and this wondrous array of life forms.

Aaron says that predominant in his teaching of you is your intention to evolve in this lifetime into 4th density beings. Many of you have done that or are in the process. Are there further questions?

Q: How will we know?

Ariel: How could you not know, daughter? Imagine yourself as the four-legged creature there, with some degree of self-awareness but no understanding of how anything goes together, and suddenly you wake up one day as a human being. A huge shift in consciousness.

As you move into 4th density, you come to know your fullest power, which is not personal power but tapped into the One, to the Ground, and know the highest intention to only utilize that power for the highest good. You possess a sense of being appalled by any possible misuse of that power. You become increasingly telepathic, which you are learning with this entering of the akashic field. Learning to open into these energetic movements, to feel the million strands of interconnection between you and everything else, so that you cannot possibly do harm to other beings because they are you and you are them. The tree trunk does not cut off its branches. It needs its branches and its leaves to draw in energy to take it down to the roots. They're part of one being.

At the time when you see suffering around you and your first impulse is compassion rather than trying to fix or to protect yourself, you know you have moved into 4th density. Remember, these densities have a spiral movement. It's not like an elevator with floors. As you enter into 4th density, your feet are still in 3rd density. You're moving up into 4th density. And as you move through 4th density, you begin to move into 5th density.

For now you are committed to 4th density because the Earth is becoming a 4th density planet. The highlight of that 4th density on Earth is non-dual consciousness, and you're committed to opening to that consciousness in the self and expressing it in the world as a model to others.

Perhaps that is sufficient. This body is tiring. I thank you for this opportunity to speak with you.

Q: Thanks for creating the Earth.

Ariel: Thank you for coming into Earth and supporting this work. Each of you has done that so many times, with love and courage. Thank you.

Aaron mentions a quote, “What if we gave a party and nobody came?” You have come. Thank you.

I will release the body to Barbara.

(recording ends)

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