June 21, 2012 Thursday Afternoon, Emrich Retreat

View, meditation and action; Karma; Barbara's stories: freedom ride; lunch counter and jail cell; Aaron on “soul,” past life karma and planning for next life; what or who plans or draws the energy into the next incarnation? 4th density experience; Aaron tells Barbara's experience in restaurant, and explains satyagraha; dealing lovingly with negative polarity; male and female energy; luminosity and nada as expressions of the unconditioned; autism; simultaneous time and releasing distortion already put forth in linear, mundane time; chanting and overtone chanting.

(much wind distortion on mic, portions missed)

Barbara: M has asked, Which came first, the dharma or the karma? Aaron says, the dharma came first. The dharma is timeless. But we didn't discover the dharma until after we had karma that we needed to resolve and needed to figure a way to figure it out. He says the dharma is unconditioned; karma is conditioned.

Returning to Pure awareness meditation, or Dzogchen as the tradition from which it is drawn. I am not an authorized teacher in the Tibetan tradition; I simply call it Pure awareness practice.

View. Simply seeing that mind of pure awareness. Resting in rigpa, knowing the direct experience of pure awareness, even if very fleeting. “View” is that moment where there's no sense of a self versus an object, but only objectless awareness.

Meditation is what we do to sustain that view and stabilize it. First we do it just sitting quietly, then we move into the action phase. Once it is stable while sitting in meditation, not necessarily stable for an hour but it's stable for five or ten minutes at a time, and we can do the meditation that notes the loss of rigpa and brings us back into it, then we take it back out into the world. It's different doing it sitting here under the catalpa tree than while driving on US23.

Action. For me this is the part that means living my practice. It's the place where if somebody says something that I find irritating, or if something happens—sitting here under the catalpa tree and suddenly a big branch drops off, doesn't crush me but startled! — Ahh! Where did awareness go? It's the point where I feel the ego self come back, where there is an “I” to feel it come back.  The viewpoint shifts from pure awareness into mundane consciousness, small ego mind, and that I'm seeing from the sense of self. Even if it's a loving self, it's still trying to choose this over that, to justify, and to hold tight to its opinions. As soon as I see that closing down into small self, Aaron has taught me to ask, “Where is rigpa in this moment?” Just to breathe and notice the shift and come back into the spacious mind. So it's not that I live in rigpa. It's that I live with the awareness that I frequently slip out of rigpa, and there's enough mindfulness to note that slip very quickly and shift back.

When resting in pure awareness, I'm outside the karmic field. I'm not creating new karma. No matter how lovingly intentioned I am, when I'm functioning from the small ego self I'm creating karma. Sometimes it's wholesome karma, but I'm still creating karma.

I learned this so deeply during the Freedom Rides years, and seeing how many well-intentioned people were doing these acts of disobedience from a small ego place that was so judgmental toward other people. Saying, “Look I'm better than you—I'm not prejudiced.” Or “I stand for equality.” Or whatever. But there was so much ego in it, and that ego called forth ego of the opposition. So it just made for two egos bouncing off each other; nobody could hear the other.

I began to see-- I've told a story that many of you have heard, the Freedom Ride bus that overturned so it ended, not lying upside down but partially on its side. The people who had forced us off the road and into the ditch climbed up on the top windows and were throwing bricks through. All of us inside were down on the lower half of this quarter-turned bus. Nobody was seriously hurt because we had not been going fast. Then the National Guard came and started firing over the heads of the people that were on the top of the bus throwing bricks. I sat there on the bottom of the bus with a few scratches and bruises and asking myself, how did I co-create this? My intention is to speak forth for equality of all beings, but also for the highest good of all beings and with non-harm. Yet somehow here I am in a situation where people are being injured, humiliated, and disrespected. In what way have I co-created this?

In the next moment, the entire bus population broke out with “We shall overcome” and the verse “We are not afraid.” It was deeply moving and positive, yet also coming from ego.

I didn't understand pure awareness, but I did understand that the ego self was predominant there, and I could not participate in that kind of action again until I could do it from a place that was much more free of ego.

Q: (inaudible, asking to tell the story about the woman in the jail cell)

Barbara: This had been a sit-in. The first indignity, I was sitting at the counter and I asked for a Coke and my black seatmate asked for a Coke. The counter man walked to the machine and filled two glasses of Coke, and I said, “Oh, he's going to bring them!” He did bring them, and he dumped them over both our heads! As soon as we were fully saturated with Coke, the police came in and dragged us out and into the paddy wagon and to jail along with a number of other people who were involved in the sit-in.

So there I was in this little jail cell-- not that little, there were about 8 or 10 women in it. We were not crowded; it was a comfortable place for 8 or 10 women.  The men were somewhere else. I was angry. I was filled with so much self-righteous anger. “He dumped that Coke on me! And they dragged me out! How dare they! These bigots!” I was pacing up and down, angry. This very beautiful middle-aged black woman - beautiful face, beautiful energy, approached me. She was immaculately dressed despite also having been dragged out-- maybe without the Coke poured over her, but literally dragged out over the sidewalk and tossed in the paddy wagon. Her hat was pinned in perfect place. She walked up to me and she said, “You look very angry.” I said, “I AM angry. Aren't you angry?” Her words were so powerful; I'll never forget them. She was really my first teacher of compassion. I was young. I was only maybe 18 or 19. She said, “Of course I'm angry, sweetheart, but I also love them, and they are so afraid.” Very powerful words. I never knew her name, but she was my first teacher of compassion.

Other questions? Today is our last day together here and we are very open as to the range of questions.

(inaudible, about Buddhists not believing the soul reincarnates but that awareness reincarnates?) Can you talk about that in terms of past life karma and soul planning?

Barbara: Okay, first of all remember I am not a traditional Buddhist. I am trying to answer as well as I can from a position that I do not fully understand. But as I understand it-- I'm asking Aaron if he would explain it and he says go ahead and he'll speak if it's necessary.

There is no soul since there's nothing permanent. Even the soul as mundane object is not permanent. Awareness, which is an expression of the Unconditioned, continues. Awareness, not a soul, moves from one expression to another, expressing as a blade of grass, expressing as a human, whatever. The karma is what carries that awareness into a new incarnation.

If there is some very unwholesome karma in one lifetime, let's use bigotry, a lot of bigotry, that awareness stream, that karmic stream, is energetically drawn into a new lifetime that will provide an opportunity to investigate, release and balance that karma. In the traditional Buddhist  sense I don't fully understand how karma works. I don't see the karma pulling the awareness as an imperative. I've tried to look at it in the very specific and detailed lifetimes I've seen. I always see that there was some personal choice to move into a new lifetime. Aaron says there is some degree of choice. I tend to trust Aaron. He's not a Buddhist either.

The way I experience it is that at that level, on the astral plane in the realm between lifetimes, the bardo state between lifetimes, it's not a self in terms of ego self that's choosing; it's awareness that's choosing. But there is a choice. Awareness  understands what it wants to learn, reviews what it did not learn successfully in a previous lifetime, makes wholesome choices that lead it into the opportunity to experience what it needs to learn. There's more to it, though.

There has to be some degree of awareness before awareness can make those choices. So for those of us who move into a bardo state without any awareness, just caught up in the sense of self, those energies that we're really not fully conscious of simply spin us around and off into another lifetime. The more awareness there is, the more likely we are to move into a wholesome new birth that gives us the opportunity for the practice that we need.

Aaron, would you add anything to that? He says yes.

 (Aaron incorporates)

Aaron: My love to you. I am Aaron. I'm not fond of the word soul because of its various confused connotations. I speak instead in terms of spirit body, mental body, emotional body, and physical body. The physical body of course falls off after the incarnation. The emotional body continues. The mental body continues. The spirit body continues.

Gradually the emotions are purified. At that point one is no longer karmically drawn into a new incarnation, but there's still a mental body. This is the mental body, speaking personally, not of Aaron.It's simply THE mental body that this stream of awareness has connection to, has access to that speaks to you. I retain the use of the mental body and the use of memories in order to teach, but they are not my memories. Let me rephrase that. They are the memories of the past life beings that I was, but I have no present self-identification with them. My ego doesn't find gratification from memories in which I was kind and loving and wise, nor does it find shame from memories in which I acted in a confused manner. They're simply useful memories because they're teaching tools.

Beyond that there is the pure spirit body. When we talk about soul in your culture, people often bring in the confusion of emotional and mental body, so they think of the soul as a conglomerate of spirit, emotional, and mental body. There I would have to say no, there is no such soul. And this lack of soul, in those terms, is what Buddhists believe. I would not even use the term believe; this is what Buddhists practicing vipassana and deep Buddhist meditation practices find to be true when they reach a place where there is no longer any sense of a solid separate self. But there's still something that continues, and we call it awareness. The ground that holds that awareness is the spirit body. But it's free of emotions, it's free of mental body.

Then the mental body can be used as a tool. If one leaves the incarnation, dies, and there's strong habit of awareness, as you move through the bardo state there's strong awareness. You see the arisings that would lead to a solid self and presence can say no to them. Eventually you pass through that bardo into vast spacious awareness. This awareness then can look at its karmic field, the karmic streams that are like threads attached to it, can see which ones are still active. Can understand what kinds of experiences would be most helpful to lead to the release of those karmic threads. And then consciousness makes choice of the right kind of new incarnation.

(some words inaudible)

Maybe one has caused endless suffering for others as a dictator, perhaps, self-centered, and one becomes aware of that in this bardo state. One wants the opportunity to release and balance that karma, so one might move into an incarnation where one will be a slave, will suffer that kind of indignity, being at the whim of others, in order to develop the intention, not to break free of the physical experience, but to develop deep compassion for the self and for those who rule the self. At that point the karma is released and balanced. Often it doesn't happen in one lifetime. We come into a number of lifetimes, working a little bit deeper each time towards the final release of whatever sticky karmic threads there are.

There's a point where it's no longer necessary to take a new incarnation. The karma that's still attached is thin enough and the habit of pure awareness mind is strong enough that from the bardo state, as one looks at the karma that's adhered, one sees through it and knows, “I release this completely.” We could simply ask at what point have we played the melodramas enough times? At what point are we ready to stop, whether in this or whatever lifetime?

That if awareness is strong, if there has been deep realization experience, and by that I mean deep realization that “I am not this mind, body, and emotions,” so there's no self-identification with any of them, then, while there may not be full realization to the level of the arahat, there are still these karmic streams sticking. But one no longer needs to move into a human experience in order to release them. The work can be done on the astral plane, heavenly realms.

I talk about densities in my books, in the introduction to Presence, Kindness, and Freedom, and I think also in the introduction to Cosmic Healing. Perhaps in The Aaron/Quo Dialogues, also. You are third density human. At the point where there is no longer self-identification with the emotional body, emotions may still arise but they're seen with compassion and there's no self-identification with them. At that point you shift into 4th density and you no longer need to come back into human form to purity those emotions.

The whole Earth is shifting to 4th density, and many of you are attempting in this lifetime that shift into 4th density. For me that's a lot of what this vipassana practice is about: watching emotions arise and watching the relationship with the emotions until there's a clarity, “I do not own these emotions, nor do they own me. They have arisen from conditions. I will take care of them. I don't need to build a self or stories around them.” At that point you move into 4th density.

I've said many times that 4th density is a density where there is telepathic thought. Many of you still have emotions about which you feel shame. When you reach the point in your practice where there's such deep seeing, “This arose from conditions. I am responsible not to toss it out in ways that will harm people. I'm responsible to take care of it. But I don't have to be ashamed of it,” then if the emotion arises and people know the emotion arises, you're not uncomfortable with it. If greed arises, or if you look at somebody and say, “Oh, I don't like the color of her shirt,” or “Look at his hair today, why did he dye it that color?” and the other person is telepathic, and without this deep realization of the nature of conditioned arising, you're going to be embarrassed. “He knows what I thought!” But once you reach this level you simply see, “These thoughts are just old conditioning, and the one who's hearing me knows they're old conditioning. Together we have compassion for this human that's still somewhat bound by conditions.”

If you were all telepathic here today, would that be okay with everybody? Is there anything you've thought today that you're uncomfortable if everybody knew it? (people laughing)

So as you move into 4th density, it's not that emotions cease but that self-identification with emotions ceases. For many of you there's a very swift journey through 4th density and into 5th density. My thinking is that it's likely that the Earth's shift into 4th density will be a relatively brief one. We talk about the shift into 4th density Earth, but I think that's just a passageway into 5th density Earth. What I envision as 5th density Earth is a place where everybody is stable in awareness. Everybody is able to be responsible for the emotions and thoughts that arise, to be responsible for the energy of their bodies, to take care of whatever arises. Not that it will cease to arise, but able to take care of it. Everybody understands that they are totally interconnected with everything else. So I think that's where we are, in a way.

The big question for many is whether we're going to emerge into 4th density and 5th density positive or negative polarity. There is a strong high density negative polarity, very strongly service to self, contracted beings. They can move up into 6th density but that's as far as they can go, because at the end of 6th density there's a dropping away of all sense of self, and the negatively polarized being that's so deeply grounded in service to self can't go any further. They can't move into 7th density. So it's a dead end. But meanwhile it's a dead end from which much harm can come.

So the work that you do here for yourselves, with each other, to hold your deep intention to move into a higher density positive polarity, this is the only answer there is to negativity. And as enough of you open to this high 4th density positive polarity vibration and higher, you become unshakable. You find a point where you can sit there with people screaming at you and just hold a peaceful place.

Q asked for one of Barbara's stories, about the anger while in the jail. There is another experience of Barbara's that has moved me and that I think is helpful. It was a sit-in in a small southern town. There were two couples, Barbara and another white man and a more middle aged black couple. For a few weeks previously people had been beaten up in that restaurant and put out on the street. The four of them came in, actually were snuck in, in a certain way, were hidden on the floor of a car, pulled up right to the door and darted inside so that there was no opportunity to get to them and beat them up. They sat at the table. Everybody who was in the restaurant, very few early in the morning, everybody cleared out. It was a fancy restaurant, tablecloths and such.

They sat there just holding the space, hearing the people screaming outside, wanting blood, you could say, furious. This was a few years later than that earlier experience and Barbara was more grounded; she still had no formal dharma training per se, but it was intuitive for her from many past lifetimes. They were all able to understand the base of non-violence, which was not simply gritting their teeth and refusing to hear the catcalls coming in from outside, but truly holding compassion for those people outside and for themselves, and for the reality that they could be badly beaten or even killed.

Satyagraha - this is Gandhi's teaching - implies being willing to accept the abuse of others based on awareness of their ignorance without blaming or judging them for it. One is not holding your energy against theirs and considering them bad or lesser than you, not hating them. Being willing to be beaten until they're ready to stop beating you, in a sense. It goes much deeper than that, and there are many more subtleties to it, because compassion doesn't just invite you to keep being beaten. But this part of it is the ability not to blame another for their ignorance, to hold compassion.

All four of them reached a readiness at once after about an hour of sitting there. They just nodded to each other and got up and walked to the door. Yes, they were afraid. But there was also such deep compassion for the enormous suffering that they were hearing from the people outside, and a willingness to simply walk out that door, holding those people in their hearts, not blaming them, not with righteousness, simply with love. And of course love is such a powerful energy that it radiated out of them as they came to the door. People with bricks, tomatoes, whatever, they all just fell back and these four people walked down the steps, down the path into a car, and drove away.

For Barbara it was a life-changing experience on the power of true love, not the concept of love, but truly reaching this place of pure awareness where one can hold that degree of unconditional love without self-righteousness and without judgment of others. There is no ‘self' there. She then understood how powerful that force is to transform your world.

As you mature in this world, you're going to find people who are just as bigoted as those who came to that restaurant door, people who are deeply embedded in negative polarity. You're probably not going to be asked to put your life on the line and walk down a path where people might strike you down and kill you, but you're going to be asked repeatedly to respond lovingly to negative catalyst, because the only thing that transforms hatred is love. Very basic in Buddha dharma. This is from the Dhammapada: “Hatred will never transform hatred. Only love transforms hatred.” So this is what you're learning. It's very basic dharma.

Thank you. Other questions?

Q: How is it that some entities are male and some are female? Or how (do they identify as male or female)?

Aaron: We are all androgynous. There was a time many, many years ago when there was a woman who said, “Aaron, I respect your wisdom, but I really cannot learn from a male teacher.” So I softened my energy, took on a feminine kind of energy, and said, “Would you prefer I be Arianna? I'm happy to be Arianna for you.” We proceeded for several days with me as Arianna whenever I spoke to her, and finally she said, “You know, it's fine for you to just be Aaron.”

Aaron is a being that I was in the lifetime 2,500 years ago. He was a wise teacher, a loving man. He had skills as a teacher. He had a compassionate personality. Barbara needed something other than “Hey you” to call me and something to relate to other than swirling energy, so I gave her the image of Aaron, who in that lifetime was a male with the deep blue eyes and high cheekbones she sees, and the scraggly beard, long flowing hair. But that's not who I am.

She's also seen me many times as the Buddhist monk I was in my final lifetime. She recognizes my energy is the same in both lifetimes and time periods. She has seen me in lifetimes in which I was a female. I was her mother in one lifetime. So I'm not male.

The entities that present themselves through Barbara and elsewhere simply choose. The Mother, of course, is not just a female energy but her female energy goes so deep that that's how you know her existence; that female energy is  what is predominant.

Let me ask her a question. She's listening to us. I'm asking her, Could you come as the Father?

(pause; Mother is incorporating rather than Aaron paraphrasing)

The Mother: I am so deeply used to expressing my energy in a soft way, with a female energy. But Mother and Father are one. The Mother is not other than the Father. So yes, (spoken with more forcefulness) I can strengthen my energy and come forth with more power, more forcefulness, with what you would consider a male expression of energy. Can you feel the difference? I am still the Mother, but I'm coming forth in a different expression of this energy.

And coming back to the softer expression, which I am more used to. Father John expresses as male because the entity as which he expresses at the Casa, and has for so many years, was a male expression of his energy field. I've not asked him. Father John, why did you choose not to be Father Johanna? Why did you choose to come forth as a male energy? Let him speak for himself.

(Father John incorporates)

FJ: My deepest blessings to you. You have called me forth to answer your question. I am also not male or female, but I am not yet a fully enlightened entity. I've reached a point in my service on this plane where I have so deeply resolved karma that there is no longer a karmic need for me to move into a human lifetime, but this is more recent, only in the past few of your years. Before that, before those years of service, there would be a need to move into a human lifetime. So I'm moving up into a higher sphere.

But for many years I was used to incorporating a part of this energy field that I am through Medium Joao as a specific entity that had a male cast to it. Not only would people have been confused, but Medium Joao does not invite female entities to incorporate. He feels that in his culture it's inappropriate for a female entity to incorporate in a male body. It would have been the same entity whether I came in, in a female or male one. But When Barbara wrote Cosmic Healing, it was very strictly asked to be edited in the book, to make it very clear that Medium Joao does not incorporate female entities. So I could not come through in a female energy through him. People simply expect this energy from me; my energy is not too much different here than the energy I express at the Casa. Please don't try to guess who I am there; it's not necessary. Simply, I am used to this way of relating to you. You might say I'm stuck in it. I'm not as adept as Aaron at shifting into a female form, or the Mother shifting into male. Perhaps it's something I will learn in time. But on a deeper level I'm still androgynous. Does that answer your question, son? (Q: Yes.)

Q: We've discussed human evolution, human beings. I'm wonder about the consciousnesses of animals and trees and plants/planets. Do they evolve? (inaudible) understand that this might be a collective project with all kinds of consciousnesses.

FJ: Yes, daughter. I'm going to pass this body in question back to Aaron. He can answer it more adeptly than I can.

Aaron: I am Aaron. I hear your question. In that introduction to Presence, Kindness, and Freedom, and I think in several other books' introductions, as I talk about the densities, I talk about first density as being gas and mineral, second density as being plant and animal. Each density has its own learning. Everything is evolving. First density evolves into second density, and second density into third density, and so forth.

Barbara has a dog who is a beloved companion. He is a service dog trained as a hearing ear dog so he very much dislikes for her to be out of his presence. He's learned to sit quietly at her feet. For example, two weeks ago, teaching for the weekend on the other side of Michigan. When they went into a restaurant he curled himself up at her feet under the table. When she led a workshop, he curled up next to her. Almost always he's in the room when she's meeting privately with people, and sometimes people are crying and upset. This is part of his evolution into a higher density, that he's learning equanimity with emotions, here as a second density dog. When he eventually does incarnate as a third density being he's going to be quite an evolved third density being, not as a new third density being that gets caught up in heavy emotions, although it will take him some time to learn how to use his free will to handle the emotions that come up and not enact them. He is now in a shift to third density.

Many of your pets are making this evolution into third density, not always as highly evolved third density yet, but the highest level of animals in second density are getting ready to evolve into third density. They're learning love living as your pets. Learning a deep sense of service to others, not so much self-centeredness.

So there's this ongoing evolution. These blades of grass, they experience energy. The earth experiences energy. If you hug a tree, you'll feel the beautiful energy pouring out of that tree. You all know the experiments that have been done with plants where, one batch you simply water them and leave them alone, and the other, you water them and speak to them, offer them loving energy. They certainly flourish much more than the ones that are ignored.

Does that answer your question?

Q: Yes. I've experienced (remainder inaudible).

Aaron: The interrelationship is simply that you are all conscious beings, and you all have a ground of awareness. These species that have not yet learned human speech need to communicate through their energy fields.  And they communicate very well through their energy fields. What communicates love better than a puppy or kitten?

Other questions...

Q: Back to the female/male aspect. Are we really in our soul or our spirit bodies androgynous, even when we're in human form?

Aaron: Yes, certainly you're androgynous in your human body. Pure awareness self is androgynous but it chooses to express itself through a male or female form, and the body energy is so strong that you're drawn into that energetic expression. When we look at homosexuality, these are simply beings that are more deeply connected to the other aspect, the other energetic expression of themselves.

Q: How does that influence balancing masculine and feminine energy in the body?

Aaron: There's a need to respect, it's not necessary to talk to the human that you're working with, but energetically to go in and see what the intention for balance is. See where that intention has been thrown off. For example, a human male who wishes to bring forth the more soft, feminine side of himself, but has been deeply conditioned by his culture be tough: men don't cry; be strong. On a mental and emotional level he's not allowing the soft female energy in or to be expressed because he's been so conditioned not to do that.

When you work with somebody like that, energetically you'll feel a lot of tumult in the energy field. I'm basing my answer here on experiences of 2,000 years ago, which is the last time that I worked deeply energetically supporting people's energy fields. At that time I found it most helpful to untangle them and help the person feel whichever was dominant, male or female. And it could be a female body with a male dominant energy or vice versa; to feel which was dominant; then to feel the subdominant one. They then have support to put them both together in a more skillful way without the conflict.

In that lifetime 2,000 years ago it was unusual but not unheard of for a man who had an orphaned infant, the wife had died, to nurse his child. One would not think physiologically that a man could nurse a child. Yet there are breasts, there are nipples. The impulse arises;  moving the energy through, allowing it. This is a very deep expression of what we think of as feminine energy, but really the nursing of a child is not necessarily male or female energy, it's simply nurturing energy. In your culture you tend to think of nurturing energy as more deeply based in the female body, but males can be just as nurturing.

Q: I have a tonglen question. (inaudible) unless I had really worked with my own negativity and cleared that, as bringing that in could get stuck and <>. Since that time I have come to trust Barbara and Aaron and John, and I feel okay about doing that. But there's still a little hesitancy (inaudible). So my question is, is it (remainder mostly inaudible). Do I need to have my heart fully open, or be able to rest in pure awareness entirely before I bring in extra stuff? Do you understand what I'm getting at?

Aaron: I understand your question. It would be the rare practitioner who was so new to practice, let me phrase this carefully... who had the power to go directly into that deep negativity and draw it into themselves, not understand how to release it, but let it fully in, which means being in a place of pure awareness—you can't bring it fully in unless you're resting in pure awareness. So it would be a rare new practitioner who was so deep in pure awareness that they could bring in that much negativity external to themselves to do damage. I've never seen it happen, not just in this situation with Barbara but in all of the Buddhist lifetimes in which I did that practice.

However, when we do tonglen and we see the person who is suffering, and that deep suffering, and draw it into our hearts, we are not drawing their suffering into our hearts, we are drawing THE suffering. You only can experience that suffering through yourself. So you are drawing your own reflection and expression of that suffering into yourself, sharing it with them, as it were. Then allowing your loving heart to transform it and release it. That release step is vital.

If there was somebody who was filled with rage and hatred and you had not yet purified rage and hatred in yourself, but you denied that rage and hatred existed so that you believed yourself to be pure yet you were not, and you drew what you considered their rage and hatred into yourself with that dishonesty, “It's his, not mine,” then yes, you could damage yourself. But as I said, I've never seen that happen, because it could only be done by a very clear and strong spiritual adept who would understand this is our rage and hatred, not his, and what I am transforming is my own anger, really just “the anger,” and then sending the purified anger out, and then breathing in light and sending it out to myself and the other.

Q: So we are really only bringing in as much as we can each handle?

Aaron: Exactly, as much as you can handle, and as much as you are ready with the deepest honesty within you to acknowledge as THE anger or pain, not THEIR anger or pain.

Q: Yesterday (inaudible), and while I was not able to see energy and light, I'm wondering if there was a part of me that (inaudible). In other words, help me get some sort of (inaudible).

Aaron: Absolutely. The luminosity is only the visual expression of the Unconditioned. It's the Unconditioned that's important, not the luminosity, nor the auditory expression of it as nada. Energy is another expression fo the Unconditioned; if you don't hear nada, or see light,  the energy is also there. But it helps people as they go deeper to see and hear it, to smell it. Oft times, not today, but sometimes when there are many fresh catalpa blossoms here on the ground, there's a scent here as we practice much like the smell of the Unconditioned. A very sweet, honeysuckle-ish smell, but very much like the catalpa blossom, also. But it's all various expressions of the Unconditioned. And each are paths through which energy expresses

I want to speak to Q here one more time about sound. Sound is also one way of expressing and experiencing energy. You know that from your work. If you don't see luminosity, don't make a problem of it. Work with the sound that you do hear and go back to the energy that's behind the sound. Feel the changes in sound as the energy shifts. Feel it in yourself. Feel it in the people with whom you work.

Q: In this country there has been a rise in the number of children who manifest autism. What are we to learn from this?

Aaron: My experience is that many of these children are born as 4th density individuals and many as wanderers who are on Earth for the first time. That is, they have not expressed in human form before, or rarely, so they're very old souls but they are not used to the human experience, the human and earth vibrations. They're used to a telepathic communication. Many of them are used to a much more crystalline than carbon-based form of expression. They're not being treated in a skillful way. People don't understand them so they're trying to fix them rather than take them as they are and support their emergence into the full bloom of being what they are. With people trying to fix you, you would back away too.

Q: (inaudible, something about negative energy)

Aaron: Certainly. All of you have experienced sitting calmly somewhere, perhaps in a waiting room or a bus station, reading a book, not watching the people walking by, and suddenly feeling your hair stand on end, the sense of strong negative energy. Nobody has said or done anything but there's a strong feeling of negativity.

In meditation, in your dreams-- Barbara very rarely has nightmares but last night she had a dream in which she was being strangled. There was something standing over her, pressing over her mouth, nose, throat. She could not breathe. She thought she actually screamed aloud, “Help! Help!” And her screaming woke her up, her inner screaming. She didn't feel negativity around her but she was aware that something had happened that had frightened her. The first thing she did, and that she has been trained to do, is simply to bring love to it. “If there is any negative being there, I send you love. You have frightened me but I do not hate you or even dislike you. I hold you in my heart with compassion. I send you love.” This frightened self still trembling from the nightmare, said, “I send myself love. I open the heart of love so deeply to myself, and to you.”

She's found when she does that, the negativity dissolves. Often when she opens to channel and she's very clear in her statement of challenging, but still sometimes she feels negative energy in the room, she will not project out of the body as long as she feels that energy. She'll just wait patiently and send love to the negative energy. Make a clear statement, “You may not incorporate in my body. You may not speak through or to this body. But you may stay here and hear me. I hold you with love.” It will either go away or it will sit there. If it's sitting there and I tell her, “This is not a danger. It will not try to take over the body,” she hears and trusts that. I'll tell her when it's safe to let me incorporate. But the first step with any negativity anywhere is always to offer it love.

Q: Back to children with autism. (I would like Aaron's) suggestions on how to better care for and communicate with these children so that we can evolve together...

Aaron: How old a child?

Q: Any child.

Aaron: So you're not thinking of a specific child. My suggestion, if I see a child with autistic symptoms, the younger diagnosed the better, is to begin to work with them with crystals, with light, with toning. To speak to the part of them that's able to be receptive. Not to try to meet their eye or try to get them into human speech communication so much as to help them to communicate on a much deeper level. As they become comfortable in this human body, then one may invite a transition to human communication.

I don't mean you stop talking to the child. Talking is essential so the child learns the meanings of words. But you don't try to force a response from the child-- “Now if you'll only answer me, we'll go get ice cream.” You don't force it. Just, “I understand it's hard for you to work on this level of human voice communication. Let's just hold hands, and share our energy. Hold this crystal with me. Let's feel the energy of it together.” Plant a garden together. Work in those ways with energy with the child. Music is a wonderful way to work with an autistic child. When the child grows confident that it's safe in this third density human experience and willing, then deal with the norms of this other-density human experience.

Q: When we have awareness of the field, and it's very clear to me I've sent/initiated a disturbance into the field, now you've taught something about I can pull it back. I know I'm doing it and I want to undo it. How?

Aaron: Time is simultaneous, not linear. Go to the place where the disturbance isn't and rest in the stillness, and let the energy spread out into the area of disturbance, like an overlay.

Think of a painting, oil paints, and you've inadvertently put a streak of color that clashes with everything around it. You know if you try to scrape it off-- let's not use oil, let's use casein water-based paint. So you can't so easily scrape it off, but you can scrape some of it off, although there's still the streak showing, and then gently paint over it. You simply go to where that disturbance isn't in yourself. Think of yourself as the canvas. Sometimes the canvas picks up streaks because there was not clear mindfulness. Seeing the streak, literally go to the place where the streak is not.

If there's strong anger that arises in this moment, instead of focusing on trying to fix the anger, taking the palette knife and trying to scrape it off, cover up, and bleach the canvas, just gently remove any excess paint - that's releasing any angry energy that's easy to release - and then shift attention to that which is not angry. That releases the distortion in the field itself.

Let's use a different example. A jar full of water with a big bottle of glittery substance poured in, many kinds of little stars and flakes of glitter. You shake it. It's solid with movement. If you put your hand on the top of the water to try to stop the movement, you just create more energetic disturbance. But if you simply hold it still, it settles. Just that.

Barbara just gave her 6-year-old grandson a book called Moody Cow Meditates. All his friends at school were calling him the “moody cow” because he was in such a foul mood all day, that's where the book title originates. This little boy comes home from school very angry. He had a terrible day. His mother takes one look at him, hears all the frustrating experiences he had that day and says, “It's time to call Grandpa.” Grandpa comes over and sits on the ground in lotus position with him, gives him a cushion and says, “We're going to meditate.” He has a jar. I think it gives instructions how to make it with water and glycerin and sequins and beads. He pours them in and shakes the jar.

Grandpa says, “This is your mind. We're simply going to sit here and breathe together until all of this settles.” So they sit for a few minutes and it settles. And he says, “How do you feel now?” And the boy says, “Much less angry. Still some anger.” So they shake it up again, let it sit again. And then the boy says, “Okay, now I feel calm.” He leaves  the jar with the boy as a tool. It's a wonderful book and a wonderful practice-- not just for children but for adults!

Q: So when I am back to my own undistorted energy, that clears the field?

Aaron: Let me put it differently. The field is simultaneous and not linear. It clears the present level of the field. You no longer are aware of the distortion, but the possibility of the distortion is still there karmically until you both release and balance it. You release it by working with that which brought up that particular energy, with kindness, with compassion, with presence, and seeing what your relationship is to that trigger. You balance it by teaching it to others, for example, or modeling it for others.

Q: I have a question for John. Can you talk about your experience with chanting, and how you feel that chanting adds to the vipassana practice?

(John has joined the group under the tree)

John: I started with the chanting at the Integral Yoga Institute in New York City. Chanting was a very significant part of the practice there, and I just connected with it right away because I like singing. I sung in the choir in my church. So singing has always been a part of my life.

There are different kinds of chanting. The chanting that we did at that yoga ashram, a lot of it was very devotional, heart-centered kind of chanting. There's chanting that raises energy, also, like that muni muni maha muni chant that we do to raise energy. In the Theravada tradition the chant is all done in monotone voice (chants in monotone), like that. So it's more concentrated. It helps to concentrate, focus, calm the mind. And in the Theravada tradition, vipassana tradition, it's both that kind of chanting... It affects in terms of concentrating or focusing attention, along with a reflective quality to it. Like when we chant the Triple Gem, we're reflecting on the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha. In monasteries they do much more extensive chanting than what we're doing here. So they'll chant the many different qualities of the Buddha or of dharma or of sangha. It can last anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half of chanting, a lot of chanting. So I would say in the Theravada tradition it has both the quality of focus and a development of concentration, a <> calm, and that reflective quality that reflects upon the teachings, different aspects of the teachings, and the practice.

Q: The chant that we did this morning, (names it), do you feel like that chant actually calls, is your intention with chanting like that to call in the energy of that being or that aspect?

John: That's the way it's used in the Tibetan tradition. “In these body, speech, and mind, the sword of the master,” or the guru, in that chant is Padme Sambhava (a Rinpoche). It's one of the Tibetan masters that is highly honored in a Tibetan tradition as being a Buddha. So it's invocating that energy of Padme Sambhava to come down and to cut through all illusion of mind, essentially. So, you know, we're not Tibetan Buddhists, and so to me it doesn't have that significance. But a lot of chants, what I'm connecting into is more the energy of the chant, the energetic effect of it, how it affects me that way, rather than in some specific sense what it might mean more literally. So that's why I don't mind mixing in chants from different traditions, because to me the literal meaning of the chant is not so important as what I actually experience as I'm chanting it.

Aaron: I am Aaron. I would add to that. There's also the harmonic value of the chant and the energy it brings forth. Different tones relate to different chakras. So chanting, for example, that Omm (chanting a tone) —base, spleen, solar plexus chakra. Omm—vajra, heart chakra. Singing it, chanting those tones, working with the chakras using the chant to help more fully open the chakras. It's a very powerful toning process for the chakras. Just chanting that Om ahh ung; vajra guru padme sidhi om...  it's perfectly attuned to aid step by step through each chakra.

Q: On this subject, with Humi (overtone) chanting, what effect does the natural overtone have on the subtle bodies?

Aaron: My experience with overtone chanting is that it's a very powerful healing technique if it's done correctly. It's often not done correctly. When it's done correctly it invites the distortion back into clarity. Barbara, being deaf, is not very adept at overtone chanting. She's done some of it. She has experienced it working with closed energy in the body, and with specific areas of distortion, as a powerful tool. But one must be careful that it's done correctly, skillfully, or you can add to the distortion.

Q: Is it intention that brings the skill?

Aaron: We sing directing intention to the specific distorted area of the body. Holding the two tones helps the cellular energy balance in a stronger way than holding just one tone.

Q: I asked because I do overtone toning with people when I work, and I used (inaudible).

Aaron: Having watched you do an energetic session with Barbara, I would say you are very sensitive and not causing harm. You would be aware if you were out of alignment in some way.

Q: You said the pitches, the frequencies, if you would, assigned to each chakra (the name of a noted being, inaudible).

Aaron: Yes. You can use your search engine, Google, and look up tuning forks and chakras and you'll note numerous chakra sets. They're different, different tones. The chakras are not set but more how they are in relationship to each other. However, at the Casa Dr. Cruz assigned Barbara a specific list of pitches that I believe are in the book Cosmic Healing, specific tones to work with, with each chakra. She has advised others to use those, and they've done so successfully. I don't know about the other tuning forks as I've not tried them. So a ready-bought chakra set with different pitch, I don't know. I don't know how effective it is. But Dr. Cruz's tones that he gave Barbara are not just for Barbara; they're very clear for any human's chakras. Even for animal's chakras—Barbara has used it on her dog on occasion.

It's after 4pm so let us end here. I'm going to release the body to Barbara...

(session ends)

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