February 1, 2014 Saturday Afternoon, Brazil

Aaron: Good afternoon. I am Aaron. I don't want to consciously channel here, with Barbara's body's eyes closed and her just listening to my thoughts, and I also don't want to incorporate to the degree that I bring in energy. So I'm going to try to incorporate just enough that I can talk directly to you, rather than Barbara conscious channeling, and keep the energy way down.

The Casa is not against my speaking and sharing thoughts. The issue is energy. I give the example if you have an illness and you go to the doctor for an antibiotic, that antibiotic is sufficient to do its work if you use it. If you go to a second doctor, a different antibiotic may work but if your take both they may contradict each other. In the same way, my energy can create energy waves that contradict the work they're doing on Barbara, ogr on you, so I want to be very careful not to bring in energy. My thoughts are fine but not my energy.

My love to you all, and to Barbara who is still partially present. I am not deeply in the body as I normally would be. But it's sufficient for most of my thoughts to come through clearly. I am speaking for myself rather than her having to think to hear my thoughts and say them herself. This is the difference between trance and conscious channeling.

I want to start by talking to you about personal healing and earth healing. If you have a stream, a small river, and a factory that is pouring out pollutants into that river, that river flows downhill into a larger river, and of course it's then polluting the larger river. The larger river flows into a giant river, and that flows into the ocean.

You can go down to the ocean and start trying to clean up the pollutants, but as long as that factory way upstream is still pouring down the pollutants, it's a losing battle. The only way to clean the ocean is to start with each stream; simultaneously you clean up the ocean.

We hold the intention to raise consciousness in the universe. But each of you is unable to do much to raise the consciousness of the entire universe against the drag of so-called pollutants of fear and negativity in this universe.  But if each time you meet negativity, you offer it love -you don't back away from it; you don't take a stick to it. You hold space for it - then you begin to draw forth change. Here I'm talking about universal energy. The wars around your world, for example.

Each of you has the capacity to work on your own selves and yur reactions to the negativity in the world.  Barbara described her dream last night. She rarely has nightmares but here was a dream where somebody was trying to kill her and other people. She was trying to keep away from this person. There was fear. Then the person came to the front of a building where people were gathered with terror in the back, and somebody announced, “There's a man with a gun out front.” Everybody started to scream and run. In her dream, Barbara knew this would not help.

She said, “No, we must just stand here and offer loving energy.” And she walked out to the front of the building and was able to say, “No, you may not terrorize us like this. We hold you in love. And if you have to shoot me, you have to shoot me. But I will not hate you or fear you.” And as she did that, the gunman dissolved and she woke up.

It's a good metaphor for the work that each of you is doing in yourselves. There's a beautiful line in the song “Amazing Grace.”

(pause to check if Aaron's energy is too high) If you're feeling my energy, I need to stop. I don't want to endanger the work that they're doing on you. Can you feel it, Q? (Q: I think so.) Is this better? (Group: Yes.)

In the song “Amazing Grace,” “...'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear.” What does that mean? Why would grace teach your heart to fear? The second line of that song is, “...And grace those fears relieved.” I gave Barbara an image last week at the waterfall. The image -- Imagine yourselves, all of you, living as crystalline beings with no sense of a separate self, totally connected in mind, although bearing what seem to be separate bodies. But you understand at a profound level that nothing that affects one of you cannot affect all of you.

In a situation like this there could be no hatred, could there? There can be some degree of compassion, but there's not really anything to stimulate compassion because there's no fear, there's no anger, there's no hatred, only deeply loving and connected emotions. Sentient beings might experience joy or sadness, but when there is sadness, there is no fear of others' sadness, only support of them. When there is joy, a sharing of that joy. It was a blissful life experience, but there was no opportunity for growth.

(pausing again to check energy level) Please, if you feel my energy, I'm trying to monitor it. I'm using probably 5% of my normal energy. My normal energy is akin to those you experience with the entities. I'm perhaps using 5% and trying to keep it down, but if you feel it, raise your hand. Give me feedback.

Q: It seems hard to not feel it at all. I'm wondering what the threshold is.

Aaron: Let us continue with conscious channeling and see if I can speak clearly without being incorporated at all in the body. Can you still feel the energy?

Q: It's much less.

Aaron: Let Barbara do a bit of work here, then... So Barbara is hearing my thoughts now and simply stating them out. My energy is not much a part of it all. She is taking in my energy but not sending it out. Barbara's eyes are closed so she can concentrate on what she is hearing and repeat it. So if my energy gets too high, please tap Barbara's knee. I will not continue nearly as long this way with her because, while you're not feeling my energy, she is.

So for eons there was this blissful experience of oneness, what you think of as the Garden of Eden in your tales.

She will try to open the eyes and see if I can come ever so slightly into the body...

The Garden of Eden experience. You wished to taste beyond the bliss of that space. You wished to know, to become mature beings in your own right, which you could not be in that blissful space of non-separation. You cannot have free will, individuated will, when you're part of a group and don't know yourself as individuated matter. In your crystalline form, you could not be individuated matter.

So the Brotherhood / Sisterhood of Light considered this at length and thought to themselves, “We need a planet, an environment, in which beings can incarnate in individuated energy forms as sentient beings of all levels—vegetation, insect, plant, animals, people—and can even become trapped in the myth of their own separateness and use their free will intention, to the highest good for themselves and all beings, to break out of intrapment. Then you have true power, because your decisions are coming from the heart of love, even if you're quaking with fear because a gunman is chasing you.

Those of you who agreed to this plan then took birth on this planet. I've told you many times that your Earth is unique. It is grounded in the high energy of the Brothers/Sisters of Light and specifically of the guardian angels—Ariel, Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, who were the entities who offered to hold the ground for this space. And the fifth that you think of as the fallen angel, but this is another story, and we will not go into it here.

Those who did not agree continued to live on this light plane, and some are still there. They will stay there until they are ready to take the giant step to experience separation and negativity, to take the grace of that step, “...'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear.” And to come into the separation experience, first simply as the smallest plants, then as animals, increasingly higher consciousness, until you finally come as the highest sentient life form of this planet.

Your work is simply to take whatever comes to you as negative catalyst—fear, anger, body pain, confusion—and touch it with the open heart. You do not fix it, you simply hold it. You always have a choice how you will relate to what arises in your experience. You don't always have choice about the experience. On some level you do, but your karma is part of that choice, and if you are choosing to resolve and balance the karma, you may invite the challenging experience as a way of resolving and balancing.

So you come to a place like Abadiania where the energy around you is so high, the portal between heaven and earth is so open;  you can feel the entities, your own personal guides, these beloved Brothers and Sisters of Light at the Casa, and other spirit, and it helps you to remember, “I am that” and to live this deepest truth of your heart, rather than living from the fear self, the separated self.

What you do here is the cleansing of the 200,000 small streams that are feeding into the river. That river is going to brighten up. You also need to go down to the ocean and scoop out the bits of litter that have appeared there, that have washed down. So you attend to the well-being of the ocean. That means you go back home today or eventually and you look at the world around you and ask, “What can I do to help bring healing on this earth? What is relevant from me-- not from the ego, but of what am I  capable as expression of all-that-is?” Each of you will be drawn to different areas—some to the environment, some to education, some to peace and war around the world, to respect and disrespect of other beings, and so forth, reaching out. But you cannot heal that in the world unless you have healed that in yourselves. And you will find that the places you are most called to service will be those places that have needed the most attention in yourself. Not necessarily the places that feel strongest, but often the places that feel weakest, because that is where your work lies.

You are radiant, whole, strong, beautiful, but each of you has some weak spots. And as you attend to those places where there is contraction, unwholesome karma, confusion, and invite clarity and love, that shift in yourself is what allows you to go out in the world and help heal the world.

Amy sent Barbara an email this morning that we have not entirely read from a teacher she knows in Seattle. I do not recall the man's name. But he talks about healing as not being a healing event but a, I can't recall his exact words, a way of knowing and remembering relationships and enacting the innate radiance of all that is. So that you see the person that you experience as the enemy, the fearsome one, and you see them with compassion. I once said, “you are not your brother's keeper; you are your brother.” It is the return to this knowing that heals.  

Barbara has been doing some work last week in preparation for a class next semester, working with a practice by a man named Tenzin Wangyal, a Buddhist lama, called “Vision is Mind.” The lama asks people to look at what he calls the famous person. the person who bothers   you and , they're always there. You turn around and there they are.

See that this person's mother loves them. Perhaps their children or spouse love them, maybe even the neighbor on the other side of his house loves him. There's something energetically between you. It's not about him, although he may be very irritating. He may come and yell at you because your apple tree has dropped apples on his grass. Scream really rude sentiments at you. It's his anger. Why should you take it into yourself?

You learn how to say no with compassion, to say, “I'm sorry. Do you want me to cut all the branches of my tree off that overhang your yard?” “Oh no, I like the tree there.” “Well then some apples are going to fall. But I'll be glad to come and rake them up each week. Just leave them there and I'll take care of them. But you may not speak to me in that way. You may not speak abusively.” Can you feel the difference? It's coming from a place of kindness and compassion. You are not becoming ensnared in his thoughts and his anger.

So the first part of the practice, “Vision is Mind,” seeing what you're experiencing is coming entirely from your own mind. And I would add that the vipassana practice is the most helpful tool, here. I would encourage you all to strengthen that practice.

The second part is, mind is empty. What is this mind in which this anger, this spite, this negative feeling, arises? It's just a mirror of you as a human, your own potential to contract because you are human. Touch; the body does that. (Aaron is demonstrating contraction with a push)No pain when I did that. Mind is empty. Vision is mind. What you're experiencing is all in your mind. And what is this mind? Who is the self, here?

John, Barbara and I just decided on the focus for the upcoming June retreat in Michigan to be about anatta, no self, but not just the traditional approach but self and no self. The arising of what seems to be a self, the personal thoughts and impulses and so forth, and seeing them as empty. This whole mind as empty. Getting through “vision is mind” and to “mind is empty.” And yet, if these thoughts arise, we still must respond with compassion, and we must also take care of them. You can't pick up the apples and throw them at your neighbor, unless you want to reap more anger, more of that karma.

So, when we talk about healing, when there is a bad shoulder or a sore on the leg, we know the body's innate capacity to hold and express the ever-perfect, and that it is expressing this distortion for some reason. It comes as a teacher. It's the “famous person.” The sore shoulder, the cancer, the sore back, the headache; this is your famous person. You are not healing it; you are bringing it love. Holding the resolution to release, to come back to this ever-perfect. The work we do with the Mother seems to help people a lot to remember this radiant divine aspect of the selves. But you don't need to experience the Mother in that external way; she's inside you. She's inside all of you. She, he, it, divine love.

When you were sitting here this morning, most of you could feel the entities present with a lot more energy than I'm bringing in here. Could you feel them? (Group: Yes.) Could you feel that love? I want to show you something here. I'm going to need to stop this recorder.

(tape paused while showing some pictures)

So each of you has the capacity in meditation to find not specifically your guide or the Mother but your own higher self. What does that energy field look like? Can you begin to open to that, to strongly identify and know, “I am that. I am that light.”? Not just me—you, you are that light. Then if you pay attention, watch when you stop being that light. Suddenly that vast white expansiveness of light dissolves. When you're angry, it's not there, is it? Then you stop and say, “Where did my light go?” This is all you need to do. The body will heal.

(pause to check energy level, asking is it related to the loudness of the voice) I think I bring forth more energy to speak more loudly.

When you live in that body of divine light that is your essence, it gives the body an opportunity to heal. It gives the emotions an opportunity to heal. And then that healing becomes the beautiful radiant stream going down to the sea, transforming the world.

Let us pause here from the formal talk for questions and answers. This is a topic about which I am passionate. It's something we'll be talking about at the June retreat but also especially at the October workshop, and for those of you in Michigan, in the class in the fall.

I'm happy to hear any questions about what I have just spoken of or about anything.

Q: What do you do when the hold on the mind is so strong?

Aaron: That which is aware of grasping is not grasping. Simply note it. Note how strong the grasping is. Note the unpleasant feeling from the grasping.

What is noting? Can you back up into that spaciousness that watches the mind grasping, watches the tension? That which is aware of tension is not tense. We keep coming back and forth until we more deeply stabilize and can live from that spaciousness. But it's not easy. If it were easy, you'd all have been enlightened long ago. This is the work. This is “the grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace those fears relieved.”

Q (continuing): What if the hold is almost subconscious, so you have to spend all your time working on it?

Aaron: It's the same work. It's simply deeply ingrained habit energy. If there's a very strong habitual pattern that comes frequently, I suggest the use of the Four Empowerments and Seven Branch Prayer, which are in my book, Awakened Heart. I will not elucidate the practice here, but it's a beautiful practice drawn from Shantideva's “Way of the Bodhisattva.” But it's really a universal practice. Shantideva gives one expression of it in his writing, and I've translated that in a slightly broader way. But the same practice is found in Judaism and Hinduism, in Native American cultures. So look it up. You can download Awakened Heart from the Deep Spring website. Go to the Four Empowerments, which is the core of the Seven Branch Prayer.

Q: I was sitting here thinking I could feel Aaron, I hope this doesn't ruin my experience at the Casa!

Aaron: I am being very careful. I don't want you to feel any of my energy. But it's impossible not to feel it. If Barbara was simply sitting here, you'd feel her energy.  (yes) You feel each oher''s energy. But I'm being very, very careful.

Q: But if Aaron's energy is coming from the highest intention, and the entities' energy is also coming from the highest intention, how much chance is there that your full energy would be doing harm to the work that the entities are doing?

Aaron: If I brought my full energy in, it could be as those two antibiotics. It could interfere with what they are doing. But as I said, I'm bringing in 2% of my usual energy, and because I'm so frequently with Barbara, just being with Barbara how many of you feel Barbara's energy? (all) When you are with Barbara, you feel her energy. How many of you feel each other's energy? (all) So I am being very careful.

Q: If there is such a thing as moving meditation, why do sitting meditation? It's painful for me to sit.

Aaron: There is moving meditation—walking, swimming. Sitting meditation allows the body to come to a more still place, and allows the mind more easily to observe that innate stillness and center of the being. One can find that in walking meditation, but one can also easily get caught up with the experience of the touching of the feet on the floor and the movement of the body, and not so easily enter that still center.

We talk in vipassana of an experience called “access concentration,” which really can be experienced in walking and movement but it's much less usual then. With access concentration, the mind becomes so focused on objects arising and passing away, and their non-self nature, that eventually there is no pleasantness or unpleasantness to them. The whole experience of them arising out of conditions and not of the nature of a self becomes extremely clear. And if these objects are not of a nature of a self, then what is experiencing this? And suddenly the arising and falling away seem to cease, and there is just stillness, a profound experience literally of the Unconditioned.

It's much harder to reach that experience in moving meditation. The moving meditation helps to center you and provides the foundation from which you can more easily open to these experiences in sitting meditation. Eventually we do want to experience stillness in every posture. But sitting meditation is easier as a start. I'm not saying you cannot experience it in movement, but more often the movement serves as a step toward it.

So do the movement meditation. And if sitting is hard, keep interspersing walking or whatever movement you choose but also continue sitting. And know what it is that's hard: body pain, agitation, mind wanting some kind of entertainment or escape. How does the mind feel that wants to escape, because when you sit still, unpleasant thoughts come? What is the experience of wanting to escape?

Q: I'd like to ask more about the incarnations that you spoke about. You said some people stayed in a crystalline world, and some chose to enter this world. The reason they chose pain was...?

Aaron: Love. “...love that taught my heart to fear.” Willingness to experience separation so that one can totally know the truth of non-separation.

Earlier it was a premature knowing of non-separation, intellectual,  because there had never been anything that induced the idea of separation. But when the illusion of separation arises and you have to work with it and release it, then you know with all certainty, and then are able to live the truth of non-separation.

The power of free will choice is enormous. The being who remains in non-separation is not exerting any free will choice other than to simply stay in this cocoon. So you have all had the courage to come out of the cocoon. And sometimes you forget it (lost to group concurring).

And you are loved and honored beyond all measure. I've said this to you before: those of you who take birth on this and a few similar planes, you are truly the hope of the universe because compassion cannot grow within the cocoon. But there's no outer limit to compassion, and you keep learning greater and greater compassion and bringing that out into the universe, and that is the only answer to the negativity in the universe. Each of you are giants of love, and becoming increasingly able to express that, even if only on occasion and partially.

Q: In the universe there's no other creation with this capacity for love?

Aaron: There are some, yes, founded in a similar way. But Earth is the one that has been most strongly pulled back and forth between negative and positive polarity and thus has afforded the greatest opportunity to choose positive polarity or to repeatedly become caught into the negative. It offers the widest individuated polarity swing. This again is a long story. In the Deep Spring archives, go to Aaron/History and there are many transcripts describing the founding of Earth and the historical choices that were made. They describe the drawing of, not strong negativity but mild negativity, curious, to the Earth, and trying to control this new environment, and the forces of light that opposed their taking over. The support that comes to you now, here as the Casa entities support your movement into light, is part of the loving support. It really is as simple as that. I'm not saying the Casa entities are the only ones to hold the portal so open; only here you have a strong center of light.

Others?

Q: My training background and experience is in Theravada vipassana. I know you're aware. They don't talk about higher self, entities, a lot of what I'm-- not sure of the word I want to use—hearing, being exposed to, learning. This may be way too long, you might just tell me, “Why don't you read such-and-such,” but how can someone—me—with this, learn to contact this higher self, as this is almost in opposition to my history.

Aaron: Let me answer this in two parts. First of all, it is not necessary, it is useful. But for some of you it's not the necessary path and that's okay. For others, you may never consciously connect with spirit or higher self.

I know you're familiar with the Buddha's handful of leaves story. He was at the edge of a forest, and people asked him, “Do you teach us everything you need to know?” He picked up a handful of leaves from the ground and said, “What I teach is as this. And what I know,” and he pointed to all the leaves of the forest, “is that. But this is all you need to know for liberation.” This is traditional Buddha Dharma. This is the base for the Theravada teachings. But the Buddha lived 2,500 years ago, and you have evolved in those 2,500 years so you're ready for more of the leaves of the forest.

The Buddha also spoke of that which exists beyond the conditioned realm.  For example, addressing a group of monks, he says, “Monks, there is an Unborn, Undying, Unchanging, Uncreated. If it were not so, there would be no reason for our lives.” (Udana 8:3) So he is misunderstood as saying there is nothing but the conditioned; then the Unconditioned as a duality.

There is, monks, an unborn[1] — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated. If there were not that unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, there would not be the case that escape from the born — become — made — fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, escape from the born — become — made — fabricated is discerned.

There are infinite expressions of the Unconditioned, but out of his compassion he did not ask people to get to know them all, because some had the capacity and some did not. But all had the capacity to watch the arising of the conditioned mind and the falling away of conditioned self-identifications and to find the space that remains. That ability doesn't depend on any faith or meeting spirits or any of it. So out of his compassion, this is what he taught, not to burden people who did not yet have that capacity. As I said, you're 2,500 years older now, and more mature. Many of you have that capacity. If you do, it's helpful, but it's not necessary.

There is a set formula I have offered for meeting your higher self or guidance. I ask people to take a notepad and hold it. First to center themselves and to make the clear statement of their highest intention to the service of all beings, of non-harm to any, and that nothing may come into their energy field that does not share that intention. Then think of a question that's important to you, like “How do I improve the relationship with the neighbor who keeps screaming at me about my apples?” You're really stuck; you don't know. You want to do this in the most loving and skillful way.

Pick up your pencil, ask the question, center yourself, and invite the guidance to come through. They call it automatic writing. Just let it write itself. It may be 2 or 3 words, 2 or 3 sentences, 2 or 3 paragraphs. Don't read it until the impulse to write stops. You really don't know what you're writing; it's writing itself. Then read it. If what you read says, “Just get out there and throw apples back at him!” stop and say, “No, this is not the kind of guidance I'm looking for. That would not be a loving thing to do. Again I invite positively polarized spirit to come and give me guidance here.” Then try it again. But if the guidance comes through that says, “Try to talk to him. Try to check the yard every day and rake up any apples. Ask what's so upsetting to him about the apples. Try to hear him. Try not to take it personally.” then you're connecting with a loving guidance.

As you ask these questions, when you get a first response you might say, “Well how do I do that?” You get a second answer and carry the conversation on a bit. You start to feel the energy of that being. I showed you the picture Barbara did of me; you start to see and feel—you may not see it, you may only feel it; or you may not feel it, you may only see it, or hear it or scent it. However you experience it, ask, “Is there a name I can call you? How can I connect with you in the future?” It may simply say “Friend” or “Teacher” or it may give a specific name. Then when you have questions, begin to call on this being. It doesn't matter at this point whether it's your higher self or your guide. Eventually that distinction will clarify for you. Just allow yourself to start to know this aspect of yourself or of divine love that is there to support you, and to feel the stability of its presence, to hear it well.

One more question?

Q: Until now I never used allopathic medicine because I'm afraid of its effects on my spirit, soul, DNA.

Aaron: It is not in the medicine, Q, it's in the intention. Allopathic medicine taken into the body with the loving intention for the highest good of all beings will not negatively affect the spirit or the DNA. I'm not sure I heard your whole question. Did you have further question?

Q: No.

Aaron: Barbara's body is tiring and she has had surgery two days ago, so for her welfare I think I will stop here. For those of you who are staying, we can repeat this next week.

My love to you all. My blessings on your journey. You have a team of celestial cheerleaders, cheering you all. D and J, my blessings to you. (applause; they just announced their engagement) May your future be filled with abundant grace and joy and everything that you dream of. I know that your union will bring real joy and benefit to the world because the loving energy that you send back and forth to each other will be broadcast out.

That is all. I'm going to end here.

(tape ends)

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