December 22, 2004 Aaron Christmas Stories

December 22, 2004 Wednesday Night Group, Aaron's Christmas Stories

Barbara: I see a few new faces here... Every year, the Wednesday night before Christmas, Aaron tells stories from that lifetime when he was incarnate on the Earth in the same time and place as Jesus. I've found them to be beautiful stories because for me they make Jesus come alive as a human being. With that brief introduction, I'm just going to move into trance and let Aaron speak...

Aaron: My blessings and love to you all. I am Aaron. It is a great joy to share this evening, to have the opportunity to share these memories. As I speak, I think it will rekindle memories for some of you, not just as stories but resonant to your own memories, conscious and sub-conscious, for so many of you were there.

I speak tonight about a specific human being known as Jesus, Jeshua, Yeshua, all different variations on that name. He came to be known as the Christ, which I think of as a parallel title to the Buddha's title, The Awakened One, The Divine One. But remember, there is not just one Christ or Buddha; all of you are Buddha, all of you are Christ. That is, that capacity for awakening is within you, and that innate divinity is the essence of your being.

On occasions such as the celebration of His birth, please take them as a remembrance to celebrate the birth of yourselves, the bringing of your own divinity into more conscious awareness, and bringing forth the ability to express that divinity in the world.

It delights me to see children here tonight. My memories of Jesus do not only center around serious religious philosophy but equally much around joy and playfulness. He was a magnet to children, and was rarely without a child by His side. He was one of those rare young men, let me rephrase that—both as a teenage boy and as a young man, He was one of those rare humans who knew how to talk to children, for He saw divinity in each child, and He invited it forth in a joyful loving way. He knew how to get down on the ground and wrestle lovingly and playfully with the boys. He knew how to bring a laugh of delight from little girls.

Sometimes young people can become a little rowdy, but His energy was such that just a “Shhh” from Him quieted everyone down. Never did I see him resort to shaming somebody. If somebody was overly boisterous, he would hug them into quietness, never speak down to them.

He brought forth this same quality with adults. He knew Himself to be divine, and so he saw the divinity in every being regardless of whether they expressed that radiance or despised from themselves and the world. He saw it, and He invited it forth, so that even those beings whose habit energy in the world was to speak and act in a crude and unpleasant way, somehow when they were with Him, their own kindness and clarity emerged.

In the past, for these 15 years, I have told these stories identifying myself only as a simple shepherd. Last summer we had a 5-day workshop in British Columbia with Jeshua and, also speaking briefly during the workshop, Joseph and Mary, all channeled by our friend Judy Coates.

Sunday morning, when Mary began to speak and greeted me, she said, “Aaron, I remember you so well as a boy who used to play at our home.” Everybody said to me, “Tell us more. We thought you were just a simple shepherd.”

Some of you have undoubtedly read this transcript, my dialogue variously with Jeshua, with Joseph, with Mary. Our own personal stories were but a small part of those 5 days where we were focused on “The Realization of Oneness.” Some of you attended the one-day workshop we did here with Jeshua in October on the same subject. In both places I was asked to tell more about myself, and asked why I had said I was just a shepherd.

I truly was a shepherd, and more also, as was brought forth at Whistler. But my livelihood was as a shepherd and it was to be a shepherd that I entered into incarnation. The stories I tell you each Christmas are the stories of Jesus. He is the star of this show, and my attempt has been to bring Him to life for you. I'm just the storyteller, and it is best that the storyteller remain in the background, so as not to interfere with the flow and radiance of the story.

Tonight I want to give you a bit of history so that you may know me better. But then I want to turn back to shine the light on Jesus again, where it belongs. Many of you have asked in the past, who was Aaron? Why do I use the name Aaron? I've said he was a wise teacher, a loving human being. It was suitable for me to come forth before you with some kind of personality, because most of you can relate better to a person than just to moving energy and light. When Barbara first consciously met me, I offered up the image of the Biblical being, Aaron. Later, I said to her, “It was hard enough for you to accept the fact of a spirit-plane teacher, a discarnate teacher. Could you have heard me if I presented myself as swirling energy with no personality?” She agreed that my displaying a personality and face was helpful. But those of you who know me know that I am not Aaron; Aaron is just one small part of who I am. It's just a cloak of personality I put on, and the image that Barbara sees me as, that Biblical teacher, Aaron. So as I explain him, please know Aaron is only a small part of this expression of the One.

He lived in many parts of the world. He was trained in the Essene tradition and in many of the Essene schools in many parts of the world. One of the areas of his training was that of cellular regeneration through which he, and many others thusly trained, could move into a state where the body slept, so to speak, and where there was a conscious regeneration of the cells, so that it was not impossible at all to live for many hundreds of years.

This Aaron did. He lived over 500 years. During those years, he deeply studied Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and other teachings of many spiritual traditions. But his deepest training was in the Buddhist and Essene traditions.

During the last hundred years of Aaron's life, there was a flurry of work within the Essene tradition to prepare the way for the one who was sometimes just called The Teacher of the Way. Who was this Teacher? What did He come to teach us?

The many different parts of the world in those days, were steeped in a consciousness of fear and the voices of fear: greed, hatred, and judgment. People had forgotten who they were. Most people in the world, not all but most, had truly forgotten their divinity. The Teacher who was to come was someone who would wake us up to our divinity--not His divinity, The Divinity, all our divinity.  

Many beings, not just in Jerusalem but all over the world, worked for that hundred years and more before His birth to try to raise the level of human consciousness and the consciousness of the earth itself to a point where the earth and all sentient beings would be able to hear Him, to embrace not just the Christ out there but the Christ within.

I had a beloved friend who lived in the hills outside Jerusalem. When I, as Aaron, came to the Essene community at Mt Carmel - remember this is Aaron at 500 years of age - he said to me, “Aaron, I have seen that the people in the cities are so caught up in fear, they cannot hear these teachings of love, but the simple shepherds and farmers can hear. I have trained as a shepherd, but I did not grow up as a shepherd. These people know me as a scholar. I want to have a son, a son whom I can train in the Essene tradition and who will also truly be a shepherd, who will grow up in the hills with the shepherds.”

So he asked me, instead of rejuvenating myself again, would I consider to move beyond that form of Aaron and come into birth as His son? I said yes. And thus the old man Aaron passed away and a child was born just a few years before Jesus' birth, a boy who, had a sacred spiritual name but was commonly known as Nathaniel.

He (I) was raised by loving parents. Many of you have heard or read my first Christmas Story in 1989, talking about the memories of the boy Nathaniel, who was so aware of Jesus' birth that night in Bethlehem so long ago. He saw the radiance of that night, the vibrant energy, the light of that star that truly did hang over His birthplace, and the feeling of music in the air, heaven and earth indeed rejoicing at Jesus' birth.

My father was an active part of the Essene community so of course he knew Joseph and Mary. We were also part of that community. I had the opportunity to see the infant, to hold Him. And then as you know the story, he was taken away to safety. So I next saw Him when he was a young boy grown out of babyhood. Since our parents were friends, we became friends.

Jesus was a child as is any child, curious, playful, sometimes bold and sometimes quiet, and yet in some ways he was never young in the traditional sense of that word, but was always aware of His Divinity and the responsibility to express it, as most humans are not aware.  We shared a memory together during the workshop in October, of how he had come to the countryside with me for a week or two. We were both boys at the Essene school, he just age 8 or 9, and myself, Nathaniel, a few years older. The plan for me was that I spent half the year as a shepherd and half the year at the Essene school. Not 6 months and 6 months, but 2 or 3 month periods in each place, because my father wanted me truly to be a shepherd, to know the work and to make friends with the shepherd boys. This is where my teaching lay, not to be a teacher on a raised platform, but to be the fellow shepherd and to teach from that place.

On this occasion, for the first time Jesus came with me out into the hills where I would stay for weeks at a time with the sheep. Someone would bring me food or I would find my own food. I was quite self-sufficient by the age of 12. There was no concern to have Him accompany me and stay in the hills there with me.

It was a cold night and it began to rain. The rain put out our fire. We shivered. We pulled blankets over our heads. The rain continued. Finally Jesus said to me, “Nathaniel, why don't you relight the fire?” I said, “Because it's raining. I can't relight it until the rain stops.” He said, “Why not?" "The wood is wet,” I replied.  He laughed as if I were joking and said, “Just light the fire.” Implied was that this game was no longer amusing, that it was time to warm ourselves. He was astonished at my belief in my limitation. “Just light the fire!”

I looked at Him. “Just light the fire. Just light the fire.” And of course in that moment I realized, He knew He could light the fire, and He was telling me if He could light the fire, I could light the fire.

So I looked at the fire, wet wood, at the rain, and held forth the intention for fire, for warmth and dryness for ourselves, and for the baby lambs in our care. I reflected on the lessons I had learned intellectually, to co-create, to bring forth for the good of all. And I lit the fire, or perhaps with my help, the fire lit itself. He taught me there at that tender age not to believe in my limitations.

Now, Aaron, who I had been before, had transcended that belief in limitations. But here I was in a new incarnation, just a 12-year-old boy, and I still held to that belief in limitations, still held to the idea of my smallness. He reminded me, “You are not small, you are divine, you are radiant. Allow it to express.” And there was fire.

We were good friends in those childhood years before our lives took us in different directions. We loved to ask questions together, to look at what was taught us, and investigate it together. "What did he mean by that? What did this teacher mean? What does this scriptural statement mean?" Sometimes the hardest task is to bring forth the question; He always knew it.  

Always He led me, led me beyond any conception of limitation. While He taught me to fully comprehend my own divinity and that of every being, He equally taught me humility.

Another situation, when we were boys, here a bit older. Let us call us 12 and 16. There was a fierce storm. It was another time when He had come with me into the hills. That did not happen so often any more, so it was a rare and precious time to spend some weeks together.

During this storm, we had gathered the sheep with us and come down, not to my father's land which was further down the mountain, as we were high up in summer pastures, but down to what you would call a lean-to owned by a neighboring farmer. The farmer had his house near there. He did not have a summer and winter pasture like many people but this was his permanent abode.

We chose not to come into his house but to stay there in the lean-to with the sheep, sheltering them from this fierce driving rain. It was dreadfully windy, huge gusts of winds, and then  what sounded to our ears like an explosion. We ran out to see the house simply crumble before our eyes. We knew that the farmer and his family were inside. Remember, we were just boys, 12 and 16. At 16 now I towered over Jesus, for I had moved into my growth and He not yet. And I did understand who He was and the importance of who He was, and that I must take good care of Him, as if He needed protection, which of course He did not.

I said, “You stay here with the sheep. I will go and find them.”  “No.” He would not have me go alone. And I could not talk Him into staying, not for His own welfare and not with the reminder, “You must take care of yourself.” He said, “How could I take care of myself and neglect others?”  He had decided and though I was the elder, He had the final say.

So we went together to that crumbled house. We could hear the children crying. Remember it was dark and raining. He did not spare Himself in any way. He did not set Himself on a pedestal with any belief that He should not get His hands dirty. He labored with me, moving the debris. Happily we were able to draw out the entire family.

Several days later, the rains had stopped and various neighbors had come together with a plan to help this farmer rebuild his home. That was quite customary, that groups of people would come together in a house-raising. Jesus was supposed to go back to Mt Carmel. My father had come up into the hills for us. We were actually both supposed to go back. He looked at my father and said, “How could I leave? I was here when this man's house blew down. I must be here until I see him with shelter again.”

He could be stubborn. My father suggested respectfully, “It is time for you both to go back.” “No.” Jesus worked alongside the men, as I did, but I had more a man's stature at 16. But He did not hold Himself back. He did not slack off the work as a 12-year-old boy could have done. Nobody would have judged a 12-year-old boy's working part of the day and then stopping. But He worked right there along with the men, giving His heart and love to the project for that 3 days that it took us to put up the house. Then He said to my father, “OK, now we will go back.”

What I want to convey here is that He did not distinguish between divine work and human work. He knew His divinity but He also knew His humanity. And humanity asked Him to stay there and build the house. He did not distinguish between spiritual and mundane work but integrated it completely in His life and His personality.

The same qualities held true of the man Jesus. He brought forth His own divinity and the divinity of others because He saw the divinity in them and invited it out. But He was never afraid of the human side of things.

There was a time when we, as we walked together, our path brought us past a community where lepers lived. A woman came forth to the road, daring the displeasure of us as passers-by, for she did not know immediately who we were, but her daughter, who was also a leper, was giving birth, and the baby would not come.

There was nobody there knowledgeable who could help bring forth the baby. Yes, there were people who could assist in a normal birth, and this was really just a simple breach birth. But there was nobody skilled to bring forth the baby in such circumstance.

We went immediately up into the cave where the daughter lay in pain and in fear. People gathered around her feeling quite helpless. They had boiled water. They had clean cloths. But beyond that, they were helpless.  Please understand that none of these people were shepherds. If you know how to turn a lamb presenting awkwardly in the birth canal, you know how to turn a baby. I am certain that Jesus could have done this energetically in some way, but He turned to me. He said, “Nathaniel, I have watched you deliver lambs in an awkward presentation. What should we do?”

I was not fully comfortable around lepers. I had been conditioned with the belief they were unclean. Not taught by my father, of course, not taught by the Essenes. But I had been touched by the general beliefs of the shepherds in the hills where I lived. Sometimes my deepest wisdom was blocked by old fear, belief, and limitation.

So I hung back a bit. If He had commanded me, certainly I would have done what He asked. But He understood that this was not a matter of command. That would save the baby, yes, but He could save the baby. This was a matter of helping me grow past the place of fear and limitation in myself, and the willingness to do it had to come from my own heart.

Here we have almost the exact replica of that fire-building situation, where He said, “Just do it.” He was asking me here to allow myself to be touched with the blood, the flesh, of this woman who was a leper. He was telling me that it was only my fear that put me in danger, that truly I could not be harmed here. It is not that I could not become ill, though that would be unlikely, but that the deepest essence of me could not be harmed.

Looking at Him, I knew that if He had my skill, He would not hesitate, and it was that same understanding, just build the fire, just turn the baby. Of course I can do this. All the old fear and sense of limitation burst open and evaporated. There was no more leper, just a woman giving birth to a child.

So I was able to turn the child into a presentation in which it could come forth. And in a few minutes, I held a beautiful infant in my hands, an infant with no sign of disease.

Jesus preferred to allow the change to appear natural, without signs of His intervention. Several weeks later, I came back on this road alone,  Jesus and others having gone on in another direction. But I needed to return home, to my sheep and my family. I came past the place where these caves were and the leper colony. I thought I would go up and see how the baby was.

There was a radiant energy as I came into their living area, a number of caves and a community hearth. There dwelled  about 2 dozen people of various ages. They recognized me immediately and the mother brought forth the baby for me to see. But it was not the baby who captured my attention but the mother, the mother who had had scabs and sores on her body. Now her face was clean of sores. She was missing some fingers, they had not re-grown, but the hands were clean of sores. A man stepped forth and opened his robe, stood there in his loincloth, and his whole body was healed.

“Did Jesus do this?” he asked.

“I don't know.” I said. “I don't know how it happened. But I think that your own love and faith has drawn it forth.” That was enough for them.

Did He do it? Did He do this healing? Assuredly He had a part in it. But nobody can be healed unless they are ready to be healed. It is the divinity in yourself that brings forth the healing, connected to the energy of, I don't want to use the phrase “the healer” as if there is somebody separate from yourself, but that Healing Divinity which was so radiant in Him but which is part of each of you.

Let me tell you one more story, of the last time that I saw Him before the crucifixion.

(long pause)

We sat together for some hours.

(pause)

He said to me, “My path takes me in a different direction than I thought it would. I knew I would not be a shepherd as you are, but I thought I would be a figurative shepherd, that I could live a simple life and share with people these teachings of love, of divinity, of God. But that way seems to be closing to me.”

He had taught me that no way was ever closed, so I asked Him, “What do you mean, it's closing? Can you not just open it, just light the fire?”

His words to me were very powerful, then. I quote Him as best I can remember here. “Each of us comes to birth with an intention, a path, and it may not always be an easy or pleasant path, not the one we had expected, but we can follow it. We can manifest anything, but the heart of love must be at the center of our manifestation. Love tells me now that the path I accept goes through the darkness of unknowing, and I must follow it. This path is not about my will, but our Father's will, and I know this is also my deepest will, whatever fear may say to the contrary.”

His faith was so powerful it's hard to call it "faith" here. Faith is based on something that we don't yet know. His is not really faith, it's a knowing. It's the way it would be for you if you had made the firm agreement to get to the top of a mountain to do some very necessary work there, had committed to that. And then discovered that the path to the top of the mountain was through a deep, wet marsh with low fog that would dim the way, with cold and harsh conditions.

You have made the agreement to go, and you know it is essential to go. If the conditions were pleasant, that would be fine, but the unpleasant conditions do not deter you. You still know what you need to do.

It was this clarity that was so powerful for me. He could not fully see what would come. He knew it would end in radical change for that human known as Jesus. I think most of you understand that He did not die. Perhaps that story needs to be saved for Easter time, the true meaning of the Resurrection.  But that young man known as Jesus, He died to the world as Jesus and lived on in a much richer, deeper form, a deeper expression of His divinity. But the personality self had to die. The personality self that said, “I want to be safe. I want it my way.” That had to die. And of course there was the human side of Him that was not eager for the personality self to die, just as many of you experience in your meditation practice when you come to that proverbial edge of the cliff, moving into that experience of no self, to that fear of annihilation of the self.

He could see through that. All His training led Him to understand the task that lay before Him, to allow that personality self, the ego, to die, so that the divine self might more fully express. The ego was already so thin. And yet He was afraid, just as you are, with your, "Will I annihilate myself?"

But there was this wonderful, penetrative radiance. As I said, I cannot really call it faith; I would rather call it love. The power of love that was willing to give everything to do the work He knew He came to do, to truly teach people about their divinity through His deepest expression of divinity, through the mind and body with which He came into the incarnation.

That last expression of His love and of His deep vision of divinity moved me more than any prior experience with Him. It led me to shake loose that fear within myself. It was the same story back to our boyhood and the fire. I knew He could do it, and if He could do it, I could do it. And if He could do it, you can do it. That is what He came to teach you, that you also can live your utmost Divinity.

As you rejoice in the celebration of the birth of this infant, celebrate the birth of your own awareness of your divinity and the divinity of all that is. Don't celebrate His birth alone, although certainly we rejoice in that birth. Look around you at everything in the world that has the courage and love to come into being with the intention to learn how to express divinity, to bring forth that non-dual consciousness, that highest consciousness of love, on the earth. Know your courage to bring forth that high-frequency vibration of love. In this way, help co-create on this planet you call Earth, a radiant wisdom and compassion that may be a source of inspiration to beings throughout the universe. This is what you have come for. And the Christ child is alive and well within each of you.

I thank you for this opportunity to share with you tonight. We will answer just a few questions and then give you time to socialize and enjoy some of those cookies and other treats that you have brought. I pause.

Barbara: We have time for a few questions.

Q: Did the entity known as Jeshua have previous incarnations?

Aaron: I am Aaron. Yes, certainly. I pause.

Q: How about subsequent ones?

Aaron: I am Aaron. He has not fully moved into a body since he left the incarnation in that lifetime. But the leaving of the incarnation was not at the time of the crucifixion. This may bring forth some skepticism in some of you or contradict your prior beliefs and assumptions. There was very careful preparation. He had learned many techniques, trainings, offered in the Essene tradition including what we called The Rite of the Sepulcher. This is a movement into that which really simulates death. It seems that the life energy is gone. But the prana, the basic energy is still there.

With the support of others who held the life vibration with Him, what really happened after His crucifixion is this. The body was cruelly injured. Before the appearance of death He had gone into a state of cessation the body processes. It is akin to the person who is underwater in a very cold situation so the body processes stop, and yet there is not death, but here done consciously.

The body was moved to a place where the wounds were washed clean. Vibrational energy through chanting, light and touch was offered in support. Others, deep in meditation, offered supp ort to help the whole process of the restoration of health. But there was a deep purification of the tissues. Let me say this in another way.

The Tibetans observe a process that may follow death, that they call the presentation of the Rainbow Body. All of the bodies may be so purified that when the person dies, nothing remains. The corpse is left in a place of solitude, an enclosed room. People pray outside the room and the energy helps the process of transition. There is no longer any karma within the cellular tissue of the body; the whole body simply, almost instantly, dissolves. People outside the room see rainbow lights shining through the walls and outward. When the room is entered a week later, there's nothing left but the hair and nails; the physical, emotional and mental bodies are so purified of karma, the whole structure just dissolves as light. There are many records of this, stories about the great masters in the Tibetan tradition who displayed the rainbow body after death. One lama of our knowing tells the story of seeing and experiencing this, watching the rainbow light, and coming into the chamber  at the end of a week to find only these small remains.

For Jesus, physical, emotional, and mental bodies were so purified that through this Rite of the Sepulcher, what he brought back into being we could no longer call quite the man Jesus, and yet he was Jesus, not somebody else. Of course they were already pure at birth. He lived on for quite a long time, married, and had children.

But there was no karma of any sort to bring Him back into incarnation, and His decision has been not to move back into incarnation. He holds Himself in what I have described to you as the highest level of 6th density, and thusly, is energetically available to you. I pause.

Barbara: Aaron says he knows he has discomforted some people with that answer. Please just stay loose with it.

Q: Is that which is known as Christ consciousness of a greater vibrational quality than that of 6th density?

Aaron: I am Aaron. This is a complex question. Some of you are not familiar with what we mean by densities, and I'm not going to explain that here. That material is readily available on the website and in several books.

Christ consciousness is both within 6th density and transcends 6th density. Think you here of a pole planted deep in the earth, and of such a length that it moves up and beyond the earth's atmosphere, far up beyond any atmosphere and up into the void beyond. We cannot say the pole only exists here planted in the earth, or in the earth's atmosphere, or up beyond the earth's atmosphere. The pole exists in all of those places.

If it existed only out there, it would be of no use on the earth. If it existed only on the earth, it could not carry the high vibration of that figuratively-speaking highest density of outer space. But the pole is complete and exists everywhere.

That which the human is able to understand of Christ consciousness takes you into a 6th density experience. That which Jesus understands as Christ consciousness takes Him far beyond 6th density, and yet by remaining in 6th density, he holds that pole. Thus holding that lower, the mundane consciousness of earth and the subtle consciousness and the causal consciousness, and that beyond the causal. Holding it together.

As you access Christ consciousness yourself and move out of the small self and into the Christ self, the whole length of the pole becomes accessible. However, beyond 6th density, we release the mental body. So if we are going to remain here as teachers, we cannot go beyond 6th density. Those who do choose to go beyond, they're still available as teachers but not able to transmit that teaching through a mental body. But only hold the energy of the highest density. If there was nothing out there to ground it at the other end in that highest and most sublime consciousness, we would be lost. And yet it must also be grounded on the earth if it is to transform the earth. I pause.

Barbara: It's 9 o'clock. It feels like a good place to stop...

(taping ends)