December 20, 2006, Aaron Christmas Stories

Christmas Stories / Jeshua / Our inner Light

Barbara: Tonight is Chanukah, the Festival of Lights. The story is that at a time of war and crisis, there was no more oil in the lamp in the temple, which was supposed to be kept burning. It was clear it would burn out. But somehow it lasted the 8 days until the oil was replenished. This is the miracle of light.

In all of our hearts, the miracle of light can burn and rekindle, even when it seems like it darkness must force it to die. As we light the Hanukah candles, it can be a reminder to us to keep this light of love burning in our own hearts and not to fear that it will burn out. To know it really is eternal.

I am 64 years old and this is the piece of paper that I used to read from when my parents lit the Chanukah candles when I was 6 years old

Chanukah prayer is read and candles lit.

Aaron: I am Aaron. So much light radiates from this circle. It's very beautiful. It makes me very happy to see you gathered here in this way because you come here bringing forth your own light to enrich the world with it.

Tonight once again I share memories of our brother Jesus, or Jeshua as many call Him. Some others here knew Him also, in that lifetime. Tonight I would tell some childhood stories.  I am running out of new adult stories to tell, as the times we were together as grown men were limited. I have been asked why I share childhood stories now, when many years ago I said I came to know Him only as an adult. Some people have felt deceived by those first statements. In 1989 when I first began to tell these stories, there was a request for privacy of the childhood times we shared. I also wanted to keep the focus on Him, not at all on whom I was in that lifetime. Hence I did not share my name in that incarnation, not much about myself except that I was a shepherd.

But several years ago, during a workshop in which Jeshua and shared the leadership, He introduced me as His childhood friend Nathaniel and told some stories of our boyhood years and of the Essene School at Mt. Carmel where we both spent some time.  People then began to ask me to tell more about this, and with Jeshua's permission, I did so.  

I want to confirm that in that lifetime I was a shepherd, despite the fact that I had some Essene training. Most of my time was spent in the hills with the sheep and my fellow shepherds. I was a teacher whom they could trust. To do this work was the intention with which I moved into the incarnation, the intention with which I left the aged incarnation of Aaron and took rebirth.  I do want to apologize to any who felt deceived by this addition in my story. Deception was never my intention, only to honor His wish for privacy, and also to keep Him as the center of these stories, not myself.  It would have been far more skillful if, in 1990 when I made the statement that I had not known Him before the adult years, I had instead said I knew Him but was asked not to speak of those times. Because of that mis-statement, some people have asked if I have spoken less than truth elsewhere.  No. That was the only time where I spoke something to you that was not as I fully knew it. Please forgive me if I have caused you pain through that statement.

At the time of Jesus' coming, the earth was in a time of great darkness. I cannot say it was more filled with fear or hatred than at other times, but there was less recognition from people of their own light and less ability to bring forth that light in the world.

Picture yourself in a dark tunnel. You have a torch, a radiant lamp within the heart, that can burn outward and light the way, but it can only light up when you are not contracted with fear. Here you are in this dark tunnel. You're afraid. It's spooky. There are eerie noises. It's dank and damp. So you want to light the lamp and you contract more and more, saying, “I must bring forth light!” And of course, then you can't do it. Only when you relax into the true radiance of yourself does that light effortlessly shine forth. So the earth at that time was filled with people who had not yet learned how to relax into their own radiance and truth.

I first heard of His intention of coming a long time before He actually arrived, while in the lifetime in which I was Aaron, a very old man at that time of hearing, and yet still a vital man, for I had been trained in the ability to rejuvenate myself and live far beyond the expected human lifetime that you carry today.  A beloved brother of spirit came through to me in meditation and told me that in his part of the world, they were preparing for the coming of this blessed one, paving the way, so to speak. That brother was both an Essene scholar and teacher and a shepherd in the mountains. He invited me, if I was ready to leave my present incarnation - and I was, it is maybe hard for you to believe but I was close to 500 years old - he invited me to leave that incarnation as Aaron and come into a new birth with him as my earthly father. He believed the simple people who lived in the hills, the shepherds, the farmers, had more ability to open their hearts to the light, to their own radiance, as they were less influenced by the greed and fear of the cities, and more open to the natural world. He was very old and wanted to train someone to work with him and continue his work. I agreed. I had been thinking it was time to leave that incarnation of Aaron, time to move into a new way of service in the world.

So Aaron passed on, and I came into a new birth as a baby named Nathaniel. When I was 4 and 5 years old, there was much talk of the readiness of Him to come. My father took me with him to the Essene school at Mt Carmel, where I was too young to participate in any formal training but sat and listened and heard the preparations that were underway for this bringer of the teachings of light.

Then one night when I was 5 years old, I sat with my father and many of the shepherds on a hillside and watched this radiant star in the sky. The whole earth seemed to vibrate with a higher energy. There was music in the air. The dark night was filled with light, and I was filled with a deep sense of peace, joy, and well-being.

We did not go down to the place of His birth that night but stayed in the hills with our sheep. But in the coming days, I had the opportunity to go with my father. We carried with us an orphaned lamb, to bring Him as a gift. I was permitted hand it to His mother and father and to hold Him, and I could feel from Him a sense of love, a sense of profound peace. It's very hard to express it in words.

He did not cry in the way many babies cry. I'm sure when He was hungry or was uncomfortable, He gave voice and let it be known. But mostly He simply radiantly peace, and He met your eyes in a way that most babies do not meet your eyes. He seemed to see deeply, to focus, when He looked at me.

I held Him and there was such deep joy. And then - you know His history - for His safety, He was taken away and I did not see Him again for some years. Since my father was a part of the Essene school, when He came back we were part of the larger family that greeted Him and His family. There were other boys, perhaps closer in age, but perhaps that first meeting or our past karma created some kind of energetic bond between us, because we became immediate friends though certainly He had many friends. Even though I was 5 years older than Him, He was in many ways older than me.

Because I was older and knew the shepherd's life, when He was 6 and I was 11, I was permitted sometimes to take Him into the hills where I watched the sheep and we would spend some time together. His wisdom touched me deeply, even in those early years. I watched Him as a young boy struggle with things we all as humans struggle with: ego, desires, pride, grasping, and anger. Most of us almost intuitively, when anger arises, or grasping, think, “No, I shouldn't feel that.” But He was different.

I remember, I would say we were 6 and 11 and this was one of our first trips up into the hills alone. I was used to being there alone with my sheep but He was allowed to come with me for a few days. As we walked, we passed some children beating a dog, and He became angry at them. I could see He wanted to take the stick away and beat THEM. I recognized them as neighborhood bullies. I took Him by the hand; I was responsible for His safety, remember. And I wasn't about to let Him try to beat up the neighborhood bullies. I was not going to bring Him home with a bloody nose and a black eye.

So I took His hand and led Him on. He said to me, “I want to hit them back! I am so angry!” And so we sat. We had passed safely away from them. They had stopped beating the dog as we simply stood there and watched. I was older than them, so they were enough intimidated that they stopped. The dog ran off.

We sat there. He simply began to breathe. His fists were clenched. “I am angry! I am angry! I am angry!” And then slowly His features settled into a slightly more peaceful expression, and He said to me, “I am learning not to hold my anger, not to be my anger. But it's very hard, Nathaniel.” He asked me would I help Him, so we sat there together. His  fists were still clenched and He was breathing hard and He said, “I release it.” Not, “I force it away,” “I release it.” I had the feeling it was like somebody who had dirt stuck to his hands and was simply washing them under a running stream, saying, “I don't need this dirt, I release it.” It's not that the anger is dirt. I'm not trying to make a comparison there. It could be a strong scent of flowers. There was simply the willingness to hold it under the running water of lovingkindness and release it.

I watched Him in some awe because I had not yet learned how to do this. I understood the technique but I couldn't do it. So I watched Him transform Himself, and within a few minutes become peaceful. And I asked Him, “Where did the anger go?” He said, “Love took it.” Just that. A 6-year-old's statement: “Love took it.” We each have that ability to give our anger to love and to allow love's clean water to wash it away. Love took it.

So He came to teach us about the innate radiance of our being and that we did not have to self-identify with the darkness and negativity that came upon us. And we did not have to be afraid of them and feel ashamed when they arose, but simply to know, these negative energies will arise when the conditions are present for them. I don't have to be afraid of it. Literally, I offer it out to the cleansing waters of love that flow through the heart, and it will release. And if it doesn't release quickly, that's okay, too. It will release when it releases. We are not hurrying it along. Rather, we are focusing upon the predominance of love, the power of love, not focusing attention on the negative expression.

When He was a boy about that same age, some of us were practicing with a slingshot, hitting our rocks against a post. He was perhaps the youngest. This was at Mt. Carmel, and we were up on the hill behind the school and living area. He drew the sling back and let it go. The rock missed the post, and we heard a squawking noise, a cry, as the rock went into the brush beyond the post. He went to look and saw His rock had hit a bird that was nesting there, and whose presence we had not known.

He was brokenhearted. He picked this creature up in His hands and held it. It was bleeding a bit; the stone had not hit its head but its side. It looked to be in pain. And such a feeling of shame and despair arose in Him. He began to shake. I could see Him begin to get into a kind of ego-centered story, “I'm bad. Look what I did. I wasn't careful. I should have looked first. It's my fault.”  He realized what He was beginning to do. And then He did the same thing that He had done with the anger but a year earlier, He sat down and said, “This is also anger.” And He began to breathe with it, but He was trembling and He was still holding the bird. Slowly I saw Him calm Himself. His facial expression changed and He began to smile, releasing here the shame, the self-anger. He held the bird very tenderly for quite awhile until He was calm, and then He took it to His mother.

I can't tell you what happened, whether that bird was simply somewhat in shock and not really physically injured, or whether His healing power and love affected the bird, but they told me that later that day, the bird simply flew off out of the container they had placed it in, flew away seemingly unhurt. I can't help but think it was because of the power of His love. Because He was able to love Himself, He was able to offer the same love to the bird. Can you see that if He had been angry at Himself for hurting the bird, He would also have been angry at the bird for being in the line of His stone? He would have needed to blame, to blame Himself, to blame the bird. But because He did not need to blame either, He was able to release blame and simply rest in the truth of the power of love. And however it may be, the bird recovered and flew away.

What He was learning in these early years was the power of surrender: the surrender of the ego self to the greater self; the surrender of the small personal self to the radiant, unlimited, loving aspect of being, which is not self but simply Being, capital B. So He was learning how to release ego in order to express the divine self, which is what He came to share with the world.

Some of you have wondered about His death, when He could have easily escaped, why did He not do so? You've read the lines in the Bible, “Take this cup from me, but if that cannot be, Thy will be done.” There's an interesting balance here. We must open our hearts deeply to the personal self, the relative human, because this is how we develop compassion. But we must self-identify not only with the relative human but know the greater being of which we are a part, know our divinity.

I think He was able to take the final step of His life so gracefully because it's what He had practiced all of His life. Not just the release of negative energy, not just the surrender of the ego, but also the integration of the human and the divine. This is not just for Him. All of you share this birthright of divinity, all of you. What He did, you can do. Each of you is capable of expressing that radiance and light out into the world, and this truly is why you are here and why you come back again and again, each time learning to do this with more skill, to bring more and more lovingkindness, wisdom, and compassion into your earthly movements and thoughts.

Just before He began His time of teaching, we talked. He knew the time was coming. He had been preparing Himself all of His life for it. He did not know where it was going to take Him. This was before He had disciples and was out in the world teaching. At that point He was still simply Jesus, Jeshua, as I called Him, and I was Nathaniel, two young men sitting together and sharing our feelings and our fears. He said to me, “I have been preparing all my life to do this work, and I'm afraid. I don't know if I can do it.” And we talked then about what I've been speaking to you about tonight, the lifelong lessons He had learned about how to transcend the ego self and its doubt, fear, anger, greed, and other feelings, and rest in the divine radiance.

The ego is an interesting thing. Think you of a cup. If the cup is full, you can't add anything to it, it's full. But if you pour off some of the contents of that cup, then there's space for more to come in. So much of our learning is how to release what is in the cup that we have held to through fear, so that the cup is an empty vessel, so that the heart is an empty vessel able to receive. You are unlimited but as long as you think of yourself as limited, you cannot receive because you think there's not enough space inside.

So that night we talked, and He, in a sense talked it through. He said, “I know that the space is unlimited. I know that the divine radiance is what I truly am. And yet, there is fear.” And He began to see that just because there was fear did not mean that He could not act upon the divine radiance and truth. The fear is just fear. That which is aware of fear is not afraid to open deeply and rest in Awareness.

Here, we begin to find compassion for the human who is afraid, rather than shame at being afraid or condemnation of the human who is afraid. If there is fear, it simply means certain conditions have arisen and there is fear. He had prepared all His life for His work and knew it would be done if it was His Father's will and for the highest good. How did He learn this? Here are a few stories.

When we were perhaps 10 and 15, we were on a several-days walk to climb a mountain. Three other boys were with us. Jeshua was the youngest, and I was the oldest. We walked 3 days into the wilderness, and up, and up; it was an arduous climb. One of the boys fell and sprained his ankle. It was clear he could not climb; he could not walk. What were we going to do?

We had come to close to the top of this mountain, and it wasn't that we could go home and then set out again the next week, we were all going different directions. It was as it would be at the end of your summer holidays; we were all going in different directions. It was then or not at all.

I said I could not allow Jeshua to go on without me. I was responsible for Him, as the oldest and the youngest. And I did not feel I could leave one of the 12-year-olds with the other 12-year-old, the injured one. Yet, part of me was saying, “But we have to get there, we have to get there.” So I was still trying to figure out how we could climb this mountain and Jeshua said to me, “It doesn't matter. We will just stop. Why do we have to climb the mountain?” He had been the one who was most eager, “Got to get there! Got to get to the top!” But the boy was injured. He said, “We cannot leave him.” And I watched Him working with the ego that said, “Oh, but we've got to get to the top!” “It doesn't matter,” He said. “We can't leave him alone. We'll just stay here with him.”

The boy was too big for me to carry. We had adequate food because we had several days' journey back. So we just camped. And as I had assumed, after we did not return on time, people came out looking for us. And of course, and adult was able to carry the boy. By then, 4 days had passed and his foot was beginning to heal.

As those 3 days passed, each of us kept looking at the peak, which was in sight, maybe just 3 hours distant. Couldn't we go up? There were 5 of us—2 stay with the one who was hurt and 2 go up, and then the other 2, couldn't we do that? We watched the ego,  “Wanting, wanting, wanting.” And Jeshua was the one who kept saying, “No, no, let it go. It doesn't matter. Let it go.” It was so powerful to watch His centeredness and assuredness. It doesn't matter; let it go. And yet I know in a different situation, if it HAD mattered, He would have been able to say that, not from a place of grasping but to allow that radiance to come through and find a way to bring it forth.

So He learned how to release the ego needs, not to be reactive to it. But also He learned how to carry on and fulfill the deeper heart's direction. I give you that as a different story.

It was the last time that He came up to the hills with me. We were older now. He was a teenager and I really a young man. It began to snow during the night, a cold wind blowing. We had rounded up the sheep knowing the weather was going to turn. But one lamb was missing. I gathered the sheep but I said to Him, “One is missing but it doesn't matter; we must be in shelter.” And He said, “It DOES matter. That lamb will die.”

So He was able to let go of the trip to the top of the mountain, which His ego wanted to do, but when it came to a lamb's dying, it does matter. At this point, He was a teenager and I was no longer in charge of Him, as I was when we were young. He said, “I'm going out to look for it.” I said, “I'm worried about you, you could get hurt.” He said, “I could get hurt but I'll be careful. If I don't go, the lamb will die.”

We compromised and went together. I herded the other animals into a sheltered place, used some rope for a makeshift pen, and then we set out to find this lamb. It wasn't a pretty kind of snow but more like sleet: wet, heavy, cold, with an icy wind blowing. You couldn't see very far in front of you. We were both wet and shivering. Each time I started to say, “We need to stop,” He said, “No, we will find him.”

He was smaller than me and I would imagine He was colder than I was, but He didn't let that deter Him. This is not so much about whether we go on or hold back; it's about whether we act from a place of love or a place of fear, the fear dictated by the ego. Love told Him, stay with the boy with the sprained ankle, and love told Him, find the lamb. We did find that lamb. I remember Him lifting the very wet, cold creature who had fallen into a small crevice and couldn't get itself out, lifting it and tucking it under His robes, warming it with His body and carrying it back to our encampment, to the fire where the other sheep were. He held it against His body until it was warm, and then gently returned it to its mother. It was a late spring storm, unusual at that time of year. The next morning the sun came out, and dried up everything.  The lamb was happy and playful. He simply smiled at me as we watched this little lamb play and He said, “It did matter.”

He came to teach us how to bring light to the world. He did not talk about how to bring light to the world, but demonstrated it. He had to learn it for Himself. Although He was born with the capacity, as all of us are born with the capacity, He had to learn for Himself just how to do it as a human being. That is, how to find the light that always shines in the darkness and help express it forth into the world; how to trust the light of His own loving heart. He did not do this with any contempt for the human nor any minimizing of the human, but with full cherishing of the human.

He taught me that we always have a choice. We do not have the choice of what will arise in our minds and bodies. We have a choice about how we will relate to it, and that we always have the choice to relate with love. To me this ability to love is the deepest meaning of His life. He came as a light in the darkness to teach us how to be lights in the darkness. We always have the choice between light and darkness, fear and love.

At the start of our evening we lit the Chanukah candles that are just dying down beside me as I speak. At this time of year, the days grow short and there is darkness late into the morning and early in the afternoon. At dusk you kindle lights. Beside their other symbolism, these lights may remind you of this truth of your being, that you are light and that you do not need to be afraid of the darkness because you always have a light at your disposal. No matter how dark it gets, you always have light. The Light within you is like the Temple lamp that burned long after the oil should have been gone; as long as you believe in it and know it, your Light will never be extinguished.

I've talked to you about those times when I briefly traveled with Him during His brief years of ministry. It was a short period, and I was with Him just on select occasions, so there are few stories to tell. I don't think there's any story I haven't told at least once, of those adult years.

I know I have told this but perhaps just to a few of you. It is a story of knowledge of Light. We were walking, a small group of us, and it was necessary to cross a pass in the hills. The night was cold and dark. We could have stopped where we were, found some kind of shelter. It did not seem imperative that we go on. He said to us, “I feel called to continue. You may stay here, but I feel called to walk on.” And He couldn't say why He felt thus called, just, “I need to go on.” Well of course if He was going, we were going.

This wasn't a high mountain but it was steep, a large hill. It was a very dark, cloudy night, with a bitter wind blowing, and we climbed up into rocky terrain at the top, As we reached out of the trees, strong wind blew on us. And again we asked Him, can we seek shelter? “No, no, we need to go on.”

Perhaps a half hour passed at the top, crossing this rocky terrain, and suddenly the faint sound of a human cry, and we followed on toward that sound. There around a bend in the trail was a young man who had fallen and had a broken leg. He had despaired, had really thought his life was at an end. Then he heard voices and began to cry, to call to us.

Jeshua could not have heard him 2 hours earlier in the trees, but He was so deeply attuned that somehow He knew something up there needed Him, and it was important to go. Because He was so attuned to His own light, and so open and accepting of the darkness in Himself, He was deeply attuned also to the light and darkness of the world around Him. He was not afraid of the darkness in the world around Him, only committed to serve it with light.

So intuitively He understood, something needs me up there. I need to go. I would not go so far as to say He was telepathic. It wasn't that He was receiving some inner message, “I broke my leg. I need help.” It was more a deep inner knowing, a feeling, something is in pain up there and calling me to come to it. So He was willing to go, to put His own comfort aside and to go.

Each year I talk about some of the things that have been most meaningful to me, the lessons that I learned from Him, His humility, His deep commitment to service. So this is another side. His deep sensitivity to the light and commitment to the light, and that at some level He knew He had incarnated as the bringer of light, giver of light.

When you find yourself in darkness, you can think of Him, that's fine. But even more important, think of the light within yourself and that you are also a bringer of light. This divine radiance is with you always; you cannot lose it. Then it doesn't matter what arises in you, fear or any other kind of negative thought; it's simply a negative thought. Stay focused on the light, and you cannot lose your way. And this is what He came to teach.

This reminds me of one last story, this one when He was a little boy. I've told this to some of you before. Again we were out in the hills with the sheep, and again it was a stormy night. I was trying to make a fire, and I couldn't get the wet wood lit. I was trying in a mechanical way to make a fire with a flint. And He looked at me, this wise 6-year-old, and He said, “Nathaniel, just make the fire!”

He was not yet formally within the Essene school; I was. I had been studying manifestation. I knew the lesson. I knew how to create fire. I knew how to create a light in the darkness, to manifest it. You have to know that you can do it. You have to know that the light is already there. You are not creating the fire, you are simply inviting the already-existent fire to express itself.

So there I was striking at my flint and the wood was damp, and He said, “Just make the fire!” Finally He got impatient with me.  He pushed me out of the way and said, “I'll do it,” and there was the fire.

I knew I could have done it, but I didn't fully believe that I could do it. He had not been trained how to do it, He knew. The fire is there; just invite it. Let it express. The light is there; bring it forth.

I'm going to pause here and see if there are one or two questions, and then we'll end so you'll have time for your holiday party...Are there questions?

Q: What did Jeshua look like when He was a young boy?

Aaron: He had intense blue eyes and long brown hair, somewhat curly. I would like to say He looked angelic but unfortunately He did not! He looked like a little boy. He had a vibrant energy. He almost always had a smile. He was very intense. When He was a baby, He had curly hair. He outgrew the curly hair and it just waved a bit so it didn't hang straight and He wore it pulled back, as was the style in those days. But it wasn't very straight. Curly hair was for girls. When He was 9 or 10, He wished it to be straighter. Then He outgrew that small vanity.

He was tall and slender for His age, always. As a young man, as His body developed, He was muscular but He was still slender and tall. His skin was neither dark nor Caucasian, light, but a middle-colored skin, let us say, chestnut-colored. The blue eyes were a bit unusual with His coloration.

Others?

Q: How closely do the quotes in the New Testament reflect what was actually said at the time?

Aaron: Moderate. I think what is most important is not that there are major errors in what is written so much as what is left out.

The New Testament presents the idea of a being who was one-focused; it doesn't show you His humanness, His joy of life. He loved to dance, He loved to sing, He loved to laugh, and that's missing in these Bible stories. I think there was an effort on the part of those who created the New Testament to express a very serious, spiritual soul, and that's a loss because He was human and full of joy for life.

It also leaves out the personal side of Him, how much He loved His parents, for example, and His  siblings. That He, like all boys, fell in love a number of times with little girls that He adored when He was 6 and 10 years old. It leaves out what a good friend He was, how supportive He was personally to the people around Him. It talks about the great teacher but not the human Jeshua.

Q: I have two questions. Forgive me if these questions have already been answered in the past.

Aaron: Not a problem.

Q: My first question is, did Jeshua ever have children?

Aaron: Certainly. Yes. He married and had children, and yes Mary Magdalene was His wife.

Q: That's beautiful. And did He actually die on the cross?

Aaron: Yes, in a sense, He did. The ego died. What remained was no longer the human as He had been. That part of the story is quite accurate. Yet it was not death as you know it now.

Q: Thank you.

Aaron: And at that hour of transition, the world turned dark as if it were night. Rain poured down. The earth shook as in an earthquake. That is as described.

One or two more questions....

Q: What happened to His children?

Aaron: There were Essene schools or schools related to the Essene schools in Britain and in Europe. It is there the family lived and they were raised.

You asked, did He die on the cross. Yes and no. This is a bit hard to understand. We have to understand the whole meaning of the resurrection. It has two meanings.

He says at some point in the scriptures, “I am the resurrection and the life.” This is not just His statement for Him self. All of you, in your highest being, the “I AM,” are the resurrection and the life. I know this may sound sacrilegious to some of you, but if you understand the meaning of the resurrection, there is the human man of lower consciousness, and there is divine man, and each of you is incarnate to resurrect yourself into the divine man, and to fully express that divinity through the vehicle of the human. Your incarnation brings the task of resurrection to each of you, not specifically as you think of His resurrection after the crucifixion, as the scriptures have expressed it, but rather, the fullest resurrection into that which you truly are.

The Essene schools at that time had many trainings and initiations, including what you might think of as the crucifixion initiation. Each of you experience this in your own ways. You don't have to hang on a cross. Have you experienced some severe trauma or difficulty in your life? You've heard the saying, “This is your cross to bear.” Each of you in this present time has your own crucifixion, your own cross to bear, and the training is to learn how to do it with love.

The trainings were not that different in that time. The crucifixion initiation had nothing to do with physical crucifixion, but it was about carrying the greatest burdens of our lives with love. Another training was the resurrection training. It was not one that everyone in the Essene school underwent. Only those who were ready were trained to slow the life process to such a degree that it appeared that there was no longer any life. The heartbeat, the brainwaves, the breath; everything slowed to the degree that it appeared there was no longer life. One could sustain oneself in that place for quite a length of time, usually with the support of others whose energy helped to support the life functions until it was time to bring them back.

So when I say, yes He died on the cross, I think the last of the ego self within Him died on the cross. The physical being did not die. The physical being came out of that crucifixion initiation and into the resurrection initiation, bringing forth the highest of His divine energy. He had such a high energy that most beings could not touch Him , but He continued to walk the earth.

His marriage and His children came after that, not before. They moved to, I suppose what would be Europe and then the England, lived in several different areas there. He lived a very simple life, and continued to teach in a very quiet way. It was not the same person, really. It's hard to explain what He was like then. But yes, He continued.

So now I have confused you thoroughly!

I will simply say that I danced at His wedding. It was a small but beautiful celebration.

One last question.

Q: Did He eat meat or hunt?

Aaron: He did not hunt. He ate meat when it was offered to Him with love. For example, as He traveled and somebody lovingly prepared a meal for Him that contained meat, He ate the meat. He blessed what He ate with great reverence for that life given to nurture Him. So He did not take life Himself or choose to hunt for Himself. He chose only to eat vegetarian fare when left to His own resources, but would not refuse anything that was served Him in a way that might shame another who was offering Him the best he/she had. He did not feel it wrong to eat meat, only wrong to eat anything, whether it was meat or a carrot, without deep reverence and respect for the life that was being given in support of Him.

I want to point out that this resurrection as He performed it was not unknown in those days, and He is not the only one who was capable of that. Others were thusly trained. Though His case was quite extreme and there was never certainty the body would survive.  Before the crucifixion was torment to body and mind. Only the great master could have moved through it with grace.

The reason that I was able to live as Aaron for 500 years is that I was trained to slow the life processes in this way. Certain oils, almost like your embalming chemicals, were used on the body to help preserve and restore the body, and I went through that process a number of times and was able in that way to keep myself young. These are all things many of you knew but you have forgotten.

So what He did may seem like a marvel and mystery to you, but it was part of the trainings that many received in those days. What's important for Him is how much love and courage He brought to it, because to face, not death, but the pain and agony of the crucifixion and the inner hurt of it, with love was so significant.

So, my love to all of you. I wish you a blessed Christmas, a joyful Hanukah, Kwanza, or whatever holiday you are celebrating, and a new year of deep growth and fulfillment, joy and service, and of good health. May each of you bring this inner life to ever-greater radiance in the new year. This is why you have come.

Barbara mentioned that she met today with the makers of the film “One,” Ward and Diane Power. While they were filming her 4 years ago they had asked her, what is the purpose of life? Today they got to talking about that again, the answer she had 5 years ago when they filmed it, and the answer she had now. She said her answer had changed in these 5 years, that she's become more certain that the purpose of life is simply to learn how to love, to move into the higher consciousness of love and bring it forth in the universe, because there is darkness in the universe, and only by holding this radiance through knowing your divinity can you bring the light forth that cancels the darkness. It takes only a moment of light to brighten darkness that has lain there for thousands of years. This is the purpose of your lives, to be light.

May your Light shine brightly and forever.  May all beings be blessed by your Light.

I return the body to Barbara. Thank you for being with me tonight....

(taping ends)