November 30, 2011 Wednesday, Cosmic Healing Class

Barbara has a classic “shiner” and multicolored bruises on the side of her face and people have asked what happened.

Barbara: ...I'm talking about the water slide accident and my black eye. We took the children and grandchildren to Splash Village Indoor Water Park the day before Thanksgiving. It was great fun but the second time down the largest slide, my head hit an obstruction that should not have been there, and I was knocked unconscious.

It's been interesting watching how much I try to control the pain. As soon as I tense up when there's pain, it enhances the pain. As soon as I relax, the pain mostly goes. I know this is temporary. The CAT scan showed no big damage. I've seen a dentist and eye doctor this week and they said no damage. So I know it's temporary. There's not any real fear about it; it's just uncomfortable. I don't want this discomfort. And as soon as I tense up, then the head starts pounding. It's fascinating to watch this, the immediate biofeedback.

We're going to be talking tonight about ultimate and relative reality. On the relative level, I certainly have a black eye. The big swelling on the skull has gone down but there's swelling in the jaw and back of the head, and pain. On the ultimate level, the ever-perfect tissue is still there; where would it go? The tissue just before the accident, the cells just before the accident, the body as it is when it's not impacted and swollen, discolored-- that's still there. I am inviting it back into full manifestation.

You were toning when I came in. I've been doing a lot of toning with these injuries, a lot of simply inviting the tissue to release the distortions and come back into the way it is when it's not suffering from distortion. I've got to stay in both places, loving the body as it is and willing to release the way it is and invite back the healthy body. So it's been interesting.

Last night there was a lot of pain running down the back of my head and neck and I couldn't sleep. At one point one of the Casa entities told me to roll over on my side so that I didn't have any pressure against the part that was painful. I slept like that for about half an hour, but finally I got up. I sat at my desk for an hour and then the Entity said, “Go out to the hot tub.” So I went into the hot tub, and he worked through my hand. I could feel I wasn't controlling the hand; he was, working energetically, moving energy around. Aaron says now that he said, “Don't self-identify with the damaged tissue but the whole tissue. Remember the whole tissue. Believe in the whole tissue. Delight in the pain-free body.” And cherish the body as it is. We have to balance it, to do both.

So after about 45 minutes out there - it was beautiful. There was snow everywhere, a few stars peeking through. Very cold out there but nice and warm up to my chin in the hot tub, sinking down so that the painful part was in the heat - I was ready to go back to sleep and slept very happily for a couple of hours without any pain.

I would like to share with you the newest book that has finally arrived from the publisher; The Aaron/Q'uo Dialogues: An Extraordinary Conversation between Two Spiritual Guides. The official release date is in December, and we'll have a book release party here December 16th... I'm very happy about it. It came out very well.

This book is co-channeled with my good friend Carla Rueckert, who lives in Kentucky and channels an entity named Q'uo. For those of you familiar with metaphysics, she's the channel for the Ra Material, otherwise known as the Law of One, a well-known metaphysical work. Back 20 years ago, visiting her for the first time, Aaron and Q'uo got into a dialogue with each other and those who were listening said, “This is profound. We need to record it. We need to transcribe it.” Through many years, we met often and held workshops together. This book is the result of all that. I'm very, very happy to see it because it's deep, and it really carries the heart of Aaron's (and Q'uo's) teaching through all these years in a way that none of the other books do. Cosmic Healing goes deep in one direction, told more in my voice and Presence, Kindness, and Freedom touches on many things, but this book really goes into these teachings in greater depth. It is also beautiful to see Aaron's and Q'uo's love for each other and their way of interrelating with each other.

So, come on the 16th for the book signing here. On the 18th I'll be out in Jackson for Aaron to talk and we'll sign books out there at Corinthian Church. I'm happy to see it launched.

Okay, that's enough from me. No, there's one more thing Aaron is suggesting that I talk about.

When I first had this impact and I came to, still sitting on a tube in the small pool at the bottom of the water slide, I saw how with the trauma I had immediately jumped out of my body. I think in a trauma the habit we have is to get out of the body. The body is endangered; abandon the body. So as I came to, I heard one of the Casa entities, Dr. Valdivino, saying to me in a very stern way, and he doesn't usually talk sternly, “Get back in your body right now!!” Like I used to say to my kids when I found them out of bed late at night. “Get back in your body right now!”

What I saw was that abandoning the body in that way from a place of fear and pain left the body vulnerable to negativity. A negative entity could enter and attach itself to the body because I was no longer holding the body at that moment. And it was very important to re-ground myself in the body. It was very hard, and I'm not fully grounded in the body yet. It's a week and I'm still working on it. It was a very powerful experience. It led me to a lot of reflection about how, both in this life and in past lives, sometimes with trauma I've abandoned the body, and what it means not to abandon our bodies. Not to be self-identified with them but to cherish them, and to stay connected to them even when they're painful and not doing what we wish them to do, not being as we want them to be. So this has been a profound teaching for me. I'm sure more thoughts will come out of this and you'll read about it somewhere along the line. Right now, it's work in process.

Aaron: My blessings and love. I am Aaron. Now, I'm not the one with the black eye, she is, but since I use this body, I guess I've got the black eye, too. My ultimate reality is of no black eye, and my relative reality at the moment is that the body I inhabit has a black eye.

It was interesting to me observing Barbara last night in the hot tub. First I was working with her, and then one of the Casa entities, Dr. Augusto, who had sent her to the hot tub, came. As soon as he put his hand up like this, the sharp pulsating pain stopped. As soon as he took his hand away, it started again. He worked with her for about 5 minutes. After 5 minutes' time there was no pain at all. Then he took his hand away and within a minute or two, the pain resumed. He put his hand back, and the pain went away.

Then he said to her, “Is the pain real or imaginary? At what level is it real and at what level is it imaginary? If it stops as soon as” --when I say ‘his' hand, he was using Barbara's hand - If it stops as soon as he puts his hand this way, then what is the basis for the pain? At what level is there no pain, and at what level is there pain? So then he and I together asked Barbara to move into that place of no pain and release any self-identity with the pain. Meanwhile he was using the hand and bringing energy in.

Think about this yourself, in your own bodies and your own emotions. Sometimes there's pain, sometimes there's no pain, shifting so quickly. An itch. It's intense. You've got to move. You've got to scratch it. And then it's gone. An angry thought or a frightened thought that arises, and then it's gone.

You cannot ignore the fact that there is pain in the physical body or emotional body. You cannot pretend it's not there. But as soon as you self-identify with it, it becomes not “the pain” but “my pain“. There's nothing wrong with “my pain”. That can generate compassion for this human. But it also excludes the whole rest of the world that's also experiencing pain. Then you start to take it personally and tense yourself trying to fix it instead of just opening your heart and saying, “Okay. In this moment, there's pain.” Body pain, sadness, confusion, depression, anxiety. In this moment, can there be compassion for all beings in the world who are experiencing that kind of pain, and not personal ownership of it but a willingness to take your share of it and carry that share, knowing that it is impermanent and not of the nature of a separate self? In other words, it is your share of the cosmic pain, not your pain.

There's a fine line, here. You can't say, “It's not my pain,” in a way that dismisses it or tries to separate you from it. As soon as you do that, you're disassociating from it to some degree, trying to keep it away from you, saying, “No, not mine.” And you can't fall into it and say, “It's mine and I have to fix it” because then you lose the spaciousness.

Interesting... Barbara has not had a cold in 4 or 5 years. A week ago, the night of this concussion, she developed quite a bad cold. I conjecture that the whole immune system went to fight the injury and left her susceptible to her family's colds. The cold is mostly better. A little hoarseness, still. Just another thing-- not her hoarseness, just the way the human body is. A human body is susceptible to bacteria and virus. It's susceptible to injury. It's impermanent. And you really can't hold on to some idea that everything's going to stay perfect in this body because it won't.

So we have relative reality and ultimate reality. Barbara had a beautiful teddy bear in a red canister through last summer and it disappeared. It will resurface eventually. Meanwhile, we've got this little fellow. He lives in relative reality. Here he is. (a very realistic looking stuffed rabbit, Sulu's (Barbara's dog) toy)  Much of the time, he's right down there in the relative reality box and he doesn't come out very often. But once in awhile he hops out into the ultimate reality box, which you note has no top to it, it's open-ended. Lots of space when he meditates. He moves into a deep meditation experience of ultimate reality, and then he comes back out and says, “Wow! That was great! Let's do that again!” He grasps after it, but in the grasping he ends up right back in his relative reality box, maybe with his ears sticking out. (demonstrating as he talks)

He goes back and forth quite a bit. One day as he's sitting in his relative reality box, he notices that the lid comes off and he's in ultimate reality, that relative reality is inside ultimate reality. At that point, he tries to hop back and forth but it doesn't really work until he finally figures out that he can have a foot in ultimate reality and a foot in relative reality and balance the two (demonstrating). At that point, he's quite happy. He's grounded in the ultimate and he's connected to the relative. Not dismissive of it, not afraid of it, but also not self-identified with it. Willing to stay present with it, and balanced between the two.

Sometimes he's more in the ultimate, maybe just one hand touching the relative. Sometimes he's more in the relative, maybe just one hand or ear, as it might be, touching the ultimate. But he learns how to balance between the two. This is the whole function of understanding relative and ultimate reality and the non-duality between the two. When we talk about non-duality, what we are saying is that both relative reality and ultimate reality are real, but they are not separate from each other. They are connected. As long as you try to separate them you create confusion and discord. But when you recognize how they are connected there's no longer much of a problem.

Please take a piece of paper. “Relative Reality” is printed in this small box. I'd like you to put this piece of paper on the floor and put your feet on it. Those who are sitting on a cushion could put it on the floor and put a hand on it.

Ideally, if there is space, I'd like to have you stand up in relative reality. It's a little box, isn't it? Can you stay there? Don't touch ultimate reality, just stay in relative reality. Can you stay there? Your feet are in relative reality. Where are your eyes and your thoughts? You're going to have to look down at the paper and center yourself right into that box. How does it feel to be in that box? No connection with me or anything else or anyone else in the room. Just in relative reality.

(pause)

Now open your eyes and look at the person next to you or behind you. If necessary, turn around. How does it feel to come out of the box? Make an eye connection with at least one other person. You can step around on your paper. Make an eye connection. Coming out of relative reality for just a moment, connecting, and then come back into your relative reality box. Close your eyes; look down at the paper... And open again. Again, look somebody in the eye; maybe even take somebody's hand. They're in their relative box, you're in your relative box, and yet you're connecting. Can you feel it energetically when you come out of your relative reality box and reconnect? You're choosing to allow yourself to open into the ultimate, or at least a broader relative reality, and that's the pathway into the ultimate.

Come back again. Drop the hands. Drop the gaze. Re-center in the relative reality box and reflect to yourself, “What is my relative reality at this moment? Is the body feeling calm or restless? Painful or free of pain? Is there happiness or sadness, ease or anxiety? Joy or sorrow? Is the mind calm or agitated? What is the relative reality of this human in this moment?”

Deeply know your own relative reality, which of course is ever-changing. But for the moment, know it. Now you can step off the paper if you want to for this part of the exercise. Each of you turn to one other person. One person, and then the other, share with each other the nature of your relative experience in this moment. The listeners, deep listening so that you deeply hear the other person's relative experience and can say back to them, “I hear you saying that your relative experience in this moment is ease,” or contraction, is joy or sorrow, is pain or absence of pain. You don't have to go into extensive detail, but tell the others some major piece of your relative experience, and the others repeat it. Go ahead.

(exercise)

As you hear each other I want you to be aware of the process of stepping out of your own relative reality box in order to hear the other. I want you to be aware of that shift, letting go of your own relative experience to open fully to the other's experience. If you're caught in your own experience, you can't really hear the other's experience. That there has to be some letting go and stepping outside of your box in order to hear the other. Go ahead.

(exercise)

We'll continue with this in a moment. As you listen to another's relative reality, can you expand yourself enough to bring their relative reality and yours together, to include their relative reality in your consciousness? To truly hear them rather than maintaining two separate boxes. Like our rabbit, if we had a second one and a second relative reality basket. The idea here would be-- I've only got one rabbit here but if we had a second creature in a second basket and they both talk to each other from inside their baskets, can they really hear each other, or are they only taking it in through their own relative reality? But if they both get into a situation where they're touching ultimate reality, then they can hold space for their own and the other's reality without negating either reality.

This insight is what we're after.

Exercise

Q: Is it so simple a concept that by connecting with others, you're in ultimate reality?

Aaron: By connecting with others you are touching ultimate reality, but there's a difference. You can stay in your own relative reality space with judging mind, hearing the other but not connecting to the other. I'm not talking about discernment but judgment, setting up barricades, armoring the heart. You cannot truly connect with the other unless you're both touching ultimate reality, expressing and receiving.

So with that in mind, I'd like you to stand up and do this one more time, seeing if you can open yourself to the point that you're truly both (or all three) touching the ultimate. You may find that speech isn't necessary, that you just want to look in each other's eyes. What allows you to connect, and even if some degree of armoring remains, can there be a transcendence of that armoring? No self-identification with it, just compassion for the human who is thus habituated to armor itself. And can you still connect? Try it.

(exercise; the energy in the room is very high)

Thank you for being willing to climb out of your armor and connect, to try this. I'd be glad to hear from any of you who would like to share a bit about the experience. Could you feel the shift from your own relative box into a larger space?

Q: The three of us just felt very connected with each other. We all agreed that we felt love for each other. And we were just in a space, and we all knew that there was love there. It was very different from before we did that.

Q: We had physical contact, and that was the second time. The first time was verbal, the second time was physical, holding hands. The physical contact, the holding hands, just brought things deeper where words were not necessary.

Aaron: Thank you. Others? My experience watching you is that many of you shifted from a centeredness in your own little box into a wider space. We cannot say that space is ultimate reality. What is ultimate reality? It's unlimited. If I have a small creek that flows down the mountain to the sea and I call the sea ultimate reality, is the creek that flows into the sea also ultimate reality? Is water evaporated from the sea also ultimate reality?

Ultimate reality by its very nature is unlimited, and yet you may only be able to experience a portion of that ultimate reality, what seems like a somewhat limited portion. We have to be careful here not to create a duality between the relative and the ultimate.

You're tucked away in your little basket in the relative, but you're still in the ultimate, you simply don't know yet that you're in the ultimate. And then you peek out. Ah, look at all the space! And then you get one foot out, a second foot out. Gradually you begin to spread yourself out into that ultimate space.

We've been talking in class about armoring, watching the movement into armoring and the release of armoring. The ultimate is always there. You can't possibly lose it. But when you're standing on your little relative reality square of paper you lose awareness of the presence of the ultimate. There has to be a willingness to step into that bigger space.

It's interesting. Barbara spoke earlier of jumping out of the body with the trauma of this impact. Her habitual tendency was to get out of what seemed like an unsafe body and back into the ultimate. There can be the reverse reaction, too; to close in to the relative and armor the self into the relative. Each of you will have your own tendencies with this.

What I ask of you is to become increasingly aware of the simultaneity of relative and ultimate, and that when you're not feeling balanced between them, to ask yourself where that balance lies and what can help support that balance. This is the primary issue, intention to remain balanced.

Why do we leave one or the other? We leave the ultimate because it seems too vast and we feel powerless. Fear comes. We leave the relative because there's pain, discomfort, confusion, and we feel powerless and afraid. I think it's always an issue of fear that closes us off from knowing the simultaneity and living that simultaneity. The first step is intention, wanting to live the simultaneity, agreeing at some level to try to live it. That means here you are connecting with people in a loving way, but imagine if you were standing with someone who was yelling at you, how much you would want to pull back from their reality and close yourself off into your own reality. Can we stay connected not only to another's openheartedness and love but another's pain? That's the hard part. To be willing to connect with others' pain, with the pain of the world, and not take it personally. Not build stories around it or believe you have to fix it. Simply to hold the space, and that space is ultimate reality.

Let's open this up for discussion and questions.

Q: I picture ultimate reality as being perfect.

Aaron: Daughter, what does perfect mean?

Q: Cozy and (inaudible)

Aaron: My personal experience of ultimate reality is that it is both extremely comfortable and extremely uncomfortable at the same time. Imagine yourself floating on an ocean on a boat. The sun is rising. The colors are glorious. The water is relatively still, small swells but no bigger threatening waves. You have ample food and drink. You have some shelter from the upcoming sun. And there's an endless horizon around you. Imagine the joy, the peace, the beauty of that scene. Comfortable. Perhaps not cozy, but expansive and beautiful.

Now imagine about three hours later. The sun has come up and it's getting hot. A wind is blowing up and the swells have grown, a little motion discomfort. But above all else, you're lonely. It's been 24 hours out here on the water and you know it's going to be several more days. It was beautiful meditating with the dawn but now you're lonely. What changed? Has the ultimate reality of the vast sea gone anywhere? But the small self says, “I want contact. I want safety. I want entertainment.”

We cannot stay in that ultimate space because you are a human with a physical, emotional, and mental body, along with the spirit body, and these are conditioned. And unless you are a fully awakened being, that old conditioning is going to come forth and say, “This would be perfect if only I had someone to share it with. This would be perfect if only I had some ice for my tea. This would be perfect if the water would quiet down a bit. The swells are too big.” Or, “If only the wind would blow a bit and create swells. It's too flat.” There's always going to be something more that we want.

I believe I interrupted you. You did not ask a question. I picked up on what you had said so far. Did you want to say more about it?

Q: I didn't know there was pain in the ultimate reality.

Aaron: There's not pain in the ultimate reality, there's pain in the human's expectation and grasping for what they want to find in the ultimate reality. In meditation, when one experiences dissolution of the body, of the ego, and rests in the vast space of ultimate reality, there's no grasping, no seeking of anything. But that only happens with some separation from the human side of the self. One cannot live fully from that space.

Imagine yourself in that place of ultimate reality, resting in spaciousness in meditation with great joy and ease, and suddenly the day grows cloudy and rain starts to fall. The body is assaulted by cold, wind, and rain. The boat starts rocking so that you're seasick. There is a physical body. Are you going to attend with awareness to the responses of this physical body, to seek shelter, or are you going to push it aside and cling to ultimate reality in denial of the relative? My whole question here is, how do we bring it together? In that moment, experiencing the cold, rain, and wind, the motion sickness, the vastness and feelings of loneliness, can there be compassion for this human? Opening with compassion to the human experience, we re-open into ultimate reality that's an inclusive ultimate reality and not based on conditions, of no body discomfort, no emotional discomfort, and so forth. Because there IS going to be body and emotional discomfort.

So where is your perfection? The perfection is not in ultimate reality, the perfection is in your relationship with relative reality and whether there can be a compassionate relationship with the relative reality that does not take it personally, doesn't fixate and grasp and jump into the stories of “if only”, “I want this, I don't want that.” Then you have perfection.

Q: Aaron, do you live in ultimate reality?

Aaron: I do.

Q: What's it like?

If I incorporate in Barbara's body and there's pain, I will feel the pain. If there's imbalance, I will feel the imbalance. But I don't have aversion to these, I simply note them as human experience, with compassion. So there's no fear and no grasping. No contraction. I think that's the predominant factor: in ultimate reality there is no contraction.

Let me rephrase that. There is the knee-jerk contraction. If there were a loud noise and the body startled, as Barbara does hear loud noises, if I was incorporated in the body, I would hear that loud noise and contract. If something pushed, there would be a momentary contraction, but there's no self-identification with the contraction. It comes and it goes, like a wave landing on the shore and rolling back out into the sea.

Q: Would you speak about the movement from the relative to the ultimate reality? I keep thinking of chakras and the movement among the different chakras, and how we sometimes can integrate our being and live in different realms, being grounded in the spiritual at the same time. Could you speak to that? Could you connect that better than I could do that myself?

Aaron: I'm not sure I can connect it better than you can, but that's a helpful point, brother. When the chakras are fully open, the central chakra channel is fully open, we are not just in one chakra but they are all connected. Thus we are grounded in the more physical, human side of things and also grounded in the spiritual, and hold both in the heart.

Sometimes people get caught up in one chakra or another. For example, if I looked at you fiercely with anger, you know I'm not really angry at you, I'm not going to hurt you, but could you feel your belly contract a bit?

Now, (makes fierce noises; laughter). I'm not really that fierce. I'm trying to give an appearance of being fierce.

Q: Not very convincing!

Aaron: I'm out of practice! (laughter) (Aaron shouts) Can you feel the belly contract? Now, what if you stayed there in that contracted belly? Breathe in. You're caught for the moment in the relative reality of that solar plexus chakra. Breathe into the solar plexus. Put one hand on the solar plexus and one on the heart. Invite the heart energy down into the solar plexus. Take the hand from the heart and bring it down to the navel, even into the base chakra, wherever it wants to go. Drawing the energy down, grounding yourself in the base chakra. Breathing in and breathing out. It starts with the intention not to get caught in the limitation of the solar plexus chakra.

Bringing the hand back to the heart, allowing the energy to connect, and then moving the hand up to the third eye and the crown. Maybe a finger on the third eye and another finger up at the crown. Bring the energy up. From the crown, bring in cosmic energy and draw it down to the solar plexus; feel it open.

This is a wonderful example of the shift from relative to opening gradually into ultimate reality. Thank you for pointing it out.

Others?

Q: Emotions, are they more relative reality rather than the ultimate?

Aaron: It depends on the emotion. Love is a very ultimate-based reality. Fear is a very relative-based reality. All the emotions based on fear are more about the relative experience. All the emotions based in love and expansiveness and connection are more ultimate-grounded experience.

The primary issue here is awareness and intention. I'm coming back to Barbara's example of fleeing the body with the trauma. Slap! And immediately she was out of the body. Hundreds, thousands of past lives and deaths, where this body, as each of your bodies, died, sometimes traumatically. It's not safe to stay in the body when it's injured-- get out of there! Fear, contraction. But she was not in ultimate reality: she remained in relative reality in consciousness. She simply fled the body.

We're talking about consciousness here. Consciousness fled the body but was still in relative reality in a place of fear and contraction.

What is your intention? We've done that pushing exercise, something pushing at me. Do I push back? Do I armor myself; try to protect myself? Or do I note the discomfort of this emotional or physical or mental push, energetic push, for that matter, note the habitual response to close up and contract, and note the intention to stay connected for the highest good of all beings and with love?

It is only through this willingness to stay connected even when at times it's uncomfortable that you can transcend the habitual pattern of the human being to separate itself and remain in a very dualistic consciousness.  What we're looking at here is the evolution of consciousness from the small self into the greater self, into non-dual awareness. There's a major chapter on consciousness in Cosmic Healing. We'll be coming to that in the second semester. But you are all evolving into higher consciousness, evolving into a knowing of the awakened self, the Christ self, or whatever you wish to call it, the Buddha nature. Knowing, this is what I am and what everything is, and I choose to live this level of consciousness and invite this level of consciousness from the world around me rather than to move back into the habitual pattern of contracting with fear, jumping out of the body or hiding in the body, or whatever fear brings, moving away from the connection.

Only when you are connected are you going to finally live your potential as humans. You are gods and goddesses. You are divine. You are radiant. You are all expansive. Why do you want to walk around like this poor bunny rabbit with his ears over his eyes and his head tucked in? Is that really how you want to live? Is that where you want to be? Get out of there!

That's what we're inviting in this class, freedom in the greatest sense. And it's not like an on/off switch. It's like this dimmer switch (turning lights with dimmer). It comes up gradually. As the weeks and months and years go by you're going to find yourself more and more able to stay connected, open and expansive even when there is some distress, and that mind will not run into these habitual stories, “poor me” or “how do I fix it?” but will just stay openhearted, sometimes with distress.

Q: The question I have is, what happens if you try to force the expansiveness?

Aaron: You can't! The ego that would force it cannot expand beyond its own little nutshell. You can invite; you cannot force. To force is from a contracted space, and how can contraction invite expansion? But the awareness, “grasping after expansion, wanting to force it.” Breathing in, I am aware of fear and wanting to get out of fear into expansion. Breathing out, I smile with this human that so much wants to be in a more expanded place. And just that pattern helps you expand. Whereas the “I should, I must,” simply contracts you.

Q: If it was consciousness that jumped out of Barbara's body, what was still connected?

Aaron: Awareness. So, the mundane consciousness, the self-identity, said, “This isn't a safe place to be. Get out of here!” And yet, even in her state of unconsciousness, there was a certain awareness looking down on the scene from outside the body. She described how the slide is in the open and then enters into a dark tunnel for about 10 seconds, and then comes back into the pool, finally ends up in the pool. In previous slides down, there was strong knowing of the coming of the tunnel, the fun of being in the dark for that 10 or 15 seconds, winding around and coming back into the light. There was no consciousness of that from the human perspective after the injury, but there was an awareness that watched this body and in some way willed the body to stay upright on the inner tube and hold onto the handles, not to fall off. And was aware of coming down into the water and, at the point where she was surrounded by several lifeguards, the consciousness coming back enough into the body to respond.

Q: So the entities wanted the mundane consciousness back in the body?

Aaron: Do you understand why? In that kind of trauma, if there is any negativity around, it's the primary place where we find negative attachment, where a negative entity can say, “Ah, here's a vacant body. It's unguarded. Let's jump in.” So Dr. Valdivino wanted her consciousness to get back in the body immediately, to reclaim the body. He and I both said to her, make the statement that you make often: “This body is consecrated to the light.” It's the statement she makes as she releases the body to me. It's the statement she makes as she takes the body back from me. “This body and mind and heart are consecrated to the light. Nothing else may enter or take over.”

Interestingly, part of my observation of this whole thing was that all of you have some little sticky, I don't want to call them entities, but small spirits that have attached to you through the years, like sticky notes stuck on you. A little bit of old anger or blame, some of it from you, some of it from other entities. Not only did Barbara's consciousness flee the body but all of these fled the body. And I think the reason he wanted her to get back into the body quickly was that it kept them from coming back. “You all go find another home! You left it willingly, of your own free will, and now I claim the body! Go!”

Q: So, following up on this question, there can be awareness when one is unconscious? And if so, is that something outside of us?

Aaron: Awareness is the core of what you are. As you cross the threshold and the body dies, awareness continues. There's no longer human consciousness. There's no longer body, mental, or emotional consciousness, but the awareness continues. Where would it go?

Q: So that's like our essence?

Aaron: Almost; a part of the essence... I, as Aaron, am awareness. What else am I? I have a memory, but basically all I am is a core of awareness because I have no self-identification with all these past lives that I've discussed at one time or another. They were simply learning opportunities. They're not who I am. I have no self-identification with the various bodies I have incarnated in through the millennia. I'm simply awareness.

(Pointing) You are awareness, you are awareness, you are awareness. What else could you be? And, you have all of these stories: “I'm Barbara and I'm a woman of this and such age, and I'm a dharma teacher,” or whatever. These are the consciousness's stories about you.

And yet you are more. What is love? Are love and awareness the same? Not quite.

Q: Is there any distinction between awareness and the higher self and/or the soul?

Aaron: These are all rather fuzzy terms. They're used in different ways. What I call pure spirit body.... There is the physical body-- I don't want to say “you have”, but a part of what you express as right now is physical body. There is also emotional body, mental body. They have a progressively higher vibration. The physical body has the slowest vibration. Emotional is next. Mental is next. And then pure spirit body has the highest vibration.

The higher self, as I define it, is the pure spirit body and the mental body. The mental body is still active, as part of the higher self. I come to you as pure spirit body yet with a mental body or I couldn't talk to you. So essentially I'm a higher self. The mental body is purified to the extent that there is no longer distortion in it, no self-identification with it, no self-identification with thoughts or memories, they're simply teaching tools.

At that level of your being in which you are the higher self, you are coming to that at the purified level of the mental body, as opposed to the everyday mundane level of the mental body with all its preferences and opinions and so forth. So the mental body has these different levels.

Soul is a very difficult term because every tradition defines it differently. I choose not to use the term soul at all; it's too ambiguous.

Q: About 10 years ago at Barbara's house on a Wednesday night, a woman who came had a negative entity attached to her. This had just recently happened, within the past few weeks. How did this entity enter her body if her mundane consciousness could protect against it? I'm a little confused about that.

Aaron: Your mundane consciousness can only protect the body if you are very clarified about the intention to be an instrument of light and not to move into or perpetuate the negative stories. But sometimes if somebody has been abusive to you and a sense of anger, betrayal, even wanting to hurt, comes up, you're pulled off into that negativity. Righteous anger, let's call it. One repeats the righteous anger over and over and over, the patterns of righteous anger. That makes you susceptible to negativity, the entity not part of the self that comes along and says, “You're right, that person really should suffer for what he did to you.” (whispering, partly inaudible) “Shhh, listen to me. Don't be kind to him. Fear him; we'll get back at him.” Whispered words.

As long as you've not resolved the negativity in yourself and still self-identify with it and see these thoughts come up and get entrapped by them, then you're still under the power of other negativity. You can be ensnared by it and then it can attach to you.

These kinds of attachment, I don't want to scare people, here. There's nobody in this room who is severely under the influence of a strong negatively polarized entity, and there's nobody in this room who is completely free of any little sticky notes of negativity. You are all very positive seekers with a deep intention to serve with love, to open to the place of love, and that intention protects you and helps to skillfully release negativity. In other words, you don't want to take swords and jab at negativity. This is Milarepa's, “Come, sit by my fire, have tea.” So you're not pulling them to the fire and burning them up, you're serving them tea and letting them sit until they're ready to leave.

For this woman, at some level she had agreed to open to this negativity, perhaps because of some need to experience it and thusly to have the opportunity to learn how to say no from a place of love rather than fear. Looking back on this in the akashic records, it seems that was her intention. But once she was consumed by the negativity, she didn't know how to do anything but fight with it with fear. So the course we tried to steer her on was, “Come sit by my fire, have tea.” Basic vipassana practice. Watching the fear arise and not getting caught in the stories of fear.

Eventually, if one pursues that, the negativity will fall away. It will see that it can't grab at you; it can't control you. It will lose interest.

There are situations where there is deep attached negativity. This is one of the places where the Casa is so helpful because the entities are very skillful at supporting the release of negativity. But even they cannot release the negativity for you without your intention to invite it to release. It must be a co-creation of you and spirit. But these supportive brothers and sisters of light will help.

In the same way, your own loving guides, your own positively polarized guides, if you turn to them and ask for help, if there's overwhelming anger or fear, even hatred, and you say, “My intention is not to enhance this emotion but I don't know how to release it. I ask for help,” and state your intention clearly, “For harmony, for the highest good of all beings, in service to all,” loving spirit will support your intention and help to guide you into that release, however long it takes.

Other questions?

Q: Can our guides read our minds?

Aaron: Yes and no. We will never invade your privacy. If there is something you do not wish to be open to your guides, we'll never force our way through. If you come to your guide saying, “I feel so much rage and I want to hold on to that rage. I find power in that rage.”, your guide will step back and let you perpetuate the rage until you're ready to say, “I'm ready to let go of it. I'm ready to find a deeper power in love, in healing.” Then you might say to your guide, “Please look in my mind and see where I'm caught, and help me understand.” And then your guide will be happy to read your mind and help you. Only because you've asked for it and never in violation of your free will.

Q: So when we ask, do we have to ask out loud?

Aaron: No, you ask with your heart. You can ask out loud, that's fine, but you ask with your heart. And sometimes there are two intentions: “I want to stay safe and closed in. I want to draw power from my anger because I don't know where else to draw power.” and “I feel trapped and I want to get out of this space.” Your guide will know your highest intention.

You are always co-creating. Nobody controls you but you. You are immense, divine beings. You are co-creating, each in your own way, whatever it is you most need to learn, step by step, and inviting into your experience that which will teach you.

Barbara asked me, “Why did I invite this into my experience? I was having such a good time on the water slide. I didn't want this.” And I said, at a higher level you wanted to learn to stay present in your body with love, regardless of the circumstances. Better this than a car crash or a broken neck from the impact. So you chose something that's, okay, a concussion, unpleasant but not such a big deal. It will heal in a few weeks. Not a big deal, but certainly a potent teacher.

At some level I think Barbara also chose this and she has to take the next steps to contact the facility and tell them, “This must be fixed.” So she was willing to be the person who was injured and who will not take them to court and sue them, but push them to make sure they resolve this error in design so nobody else is injured.

So sometimes, unconsciously - no conscious intention - unconsciously her intention is to be of the highest service to beings, and at some level of consciousness, as she slid down it the earlier times there was an awareness, “there's this thing sticking out. It shouldn't be there.” Perhaps the only way to bring attention to that was to strike it and cause injury so that they can figure it out and fix it.

Other questions?

(coughing spell) There are certain things I can control when I incorporate into the body. Almost never does the body need to use the bathroom or even to move itself and stretch. But when the body has the reflex of coughing, I really can't control that easily. I could but it would probably harm the body because it needs to be cleared out.

Q: There's a person in my everyday work life who was abused in her younger life but now as an adult in her 40‘s she often expresses righteous anger. I've been struggling with this relationship for over three years, so I want to tell Aaron and Barbara thank you because I finally have some understandings. And it's still very hard to not put up armor, but I'm working more and more with the intention to be open. Thank you very much.

Aaron: You're welcome. Have you read Cosmic Healing, the beginning chapters?

Q: The book has helped me SO much.

Aaron: Because Barbara speaks in an early chapter about meeting with a man who was consumed with righteous anger and how she tried one way and another to see how his negativity was bringing forth more negativity in his life. And he was simply not ready to hear this. She finally had to simply offer compassion to him and accept where he was.

The powerful thing for Barbara was that once she went home and meditated with his righteous anger and found space for it and respect for him where he was, she was able to connect with him on the inner planes during meditation in such a powerful way that the next day he came to her in person, came up to her, took her hands, looked her in the eye, which he had not done the previous day, and said, “Thank you,” and then simply left the building.

So at some level consciousness was able to connect. It did not make a radical change in him, he still had to take years to work with this. This is where he was. His righteous anger was teaching a lot of people about compassion.

Q: That's what I wanted to add. Finally I see how amazing this woman has been as a teacher for me.

Aaron: And also a reminder to you and to others that she meets, to let go of their own righteous anger.

I think we have time for one more question.

Q: Is it really possible or is it just an illusion, that when we move from our relative reality <toward> ultimate reality and then back into relative reality, are we really able to disconnect, dissociate? Aren't we always connected? Aren't we just deluding ourselves, it's an illusion that we're actually disconnecting?

Aaron: We're talking about paradox here and there are no paradoxes. You are always in ultimate reality and yet, the consciousness contracts so that you fail to see the big picture, and there you are in relative reality. And then you note how cramped it is in relative reality, (sound effect) and you're back into ultimate reality.

Q: But when we're in ultimate reality, we're still really connected, we just believe that, maybe we're connected to our defense or our armor, but we are still connected even when we're in the relative reality. I guess that's what I'm asking.

Aaron: Pass me the rabbit... (puts in relative reality basket) Only his tail sticking out. He can't see anything. He's in relative reality. He has no idea that he's in ultimate reality. He is, of course, but he's so closed in he can't tell. But he gets so cramped in there, so confining, so unpleasant, that finally he lifts his head out and takes a look around. “Oh, there's space out there. Here I am, I'm coming out. I can do this. I can be free.” His feet are still in the relative reality basket. He's choosing this. He might go back into relative reality if you make a loud noise. A rabbit bolts into his hole. But eventually he's going to come back out. Here he is, back out. This is really what you're doing, constantly.

Q: So the answer to the question is yes...

Aaron: Yes. But beyond that, the answer to the question is, this is a teacher for you. The habitual pattern to close up into relative reality is contracting and unpleasant and you lose your sense of connection. The deep intention to be of service in the world, to live more from the open heart and the place of love helps draw you back out. If relative reality becomes so unpleasant that you jump out completely and lose complete touch with relative reality, eventually you're going to see that you can't be of service in the world, which was your intention because the world is grounded in relative reality as well as ultimate. Then you come back. It's all based on intention.

Let me talk about something here, a leap beyond. How many of you are familiar in any way, have read or heard about DNA changes in the body?  (many hands go up)This is something people ask me about a lot. Your body has a DNA structure.

This may seem like sci-fi but it's real. At one point in your human history, your abilities given you as human by your DNA structure to telepathy and to certain kinds of power were not something you could handle because you did not know how to relate to the heavy emotions in a skillful way. Emotions still came up and caught you, and you acted them out by killing and destroying.

This next step was not done to you but happened by mutual agreement, not you as the living human but you as the potential human on the astral plane between lifetimes. Many beings, the brothers and sisters of light, made the decision that until humankind could control its emotions better and not enact them with such ferocity in the world, could hold space for emotions, that they would be better off not to have the DNA that allowed them telepathy and the fullest use of their power. Humans coming into incarnation agreed to that shift in the DNA, and through so many lifetimes you've come into the human body with a much more limited DNA, which I think is all that's stopped you from destroying the world.

Now you have reached a point where you are ready to reclaim your power. You are ready to graduate from this smaller plane of simply self-identifying as human and to know yourself as the vast spirit that you are, as mature residents of the universe, and literally to reclaim the complete DNA. Many of you in this lifetime are going through DNA changes in the body. We'll talk more about this in the spring semester.

It can be uncomfortable. Some of the discomfort that you experience is literally due to DNA changes in the body. At a certain point, when you express your intention to be fully human in the highest sense of the word, fully aware and awake beings, you are at some level making the statement, “Okay, I'm ready for the support to allow these DNA changes to happen physically, literally, in this body.” And you're going through the process. For some of you it's quite disorienting.

I don't want to say too much more about this now. There is not a chapter about it in Cosmic Healing, it's one of the chapters that was cut, but I believe Barbara has that cut chapter in her notes and we can eventually email it out to you, at the appropriate time. The original book was 600 pages and needed to be cut to make it manageable so we tried to cut out that which was not most needed.

But I think this is important to those of you in this class, to understand that this is not something being foisted upon you but something that you are choosing and agreeing to, to live your unlimitedness, to live your power, and to learn how to safely hold that power so as not to do harm with it.

We have about 2 minutes. Is there any question on what I've just said? How many of you are experiencing this in some conscious way? (many) Okay, we'll definitely talk about it in the second semester and give some guidance as to how best to work with it.

Let us stop here. My blessings and love to all of you. I see you again for a second class in 2 weeks... I will be here telling Christmas stories on December 21st, the annual Christmas stories night. And I'll be telling some of these Christmas stories at Corinthian Church in Jackson on December 18th, also. I will not see you in January because Barbara will be taking this body to Brazil. It will back in February. Anna Marie will be carrying the program in January and doing some work teaching you things about the Casa and about working with guides and so forth, timing to connect with us while we're in Brazil. So I'll connect with you energetically but Barbara's body will not be here in January. And I'll see you again in February. But I will see you in your smaller group classes in two weeks.

That's all. My blessings and love to you. Barbara will not remember this so I'll state it. Please do come to her book release party Friday, December 16th and share her celebration of this new book. She'll read some from the book and talk about it, and I will talk. I rejoice in it also because it's given me a very clear opportunity to express my own deepest teachings in a way that I much value and with much love shared with my brother/sister Q'uo.

Q'uo calls itself a social memory complex. It is not one being who has incarnated in human form like I have but is a group entity of many different beings, none of whom have been incarnate in human form. So it speaks from this different plane perspective, from a perspective of beings of the vast universe rather than the human perspective, and I speak from the human perspective because that was my own path of evolution. I think the juxtaposition of our perceptions is helpful in part because they're so much alike, seeing the same thing from two different sides. It was a great joy to create these dialogues with Q'uo, and to feel much love between us. So come and share if you're so moved.

That's all. My blessings and love to you. Good night.

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