March 5, 2012 Monday, Cosmic Healing Class

Aaron: The group has gone around for an hour and talked about their experiences with the assignment. Now I've just asked the question: what is the difference between karma and habitual tendency?

Q: I think it's a progression. If a tendency is repeated enough, it will turn into karma. So there's past karma and there is developing karma.

Aaron: Correct. So, first we start with a lack of mindfulness and a repetition of some thought pattern or action until it develops into an habitual tendency. It doesn't necessarily then shift into karma, though. If you bring attention to the habitual tendency, it can be reversed at that point. It develops into karma because the habitual tendency is there, and because there is lack of mindfulness about the repeated enactment of the habitual tendency.

Karma must have something to stick to, so there is a self. There is not necessarily a self in habitual tendency, just the ongoing flow of patterns. Karma involves will or intention. Habitual tendency may not do so, but just be mindless repetition. A dripping faucet is like a habitual tendency; the stain developed in the sink because the faucet was not repaired is karma; there was a choice to attend and it was not done. So karma also involves intention. It may be intention based on wholesome (pali- kusala - conductive to happiness) or unwholesome (pali-akusala- not conductive to happiness) conditions.

Karma, remember, may be wholesome or unwholesome. If you have a habitual tendency to kindness to another and to putting others first, that habit may develop into a karmic path: one who is deeply in service to all beings. Right there along with that particular habitual tendency and the wholesome karma there may be this somewhat uncertain self, a different habitual tendency that asks, “Am I doing it well enough? Is it good enough?” And that also develops into a karmic stream of, let's call it unworthiness or fear of inadequacy.

Now, what happens when you bring them together, the one who wants to be of service to others and the one who fears, to some degree, that they are inadequate, and who may sabotage the service to others because of that fear? We watch the way these different streams come together and made a braided rope. You pick out the different strands of karma within it, and you can see this one running through and that one running through. You don't want to limit or negate the deep loving intention to service to others, but you do want to unearth the part that says, “I've got to do more. I've got to martyr myself, to keep giving. It's never enough.” So we see that a tendency may be in place for wholesome reasons and also for unwholesome ones. If it is, on the whole, a wholesome tendency, we don't wish to eradicate the tendency but to release the unwholesome conditions that support the tendency so it is ever more pure.

I've asked you to look at one habitual tendency or karmic stream. I find that it's more fruitful to investigate just one at a time, to begin to understand how it works.

This year's class is more a survey, looking at many different things that were covered in Cosmic Healing, the various disciplines and teachings that I offered to Barbara through all those years. So in a sense you are taking 20 years of Barbara's learning and encapsulating it into one year of quick survey.

What we plan for next year is to go much deeper. For example, to take something like this assignment, looking at a karmic stream and beginning to unravel the different parts of that stream, and to look at the various tools that help support the wholesome karmic stream while dissolving the unwholesome strands that are woven through. So next year we'll work with many different practices; such as looking at some ongoing karmic energy, karmic pattern, and asking, how does the Seven Branch Prayer help? How do I work with spirit, how does that help? How does my vipassana practice help? What about the power of intention? We'll investigate, “What is wholesome about this karmic stream and what is not wholesome?” What about the deep knowing of wholeness and radiant perfection, right there with the distortions that you see? What really supports your emergence into the radiant and divine being that you are?

We'll do this in a more gradual practice next year and go deeper. So for now, I realize there's some frustration because you're just getting into it but we're not giving you time to fully penetrate the practices and questions. But remember, you're laying a foundation that we'll build upon.

Karma is basically energy, and the specific flow and direction of that energy based on thought and action. Karma grows out of habitual pattern. When you catch the habitual pattern early, it doesn't deepen into karma.

I'm thinking here of the traveler who wants to get from Point A to Point B, from the home to the ocean beach,  over a steep hill through the woods, or through a low and perhaps muddy valley through the woods. The intention is to reach the beach.

If your intention is to get there in the easiest way, then you'll probably take the clearest path. If your intention is to investigate and explore along the way, to learn many things about the environment, then you may take a much more winding path. If your intention is ease, you'll take the road through which a car can drive. If your intention is building up the muscles, you'll put on your hiking boots and climb the mountain and descend the other side.

Intention is a vital part of karma. When you see what seems to be a solid area of karma, like feelings of unworthiness or fear of ineptitude, it's very useful to ask yourself, “What is my highest intention here?” This brings us back to clear comprehension: what is my purpose? Is it to protect myself in some way? Is it to limit myself? Why would you choose to limit yourselves? What fears are there? What if you really are as immense and powerful and radiant as I perceive you as being? What responsibility comes with that? So begin to regard these karmic patterns in that way. You can do anything, invite in anything that you choose. From whence comes that choosing?

I'd like you to continue this for these next two weeks. Barbara or Anna Marie will email out, unless it's already been sent, the specific details of the Four Empowerments. This is a practice I'd like you all to use:

Noting your intention.

Noting with compassionate regret -- very specific words we use, not with judgment, with compassionate regret — the fact that you keep slipping into this habitual tendency or karmic stream, and it blocks the enactment of that highest intention.

Ask for help. Take your crystal. Hold your crystal (the class members have each been given a crystal from the Casa in Brazil) . Become intimately connected with your crystals. They are intelligent friends. Ask spirit, ask me, ask whatever great master you feel a deep resonance with, for help.

Begin to envision how it would be if you fully expressed your intention without the habitual tendency that blocks it. Begin to know that capacity in the self.

So this is a bit beyond the Four Empowerments, just enriching it a bit.

Be persistent. Each time that habitual tendency comes up, experience the compassionate regret that it has again arisen; the deep intention that it seems to block. Ask for help. Take it into meditation and see what intuitive directions come.

Q: I have a question about intention. Our highest intention is to learn and grow but the human also wants to be comfortable. So sometimes it seems like there's a discrepancy. Is it possible for both of those?

Aaron: If it is grounded in compassion, there is never a discrepancy. One strives, holds the intention to learn and grow, the intention to service to all beings, the intention to develop deeper toward unconditional love. One does not separate what one gives out into the world and what this human receives. You cannot serve others without kindness to the self.

Imagine yourself in a situation in which you are literally starving,. A truck with food comes to the area. Thousands of people are starving. Everybody is mobbing the trucks, and it's clear those who are strongest are going to grab all the food.

A being whom you deeply love and trust, it could be, let's use Jeshua, or the Buddha, Mother Mary, Kwan Yin, this being climbs up on the truck, and people respect this being, who says, “Stop. Everybody will get a share.” And then beckons to you, “Come. Help me distribute.”

You watch the truck emptying. At first there was a full truckload. “Me, I'm asked to help distribute. I'll certainly get plenty.” But slowly the truck is emptying and there's almost nothing left. You have big pockets. Watch the impulse, “Maybe I should put a little in my pockets. Is Jeshua looking? Is Kwan Yin looking at me? Shall I put that in my pocket?” Can I trust, “My needs will be met.?”

This is the power of intention. If you come into it with the intention to be a martyr, “I'll give everything to others and then I'll just die,” then that's probably what you'll invite. If you come into it with the intention, “I'll get much more than anybody else. I'll be safe,” that's probably what you'll invite. If you come into it from a, I won't say fearless but not caught in fear's stories, kind of place, and you say, “My intention is that everybody's needs be met, myself and all beings, and to serve that intention in the best possible way,” you will be led into that direction. There won't be a discrepancy. Others' needs will be met and your needs will be met.

When I'm finished talking here in a minute, I'm going to have Barbara describe to you what she has been working with, with her habitual tendency, because it will illustrate this point.

Intention is very powerful. Intention sets the stage for the outer expression. If intention is tinged with fear and you do not pay attention to that fear and take care of it, then it influences the intention and thence the outer expression. If intention is tinged with fear and you bring attention to the fear, hold compassion for the human that's feeling fear, and then return to the intention, the intention will be purified and bring forth a clearer expression.

It really is very simple. Not easy—simple. In the doing of it is your whole reason for human incarnation, which is how to bring love to fear; how to live with love and release the negative stories.

Are there questions? (No.)

So we want you to work with intention, with clear comprehension of purpose, with the Four Empowerments, with your guides, the crystals, with energy, with whatever feels right to you. Nobody is going to do it all. Don't get into a, “Oh, I left something out!” mode of thinking.

Q: Is there an effective way... to handle ego promptings? I start to pay attention to the ego promptings.

Aaron: There's usually fear there, son. When you note the fear and become clear, “Right now in this moment there is fear, and I'm not going to force myself through the fear, but open my heart to the fear and give it time to dissolve.”, then you take the pressure off the ego. The fear will dissolve and then you can move ahead—spirit, the true self, can move ahead. There must be balance, never force. Kindness.

Okay, I'm going to release the body to Barbara so she can talk for a few minutes about what she has been working with, because it relates to what I have been speaking about. Thank you.

My blessings and love to all of you. And keep heart as you do this practice these next two weeks, knowing you are not intended to be perfect. It's a learning experience. It's like cleaning the house. You go through and you get it clean and you say, “Oh, I left some dust on that shelf.” You clean the dust off the shelf and notice the dust balls under the sofa. And then the piano wood needs to be polished. There's always going to be something.

Just attending to whatever is predominant, with love, is all that is asked. Just that. Not perfection.

(Barbara returns to the body)

Barbara: In the five weeks at the Casa, I was led toward much new instruction on mediumship. Channeling Aaron is pretty easy, I just get out of his way and he incorporates. I fully trust him, and there's no tension in releasing the body to him. I have to do my preparatory work, but then I just step out of the way. But now I'm being asked to be more of a portal through which many different entities can work, and a lot of the old habitual tendencies are coming up: how to let go, and let go of the body, of the mind, to let somebody else use it. How to not control, not be a back seat driver. I must ask where my own responsibility comes in, in terms of discernment: is what's coming through positive or not? This knowing is something I have to learn as I did with Aaron, through years of reading transcripts and seeing it's all positive and trusting that if I say, “This body is consecrated to the light,” and if I'm living my life consistent with that commitment, then what comes through is going to be positive. But they're not talking so much about incorporating in my body as simply my holding an energetic space and co-creating a space through which they can work energetically. Sometimes incorporating, sometimes not.

So what I've been looking at the past week is, there was a strong image, we watched a movie here on the 29th, it was Powaqqatsi, not Koyaanisqatsi, but the second movie in the series. It's just visual images and music, no words. And there was a very powerful image. Men were carrying big boulders up a very steep hill, sweating, with huge, heavy weights that they were carrying. Some of them barefoot, some with sneakers, shorts, dirty t-shirts, perhaps miners carrying big things up on their heads and in their arms. Then two men came up the hill carrying a third man on their backs. He was lying on his back. He seemed to be unconscious. One man was carrying the lower half of him, one had his shoulders. Both of the other man's arms were back over the other men's shoulders.

Aaron said in meditation, could I relax and allow myself to be thus carried? And I saw that there were two factors to this. One was developing the trust not to squirm and look over my shoulder and say, “Watch out for that rock! Oh! It's steep and dangerous,” not to back seat drive; to just completely stay relaxed, conscious but relaxed. And the second was a habitual tendency, the feeling of, “They shouldn't be carrying me, I should be carrying them. I ought to be the one who's doing the carrying, who's taking care of others.” The question for me was how to receive care as well as give care.

Aaron pointed out to me, unless you can allow yourself to be fully carried like that, with no stories about safety or lack of safety, and no stories about “I should not be the one who's being carried,” you can't carry others without an ego that says, “Look at me, I'm the carrier, and I'm completely responsible for the other's safety.” How do I let go of that and come to that place where carrying and being carried are completely non-dual with each other, and where there are no more stories about either one? And I could see immediately that that's what needs to be developed in order to do this mode of mediumship.

So I've been working on that for the past couple of weeks, a lot. That movie image on the 29th helped. I was working on it before that but that brought it more into focus.

And then something wonderful happened, two days ago I guess. I was still watching the place where the chakras were not fully open and where there was a little bit of self trying. The energy flow was open but not completely open, and especially the heart. So I was doing a vipassana sitting. I was not in access concentration but close to it, really present, watching objects arising and passing away. There was a  lot of space, a lot of ease, a lot of stillness. Mind was not going out into thoughts at all, just present without opinions about the objects. Aaron says it was pretty much access concentration.

Suddenly an image came in. It was not an image that my mind was creating in any way. There was just an image of myself riding on a bus. I didn't know where I was or where I was going, and mind was not at that level of trying to figure out, “Where am I going? What's going on?” It was just seeing, seeing. Bus, window. Fields, semi-rural area. Bus pulling into a kind of empty station, more like just a platform. And a little bit off the platform in the distance I saw Mahara-ji. At first I didn't recognize him; I just saw the energy and was riveted. It wasn't my stop but I picked up my backpack and I knew I had to get off the bus. I got off the bus, he looked me in the eyes, and at that point I recognized it was Mahara-ji. He just turned his back to me and started to walk, so I followed him.

He led me to a house. He didn't talk to me; he just led me to a house. I knew I was not imagining this. It was like a movie playing. I was just watching it unfold. I had no control. There was no self to have control, just awareness noting, “seeing.” He just opened the door, I walked in, he walked to the back of the house There was a woman by the door who said, “Are you hungry? I have food.” I asked in the visualization, “What's going on?” She said, “Baba said he had to get somebody, and he left half an hour ago and he came back with you. So clearly he wants you here. Sit and eat!”

So I ate, and then I was brought in to him. He looked at me, and my whole heart opened. He said to me, “You've been away a long time. It's time to come back, now.” And my heart opened completely.

It was such a grace. I'm sharing this because it's the other side of healing habitual tendency, that spirit, our guides, our love, grace, leads us to the instant healing of some of these tendencies. My heart has been so open and tender for a couple of days. I feel like everybody is my beloved. And I feel so connected with everybody and everything. And I'm sure it won't last! It will close up again, to some degree. But it's all beautiful, and I give thanks!

So that's what I've been working with. It's 12 o'clock so we'll end here.

(recording ends)

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