May 21, 2012 Monday Morning, Cosmic Healing Class Small Group

Barbara: We're talking about the human knot exercise done in the large class last week. Aaron will speak.(the group has shared their experiences from the last class)

Aaron: My blessings and love to you all. I am Aaron. It's easy for me to speak of this-- I don't have a body! I don't get caught in the knots in that way. This exercise was part of a focus on healing and what healing means. I said in the class before that healing was about remembering, in the mental level, emotional level, physical level, and cellular level; remembering the wholeness of your being. So healing is about moving beyond limiting beliefs.

Today's knot is an experience of this moment and also a metaphor. When you find yourselves tangled up like that it's easy to say, "Oh, we can't do this." But your life constantly brings you into these knots. So it seemed like both an enjoyable exercise, for some of you, at least, much laughter; frustrating, perhaps, for others. But it seemed like a good metaphor for the knots you find yourself in life, and to see the habitual patterning in yourself as you respond to knots. Number 1, are there any limiting beliefs? And Number 2, to see how, working with others, you can co-create a solution; no one person dictating a solution; no person standing there saying, "Now you do this, now you do that." But rather, through that connecting of hands, passing energy and information.

If we had had more time last Wednesday I would have asked the groups to first form in a circle and feel the energy, then to try it silently, so that there was nobody saying, "Oh, you can climb under there," but just energetically to transmit the insights that people had, with each person just raising or lowering an arm, stepping.

I have seen this happen once with a group when we did this exercise over a two hour period, perhaps, first with speech and then resting in a circle together, feeling the group flow of energy, then without speech. And the last knot unraveled itself like that(snapping fingers). Everybody stood, eyes open, for about two minutes just looking, asking, "Which way is release from this?" It ceased to be eight different humans and became one unit. They all moved fluidly like a dance, and it opened.

If the group here would like to, I think we have time today to try this exercise again. Just to try it perhaps without speaking. Do it from a place of deep centeredness and meditation. Move slowly. Each follow others' leads without saying, "Oh no, that can't work." This brings you more into the body and intuition, less into the practical brain. You don't know exactly where the other person is leading. What if you follow it? The worst that will happen is that you'll be further tangled. You can undo it.

So my hope with giving this exercise is that you would find that place in yourself that's able to approach the knots of life with more spaciousness and from a centered core. What this means in terms of healing is that you rest in the ever-healed, and then allow the pieces to fall into place to replicate that ever-healed.

Have you ever done a jigsaw puzzle without a picture? You've got 1,000 pieces or 500 pieces and no picture. You don't know what you're putting together. It's hard! When you see the picture, immediately you have some idea what these pieces are about. You see the end result and then can move toward it.

When you find yourself in any kind of knot, whether in the game or in a different knotted situation, and you pause and hold the ever-healed in your heart, then you have a sense of direction. The same is true with the healing of body ailment or distortion. You've probably heard Barbara speak about the pain in her shoulders, the arthritis there. I've been asking her in meditation to reflect on the baby's body. She was doing this a bit last weekend when she was with her one-year-old granddaughter and seeing the flexibility and ease of motion this baby has. What was this body like 69 years ago? The mind doesn't remember but the body remembers. Invite the body to release any distortion, to come back to that ever-perfect body.

Once again, healing is remembering. When there is a great deal of anger between two people, if you can remember a point where you had just met this person and there was no anger between you, but  perhaps there was kindness, affection, that's a big step toward healing the differences. Healing through remembering leads you to a path to returning to the ever-healed.

That said, I'll leave the body and let you decide as a group, and with Barbara and Anna Marie, if there is time to do this exercise. My thought is it's a small group so there will be plenty of time for the other discussions. Thank you, and I will be back.

(tape paused for discussion)

Barbara: We're going to do it again. Aaron says, feel the energy flowing. Release the sense that you are a separate being needing to unknot yourself from the people around you. See yourself as one long organism, like an octopus whose tentacles have gotten tangled. Each tentacle knows what the other tentacles are doing as it unknots itself. Really feel that flow of energy.

He would like you to start just holding hands in an open circle, no knot. Just feeling the flow of energy together. Stand for a minute or two. Feel the flow of energy. Then release and take the hands in a knot formation and again stand for a minute or two. Thinking the open circle, feel the knottedness, and know it's just the knot of one moment. It's not a big deal. The open circle is still here. Aaron is saying that ideally this is done with people holding a handkerchief or something that allows the hands to swivel easily.

(tape paused for exercise)

Aaron: I am Aaron.After the knot exercise.  In your discussion Q has said, "Just flowing, not knowing where it's going." There has got to be an intention. That is the vision of whatever it is you wish to manifest. It's the ego that wants to pretend, "I know exactly the steps." And sometimes you manifest it knowing and controlling each step. But more often, as you hold the intention in your heart, invite spirit, invite everything around you to co-create this with you, it simply will flow. It's a very different experience.

The reason we bring this into healing is that each of you look at whatever physical or emotional distortions there may be, and then you think you know what you need to do, step by step, instead of relaxing and letting the universe teach you what comes next.

I pause. I'll stay in the body for a few moments.

(tape paused)

Speaking of the knot and some flexibility within it. Everything changes in your life constantly. Nothing is fixed. It becomes fixed when you hold a fixed idea, "This is how this is," and then you lock it in place and it loses its flexibility.

Using Barbara as an example, if she was to believe-- I want to find a good example in her life...Working with her eyes. After her accident 7 years ago, she was legally blind in both eyes. It was terrifying for her. After many surgeries and injections into the eyes, the doctors at Kellogg said, there's nothing more we can do to help you. If she had believed that, "This is fixed, this will never change," she would not have allowed the possibility of healing.

She went down to the Casa. If she had gone down there saying, "Well, I'm blind, please help me to find a way to accept it," they would have helped her. But far more wholesome to say, "I want to see. I choose to see. I don't believe that this is fixed." Actually Dr. Augusto, incorporated, took her hand when she first arrived through the line on her first day that year, and before any intention was vocally articulated, he said, "You will not be blind; I am taking care of you." And of course they restored her vision. Not perfectly, but good enough that she can read and drive and has good use of her eyes.

That opening of the heart: sometimes you close the heart and say, "Well, this is how it is." There's a difference between resignation and equanimity. Resignation is protective. "This is how it's going to be forever. It's hard. I don't like it. But I'm resigned to it." There's tension, a contraction, and there's no possibility of healing. With equanimity there's a peacefulness that says, "This is how it is right now, but this is how I envision it growing and becoming. Everything is constantly changing. My work is to explore the conditions that will lead to the possibilities that I wish to manifest, knowing it's constantly in flux. I can dance with it. I co-create for the highest good of all beings, and remain open to infinite possibilities."

Back to you...

(question/comment not recorded, about knowing the difference)

It always is if you pay attention. Whenever you're in any relationship situation, verbal, energetic, with one person or a dozen people, if you get out of your head and down into the body and feel the energy flow, you see where there's somebody who's frightened and resistant, and you can send loving energy to them. Help them release that and open so they're more integrated into the group.

Your body is an energy system. You reach to the part of the body that's contracted. That which is open embraces that aspect of the body that's contracted and invites it to open back into the full energy flow.

When we teach work with chakras and one chakra is felt to be closed, we never go directly to that chakra to try to push it open. If the heart is closed, we go to the throat and the solar plexus and invite fullest movement. Feel the energy in those chakras. Moving down, moving up. Gently inviting the heart to participate in that energy flow until gradually the contracted heart chakra opens.

Q: A question about intention. Is that just saying what you'd like, or is there something more to it? Visualizing it? Are there certain intentions that are more likely to be honored?

Aaron: I think it's important to visualize, to use that sense of seeing it, not in process but done. Knowing it! You did this with your office. Can you share that with the group?

Q: This was maybe 12 years ago. I'm a psychologist at a private practice. I was downtown and wanted to leave that group practice, so I thought about the kind of environment I wanted in my new office. I realized I loved trees and I wanted to look out my window at the view of a tree. There are woods by my house, so I would go running in the woods and visualize looking out my imaginary window at the actual trees of the woods that I was running through. And the office that came my way overlooks those very trees! It's an artist's studio. It's a very unusual place for a therapist's office. But it's serene and gorgeous, and way beyond what I imagined. I thought I'd be downtown looking out a window at one tree instead of at a whole woods.

But one thing that I remember, I visualized for a long time, and at some point I just had the sense that it was absolutely in the works. Like I could feel the momentum of the energy growing. And at some point it just felt like this is absolutely going to happen. Not so much the tree but being on my own, because I'd been in a group practice and they'd given me patients. And for me to be able to say I can do this on my own, that was a lot of switching. And at one point I just said, "I love this. This is right. This has got to be."

Aaron: And I believe we spoke back then about the feeling of walking down a street and smelling the sweet odor of pie baking, coming from somewhere. (sniffing) Following it, following the energy. So that as you held the visualization, a very clear visualization, there was almost an energetic pull toward what you needed. Here it is!

(She doesn't remember the pie) I may have said bread or roast or something else, but I invited you to use odor, the way you follow a sweet odor. Flowers in a garden, maybe.

Q: I do remember Aaron saying to visualize the emotional feeling of it, being with people, just having that sense like feeling this is the place I should be, and deserve to be, and can be.

Aaron: So you've answered your own question. You must not be overly rigid in your visualization. In other words, you can't say, "I want this, and I want it to be on this street." You can say, "I can visualize it on this street," or "I visualize the woods." But if there are no woods on that street, you can't put both together.

Q: One more thing. Towards that point, I had been looking in the paper because that's how you found things back then. I saw this artist's studio that was overlooking the woods that I run in so I went to look at it. And the landlord said, "We can't have a business here." I looked at it anyway, just because I loved the woods, and went home and thought about it, and said, "That is my vision. That's what I've been visualizing this whole time." So I went back that afternoon and said, "Can I look at it again?" And the landlord said, "My wife and I were talking, and we decided it would be okay to have somebody here during the daytime, while we're gone." And he built me a waiting room...

Aaron: Perfect. The vision must be held without grasping, with an open heart. If grasping arises, you work with your practice, noting grasping, until the grasping resolves itself. Sometimes you may seem to look for a long time for something. Then you begin to ask, "Is there something in the vision that is not completely clear, something that I have not been honest with myself about, in terms of my needs?" Or if you're co-creating it with another, something we have not been completely honest about in our mutual needs. But you also need to trust, that which you are seeking is there. As soon as the vision clears, you'll see it.

Is there other discussion of this?

Q: I have a question but I'm not sure exactly what it is. You said something about resignation versus equanimity. I'm thinking about the last time I visited my parents. I left with resignation because I could not handle my father's negativity towards my mother and towards me. I could not take it anymore. And I couldn't see any other way out except to leave.

I'm getting ready to go back this week, and I'd like to be able to, I'm not sure what, but at least leave with equanimity and not resignation.

Aaron: Am I correct that your father is in hospice care at this point? (Q: Yes.) So he's quite ill. Is he in a lot of pain? (Q: No, he's uncomfortable but doesn't have a lot of pain.) And your mother is well. And is he living at home with your mother, you mother caring for him? (Q: Yes...)

Sometimes one needs to go away and make space before you can come back. I don't know how soon you're going back, but I would suggest that you spend a lot of time with compassion meditation for each of them and yourself, just moving around the circle. Try to visualize your father as a younger man, healthy. There may be things that you did not like about him, but look at what you loved about him. What are his strong and beautiful qualities that you can remember?

Do the same with your mother. With each, see the beautiful qualities and then see the present suffering. What do you wish for them? Really let the heart open with compassion and know, this is their karma. I cannot fix this for them. All I can do is love them.

I'm looking for the prayer on the song sheet...

All beings are heirs to their karma and inherit its results. The future will be born from such karma. Its results will be their home.

Barbara while reviewing transcript: The whole prayer is pasted below.

Reflections on Universal Well-Being

May I abide in well-being, in freedom from affliction, in freedom from hostility, in freedom from ill will, in freedom from anxiety, and may I maintain well-being in myself.

May everyone abide in well-being, in freedom from affliction, in freedom from hostility, in freedom from ill will, in freedom from anxiety, and may they maintain well-being in themselves. May all beings be released from all suffering, and may they not be parted from the good fortune they have attained.

When they act upon intention, all beings are the owners of their action and inherit its results. Their future is born from such action, companion to such action, and its results will be their home. All actions with intentions, be they skillful or harmful, of such acts they will be the heirs.

This is not the exact wording. I omitted a line. But this is recited in Theravada Buddhist monasteries all over the world on a daily basis. It's a reminder: all beings are heirs to their karma and inherit its results. Their actions are born from such karma. Its results will be their home. You cannot change that for them. All you can do is love them. If they are open to your non-judgmentally pointing out specific areas of unskillful action or speech, and open to trying to work on those, that's fine. But likely they're not. All you can do is love them.

And then you bring the same reflection to yourself. Seeing your suffering, and seeing that which you love about yourself, that which you cherish, that which is radiant and beautiful. And you wish yourself well.

You cannot fix it for them. All you can do is hold the space and love them. It's a very powerful teaching for you. You are not there to fix, only to help hold a spacious container and give love.

Q: I felt like I had failed when I left because I could not keep my heart open. And that I left them alone. And I know now that they're not alone, although I don't think they're aware of help that they have. But it helps me to know that they're not alone.

Aaron: It's very painful when you are a parent or a child with family that you love, family with whom there's often conflict as well, but you still love them, and you cannot fix things for them. This is part of the human experience. You can't fix it for your children. You can't fix it for your parents, for your spouse, for your best friends. You are here not to be fixers but to be those who attend through the open heart.

Fixing means controlling. Fixing comes from a place of fear. "I don't like this. Let's fix it." I was going to say the results are often the same, but they're not, because when you try to fix it, it usually fails. When you attend with loving presence, often you can envision a result and help invite it to happen, because it's coming from a different energy. It's coming from a combined circle, not from the ego self.

You said you felt like you failed. This is your work, to see that which has not failed. (Q: Because I could not keep my heart open.) Then your work is to work with karuna with yourself. There are places where one simply cannot keep one's heart open. It's okay in this visit, when you're feeling like that, I don't know if you have a car at your disposal, or to take a public bus or whatever is necessary, and go off into a pretty woods and spend an hour or two meditating. Get yourself out of the situation. Sit quietly by some beautiful trees or by a pond. Do some metta with yourself. Sometimes you just need a break from that situation. It breaks your heart.

I don't want to return the body to Barbara at this point, so I'm sharing her story. That her father, after years of living with Parkinson's and severe arthritis, finally had to be put in a nursing home because her mother simply could not lift him, could not take care of him, and he could no longer stand up by himself. There was a nurse or attendant who came in for a number of hours a day, but the mother could no longer cope. This couple had been living together for, let me see how long... for at least 50 years, and it broke their heart that he would have to go off and live separately in a nursing home. But they did not have the money to buy into a fancy place where they might stay together. She lived in her apartment. He had to move to a nursing home.

Barbara felt she had failed because she could not fix it for them. Her heart was breaking, and she realized she had to go into that breaking heart. Literally enter into that aspect of the self that felt that it should be able to fix everything for everybody, that it should never have to suffer a breaking heart or watch others suffer a breaking heart. Sometimes the heart will break. Can it just break? When it breaks open, so much light spills out.

I'm deviating from the plan for today, but I'd like to ask this group a question. Barbara and Anna Marie have been discussing next year's class; if there will be a class, what the class will focus on. How it will be taught. I would like to hear some input from this group. What kind of class would draw you to attend? What is it you would like to learn with these two teachers and me? What sort of focus would you wish? Their difficulty is they cannot cover everything in one class so they must decide where the focus will be placed.

Q: I don't know if this is going to answer the question, but it's just sort of looking over the last 9 or 10 months, for me. It's just all new information, all new material. And it's a journey that I'd like to continue, but I can't say I know where. One thing I've come to realize is that I can't grasp this journey either, because that's inappropriate. Youwant something; you can't grasp it.

Aaron: You invite it. But to invite successfully there has to be an intention. And the intention can be as simple as growth in whatever form is for the highest good. Not knowing the details, so the mind is not controlling, just saying, "I am open and I don't know what's going to come, but I invite it."

Q: So that doesn't answer your question!

Aaron: In part, Q, in part.

(Q asks what they're thinking about teaching. AM says, pretty broad-ranging. Q says, I was thinking maybe we could vote.)

Aaron: Are there other comments about what would most interest you?

Q: Healing and energy. (murmurs of assent; adding, using the akashic field)

Anna Marie: We do both want to do something that is very synergistic with the rest of what we are doing, because a lot is going on. For instance, in the healing arena at Corinthians, and our crystal beds. Something entirely different would be too much work.

Aaron: What I had suggested to Barbara, and I'll see how this sits with you, as Anna Marie just said, both Anna Marie and Barbara are directed toward healing at this point, working with the akashic field, working with energy, chakras. They're also directly or less directly involved with mediumship, for themselves and training others. That seems like an esoteric word, perhaps, for the simple process. You are all always mediums. You are mediums for love or for anger. You are mediums for kindness or negativity. What's coming towards you, and are you going to manifest it into the world or to release it?

A clear medium must know how to work with anything negative that comes up in their experience. Thus, for me, a basic aspect of a class that works with the akashic field, energy, healing, and so forth, there must also be a ground of vipassana so that people are aware of what comes into their experience and how they're relating to it.

With this in mind, I had suggested to Barbara using,... in the Venture Fourth class we used a book of Mussar, a Jewish tradition, looking at different characteristics like generosity, greed, humility and pride. Seeing one doesn't want to go off into extreme humility that becomes self-negating; one doesn't want to go into pride. How it's balanced. Generosity and stinginess, where is the balance? These many different aspects of being.

Seehttp://deepspring.org/ archives/ Aaron/ venture fourth/  weekly work/ and other areas under VF for more on this practice of mindfulness with these characteristics, as drawn from Mussar.

I had suggested that one characteristic or pair of them could be taken as focus every few weeks as we did in Venture Fourth, people just using this as a mindfulness practice to help them come back into a deep place of intention to live their lives with clarity, with love, from this balanced place, and from a ground of mindfulness. I would not envision spending a lot of time in the class with this, but rather with handouts and people doing this as their work at home. We would build on that, for what Anna Marie has described, the work with energy, akashic field, healing, and so forth. Working with the chakras. Working with many of these different things that we can teach.

I would probably start out without a focused agenda for the entire year, but let it unfold naturally. Basically Barbara is okay with my suggestion. Anna Marie is a bit hesitant about it because it brings in the whole field of vipassana and another whole aspect, Mussar, something else to be fed in. So we're at a bit of a quandary as to how to pull it together.

Anna Marie: I want to make sure that we do not have so much material that people only listen and do not practice, and not enough time to discuss it in class, especially people that have very busy lives. For me, it is very important that people can put these teachings into daily practice. And if we teach too much, it is counterproductive.

Aaron: I understand what Anna Marie is saying and I agree. Would it feel like too much to you if you were given a topic, like watching generosity vs. stinginess, or the open vs. the closed heart, or humility down to a sense of unworthiness vs. pride and feeling superiority? Just watching the flow of those and mindfulness in your daily life. And when they arise, bringing it into your meditation practice as a foundation for the class.  I was not expecting you to do a specific amount of reading or long practice, but really, 24/7 mindfulness on this. But not on everything; just taking one characteristic at a time over a 2 or 3 week period so that you can watch it and see how it develops.

And for those in the group who were part of Venture Fourth, they would work with the specific areas that they had been focusing on toward the end of Venture Fourth. So they would simply take it further. We would not spend a lot of class time on this, but simply expect it as a foundation for whatever we do. Would people feel comfortable with that, or does it sound like too much?

Anna Marie: And along with that, there would besome reading and practice by topic, like by akashic field or whatever. It's both.

Aaron: Two areas that especially interest me to teach are working further within the akashic field, and mediumship in its broadest sense. I'm not talking about mediumship as Barbara is a medium here for me, but that you are all mediums through which energy is passing. How are you handling that in your lives? How do you become clearer so you're not picking up all the negativity and passing that on?

I think Barbara and Anna Marie are agreed that they prefer to have one section this year that is of a manageable size, and not break it up into two sections, although that can be discussed. We're envisioning asking a one-year commitment so people can see a follow-through. So we have a group that can work together, follow through.

(Discussion on days/times; show of hands on morning vs evening)

Q: One thing I found really helpful and that I enjoyed with this class was reading Barbara's book. I really enjoy the way Barbara writes and what she has to say. Usually if I read some ofCosmic Healing before I go to bed at night, I sleep really well.

Aaron: I imagine we would continue to use that book in part, and other reading. For me, I just want to be sure that people are doing the inner work through their vipassana practice and through, I had suggested this, I don't want to call it Mussar practice. It's drawn from Mussar. Spiritual qualities, looking deeply at these spiritual qualities, and seeing what's strong, what's not so strong. Responsibility, humility, joy, looking at these, watching them. Becoming increasingly  familiar with them for a while, so that you're more inclined to do the work with the various tools, like chakra work, working with guides, and so forth, from a place of clear intention to deepen yourself spiritually, for the good of all beings, with love for all beings. And not, "Oh, let's get this! Let's get that!" I want it to come from a deep place. And this is the idea I have to be sure that it comes from a deep place.

Anna Marie: The qualities themselves can easily be taught with the energy component of them as well, as I did on a couple of them last fall or January, because this balance is about staying in the center channel and the heart. And when contractions or knots arise, how to be with them and let them dissolve, and develop discrimination enough to see them. So it's not inconsistent with energy, just how much work (it is).

Q: I'm relatively still new at this, and the exercises really help me, in class. The one we did today, after having done it last time, talking about it without doing it or reading about it I wouldn't have had the sense of it, but what we did was really profound. So I like that.

Aaron: I would envision that we would include many exercises. I would also like to go into specific areas that, if the circle is small enough, if each Monday group and Wednesday night group is under 12 people, perhaps, that we can work more directly with chakras, with energy. Are you familiar with the "Ah Breath" exercise? Anybody else here familiar with the Ah Breath exercise?

It's a very powerful exercise where one person lies on the ground and simply breathes. Their partner watches them–no touching, just watches them. As the belly rises, (inhales), and falls, the partner says, "Ahhh...". Not a shouted Ahh but an audible, soft Ahh. Both people, the one lying on the ground and the partner, find the boundaries falling away. They're both breathing together.

For the one lying on the ground, eyes closed, it's a profound experience to have somebody breathing with you. But the one who is sitting and doing the Ahh's also has a very deep experience of non-separation.

This is just one exercise. I have an enormous toolbox of exercises. So the exercises will depend on what we plan to teach. But my own perspective on it is to start in the fall with some basic plan and then flow from there, rather than being fixed in a curriculum. What is it people most need to learn?

Here we were trying to work through the bookCosmic Healing. We got a glimpse at it. Now I'd like to go back and look at parts of the book in a deeper way. But I'd like to call those up from the class: what is it you most need to hear about?

Q: That specifically is what I would like, and that is go back to some components of the book. For me to review would be very helpful.

Q: This might be too far afield, but I really like Rob Schwarz's book about our soul's plan, because I think it's a constant reminder that how things appear from our human perspective is only a small bit of it. And bringing in that larger intention to learn and grow, and what that is, I think that's hard for people, for me and others.

Aaron: I think this is something we can realistically address in the class, spending a month or so asking each person to look at the foundation experiences of their lives and why they might have chosen such experiences. But this has got to be in a non-intellectual way. And we come back to the vipassana and the need to be able to take this into deep practice, and also to connecting with your guides and being able to ask for help.

I'd also like to work with power animals, with you. They can be very helpful. And different areas of shamanic practice. So all of this can fall into place. As we talked about earlier today, if we hold the image and then allow it to form, instead of saying, "Let's do it this way, that way," there has to be some direction, it can't be completely haphazard, but it's not haphazard when we're all holding a clear image of intention and then allowing it to unfold. The planning itself becomes part of the teaching as we manifest a class together.

Q: I wouldn't mind a Buddhist reference here and there, also. Once in a while.

Aaron: I would like this whole class to be centered on, when I say dharma, I don't necessarily mean Buddha dharma. The dharma pre-existed the Buddha, and the Buddha revealed the dharma. But it's a clear revelation of it. If you're going to be in a class where I'm one of the teachers, you're going to hear dharma. And I'm going to focus on vipassana and taking it back there. Those of you who've readCosmic Healing know how many times I said to Barbara, "That's enough words. Now go and sit."

The other question that has come up for Barbara and Anna Marie is that right now I'm the predominant teacher. Barbara and Anna Marie participate somewhat, but they both have a lot to offer as well. So, the suggestion from me is that within each class period we try to break it up so Anna Marie offers some of what she is specializing in, Barbara offers some of what she is best able, and I can speak. So it won't be so much centered on me.

Q: Do you have any plans to do a class onThe Aaron/Q'uo Dialogues?

Aaron: I would love to, but not at this point. I think we'll have to wait at least one more year while we focus now on this. To be clear, I would need to reread the whole ofThe Aaron/Q'uo Dialogues and choose several topics. Each weekend of the Dialogues we focused on a topic. What would seem best to me withThe Aaron/Q'uo Dialogues might be a class where we picked five of those weekends, perhaps, focusing on one topic for two successive classes, for a month. But I think that's ahead of us.

Anna Marie: I find that most of the material in there has come forward and been integrated in everything we teach already. There is little new. It was from a long time ago.

Aaron: Yes. We started this 20 years ago. It's from 20 years ago, that book. So you've heard it all from me many times in the past 10 years, since the book was channeled.

Q: But many of us had not experienced the material in the format that it's presented in. And I found it really informative and educating...

Aaron: I think it's a wonderful book, and one of the best parts of it is you hear Q'uo and not just me. So you hear it from two different voices. But for Barbara and Anna Marie, it's not where they are headed right now. So, while I would very much like to do a class based on that book, I know Barbara must restrict herself to one class. And what we're proposing here seems more direct and to the point of the present direction. However, I can see that there might be reading fromAaron/Q'uo as a part of next year's class.

Q: I was not saying that we needed a class. I just wanted to express the fact that those of you who have been with Aaron from the beginning would have a different experience and evaluation of that material than those of us who are more recent. I find it very profound.

Aaron: I would recommendThe Aaron/Q'uo Dialogues to all of you for summer reading. It's an excellent foundation to all of my present teaching,  It's a lovely book to carry around, and you can read just one session and then spend time reflecting on it. You can leaf through; you don't have to read it in order. What particular area of discussion resonates with your heart right now? Many people are finding that they simply open the book to a page and that the page speaks to them, and they bring it into their practice. So that's a way of reading the book, one page a day, or two pages a day. Open the book, read just one or two pages, wherever the book opens to you. How does this relate to my life?

Anna Marie: I want to go back to workload for a moment. If people would comment on whether they were able to do the amount of work in this class, and based on what we just discussed, how much is realistic?

Q: I found the workload doable. (Q: But no more.) But no more.

Q: Maybe the assignments not quite so close before class.

Anna Marie: Actually, most of the time the assignments were given out in class, but people do not take notes and wait for me to write it, and I don't always...

Aaron: Something that has worked well in prior classes is that we assign a note-taker as a volunteer, different in each class. One person who takes clear notes of the assignment, just the assignment, because we don't get the transcript back for a few days, and then it gets reviewed, and by the time it goes out, it's a week later. Somebody who will take clear notes: this is the assignment, and type it up and email it to the whole class. So the next day after class, everybody has the assignment. And it doesn't fall on Anna Marie's shoulders. Anna Marie has done an enormous amount of caretaking of this class. (applause, thank you)

Q: As well as everything she's done. Just like Barbara. You're both hard workers.

Aaron: Indeed they are. But they are each going in numerous directions, and I don't want them to be overburdened. And I think the spiritual energy healing work they're doing right now is very, very important. And some of you are involved in that. So we also want to take that into consideration and ask, since I would say half the class is directly involved in that spiritual energy healing work, how we can make the class more connected to that work.

Q: What does that mean? Obviously I'm not involved in that part! But I might like to be.

Aaron: Spiritual Energy Healing: everything is spirit; everything is energy; as we bring intention to focus, for the highest good of all, we invite healing, or remembering of wholeness and deeper expression of it. We are doing this in some formal venues. The things that we're teaching with the spiritual energy healing work are brought into the class as topics of discussion. People do not have to involve themselves with the spiritual energy healing work outside of the class in any way. That's completely optional. But we can use the class as a ground for training people to do this kind of spiritual energy healing for themselves and for the world.

Anna Marie: But there are venues, groups you could go to, to practice elsewhere.

Q: And that's the Jackson church, correct?

Anna Marie: That's one, or the crystal baths, or just healing circles at Deep Spring or at Friends Meeting, or other...

Q: Is there anything to do with the crystal baths?

Anna Marie: We can think about it.

Aaron: I don't know if it would be too much work. I don't know if it's an appropriate situation, but perhaps the portable crystal bed could be brought in for a class, and the whole group hold a circle around it while each person had 10 minutes on the crystal bed. Just to give you a sense of how this energy works, how it feels. I think many of you have experienced the crystal beds directly, so this may not be necessary.

There are so many areas we can look at together so I don't want to limit this. I want to see what comes up for you. What is it you need to know? So as we meet in the fall, we'll then talk ahead: What do you need to know? What's coming up in your lives?

Q: I'm having a series of experiences that I'm wondering what they mean or are an indication of. However, in the last couple of days I received what felt like answers that more clearly explained what was going on. Just a statement that I'm having various experiences but I think the answers are coming to me, intuitively and directly and other ways, and therefore less of a mystery. But very interesting for myself. (more of personal question not transcribed)

Aaron: This takes us in a very interesting direction: how do we feel, hear, know the answers? How do we know when it's a clear answer versus when it's the ego bringing it in? How do we integrate it? This is why I want to keep the curriculum open, so that we can explore in the directions we need to explore as the questions come up.

You spoke ofThe Aaron/Q'uo Dialogues. Basically the group that was meeting raised a question and Q'uo and I talked about it. And then we had a discussion with the group: how do we work with this? And that's what makes these Dialogues so rich, that it's not just spirit expressing its views, but humans participating and asking how do we work with this information? We're a team. We're co-creating spiritual growth, for you and for us.

Somebody asked, what does spiritual energy healing mean? This is the term we've given to working with spirit. Not just me as spirit but all of you as spirit. Knowing everything in the world is spirit. Everything has energy, and that energy sometimes expresses itself in very clear ways, and sometimes in seemingly very distorted ways. When it moves into distortion, it creates disturbance, whether it's on a personal level or an international level. Working with the akashic field, we hold the vision of the ever-healed, and we understand how to invite energy back into the clearest possible expression. This is part of manifestation.

There's a group of us–when I say us, I'm including Barbara there, but of course I am also a part of it, but a group of people looking at creating, not an organization, just a loose group of people interested in healing, on a personal level and on an earth plane level. Many are meeting at Corinthians to support the spiritual energy healing sessions there. The group is considering meeting somewhere out in the Irish Hills where the government  talking about doing fracking, which causes great damage in the earth. Simply to come together and hold the energy and prayer for an hour, to help protect the earth and the environment. Holding the vision of a clear earth, not fractured in this way, not damaged. Loving the earth.

All of this falls under the term of spiritual energy healing. So there are many ways for people to participate, for any who have any interest to participate. Eventually we'll have a mailing list together, send out information on various opportunities to participate, and invite anybody who wants to come to any opportunity to do so. There's no push to do so. It's completely optional. But there will be opportunities to practice with others, whether it's on a personal healing level or for the earth.

Q: I'm going to ask this. It may be incorrect. But can I say what the two things are that have been bothering me, that I think I have an answer on, just to check if I'm <?> in the right direction? One is since I was in the hospital and in rehab, when I look back on things, or I'm trying to bring up a memory or relate something, I see it like through a fog. And at some point it became difficult to tell whether I had the experience or it was a dream. So, as I then tried to focus on that, I was wondering if I had been doing more out of the body experiences, which I did a lot of as a child. So that was one question.

Aaron: Here is not the place to talk in-depth about this. You did have some out of body experiences, but the real issue here is one of doubt. Being present with the doubting mind. That which wants certainty. This is where we come back to the vipassana practice and the importance of that as a foundation. There are certain things we may never know, or need to know. Can we rest in unknowing? When doubt arises, can we simply note it as doubt? "I don't know if these experiences were real or not. I don't know what happened. Okay. What's  happening in my heart, now? Where is my heart now as a result of these experiences?" If it's in an open place, that's fine, support it. If it's in a closed place, then perhaps more metta is needed. What will help the heart to reopen?

Metta sometimes to the one who needs to control and get things set up just right. To understand, to have everything positioned. Each of you has that aspect of your being. So this is a place where you do not need to know the answer, but only to work with doubt and find the space in the heart that can be with unknowing.

Q: I'm not aware of having had doubt, but I will accept that.

Aaron: I am naming it as doubt. It's basically that which wants to know because it wants to feel safe, wants to control, wants to be able to line up everything. What is that which needs to know?

Q: The other thing is about what I decided is emotions. I went to a doctor and one of the patients in the waiting room was breathing heavily, like, it brought to mind when some of us went to help a dog release to her next life, to transcend. She was having difficulty breathing, and making really strange noises. This child, who was a Downs Syndrome child, was breathing this way in the waiting room. When the child got ready to leave, she walked over to me with her, I assume, mother, and she made this demon face (demonstrates) at me. I was standing, but as far as I know, there was no visible reaction. I was not frightened by that child. I simply observed it.

Aaron: Again, daughter, you don't need to know. When somebody comes over to you and goes (makes face), the human response is compassion. Just knowing, "This being is suffering in some way, is expressing some discomfort. I hold him or her in my heart."

Q: I've had several other experiences where there's no emotion. But yesterday when I saw Sulu lying at your feet, I was just overcome with love for him. And that was like a heart opening for me.

Aaron: I'm glad you experienced that. Sometimes it's easier to experience a heart opening for something that's beautiful than something that brings up fear or pain. It's a journey.

Q: You might not answer this, but since this is one of our assignments, I've been trying to get the name of a guide. And one came to me, but I don't know. Could I ask?

Aaron: No... (inaudible due to laughter) I am not "Aaron". Aaron is one being that I was in one life. On a spiritual plane, these different entities, we do not use names for each other. We see each other's energy field. I see the aura, the energy field, the specific movement of the energy field. I call that up. That is how I reach out to another being, by remembering his or her energy field. Then I might ask, "What can I call you?" Monday he may say Joe, another day he might say Sam, another day Hilda. It doesn't matter. The names are irrelevant. Feel the energy field. Then if you asked and a name came, that's an indication that your guide is saying, "You may call me by this name."

We've just had an interesting experience. Barbara and Anna Marie and some of the others here are working with the church in Jackson doing these spiritual energy healing services, perhaps once a month or once in six weeks. Some of the entities who are incorporating in Barbara's body are entities that are seen at the Casa, but they made it very clear, "We don't want to be called by those names. Those are the names they call us in Brazil." So one of them said, "Well, call me Father John." Another said, "I'll be Father Kindness." They simply chose the names that felt appropriate for them for that setting. The name is not who they are, any more than Barbara is her blue shirt. Tomorrow it might be yellow.

Use the name that the entity gave you. That's perfectly suitable. (Q: Okay!) If the entity decides to change the name that you use at a later date, as you have a clearer connection, he'll tell you. Instead of Brother Abraham, you might make it Brother Abe, or whatever.

Q: Okay, excuse me! (laughing) Actually it was Ah-brah-hahm, which is like the Hebrew version of Abraham. Wow! Thank you, Aaron!

Aaron: Anna Marie, I see we have less than 10 minutes. Is there anything we have not covered that's essential?

Anna Marie: Is there anything you want to say about what is healing, that has not been covered?

Aaron: Last class, I gave a talk on "What is Healing?" And I asked you all to reflect on that in your lives. What does healing mean? There's probably not time to talk about this now, but I'd like you to continue to reflect, is healing something substantial? Like I have a cut on my leg and it closes over? What is it? Was it ever cut in the first place? Consider that wrinkled piece of paper.

What is broken? If we ask "What is healing?" we have to ask "What is broken?" When we consider healing, we consider a linear movement, but I'd like you to jump out of that linear image and into the present moment, and seeing the wholeness right there with the distortion in the present moment.

So please reflect on this in the coming weeks. I'd invite you each to take some emotional or physical area of your life and focus deeply on your highest intention for that area of your life, whether it be something in the physical body, a relationship issue, needing a new roof on your house, a person with whom there's a lot of anger, whatever it might be. And to ask, what does healing look like in this situation? Really envision what you want to manifest.

We're back to the practice of clear comprehension: what is my highest intention here, and is what I'm about to say or do suitable to that intention? Am I moving into fix-it mode with a lot of contracted energy, or is my heart open?

Is there anything that really needs to be healed? Or is it really just a shifting the focus? Here is this person with whom I have a lot of anger. Opening up, viewing, looking at a wonderful memory of this person, something you've really appreciated about this person. Can you open your heart and see that right there with the anger is love? There's no denial of the anger, but a need to refocus the attention. Instead of, "I must fix the anger," I just move back into this place of the open heart and of love. And then from that place, I look at the anger. What is this anger? It's just energy bouncing back and forth. Hold it in a bigger container and let it settle.

Barbara gave her six year old grandson a book for his birthday calledMoody Cow Meditates. It's about a little boy who had a very hard day and is angry. He comes home from school and his grandfather comes over and teaches him to meditate. His grandfather brings him a glass jar filled with some kind of liquid and pours sparkles into the jar. He shakes it up so it's agitated, and says, "Right now, this is your mind. We're going to set the jar here on the ground and just breathe and watch it until all the sparkles settle." And the sparkles will settle, of course, and the clear liquid returns.

When there's agitation and the idea, "Something is broken. I have to fix it.", let it settle. Come back to that which is whole and openhearted, and then attend to it.

That's all. Is there anything else from you, Anna Marie? (AM: No.) My blessings and love to all of you. If you would like to be added to any of these lists about Corinthians or  the project with healing the environment, let us know...

Anna Marie: They are all on my distribution list that sends info on this.

(discussion on what has been going out on the list)

Aaron: I simply want to make it clear that these are places where youmay choose to come and practice and serve  if it calls to you. And if it doesn't call to you, that's fine, it's not an essential part of any class here. It's just an opportunity to participate in one way or another.

My blessings and love to all of you.

(recording ends)