May 23, 2012 Wednesday Night, Cosmic Healing Class

Aaron: My love to you. I am Aaron. What we're looking at here is how to live in this world that's emerging into a new density, into a higher vibration of connection and love. You have each been so deeply conditioned through so many lifetimes to live from a lower vibration of separation, more grounded in fear. Through this transition, there is the energetic intention to begin to co-create rather than to control, from the place of love rather than fear. It is only learning this skill that's really going to bring your world through this transition.

As each of you learns how to do this, you invite others. So that when you're in a situation at work or in your families where some people are angry and controlling and trying to push from their ego, you begin to realize, “I can step out of it. I don't have to be snared by their fear. I hold this place of love.”

This brings us back to the pole meditation that's in Cosmic Healing. Grounded here, without denial of the fear, controlling impulses and egos around you; but not getting lost in it, and not  lost in your own reaction to it, if there is one. You hold that high vibration and know it in yourself as the fruit of your own meditation practice; you begin to know that you can bring that high energy down. You can help release the lower fear vibration and hold this more loving space.

Some of you have been involved in the work at Corinthians, the spiritual energy healing work, and basically this is what the mediums there are asked to do, to hold this high vibration without losing touch with whatever fear, distortion or other energetic lower vibration may be there; to see both the wrinkled piece of paper and the clear piece of paper and not get caught in the wrinkles, but hold the clear image of the perfect unwrinkled sheet.

It's what each of you is doing in your own personal lives, where there is fear or sadness or loneliness or confusion, where there is body pain. Finding right there with the pain that which is not in pain; right there with confusion that which is not confused. There can be no denial of the pain or confusion, but there is a deep opening the heart to that human experience. One then holds the possibility of, I don't want to call it “healing” because there's nothing happening, except opening to the ever-healed. It's a different concept of healing. Not, “we will fix it and move linearly from broken to healed,” but right here, we invite the experience of the ever-healed; knowing that ever-healed and willing to release the images of “broken.”.

Are there comments or questions?

This is the core point of the book Cosmic Healing, with which you have worked this year. Coming to know the ever-healed in yourselves and in the world, and to invite the deepest expression of that ever-healed, while knowing that it's not going to be perfect. It's okay. It's part of this transition. You are human. There is going to be the experience of distortion. Just don't take it personally. Don't get locked into it and think, “I've got to fix this,” but flow, as you did in this dance just now.

Q: I am a visual learner, and sometimes when I hear the pole meditation explained it sounds like earth energy is being described as negative. And I don't feel it that way.

Aaron: It is not earth energy that is negative, but the conditioned consciousness presently on earth, which often has a negative polarity based in fear and contraction, That polarity is not the essence of this plane or we could not shift it. It is conditioned. We start by knowing the high vibration possible too. We attend to the lower vibration to it by inviting non-contraction, with love.  Perhaps a way of experiencing the pole meditation would be to stand in a stream or lake with your feet in cold water, and the sun beating down on your back and head, and feel the simultaneity of both. That you have a choice whether you go into the cold water and start to shiver, attention solely in the feet; to simply escape the cold water, deny it and go up into the heat; or literally allow yourself to feel and hold both. Your body and energy field become the medium through which it's all connected.

AM: Are we not just holding all possible vibrations of form and not form? So connecting to form in the earth visually can be positive or negative, and whatever helps people connect to the highest energies. We talk about light and sun. We really are going even beyond that, when possible. So I find like Q does that I do not always have to be with pain, but rather with density, low density, which can be both either positive or negative. Allowing everything in my experience, experiencing oneness as much as possible.

Aaron: Yes.

Q: When I feel like I'm doing the pole meditation right, I feel earth energy coming up and heaven energy coming in. It all swirls in my heart. And then there just is no more negative. It just kind of goes away. And I'm just in my heart.

Aaron: Exactly. Thank you. That's a very clear expression of it.

There's a beautiful story of a situation in Earth's history, in a concentration camp where people were suffering enormously. People were dying and being put to death. People were starving. People were cold. People were terrified. People were grieving. There was a lot of “How do we fix it?” energy, and a lot of despair.

The story is of a woman who had the ability to hold all this pain in her heart. She did simple things, like just coming and sitting beside somebody who was crying. Putting a hand on the shoulder. Sitting with them. Just opening her heart with love. Not trying to fix it for them, because there's no way to fix such traumatic experience. Simply using her expression of the pole meditation to open and hold that space, and invite them from that place of despair and horror into a place of light.

She did it in simple ways. Bringing somebody a little bit of soup or some other kind of food. Bringing somebody a spare blanket. Just holding a hand. She was known as the angel of that camp, and basically all she did was hold the space. But many people survived because of her love, because she let them see a different possibility and enter into that possibility of survival, of light, of love.

Others?

So this is what I most hope you got out of this year's class: the remembrance each time you get lost in darkness, “Light is here, I just misplaced it for the moment. Where is it? I can choose to open to it.” Each time you're lost in anger or in fear or confusion, right there is that which is not angry, frightened or confused. Opening to it, but with no denial of the human experience of anger or fear or confusion. These are real experiences.

The difficulty for most of you is you tend to try to push these experiences away and deny them in order to hold on to that which is not frightened or angry or confused, and that results in a contracted energy, which deprives you of light, instead of being able to really open your heart compassionately to these very painful human experiences without so much self-identification with them.

Is there any further comment?

Q: Sitting in class tonight, I realized how contracted I've been over the last many weeks because of simple busyness. It felt kind of miserable. And then what I felt in class tonight, it's such a sweet reminder.

Aaron: When one becomes aware of ongoing contraction, the practice of clear comprehension can be very helpful. Just watching the self contract and asking, what is my highest purpose here? The deep habit of so many lifetimes is, when pushed, to push back, to contract. The issue is not about forgiving the self for that but having compassion for the self, that this old habit energy persists over and over, but the enactment of it right now is not suitable to my highest purpose.

It's perhaps the hardest thing the human is asked to do; when pushed, not to push back, not to contract. But it does become a new habitual pattern: when pushed, to dance with it; to open, to relax.

Have you all done the Tai Chi pushing arms exercise? Everybody's done that. (Demonstrating with Anna Marie)There are always going to be pushes. You don't have to get involved with the push. You do have to attend to it. I can't just sit there rigidly and let her push me. I do have to relate to it honestly. But I don't have to get snared into a story and push back.

(Q: What is clear comprehension?)

The practice of clear comprehension has four parts. Clear comprehension of purpose. What is my highest purpose of this moment? Is it to be right? Is it to control, to fix? Or is it perhaps toward harmony?  

Clear comprehension of suitability. Is what I'm about to do, the way I'm being snared into this with contraction and fear, is this suitable to my highest purpose? Just bring mindfulness to it. If it's not suitable, it means I have a choice. What would allow me to relax and dance with this energy rather than getting snared into it and fighting it?

Clear comprehension of the domain of meditation, is the specific next phrasing. This means, taking the whole experience into meditation and seeing that push - contact, consciousness, unpleasant, the mental formation, push back—no, I don't have to push back. Just knowing unpleasant as unpleasant. Relaxing with it and letting it flow by. Not moving into the old mental formations and the reaction to those mental formations.

And the fourth is clear comprehension of the dharma. Seeing how if I contract and fight back, that's where suffering is. When I relax and simply move with it, it may still be unpleasant but there's no suffering. It's just unpleasant. It may not even be unpleasant anymore. It's just a dance. There may actually be nothing unpleasant about it anymore.

So that is the practice of clear comprehension. It is a basic Buddhist practice that accompanies mindfulness; a very beautiful practice, in my experience.

AM: I would add a clarification about contraction. Contraction is fine. It is an automatic response. It is more about not manipulating our energy through pushing away or grasping. That is a subtlety, but if you judge contraction, that will just make it stronger. So it is about letting go, letting whatever is there be there. Does that make sense?

Aaron: If I might phrase it in this way, not contracting around the contraction. If there's a contraction, just let it be.

Q: I don't know if it was Aaron or Barbara that shared this comment about this situation, but just thinking to myself, “I've been expecting you.” when ego pops up, or anger or fear. It brings a sense of humor to our serious humanness.

Aaron: This is the whole blending of wisdom and compassion. Seeing that there is going to be contact, consciousness, feeling. If unpleasant, feeling possibly contraction around it, and a move into the ego self. But with practice one starts to see this happening and steps aside from it. “Hello I've been expecting you.” Not getting pulled along with it. And the heart opens in compassion for the human even as the human is getting stuck. And then you're unstuck. This is the simultaneity of the mundane and the ultimate. Right there you're in the pole meditation, you're in the heart.

Are there other comments, questions, or things people simply want to share about this, especially about how this relates to your life?

Q: I am finding that the simple practice of being patient with self and others allows a space to be held for options.

Aaron: That opens the door. When you're sucked in, it's like wearing blinders. When you're not sucked in, you see all the possibilities.

My dear ones, this learning is why you have come into the incarnation. This is what it means to be human, to feel your heart break, and in that breaking to know your heart's openness. Opening to everything. Opening to joy and to connection and to non-duality so that you need not to be afraid of the heart breaking. Neither do you seek it. But just remember, right there with the broken heart is joy. Right there with body pain is that which is not pained. And so forth.

Have I talked with this group about the second Milarepa story with the demons? Not the giving them tea but the second story. (Yes) Finally he sees he's going to have to live with this demon and the demon isn't going to go away, he says, “Eat me.” He simply merges with the demon and finds that of the demon that's always been there in himself and has no substance whatsoever. At that point it dissolves because it ceases to be anything solid or substantial. It's just old conditioning and it goes. But the hardest thing is to put your head in the demon's mouth.  

Clear comprehension reminds you: “I have a choice. What is my highest purpose?” Is it more suitable to pick up a stick and beat the demon, or to say, “Okay, I give up. I surrender completely to this and move through the seemingly solid substance of this demon and into the vast spaciousness.”

Q: What does that actually mean, in real terms?

Aaron: It means, when I'm feeling terror, when I try to fix the terror, I close myself off. But when I allow myself the experience of terror, I come through to that which is not afraid. When I come through anger, I find that which is not angry.

Q: Yes, but if you are surrendering to it, then you are consumed by it.

Aaron: You are not surrendering to the terror or the anger. You are surrendering the ego self to the divine self. You are releasing the sense of separation and moving into that which knows that this was all illusion in the first place, everything that made this terrifying or enraging.

Q: Okay. I know what you mean by the story, but when I hear the actual words used to tell the story, it seems to me that the story says, surrender to the emotion...

Aaron: It doesn't mean surrender to the anger. Surrender to the fact that as a human there's going to be anger. There's going to be pain. There's going to be confusion. And you don't have to fix it.

The point here is that you don't have to fix it. He first tries to beat it away with a stick. Then he teaches it dharma to try to fix it. He tries to bargain with it. Then he comes to see, “It's okay. This has simply arisen from conditions and I don't have to fix it, because right here with whatever I'm experiencing is that vast spaciousness and love. But I can only get there by allowing myself to sink through the contracting emotion.”

Q: But without losing sight of the fact that the emotion or contraction is not all that is.

Aaron: Correct. Another way of expressing it. I like the illustration of a skater skating on thin ice. One has to keep going fast or the ice will break, until one is totally exhausted. Finally one has to stop and sink through the ice. It's the same story. It's surrendering to things as they are. Here is this experience of pain, and I've been trying every way I can to fix it, to dodge it, to change it. Can I just sink into it? It's only then that I realize that right there with the pain is that which is not in pain. Right there with the fear is that which is not afraid. But I can't find that unless I'm willing to sink into and experience it fully. That doesn't mean becoming self-identified with it.

Q: That is the difference.

Aaron: Yes.

AM: What I experience of this is in a similar way to Milarepa. Resting in as much of my heart and centeredness as I can, and then letting go of any aversion to the heavy emotion. And while holding the open heart energy, flowing and loving, dive into the vibration of the anger. “Ooo! It feels prickly and hot and unpleasant. And when I feel that energy of that, and at the same time holding the heart or the pole vibration of love, they harmonize together. And the anger is there, but it is a soft anger in harmony with the heart and no longer hurts. It's just a vibration.

Aaron: Thank you. That is a very clear way of expressing it. Others?

Q: The anger is still there but it doesn't hurt?

AM: I said that because really everything is vibration. We interpret and put a story on the vibration and say, “It is bad,” and contract and push the anger away. And that distorts the anger energy and makes it solid and painful, because it is no longer a part of our flowing being; it is a rock in our energy. So it is about allowing that energy to be part of us, but let it flow. And it then really can dissolve. Otherwise, we are holding a rock.

Aaron: The pain is different. This pain is really the place of coming together in the human experience. There is deep compassion for the human experience, and recognition that the human experience is going to be at times painful, frustrating, confusing, and that that's okay. That as long as you're in human form, these things are going to come up. They don't have to create suffering, though.

I will share a memory from Barbara, from 20 years ago, a day when the sewer in their laundry room backed up from the drain in the floor, started sending sewage from the floor into the laundry room. One of them came downstairs and saw water spouting up. So they called the other. They began working with the shop vacs, gathering water in buckets, tossing it out the back door. Of course they called the sewer company, to come and do the work to open the line again. But meanwhile there were several hours of this water backing up.

At first Barbara and Hal were very tense, struggling. We can't keep up, what are we going to do? And finally Barbara said to Hal, we can do this with a lot of fear and anger, or we can just do it. And they stopped. They stopped racing. They held hands and just breathed for a few minutes, and then said, okay, let's just do this as a dance, emptying water out of the basement. It will be as it will be. We're not going to turn our backs on it and go out and take a walk; we have to attend to it. But we don't have to attend to it with fear.

They were up all night that night and for probably 18-20 hours, working to try to prevent deeper damage. The sewer company came and opened it, and then there was that much water to contend with, to get it out. Just getting it out. And at a certain point there was a joy to it, actually. They began to dance together, doing it. They actually were dancing! With music on. Barbara couldn't hear the music but Hal could. They started dancing together, taking breaks to play together, and just dry the basement.

One does not have a choice whether the basement is going to flood. One does have the choice of how one is going to attend to that flood, from a place of anger and contraction and fear? Or, not with resignation, but with joy and equanimity and remembrance, this is just one earth plane experience? This is how the earth plane is. Sometimes basements flood.

Are there any other comments or questions?

Let me invite you into a different conversation, then. Barbara, Anna Marie, and I have been looking a bit at what direction our class may go in next year. We spoke some to the Monday morning group about this.

What is it that people want to learn? There are many directions the class could take. The question for me is, what do you most want to learn? I'm not assuming that all of you will participate in the class, but for those of you who are considering it, what do you want to learn?

Q: To continue to learn how to deepen by connection with spirit energy and guides, is something that comes to my mind.

Q: I think that is important to me, too. I'm also very interested in continuing to work with co-creation. These last few months I think I've had some tremendous experiences with that. It's very important to me to continue to build up my abilities and understanding.

Q: The energy work that we've done has been like a new awareness for me. And if we could do more work on understanding energy and vibration.

Q: What they said.

Q: Did the other group have any other suggestions?

Aaron: An interest in going deeper with the many tools that are available to you—working with the chakras, working with your guides. Maybe some shamanic work with meeting your power animals, and so forth. Work in the akashic field. But holding all of that in a container of dharma. Not doing it as a way to fix the world from an ego place, or to fix your life from an ego place, but always with the grounding of dharma, and the deep intention to the highest good of all beings and service in the world.

AM: The three of us talked about, possibly as a background to the whole experience, working more with spiritual traits, like we touched on earlier this year. Like compassion and the energy of compassion, and bringing balance between various traits. So that we would have you read about each trait or set of traits and practice it in your life. Because it is essential that we work toward becoming the clear energy vessel, and by actually working with traits like compassion, gratitude, and so on. They actually cause our energy fields to open more permanently, and then less work with crystals or other things is required because we actually shift upward in consciousness. So it is a both/and situation. It sometimes seems like just morality practice, but it has a deep effect on us.

What do you think about that?

Q: Valuable. Valuable to look at our lives and see the places where we... what we're doing...

Aaron: My suggestion was that we work with some of these beautiful qualities of being like gratitude, generosity, and equanimity, and also the places where we find ourselves in contrast—lack of gratitude, closing off, lack of generosity, feelings of stinginess. Being able to see there is a balance there. Learning to explore how these different energetic practices can support our moving into a place of balance that's largely free of the ego. There is no one being generous, just the flow of generosity. No one being grateful, just the flow of gratitude. Being able to find how that connects to the various energetic practices and supports we have.

There's always the ground of your vipassana practice and of dharma, and of,... really we're back to clear comprehension. What is your highest intention? So this is grounded in dharma and not a, “Gee, let's learn these energy practices.” But why are you learning them? Why are you using these tools? What is your highest purpose? Looking at the intention for service, and so forth. And for the intention to purify the karma and the energy.

Any other comments on this?

So we will be exploring how we'll put this together. My own feeling is that it be a committed one-year class, so that we don't have people dropping in and out but there can be real continuity from September through June. Everybody who has not participated in the class this year, I would ask to read Cosmic Healing and review some of the transcripts from this year, so that people who are new can join us but are starting from a place of some grounding in what we've been doing, rather than us having to step way back and bring them up to speed.

Another part of this. I've been looking at the whole idea of mediumship. Not as Barbara is expressing it here as a channel for me, but that you are all mediums in some way. This relates to the pole meditation. Holding various vibrations together. You serve as mediums for whatever energy you're experiencing; how do you bring that into the world? You're all mediums for love, for loving kindness, for compassion, for generosity, for equanimity. You're all mediums for whatever creative endeavors you bring into the world. So, training in what mediumship means, in a broad sense of the word. And that leads us also to deeper connection with your own higher self, your guides, and so forth.

Anything else you want to discuss here, Anna Marie?

AM: We have one more combined class to wrap up this year, in two weeks.

Aaron: So we will see you in two weeks. My blessings and love to you all. I hope you will all enjoy this holiday weekend and have a lovely experience of nature, of friendship, of ease. A little bit of play. Play is important.

I will release the body to Barbara.

(recording ends)