Wednesday, April 27, 1994

Aaron's talk

Good evening and my love to you all. I am Aaron. Tonight I want to talk to you about passion, about what it means to live your lives with passion, and why that is difficult for you. As part of this talk, we will spend a small amount of time on the technical side of it, talking about this energy stream and what happens to it when you are closed and shielded versus when you are open.

There's no one in this room who does not verbally and cerebrally say, 'I want to be free, open, expansive and passionate. I want to fully live my life.' If this is how you feel, what blocks it? There is also not one of you here who does not protect him or herself. It's not that it's bad to protect, but there are different ways to do so. One aspect of protection grows out of fear. It comes from a closed heart and a need to shield yourself from life, to grasp at security and safety. The other aspect of protection simply grows from wisdom.

I am not advocating that we form a Deep Spring Center Bungi-Jumping Club. In fact, such risk-taking is simply another kind of manifestation of your fear. The need to dramatize some emotion is very much a statement of trying to deny that emotion. Those who are most likely to go off bungi-jumping, or driving racing cars or other high risk pursuits-I won't say it's unilateral-but most of them are denying their fear of death. Those who can open to that fear and not need to live their lives in denial of fear neither need to take risks nor fear taking risks when appropriate.

What is security? Every being wants to feel loved. You want to feel safe, that you will not be hurt, that your needs will be met. Can you assure yourself that tomorrow you will be safe and your needs will be met? Can you assure that better by grasping and protecting than by opening your energy to the flow of love?

A story here. Some of you will have heard this one before. A man is running from a tiger. He comes to the edge of a cliff. Knowing that the tiger will not be able to climb down the sheer rocks, he starts on his way down, holding onto a heavy vine. The tiger is growling at the top. The man is a third of the way down when he looks below and sees at the bottom, there's another tiger. What is he to do? Then two mice appear on a small ledge and they begin to gnaw the vine he's holding onto. He notices on a lower ledge, just near his hand, a number of ripe succulent strawberries growing. He can't reach up to chase the mice, he can't get rid of the tiger above or the tiger below. What is he to do? Very mindfully, he begins to eat and thoroughly enjoy the strawberries.

What does this story mean? You all have tigers chasing you and you all have tigers at the bottom of the cliff, all of you. There is no way to leave this life alive. You can't do it. One way or another you're going to die, you're going to meet a 'tiger.' The choice is not whether you will die, but whether you will live. Do you hang on that vine saying, 'Oh no, how do I get out of this?' or do you live the life that's offered to you? Can you eat the strawberries and enjoy them? This is what passion is.

It's not a matter of giving up. If this man had the means to swing himself off onto a ledge and just sit there and out wait the tigers, then he could ascend or descend. Yes, of course, to meet his tigers again another day, but one works skillfully with one's tigers. But when one is terrified of one's tigers, one can't live.

What is it that terrifies you most? The answer is going to differ for each of you. Some of you are afraid of failure, of making a fool of yourself. Some are afraid of physical pain. Some persons' greatest fear is failing others, which is a different kind of failure. Somes' greatest fear is of losing that which they love. Most of you quake a bit in any of these situations.

Through this and many lifetimes of meeting such situations, you have found ways to keep yourself, what you call secure. My dear ones, of course this security is an illusion, but you've bought into the illusion. If I keep my emotions in check, if I keep enough money in the bank, if I am polite to people and don't step on toes, then I can be secure. That's just a little of it. You each know your own mechanisms for trying to control your environment, for manipulating-and that is not too harsh a word.

I come back here to the idea that there is a difference between that controlling which comes from a place of fear and a struggling to make everything come out just right so this time you'll be safe again, and that controlling which comes from a place of wisdom. You are dependent on a job. Your boss has stolen your ideas in the past, passed them on to his boss saying, 'Look what I thought of!' and it angered you. He does it again. There is a difference between denying your anger, or even allowing how angry you are but holding it tightly inward and cursing at this boss under your breath while smiling on the surface, a difference between that and fully knowing how angry you are but making the wise decision, 'Right now I cannot speak up and lose my job, but I need to get a different job; the process of his stealing my ideas is not acceptable to me.' It's subtle. Can you feel the difference?

In the one place, you are limited by your fear, contracted by it. There's fear and anger, 'I'll lose my job, I can't say anything.' But there's no compassion for the self who's feeling that pain. Instead, there is strong separation: 'He stole this from me. He is hurting me.' It's this, 'Something outside of myself is hurting me,' which contracts you and makes you want to build walls and to find a way to stay safe.

What's really hurting you? At some level, could it be okay that he steals your ideas? Is that too hard to accept? What is hurting you is not his stealing your ideas, which may be discomforting and annoying and dishonest on his part; that's not where the pain is coming from. The pain is coming from your desire to have acclaim yourself for your ideas, to be noticed, to succeed, whatever that means to you. Your pain is coming from your anger that this one has taken your pat on the back.

Again, such anger is not bad-it's just anger-but look how it tears you up. What is it about? Could one envision the scene where another has stolen one's idea and gotten credit for it, and one finds compassion for that being, sees that one's fear that he cannot be creative in himself and has to take from others. That is not telling him it's okay to steal but finding compassion for the contraction and distortion in him which makes him steal.

From this point, the open heart can respond wisely, may make the decision, 'I need this job and if I say anything about this, I lose this job; but it's clearly time for me to find a different job.' Or may make the decision, 'I need to confront him on this, gently.'

This may not seem like passion to you. In fact, some of you are questioning, 'Isn't the intense anger more passionate?' Let us define the term. What I am calling passion always comes from an open heart. It is an expanding outward of your energy, not a contracting of your energy. When you find your energy contracting and can ask, 'What is this contraction about?' then you can begin to touch the place of fear in you, 'My needs won't be met, I will not be affirmed for my creativity,' whatever it may be. You can begin to touch that with compassion which connects you to the one who has acted in a way that was discomforting to you. Then there's no longer separation.

With separation, passion is not possible. We come back to the man hanging on his vine. Can you assess the situation and eat the strawberries? What is the fear about? He hangs there: tiger up, tiger down. 'I'm going to die.' Of course you're going to die. Tomorrow, next week, in fifty years. Eat your strawberries and live.

Here's another one. Have you ever flown in one of those motorless aircraft? A glider. They are hauled up by a motored plane, then let go, and they glide freely through the sky. This is a metaphor for your entire life. The process of birth hauls you up, lets you go and you soar until you land. You cannot help but eventually land. Most glider pilots walk away from their landings. It's a relatively safe pursuit.

What if you were in this glider and suddenly there was a storm, and the steering control broke off in your hands because of the buffeting the machine was receiving? You can't steer. You can control the wing flaps a little to keep the thing more or less level. That's it. You're solely at the mercy of the winds. There's some chance that as you come down to the ground you'll be able to keep it level enough to land safely. Up here at ten thousand feet, with heavy winds buffeting you, there's nothing you can do. You've got a half-hour ride before you get down to the ground. What are you going to do in that half-hour? You've got no tools, no material, nothing with which to repair this steering mechanism. What are you doing to do? It's the same as the strawberries. Can you enjoy the ride?

You all have the illusion that you can steer this life that you're in. You do have the ability to keep it in balance through mindful attention. The glider pilot can maintain balance by shifting her weight back and forth. If she pays attention, she can keep it gliding, rather than turning vertical and falling. It's just a matter of staying alert and rocking. But she cannot steer it. You can keep your lives balanced but you truly cannot steer them. You don't know when there's going to be a big gust of wind or when it's going to cease entirely and you fall. You cannot control it.

We come back to passion. Do you fly your glider with a closed heart that simply says, 'I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die!' and search for ways to control the uncontrollable? Or do you take a deep breath, open your heart, say 'Maybe I'm going to die. Meanwhile, I've got a half-an-hour to glide in this thing and it's absolutely wonderful! The winds are lifting me, flying me here and there like a roller coaster! It's glorious! Look at the beautiful clouds and patches of sunshine and blue sky! When I get to the last five minutes close to the ground, then I will have to do everything I can, not with fear but with love, to see if I can land horizontally and safely.' Until then, enjoy the ride!

How do we do this? How do we learn to enjoy the ride? Fear arises. What do we do about this fear? This is where your spiritual practice is so important. When you first begin spiritual practice, there is often that element of control. Nothing else has given you satisfaction and ultimate happiness. You think, 'Maybe I can find it through this spiritual practice. Maybe I can get rid of my suffering here.' Then there's still somebody trying to get rid of suffering, trying to steer the plane.

Through your spiritual practice you start to understand your interconnection with all that is, including others who are suffering. Instead of asking, 'How can I stay safe?' the more pressing question becomes, 'How can I more lovingly attend to the suffering in the world?' 'I' loses its central focus. Not completely. Never completely. But gradually, a little at a time.

The more you become 'other-involved,' the more you experience the intimate connection between self and other. The more you experience that connection, the less you fear others. The more compassionately you see into others' motivations and fears, the less you judge others. And most important, when you understand that others cannot hurt you, you begin to understand the root of your pain as growing from your own fear and you become more willing to reach out for the strawberries. The more you practice that, the easier it becomes.

So, your spiritual practice does not give you control of your life, although at times it seems to. You do find that you can work more skillfully with your heavy emotions. You do find that there's more joy and peace in your life. But you also learn, 'This is not why I'm practicing. If I am practicing just to create situations of joy and peace in my life, I am moving deeper into separation and I am in for a crash when the wind buffets my plane in the wrong way. When I relax and trust the winds, when I open my heart to others and let go of some of this fear-based separation, then I can begin to live with passion, to seize this moment and the joy and wonder of it, even if I'm on my way to crashing into the ground.' Then the painful catalysts of your life become sources of wonder.

Barbara spoke last month about the dental surgery she experienced, the way she was meditating during that hour, and that she walked out of that surgery absolutely high, feeling deeply joyful and connected despite the discomfort of the experience. This is possible. You are not doing it to grasp at that joy and peace for yourself, you are doing it because it's the only thing to do: to take the boss who stole your ideas, to take that situation and ask, 'How can I bring love in here? What am I afraid of? How can I open my heart? How can I hear this being's pain that he's continually got to steal others' ideas?' It's the only thing to do. Plucking the strawberries.

I want to talk about this briefly from this energy stream perspective. Those of you who are new here tonight, please, simply bear with us. I am not going to repeat the teachings of past weeks. This energy stream … I want you to visualize it with me. First, let us use the sun metaphor we've used before, the sun and the sunbeams, the individual projections of the sun, of God or the Absolute. See within the core of that sunbeam what we called the light line, moving down through the sunbeam or light body, flowing as a stream of light into the materialization of that energy which is the incarnation. It comes into the crown chakra and straight through to the base chakra.

All around that light line is what we call the energy stream. When you are open, allowing your energy to expand outward, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, unshielded, this energy stream is very diffuse, spreads outward and mingles with all the energy around it.

By way of example, Barbara and C were sitting in the backyard today where a crab apple tree is filled with red buds about to burst into bloom. They have enjoyed that tree through many springs. They are both learning to open their energy fields and be undefended. They remarked on the vitality of the tree's energy, that they never felt it so forceful before. The tree's energy isn't any more forceful than it ever was. You are allowing yourself to mix with it, to feel it. It's not just conscious awareness of it, but your energy field is fully open.

You might visualize this, those of you who are more visual people, as if your energy was a dot of whatever color you like, filling that energy stream. Think of it as balloons, tiny balloons. When you open, lifting the cover, the balloons begin to drift out. They are subtly magnetized to the light line-they won't drift too far. By focusing energy on the light line, you can recollect them. As they drift out, the tree is also sending out its energy through its own energy stream. Picture the tree's balloons; feel the joy of that energy mingling with yours.

If there is fear, that tends to magnetize this light line, pull your own energy balloons back into the energy stream and pull skin around them. As they pull back, the tree's energy is forced out. You move back, not only into the illusion of separation, but into the experience of separation. The more dense the skin, the more separation, and the more constricted your energy.

You will approach the understanding of this in different ways. Some of you who can see energy fields will be able to see it if you focus. Some of you will simply be able to feel it. Some of you may be able to hear it. You will have to listen carefully to the tone of your energy field when it's open without skin. It hums. It comes to a much higher pitch, almost a shrillness, as it contracts.

My challenge to you this week, then … In this lovely spring weather, seat yourself in the backyard or in a park, a place where you can be undisturbed with some very energized natural beauty around you. You will find that these trees and flowers just about to burst into bloom are especially potent in their energy. Relax as fully as you can and see if you can see, hear or feel this intermingling of your energy.

Then, consciously think about something that's very frightening or discomforting to you, something that calls you back into a defended stance. It should not be something that's present. In other words, if there's a large snarling dog running across the field, it's going to be hard to be mindful of what's happening within your energy field. Better the thought of the large, snarling dog and not the actuality of it.

Watch, listen, feel. In some way can you experience that contraction? Repeat this until you feel some stable awareness of when your energy field is open, when it's contracted.

Then, consciously allowing that which creates contraction-you're going to have to experiment here-what opens the energy field again? This four-step process that we've used is one way of releasing that contraction. You may find if you can see or hear the energy field, can see or hear the contraction, that you can simply remind yourself, 'I do not need to contract here. This is old conditioned mind. There's nothing here that can hurt me.' You must be sure there's no getting-rid-of the contraction, that it's truly a letting-go-of that which you understand is simply old conditioning. Then come back, allowing that skin around the energy stream to dissolve again, allowing your energy to move outward.

Those are two practices. A third: when you feel the contraction-this is the most simple practice-acknowledge the contraction, 'feeling fear.' Be aware of the closing of the energy stream. Focus your attention on this light line. This is simply a way of shifting back into pure awareness, back into your natural divinity. As strongly as you can focus, using perhaps this metaphor of sun and sunbeam and light line coming down, allow yourself to travel back up that light line back into the God self.

This is not denial of the fear self. Relative rests in ultimate reality. The fear self rests within the divine self. It's simply a reminder: The fear self is here and needs a hug. But it's not who I am. I can come back and rest in my true divine nature, which nature is interconnection. As you do this, the fear will naturally dissolve. The energy field will begin to expand again.

These are three ways to work with the contraction. There is no right way to do it. What works for you? The first step is simply recognizing the difference between that expanded state and the contracted one. If you do only that, that's fine. If that recognition is stable, then take it to the next step.

This has been a long talk. I do not wish to weary you. I thank you for your attention. We'll end here for your tea and come back for your questions. That is all.

Questions

K: In speaking about physical manifestation on March 25, you stated, 'The most concise way I can say it is that you think it and then you manifest it into physical reality.' Would you elaborate on this process, particularly the thinking part of the process?

This seems to have a lot to do with what Aaron already talked about tonight. He was talking about how we do not control our lives, but we can be mindful and bring balance to them. That seems to suggest that we don't influence what comes to us. We just wait for it to arrive and then we can be mindful and balance the energy of whatever comes into our path. My experience feels more like my thoughts and my intentions and my actions influence what actually comes into my life, as well as helping me balance. And that seems to go along with the question about manifesting.

Aaron: I am Aaron. Let us use two images from earlier this evening: the glider pilot and the energy stream and balloons. When the glider pilot is open, unshielded, I visualize her energy stream without the skin around it, these balloons moving out openly. The glider pilot is simply gliding, energy stream open. There are soft and harsh phenomena which come past. When the energy stream is open, it is like standing in the middle of a park with your arms spread and a smile on your face. There are a hundred people in the park. Those who are dour, sad, raging are going to look at you with your spread arms and your smile and turn away. Those who are joyful are going to be attracted to your energy.

In this sense, I was not quite correct when I said that the glider pilot has no control over what comes. You have no control over who will walk past you on the path. The glider pilot has no control over what types of winds will move her craft. You do have control over who will stop when they walk past you on the paths. If your energy is open, those who are angry aren't going to be attracted to stop. A trite but true saying, 'Misery loves company.' Those who are feeling miserable are looking for other miserable energy with which to commiserate.

What you send forth is what you will attract. You have no choice over what walks past you, but you have choice over what stops. How do you relate to what moves past? The glider pilot has no choice over what types of winds will move past. She does have a choice over how she relates to those winds.

When something which is contracted moves toward you, if your energy field is also contracted what you have are two shielded energy streams striking each other. It hurts. Visualize the difference: this one is contracted, this one is diffuse, open. The contracted, angry, fearful one simply slices through the other's open energy field, just as if there were balloons in the air and you swung through them with a baseball bat. The movement of the swinging baseball bat creates enough of an air current that the balloons just drift out of the way and it slices through. The balloons aren't hurt, they simply part and drift back again. When your energy is contracted, then it hurts. The balloon fixed tightly in place will be broken.

This is why this work is so important. When you think in that expansive way, when your mind is deeply engaged in its interconnection with all that is and thereby not feeling threatened, not needing to shield, then you truly manifest that reality where there is no need to shield, where there is nothing that can harm you.

One could well ask, then, if somebody is coming at me with a knife and I can be totally relaxed, is that knife going to pass through my physical body without doing harm? Theoretically, if you could be that totally relaxed and were in that deep control of the mind-body connection, yes, that would occur. More likely, the knifer would not be moved to attack. The being I was in my final lifetime in Thailand learned to meditate in the jungle, surrounded by tigers. Never once was he threatened once he ceased to emit fear energy.

In the book, Illusions, by Richard Bach, one pilot who has mastered all of this teaches the other pilot how you walk on water, how you walk through walls. Technically, yes, it can be mastered. Very few humans achieve that mastery, so, no, in reality, if this one attacks with a knife, you're not going to be able to not be physically injured by it, not because it's not possible, but because it's so difficult to attain that mastery. It's so difficult to be that totally undefended when someone is coming at you with a knife. But, truly, it is not the knife that's harming you, it's your own contraction of your energy which solidifies the self to the point that the knife digs into the tissue. I don't suggest you experiment with this one!

We're getting a bit off the subject and there are other questions. K, I feel I have not quite answered your question here. Is there something further related to this that you wish to ask? That is all.

C: You were talking about manifestation in terms of two people's energy. What about manifestation in terms of healing, or in terms of Machaelle Small Wright and her pile of manure? (Machaelle was working with manifestation, needed manure for her garden and manifested a cubic foot of manure in her yard.)

(Short discussion here about why Machaelle didn't manifest money instead of manure if she could manifest anything. Aaron says that if there was any attachment to money, she wouldn't be able to manifest money as she manifested the manure.)

K: She wasn't manifesting the manure because she wanted the manure, she was being trained in understanding how energy moves into form. Manure's what the nature intelligences used to teach her.

Aaron: I am Aaron. Some of you have the control of energy fields to manifest the pile of manure, just ppff! here it is. You remember in the writings about Findhorn, at one point they wanted to manifest manure. They were aware the plants needed it. They manifested it no less miraculously by one of them simply going out for a walk, meeting a neighbor who was a farmer who said, 'I see you're farming; I have a great pile of manure. Would you like it?'

It doesn't matter how you manifest it. This is what I want you to see. It's possible to manifest it as Machaelle did, but few of you are going to reach that level of control. You can understand intellectually how it happens. It's no less valid to manifest it by asking the universe for it and then having the neighbor offer it. The energy stream is basically doing the same thing. In the Findhorn example, the energy stream was fully open. There was no fear, 'Will we get manure? Where are we going to get it?' which would have contracted the stream. There was awareness, 'This is what the plants need. It will come to us.'

I ask you again to use the image of the balloons. There was no constriction around them. A useful visualization might be to take the skin off, like removing a stocking in which the balloons were enclosed, but leave them tied with long strings so they can't drift too far from the light line-ten, twenty yards. They're reaching out. They're not tied but they are magnetized.

So, the one from Findhorn went out walking, sending out this energy. There are thousands of energy streams passing you. You invite in that which you seek. The energy stream from the farmer was also open, wanting to be of service to others and also to himself, wondering, how can this manure be useful? Not a fearful, 'How am I going to get rid of it?' but 'How can it be useful?' They simply were drawn together.

There is no likelihood at all that they would have passed without speaking. This is something I can't explain. The energy expresses itself to energy in a completely nonverbal level, one offering and the other receiving. It's almost the same magnetization. If either one had been contracted, it would have just sliced through and lost the opportunity to intermingle.

This is why, when you go to a party feeling very open, not worrying about acceptance or rejection, just fully open to what you will experience there, joyful about the opportunity to mix with others, you will enjoy the party thoroughly and find that opportunity to mix. The one who goes into the party contracted, saying, 'Will people accept me? Will I find people to talk to?' is like the baseball bat waving around. There are energy fields which are open at the party. The balloons simply part as the bat swings through and then come back together with other balloons which are open. The bat is flailing around saying, 'Why can't I connect?' It can't connect because it's contracted.

Does that answer your question? That is all.

C: I am very interested over time in continuing to explore … In the Bible it says if we have faith we can remove mountains. I always took that quite literally. (Aaron says it is meant quite literally.) I know that. And that is the level of faith which it takes to manifest some things, like moving mountains. Or healing. I am particularly interested in how it relates to miraculous healing. I don't need the answer tonight.

Aaron: I am Aaron. We will talk about this further because it's directly connected to the energy stream work that I've asked you to do. I do not want this to be an intellectual discussion. Therefore, enough for tonight. Go home and do the homework. Become acquainted intimately with your energy streams and then we can talk about it in a more meaningful way.

Remember that although it is possible to have the faith to move a mountain, it is not necessary for the human to achieve that level of mastery. Focus on the lessons of third density. Somewhere around fifth density you will have the opportunity to move mountains. That is all.

C: I wonder what mountains there are in fifth density?

Aaron: I am Aaron. The light body of a mountain is the template for the physical mountain itself. In fifth density we co-operatively assist the move of light body templates. That is all.

C2: Since God is not personal, what is the object of prayer? Do we pray to ourselves, focusing our own energy?

(Aaron asks Barbara to make a stylized children's drawing of the sun. From a spot in the middle of the sun, lines project out each ray and each comes down to a human manifestation. The line actually continues through the crown chakra and down all the way through to the base chakra of each being.)

Barbara: While this is the individual manifestation, this light line connects back to the Source. Each light body is simply a projection of God.

Aaron: I am Aaron. Your prayer is of two sorts. One is the personal prayer that comes from the ego self. It may be for another but it still is based on fear that wants this or that to be changed or fixed. A higher level of prayer is that which says, 'Thy will be done,' and prays that whatever is suffering or troubled or grieving, that it may find its needs to be met, whatever the highest need of that entity may be.

When you pray in this way, it's a way of connecting to your own light line, to your own divinity. The energy of that prayer quite literally moves up the energy stream and into the light body. If you follow any two of these spokes, you will see that they are of the same material: God and God. Eternal and Eternal. Whatever word you wish to use there.

Let's come back to these balloons. Along that whole light line is the energy stream, moving all the way up into the light body. What I describe here is literally the way I see it. When your prayer is open-hearted, there's no skin around the balloons. There is the force of your aspiration to serve another, which serves as a push. Part of your energy field ascends and is redirected out to that which is suffering and to which prayer has been offered.

Even if that being's energy field is contracted with fear, it will feel the presence of your energy. Again, using the visualization of balloons, if that to which you direct your energy and prayer is open, it simply is infiltrated by your own energy balloons, feeling the touch and love of them. If it's closed and contracted, your own energy balloons cannot enter it but they rub against the outside.

You know how a cat feels when it rubs against your ankle, purring, offering you its affection? It's hard not to soften to that, isn't it, at least, if you like cats? If you don't like cats, it's probably not rubbing in that way. When the one who is constricted feels the rubbing of your energy around it, it's hard for it not to soften. It begins to release some of its skin, some of its shielding. It allows you access. If many of these beings are praying for that one, it's all the more forceful.

It is important to note that this energy you are sending through the Divine and out to the individual is no other than the divine in yourself. When I say God is impersonal, God doesn't look around and say, 'This one is suffering, we'll attend to it; that one was bad, we won't attend to it.' That which we call God truly is impersonal. It is infinite intelligence, but it doesn't choose or control.

Each of you is a projection of that God energy. Yes, it's made all the more forceful because it moves through the Source and back out. Let's say it picks up a silver coating as it goes through. It glistens with divinity. The power of your prayer helps to direct that divine energy because you have noticed where there is suffering and offered your energy to alleviate that suffering.

Let's use the opposite picture. If you see one you love feeling great pain, want to lift their pain, but it comes from a place of fear in you-'I can't tolerate this pain, let's get rid of it'-that fear and discomfort in you contract your energy. It tends to freeze those balloons. They can't move through the process of entering into the Divine and back out because there's no 'Thy will be done' in it. Rather, there's 'Fix it this way.' Control. Fear. When your energy is frozen in that way, it can't move through, can't touch the other one. When the energy is constricted, instead of its moving up this energy stream and back out to the other one, instead of moving through this that we're calling God, it tends to try to reach from small ego self to small ego self, bypassing the whole divine aspect. Then it comes from the human manifestation and doesn't involve the whole energy stream. Are there questions?

C: In the Tonglen meditation which Aaron has taught us, he taught us to envision the light coming in, resting in our hearts, then moving directly to another person.

Aaron: I am Aaron. Please do not take these drawings one hundred percent literally. You are drawing down that divine energy. To simplify the practice, we have you breathe it out to where there is suffering. But, in effect, when your energy is open that breathing out process sends it back up and back down. It's simply too complex to explain it that way. For the physical human who is doing the practice, it's perfectly sufficient to simply breathe it out, lest we get lost in complexity. Do you understand? (Yes.)

L: Going back to a point that Aaron made about 'Thy will be done,' in my most intense spiritual moments this is how I felt. However, on a day-to-day basis, I find that it's okay for me to pray for specific things. And what I've done is to experiment on what gets the best results when I pray. To be honest, I have experimented with several ways. I have tried the Christian way of praying where you ask for things in Jesus' name. I've tried praying through the guru. And I've tried praying just to my higher self. And they all seem to work. But when I pray to my higher self, that works consistently the best. How does that relate to this drawing about the energy stream, etc. or does it relate?

Aaron: I am Aaron. This will differ for each of you. What is most effective is that which allows the greatest dissolution of shielding, the most complete openness of energy and the least fear. For you, L, that process happens most strongly when you open to your higher self because it connects you most deeply with your own divinity. One can connect with Christ's or any guru's or master's divinity and put oneself outside that field of divinity. Then your energy is still somewhat contracted, although asking help of energy which is totally non-contracted. A Master's energy is very receptive and will draw your energy into it because its nature is total openness. Still, while your energy is somewhat contracted, it cannot fully merge with that energy no matter how open it is.

When you open your own energy by reaching your own divinity through resting in your higher self, then unconsciously you merge with all that other Christ or guru or simply God energy. All that the guru is is a projection of God. Are you familiar with the quote of the great teacher, Ramana Maharshi: 'God, guru and self are one'? Once you fully understand that, you don't need the guru anymore. So, in a sense, your working through your higher self manifests the truth of that statement, 'God, guru and self are one,' and allows you simply to merge with God. That's very powerful. From that space you can manifest very clearly because your energy field is so totally uncontracted.

Others may find the most uncontracted place through prayer through some being such as Jesus or the Buddha. If this being is seen as ultimate projection of God, as the supreme personification of the Divine, one may be so deeply inspired by and trusting and loving of that energy that calling to that energy allows the fullest opening of your energy field. So it's individual.

There is much more we could say here. I will not continue, but pause to see if there are other questions. That is all.

C2: How does this relate to personal affirmations? It would seem to me that affirmations could be made either in a contracted way or with an openness where the prayer or affirmation could be quite specific but with the appendage, 'or whatever is for my highest good.'

Aaron: I am Aaron. This is a large topic which I would like to address when we have considerably more time. I will be very brief here. I only want to link this question with C's talk about the manifestation of manure and not of a pile of gold.

Affirmation works through this same mechanism of dissolution of the shielding, expansion of the energy stream. It is complex. I am vastly over-simplifying it. When the affirmation is made with any sense of grasping-for instance, an affirmation 'I am worthy,' there's a fear there 'What if I'm not worthy?' There's still a sense of duality: worthiness/unworthiness. Because there is fear, the energy field is somewhat constricted. The skin is around it and the affirmation bounces back and forth, it's trapped in there, like an echo chamber.

This is very different from the selfless affirmation: not 'I am worthy' which means 'I am not unworthy' and blocks that fearful thought, but 'Worthiness and unworthiness are illusion; I rest in my true light and being which is love.' Can you feel the difference? That second affirmation contains no fear. There's nothing to grasp or be rid of, only a statement of truth.

I'd like to explore this much more deeply. I want it to be experiential and not intellectual. Again, as foundation, the homework. Get to know your energy fields and then we will talk about manifestation, affirmation and prayer at much deeper levels. Are there questions?