Wednesday, February 9, 1994

(Barbara reads from No Chain At All, 4/22/93 transcript, pages 63-65.)

Barbara: With this goes Aaron's image of the perfect light and the piece of transparent colored paper that's got a wrinkle in it. You hold that paper to the light. If the paper was also perfect, with no wrinkle, then you wouldn't see a wrinkle on the physical plane surface where the light is shining. Because the paper has a wrinkle in it, the light shines through the paper, wrinkle and all, and the manifestation on the physical plane shows with the wrinkle.

When he talks about scar tissue of the light body, that image of a scar on the surface of the 'always perfect' helps me to understand that the pure light is perfect. It's only a wrinkle in the paper. The perfect sheet of paper is there, but the wrinkle shows as a distortion on the final physical manifestation, interpreting that as … we still get hooked into the identity of 'my' anger, 'my' jealousy, 'my' fear, whatever. We start to own that and identify with it as who we are, rather than identifying with the perfect light.

Aaron's talk

I am Aaron. Good evening and my love to you all. Tonight's opening talk will primarily be a guided meditation.

Several weeks ago we introduced this four-step process for releasing the scar tissue of the emotional and physical bodies. We worked with it last week with unworthiness. Tonight I want to focus more on the physical body's distortions.

First, I would like to point out the connection between the physical and emotional bodies. I am going to do something in a moment and I want you each to notice as carefully as you can if there is any reaction in your body. (Barbara screams.) I ask you to forgive me if I alarmed you. Where was the contraction? Where was the tension?

For some of you, your jaw may have set just a bit firmer. Did your shoulders hunch? Did your abdomen pull in? You each have habitual areas where you hold tension. Usually these are related to past life experience.

C, Barbara and I were talking about this earlier today. C described an exercise she had experienced in a different setting. To help you understand the interconnection between mind/body, I asked C if she would be willing to share with all of you what she shared with me and she said yes. Before she begins I want to talk very briefly about old mind conditioning. All but those who are new here tonight have heard me talk about this before.

You see a snowfall. When you open your eyes in the morning, there's snow on the ground. Some of you move into delight and some of you shudder, depending on your prior experiences with snow. Now, of course, they have not all been one kind of experience. You've all had some joy of sledding. You've all gotten stuck in the snow in your cars. But there has been a primary tendency to like it or to dislike it.

You smell bread baking in the oven. Good! Your mouth begins to water because you know what that fresh bread is going to taste like. Old mind conditioning.

In most instances, it's not a problem. But when you see somebody coming toward you, and the last three times you've met that person there's been an argument, you begin to tense before that person opens their mouth. The contraction of your energy already is inviting their anger.

Is it possible to see each person, each situation, fresh, as if it had never happened before? Last year we did an exercise with a class in which we brought in a cup. We asked everybody to look at it for just fifteen seconds, then we covered it up a again. We asked people to draw it. Very few people were able to draw that cup. People drew the concept 'cup.' Then we uncovered it again and said, draw it. Really be with that cup, as if you had never seen a cup before.

You see the world around you in concepts. It's so difficult to come to direct experience because this old mind conditioning gets in the way. Accompanying old mind conditioning is the reactivity of the emotional body. The physical body's distortions follow exactly the same pattern. You have learned, many of you, to identify the arising of old mind, to simply note that it is present and to be less reactive to it, to let it move past and try to come back to the experience of this person's pain or anger, of that pile of garbage, of whatever it may be. But the old physical or emotional reaction still occurs; you have just learned not to follow it.

I'm sensing a little confusion still. An example that Barbara used last year was that she needed to clean up her yard where there were dog-droppings. They had been on the ground for some weeks, covered with snow. The snow had melted. There was absolutely no more odor. It was no different than raking up leaves. She had a big scoop and a rake. But old mind said-pardon my language-this is dog shit! It's disgusting. And she wanted to pull back from it. As she was able to observe that old mind and look at this-what is it? digested and reformed dog food, essentially, that's been lying out on the ground in the snow for some weeks-then her relationship to the job changed. The contraction around 'repulsive' dissolved.

The physical pattern may accompany the emotional, or may be formed on its own. For example, if somebody were beaten in a past life, they may have developed a certain protective stance. Perhaps they were hit in the stomach, so they might hold themselves with their arms wrapped around a bit, shoulders hunched forward, when they feel threatened. The stomach might automatically contract when there's feeling of threat.

What happens with these physical distortions is that they become the places of inherent weakness in the physical body. By way of example, somebody with whom I spoke in the past week was experiencing pain in a part of his body that relates to the gall bladder meridian. This person has absolutely no problem at present with his gall bladder. However, if there is continued energy blockage on that meridian, in the future there may develop a problem with the gall bladder. The meridian goes through different parts of the body. The present physical distortion was in a different part of the body and not the gall bladder. But seeing that it's related and beginning to release the scar tissue, as it were, is possible. Then the distortion need not develop.

However, it must be done in a very gentle way with no getting-rid-of. This is release of what we see we don't need, not getting rid of something which is discomforting. We've done this with anger, jealousy and fear. You've seen, time and again, how those heavy emotions arise in you, that the emotion itself is discomforting and the second reaction is wanting to get rid of that fear, rid of that anger, or impatience or whatever it may be. You cannot get rid of it by wishing it away. Denying it doesn't work. Flinging it at others is unskillful. So you have learned to make space around it.

The next step in the process was to come to see 'I don't need this. Every time somebody ignores me, I have a sense of unworthiness.' I speak here of a hypothetical case. 'Just because they're ignoring me doesn't mean I'm unworthy. It's just old mind conditioning.' Many of you have gotten to that point where you understand that. You allow the pain, 'feeling unworthiness,' and at the same time you know there's not really any worthiness or unworthiness here. It's just old mind conditioning. What we haven't looked at is the accompanying tightening of the shoulders or the gut or whatever it may be that accompanies that sense of unworthiness and its pain.

Now we come to the next step, which we did with the emotional body last week; we do the same thing with the physical body. First, there must be seeing of the physical distortion that accompanies the emotional distortion. What is this headache about? Why do I always get sore throats, an upset stomach or weak ankles? How have I moved into this distortion? Do I need to continue to own this distortion? Can I begin to let it go?

That's the background. I would like C to share with you what she told me today. And then I want to do a meditation with all of you to release the scar tissue created by old conditioned physical distortion. We're not doing this specifically to get rid of the headache or the stomach-ache. They'll go when they're ready. We're doing this to relocate ourselves from identity with the distortion to readiness to release the distortion, to re-identify with the perfect light body. I will pause here and ask C to say whatever she wishes, and then continue. Thank you.

(C discusses her recent experiences at a Polarity conference and how one particular exercise that she learned there has helped her in working with her sore neck. She then leads us in the exercise.)

C: Sit up straight. Get centered and grounded, in touch with the floor or the chair. Just quietly, for a minute, think about a situation that you've been in in the last few days that angered you. Some small thing that caused you to feel some anger.

Then notice, in this remembered situation, what is the movement that comes with that angry feeling. Either do the movement or figure out what it was in your mind. (She demonstrates the tensing that came with her anger and led to her neck pain.) So try to figure out what your movement would be, the first jumping reaction there when you feel that anger arising.

Then label in your mind that movement from one to ten, one being the beginning of the movement and ten being the completion of the movement. Then come back to your center. And now, imagine what it's going to be to move just to position one, one-tenth of the movement. Just think in your mind what it's going to be to move to the level of one in that movement, just a little tiny bit. Now go ahead and do one and then come back to your center. One more time, just move to position one of that tense movement and notice what happens in your body as you begin to move toward that angry gesture. Then come back to center.

(C discusses her experience of this exercise in working with her neck pain. We can learn to just begin the contraction and then come back to center without having to complete the whole movement of tension, resulting in chronic pain.)

C: Now imagine or remember an event in your lives which caused you to feel some shame and, again, go with the first movement that comes into your mind when you think of shame. What is the movement? Go with the movement and then come back to center. If that movement was again on a scale of one to ten, imagine how you're going to move toward one, but don't do it yet. Just feel the movement in yourself toward one, and then come back to center before you ever move. And then move to one and stop, and notice where in your body the contraction is beginning. Then come back to center.

(C comments that this exercise seems to be akin to working with the cycle of dependent origination for kinesthetic people who like to move and who don't visualize. She learned how she could stop the movement, the cycle, somewhere before she completed the whole contraction.)

Aaron: I am Aaron. Before continuing, I simply want to point out a few things. When the energy is blocked in a meridian because there is this scar tissue of the light body there, the points on that meridian are more prone to re-injury. This is why you each develop weak spots. One gets frequent stomach-aches, another gets headaches. It also concerns the whole meridian and not just one spot on the meridian. There are organ and junction meridians. If there is a blockage on a specific meridian, it does not mean that that organ is damaged, only that if you don't learn and reopen the energy there is a likelihood that it will become damaged.

There are three parts to this whole thing. The first is simply to see how that distortion has arisen in the ways that C just shared. This takes constant mindfulness. The second is to limit the ongoing distortion, again in the ways that C just shared. It's just like, 'Anger.' Many of you who have worked with me for awhile have learned, when you're angry, to just know you're angry-not to need to do anything about that anger, not to need to deny it, not to need to throw it on another, just to let it come and when it's ready, to let it go. To smile to your anger and, thereby, not to increase the distortion, not to 'practice the wrinkle,' as it were.

We've worked with all of that. That does not mean our work is finished by any means, but you're familiar with it. This step that I want to introduce now with the physical body comes next, after you are aware of how you create tension-you may have some karmic memories even about that tension-after you have minimized the distortion so you are no longer identifying with that distortion. But there's still the shadow part, the scar tissue.

For C, in this example, it might be a matter of noting with more and more precision how each moment of anger or shame causes tightening in those muscles, and a decision to limit it to that very small movement and come back to relaxing the muscle again. This is the point where you're still addicted but you've got the, let's call it 'distortion patch.' You're coming back to center.

The next step is the one of making the decision to release the scar tissue, to shift the focus from the scar tissue itself to the perfect template, the unscarred light body, to start to know, 'In my perfect light body, there is no distortion in this area. I don't need this distortion any more. I see how it has arisen. It's old habit. I've learned how to not get caught into it. Now it's time to release it.' It's the same four-part meditation.

Each week I am introducing the second step of this four-step meditation in a different way. Basically, what this second step involves is dropping away the boundaries of the solidified small ego self and coming to rest in the God-self, pure awareness, call it what you will. Each of you is different and unique so, ultimately, you must use the method that's most skillful for yourself. I invite you to try each new method to find what works best. We've done this step with breathing in … pause … breathing out-finding that pure awareness in the 'now' of the pause. We've done it by sky yoga-breathing out into the universe, letting your energy move out, expanding outward. Today's again will be a bit different.

Meditation

We start by clarifying the intention that the work you do here is for the benefit of all beings. You allow yourself to remember the suffering of all beings and the deep aspiration to help alleviate that suffering, not only your own but the world's suffering. This helps you connect with that clear space of loving aspiration and service, that selfless place within you.

Visualize, imagine, bring your energy to, or in whatever way you can, experience the direct presence of a being who is the symbol of truth and love to you. It may be an historical being like Jesus, Mary, the Buddha, Krishna, or Moses. It may be a being such as Gandhi or Mother Theresa. It may simply be a beloved teacher, a guru. There must be a sense of trust and love of that being and a reverence for the perfection of that being. You must see that being as divine, see any shadow in that being on the relative plane as non-dual with its perfection

Use your imagination or senses to really feel the living presence of this being and allow yourself to feel your love for this one … Allow the boundaries between you to dissolve … Feel your energy field merging with this being … I don't mean beyond sense of self, only coming to see your own divinity through the divinity of this being … For example, if it is Christ or Buddha whom you visualize, meet him from the space of your own Christ or Buddha consciousness …

Just rest in that loving presence … opening your energy field to let him or her in …

Allow your mind to focus for a moment on an area of your body where there is frequent distortion or tension or pain … Feeling this loved one's presence and energy, see if you can feel them putting their hand on that spot … You may find it useful to use your own hand and gently touch where there is tension …

Can you feel that tension dissolve under this all-embracing touch? …

Allow awareness to move to the perfect distortion-free light body template of this body part … See if you can really move into the experience of that ever-perfect … You may be experiencing both almost simultaneously, the very open-hearted higher self within its perfect light body gazing with unbounded compassion at the human with its body knotted into distortions …

Can you open your heart to that human … and also see that the distortions are just old scar tissue, old mind? … Rest awareness in the perfect undistorted template for that particular area of your body … Let identity rest there … in that perfection … not shutting out the distortion manifest in the human plane … but finding the heart opening and opening in loving compassion for the human who for so long has borne that distortion …

'I do not need to own this distortion anymore … I release it … It has served its purpose … It has given me the illusion of safety and I have borne its pain from lifetime to lifetime … I release it …'

Breathe it out with exhalation … Open your hands upward and let it go … No getting rid of … just release …

Breathe in the perfect light body template … Breathe out the distortion … And again … And again … Continue as much as you are able to feel the power and energy of this beloved being, to feel that being's touch on the place of distortion … healing … helping you to identify with your own highest consciousness, for that is what this being does …

It does not magically release the distortion for you, you must do that … It helps you identify with your own God-nature from which place you understand the distortion is not needed … It deepens your courage … It offers you its energy and love …

Breathe in the light … breathe out the distortion … Again … Again …

Gently now, feel that being begin to recede from the immediate presence of your awareness … Allow awareness to move from the highest consciousness back into the relative body … knowing that it does so … knowing that it moves back into the tool and gift of the incarnation … but with less fixed ownership of the distortions of this mind and body …

Relative reality is within ultimate reality. You do not have to choose-you are always in both places at once. You can rest attention in both. Whenever you are ready, open your eyes. There is no rush.

That is all.

Barbara: As I was channeling that meditation, in between my words, Aaron was also speaking directly to me and asking me to notice levels of connection in my body so subtle that I've rarely noticed them before. Like the first thing I noticed is that when I'm defended I clench my jaw, but that didn't seem to jibe with the sinus headache I've been working with all day. As I looked very closely, I could feel how clenching the jaw tightens lines up the back of my neck and that these lines come over the top of my head right into my sinuses. It's the first time I've really noticed that connection.

Aaron said to me, and I'm passing on to you, 'Look carefully. It may not be exactly be the first place where tension settles. There's a chain.'

(M comments that she noticed pain moving from her lower back to the middle of her back during the meditation.)

Aaron: It could be for a number or reasons, the simplest being that you had released the pain in the lower back and pain which was subtler and not previously noticed in the middle back was suddenly noticed. Pain also does move. The muscles are connected, of course. There is a chain reaction. Those of you who have been on a meditation retreat remember how hard it is to sit the first day. Everything in your body hurts. Your body isn't used to just sitting. When it's asked to just sit, the pain seems to run all over it. It's your body's way of releasing the tensions from one muscle to the next related muscle to the next. That is all.

C: Does the revered being that you identify with have to be a person?

Barbara: No. It can be anything. Everything is God. A flower is God. The piece of dirt on the carpet is God. Some people find it easier to start with someone like Jesus, Mary or the Buddha, but it doesn't have to be a person. It doesn't have to be anything special. The point of that stage of the meditation is … It's called 'guru yoga.' … You move into a place of real reverence and love for some 'divine being' and, through merging with that being, you really start to be able to rest in the divinity of yourself. If you can already do that, you don't need the other being at all. It's just a tool.

C: So the purpose is to feel the divinity within yourself?

Barbara: It's the same meditation we've done in many different forms the past two months. We've done one form as 'expand outward into the sky, visualize your breath going out into the atmosphere, and out.' We did a form of it one week with letting your boundaries go, moving into your higher self. We did it with the breath last week: breathing in … pause … breathing out. In … pause … out. In that moment of pause, if it's a brief pause, thoughts stop. And, instead of being in conceptual mind, for that moment you're in Pure Mind, divine mind.

We keep moving into that Pure Mind; we try to allow ourselves to stabilize that experience and to really rest in that place of experience of our own highest self, highest awareness. From that space we don't need to be defended, we don't need all the old distortions. We can see very clearly how we've picked them up, that they've served their purpose, and just let them go, with 'I don't need it.'

There's no getting rid of it; rather there's a clarity, 'This never was who I was in the first place. It's an illusion. It seemed very real but it's not who I was.'

In meditation class, talking about this, I gave an example of an experience that I had some time ago. I was at a meditation retreat. Aaron was first teaching me to work with this practice and I was working in myself with a sense of unworthiness. I knew I wasn't unworthy, but still, if I felt at all rejected or if something went wrong, I would keep experiencing this, 'I'm unworthy.' Aaron asked me, each time that sense of unworthiness arose, to just stop and say, 'Who is unworthy? Where did it come from?' It was very clear to me that it was just old mind conditioning, that when I was a kid, this or that had happened and the feelings of unworthiness were what I had done with my discomfort of my anger of fear. Aaron has talked at length about the reasons we move into unworthiness in the first place; I don't want to go into it now. That's a whole other talk. But we do move into unworthiness and it becomes a pattern.

At a meditation retreat, people are pretty much into themselves. I'd walk past somebody and I'd smile; they wouldn't smile back and I'd feel rejected. And it was absurd. It was because it was so ludicrous that I was able to look at it because, obviously, I wasn't being rejected, they were just meditating. But here's this rejection. It's old mind. Who is unworthy? Not Barbara in this moment walking down the hall in a meditation retreat, but Barbara, the little girl who had this illusion of unworthiness. But I was never unworthy then either. What is 'worthy?' What is 'unworthy?' The whole thing has been an illusion.

When I come back to the pure mind that sees that from this space of higher awareness, there is no worthiness or unworthiness. The whole creation of worthiness and unworthiness has simply been consciousness' way of coping with whatever stresses and strains have been coming to it. It's old habit. Nobody's ever been worthy or unworthy. But in a relative reality I have experienced unworthiness. So I need to do two things: to know I was never unworthy, to really shift the weight from this person who's feeling scared and unworthy and rejected to the open pure awareness of the person who really sees through it all. Also to have compassion for the pain, which is real. It may be an illusion, but it still hurts. So, when I can open my heart from that higher consciousness-when I can open my heart to the sense of unworthiness and the pain of that, not have to get rid of the pain-then the whole idea of unworthiness just goes poof! It just dissolves.

You do it over and over and over. Each time you do it, you rest in the state of Pure Mind and watch the unworthiness just go poof! And, eventually, you start to realize as soon as the thought of unworthiness arises, 'I don't need this anymore. It's just this baggage I've been hauling around.' Let it go. But you do that from the state of pure awareness. That's why Aaron's asking us as the second part of this meditation to identify with a divine being and, through that, to come to a space of our own divinity from which perspective we can more clearly see, 'This is just old baggage, I don't need it.'

(C shares that she was able to let go of just a little bit of the old mind pattern in the meditation, not the whole pattern. She is able to let go little by little, not all at once.)

Aaron: I am Aaron. C, what you're going to find is that when you work persistently with this-that is the key word, 'persistently'-somewhere along the line you're going to have a tremendous insight, as Barbara had in the experience she described, 'Oh! I've never been unworthy!' And you're going to truly be able to say, 'Yes, let it go.' You just keep working with it. It may take you days or weeks or months or years. It doesn't matter how long it takes. Meanwhile, you're skimming it off the top. But there will come that moment when there is a flash of deep understanding-at a gut level, not a conceptual level. You don't have to worry about what blocks that understanding now, just know there is still some level of fear, some level of defendedness. That's okay. When it is ready it will go. Be persistent. Have faith and courage, as I know you do. That is all.

M: … about relative reality being within the ultimate reality. I really liked that. I thought that was a lot like what C. S. Lewis' character says in the movie, 'Shadowlands': 'The pain is in the joy.'

Barbara: This is very important … that relative reality is not separate from ultimate reality. If it were, then we'd have to get rid of this and attain some other space. But we're already there. We're all already free. We're all already enlightened. We're just really learning how to let go of the old baggage that's stopped us from remembering the light. But along the way we keep gaining little degrees of freedom.

The way that you've learned with your emotions, you've found increasing freedom to allow emotions in. None of us are perfect at it yet, but we're each getting better at not being reactive, at having our hearts open, at seeing what gets thrown at us. Sometimes we collect it, grab it and go scurrying for cover. But, increasingly, we're able to just let it go through and not have to take it out on other people or ourselves. So, we keep gaining little bits of freedom.

I see what Aaron is teaching right now about release of the 'scar tissue' as some of the same thing. He just said to you, at some point it's just going to go whoosh! But meanwhile, you keep finding a little more freedom and a little more freedom. The old karma becomes just a shadow of its prior self and less and less and less and less.

C: On the issue of unworthiness, I still am somewhat confused because on a relative plane most of us do things of an unskilled nature.

Barbara: Aaron says not unskilled, but less skilled than that to which you aspire.

C: But some people murder.

Barbara: Most of us don't.

C: But most of us have in past lives. So were we worthy then? We always were worthy, he says. But in the past we murdered. Some people still do. We hurt each other in many ways.

Barbara: I ask again, what does 'worthy' mean? Worthy of what? Of whom? You can't just be worthy; it's got to be 'worthy of …'

Aaron: I am Aaron. There is nobody in this room who has not murdered somebody in a past life. There's nobody in this room who would murder somebody in this life. A clear sign that you're growing up. Please continue.

C: Would Aaron tell the murderer that he was worthy?

Aaron: I am Aaron. As Barbara just asked, what do worthy and unworthy mean? The murderer is neither worthy or unworthy, he simply is. And he's committed an act that has harmed another out of his own fear. It is a tangled distortion to pull in ideas of worthy and unworthy. We can call it harmful or unharmful, skillful or unskillful behavior, self-serving versus other-serving behavior. What does worthiness mean? To be alive, to have taken incarnation is, in the relative sense, to be worthy. Everything that exists is worthy of its existence. It took tremendous courage for that being, with all its anger and distortion and fear, to move into a new incarnation, knowing there was a likelihood that it was going to be caught in the same distortions and do harm to others. But it was willing to put itself in that situation again and again and again in order to learn. What wonderful courage! How can you call such a being unworthy? Unskillful, absolutely. Unworthy?

But, on another level, there's no worthiness or unworthiness because there is no duality. If the being is not unworthy, how can it be worthy? They are both concepts. Just as relative reality resides in ultimate reality, unworthiness resides in worthiness. There's no separation between them.

When I say there's no worthiness or unworthiness, I mean as distinct and separate things. Everything which is unworthy contains worthiness and vice versa. That is all.

C2: Are we just making things too complicated? Hasn't Aaron given us plenty of specific answers about specific questions? When we come back to guided meditations with regard to emotions or body pains, we come back to complicated questions. Are we struggling too hard to satisfy our analytical minds by asking these questions? Isn't it really the simple questions that matter which are answered with less struggle and which lead us into mindful exercises such as meditation, and lightening up on these types of questions, and having more confidence in simple exercises? The answers are basically simple, aren't they?

In other words, we're getting involved with all of these types of questions which are all complicated for everybody in their own way, but really doesn't it just come down to exercises that apply to everyone, starting perhaps with meditation? Maybe isn't it simpler to say just start clearing?

Aaron: I am Aaron. C, you're right. It's all very simple. One of the ways to learn it is to simply go off on a several year silent meditation retreat. But that's not where most of you are. I thank you for the opportunity to mention the value of retreats. I like teaching this at a retreat because we gather together and we talk like this for a limited time, 45 minutes perhaps, and then everybody is silent. You sit and meditate with it. Then there's another optional time to ask questions for those who are caught back in the mental body again. Those who want to stay quiet can stay quiet.

The thing is, C, each of you are different. These four bodies of yours vibrate at different frequencies. The spirit body may be very clear. The emotional and mental bodies may be reverberating with old fears, old experiences. You have hooked into those and become identified with them because they offered you an illusion of safety. The time the experience was first created, it may have given real safety: there was a tiger and you ran. Now, when you see danger, there's this 'fight or flight' reflex. But now you've come to a time in your evolution when fight or flight is no longer skillful.

What do you do with the reverberations of old mind? Yes, you can sit and meditate. That's a wonderful way to understand those reverberations and begin to release them. But for some people there's too much tension in it. Talking about it and finding what is truly only intellectual clarity does open a doorway for a much deeper experiential clarity when the being is ready to allow that clarity. Your intellect is a kind of defense. As you become willing to put your intellect down and be simple, you allow in more clarity. But that is each individual's choice: When am I ready to allow in that clarity?

I do not feel then that what we're doing here is maintaining the defendedness of intellect so much as allowing intellect to become a tool that serves the spirit. It is the spirit that will have to decide, it's time to let intellect move aside, to just rest in the light, to rest in who I am. It is very, very simple. You are God. Or, more clearly put, there is nothing in any of you that is not God. Each drop of water, there is nothing in that drop of water that is not of the sea, but no drop of water is the entire sea. There is nothing within you that is not God. Seeing that there is nothing in any of you which is not God, there is nothing in any of you which is separate from anything else. All the rest of you is old fearful mind, the old dialogue with fear. As you release the dialogue with fear, you become able to manifest your divinity. That's all we're doing here: each, in our own way, coming to the readiness to more clearly manifest that divinity. For some, the words are useful tools.

There is a Zen teaching: Do not mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself. What we do here is to offer myriad fingers pointing at the moon. Each of you, yourselves, must come to experience the moon. I cannot do that for you. I can only point, through words, through guided meditations, and so on. And I can encourage your own use of silent meditation as perhaps the most potent tool that I know for experiencing the moon. That is all. Does that answer your question, C? (Yes.)

Q: I am committed that this be my last physical lifetime and I'm wondering about more fully comprehending the processes of completing the work that I've promised to do …

(Tape ran out. New tape begins with Barbara in the process of answering.)

Barbara: The most important thing for me … I said in the beginning, are we just trying to get more comfortable through our meditation practice, to ease our pain? Or do we want to be free? Years ago, I was just somebody trying to do all of these different things to get rid of my pain. I saw that the more I tried, the more solid pain became. Then I fought harder.

We all have pain to some degree. There's nobody who comes through that door who's not feeling some kind of pain or you wouldn't be here. That doesn't mean we're heavily neurotic, messed-up people. It means that we're human. If we're human, we have pain. The more we try to get rid of pain, to control it, the more we solidify ego. The more we just make space for the pain and focus on looking at how we create this ego structure, looking at the whole process that we've gotten caught in for how many lifetimes and allow ourselves to refocus our attention to who we truly are, to our true nature as interconnected with everything, the less we experience suffering. There's nobody there getting caught. We start to see that being caught and not being caught are the same thing; in both cases there's somebody we think we are who is free or not free. Who is this 'somebody?'

Aaron wants to speak.

Aaron: I am Aaron. I will speak to this very briefly. It's something that we could spend hours on. It's also something that we've talked about at great length here. I don't mean by that to refuse to answer your question, only much of it is available in transcript and I do not wish to talk at length about that which is already transcribed.

You are what I call third density beings. You are approaching readiness to graduate to fourth density. In your fourth density form, you will be completely telepathic with one another. You will dwell in what I call a group energy, completely open to the others in your group, able to learn from the group experience, from the experience of others, rather than only from your own experience because nobody in the group will be ashamed to share and nobody will be afraid of others' judgments of them or of their own emotions. When I ask people, are you ready for fourth density now, I ask them a simple question: If everybody in this room were suddenly completely telepathic, would that be okay with you? Is there anything that you've thought of tonight that you'd be embarrassed to share? Would there be anything another in the room has thought of about you that would make you feel uncomfortable?

You have four bodies, one of which is the emotional body. Emotions arise. As long as you are in human form, there are going to be emotions. When you are ready to graduate from this plane into fourth density, to move beyond this samsaric cycle of birth and death, there will still be an emotional body but you will no longer be reactive to it. You will have developed such deep compassion that there is no longer any judgment of that which arises in yourself. Coincident with that, there will be absolutely no need to fling what arises at others. No need to act it out or own it in any way. And also coincident with that, there will not be judgment of others, but deep compassion at their pain when you see them frightened or angry or sad, grasping or jealous, or whatever.

This is what you must do to be ready to graduate from this plane: to find that complete equanimity with what arises. Just that. Of course, there's all the work with karma. It ties in. We're running out of time and to speak about this in detail would take me over an hour. But, as you come to equanimity with emotions and find forgiveness for yourself and others, you cease to create new adhering karma, and the roots of old karma shrivel up and die away. You don't have to get rid of karma, you release it. You let it go. It dissolves.

Finally, I would emphasize that you are not attaining anything, you are not getting rid of anything. You're not getting rid of the emotions, of the thoughts, of the physical body. When you no longer need a physical body, you'll cease to incarnate. You're not getting rid of anything in your experience. You are coming to see how you have erroneously identified who you were with your emotions and thoughts, and that those emotions and thoughts were never who you were. You are coming to find out who you really are when you're not your emotions and your thoughts, and to rest in that space of your divinity. It is here that you find that you have real equanimity with those emotions and thoughts, no need to judge them, no need to enact them or harm others because of them, or harm yourself. And then you are free.

In closing, may I remind you: Enjoy the journey. Those of you who are goal oriented are missing the beauty of this gift of incarnation in your eagerness to be done with the incarnation. And it is just that that will trap you. So, trite though it may be, stop and smell the flowers. I thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts with you this evening. My love to you all. That is all.