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Wednesday, March 30, 1994A note about tonight's talk Tonight's talk was an interweaving of the reading of a private session transcript and Aaron's expansion on those ideas. The transcript itself, from March 25, 1994, begins with a note of explanation. What is presented here is the result of that interweaving, as it was presented to the Wednesday Group. The introduction to the private transcription is given in italics.
Aaron: This is very technical. You don't need the labels. What I have just offered is a basic description of the energy process of karma. You understand that the basis of karma is that you reap what you sow. Why? Because when you send out a contraction it moves up this energy stream where the sub-light body serves as a mirror and reflects it back at you. What is a mirror but glass with a backing. The density of the contraction is sticky and becomes the backing. If you send up loving kindness and openness, metaphorically it scrapes the back off of the mirror so you can see through it. When you see through it you see straight through to the light body. The illusion of distortion dissolves. What comes back to you then is not the illusory distortion but the perfection. When we've spoken about this in the past fall and winter, I emphasized working with this process only after there is no strong aversion to what is being experienced. If you are experiencing physical or emotional pain-fear, jealously or any other discordance-and strong desire to get rid of that pain leads you to say to yourself, 'Aaron says it's illusion so I will go to the ultimate reality where it doesn't exist,' my dear ones, that's escape. On the relative plane, which is where this incarnation is, there is that fear or pain. It must be attended to on the relative plane. When there is an openness about it, space made for it, then you are ready to let it go; not to get rid of it, simply to let it go. The process of letting go is one of working with this light and energy stream so that what you send up the stream is clarified; so that you no longer see this sub-light body as distorted, but see the ever-perfect. We frequently use the example of the clear piece of paper that has always existed within the wrinkled sheet. When you have that wrinkled sheet of paper and focus on the wrinkles, that is a way of practicing the wrinkles. When you look at that wrinkled sheet of paper, stretch it out and see the wrinkles and see the perfect sheet of paper within the wrinkled sheet, you fix your attention in a different place, on perfection rather than distortion. This relates to the new age maxim that you create your own reality. You know that I'm not found of that saying because of the ways it is often misapplied to provoke guilt, and yet it is true. Of course you do create your own reality. What are you sending up this energy stream? What does it shine back at you? I want to say to our friends who are new here tonight that this practice we are introducing is a very valuable one. You can start at either end, working with clarifying this energy stream or working in relative reality with the fears and pains of everyday life. Eventually you've got to work in both places. I only want to mention this for those of you who have not heard me speak at length about the work in relative reality. We have simply put it aside, temporarily, but there must always be a balance. I do want to emphasize, for those of you who are confused about the precise details of this scheme, that it doesn't matter. I provide the whole scheme because there are many of you who are interested in it. If it eludes you, simply focus on two things. First, the contraction that you feel in the physical body and the way that contraction moves out of you as distortion of energy, and second, the ways that opening your heart and letting go on the physical plane can clarify that energy. We will do a specific guided meditation to give you a feel for it. We return here to reading the March 25 transcript.
Barbara: This is Barbara. There's a drawing being passed around. In that drawing the light body is the body that's within the sun. The sub-light body is just below that and the physical manifestation is the one on the bottom. Question: What was self-aware? Was it the light body? Barbara: The piece of cellophane was self aware. The sub-light body. Where did it start, if there was no sub-light body until self awareness? I don't know. I don't think it matters. M: When there first was self awareness, did it form the sub-light body? Barbara: Yes. First there is just soul, or spirit body, whatever we want to call it, which finds itself totally merged with God, or whatever we wish to call that. There's no self awareness. With that first moment of self awareness, there is that which became self aware. What experiences itself as totally merged can not have the illusion of distortion. Because self awareness leads to a sense of self and other, we then can move into that distortion that Aaron has called the first distortion of love. We can not experience love in that sense unless there is lover and loved. So, with the first distortion comes both love and separation; then the energy moves into the possibility of further distortion. But, as Aaron just said, the energy in the sub-light body is not distorted, how could it be? He said, 'If you have an unmarked sheet of white paper and snip off a part, it is also unmarked.' So, the distortion (this is the hard part) in this sub-light body is illusion. We've taken it as real. This delusion, of separate self, is a primary cause of all of the physical, emotional and mental distortions which incarnation after incarnation after incarnation have carried. This process, as Aaron said earlier, is a way of explaining the energy of karma, why karma happens. Aaron wants to say (I'm paraphrasing), for the people who were not here last week, this cellophane that he's talking about is that perfect sheet of paper that we've taken and wrinkled. As cellophane, it's transparent. If you shine a flashlight through it you can imagine what it would look like. What you see shining on the ground picks up the clear places and the wrinkled places. In a sense our physical, emotional and mental distortions are the reflections of those wrinkled places. Once we understand that they are illusion, we can begin to release them, but only if we're not getting rid of them. If we are getting rid of them we solidify them more because there is aversion to them and we're somebody trying to get rid of something. Does that make sense to everybody? It will take meditation and practice with it. Right now what you have is a conceptual understanding, which will steer you into a path of experiential understanding. D: Aaron said 'At that first moment of self-awareness, that which we call soul did not find itself separate. That which was self-aware is what found itself separate.' Where did the self awareness come from? Aaron: I am Aaron. Self awareness is infinite light and intelligence's projection as it seeks to expand and know itself. Does that answer your question? D: Aaron's answer is very satisfying because he implied that what we are all doing here is working to expand God. Barbara: Aaron says, essentially, yes. He says (I'm paraphrasing) that somewhere we have an old transcript about the question 'Can an infinite God expand?' M: I think that this is a chicken or the egg question. Are the wrinkles formed as a reflection of our distortions on the physical (Can not hear the rest of the question.) Barbara: It's spiral, circular. Aaron says it's kind of like a mobius strip, it feeds up and comes back; it's continuous. Back to the transcript, last sentence repeated.
Perhaps this is a key sentence. You are here to expand, as D put it, to expand God, to expand the divine as expressed within yourself. Part of that expansion is learning to live your life with more love. If there was nothing to reflect back the fear energy and let you know the fear which needed to be worked with, how would you learn? Some of you have pitched rubber balls against a wall. If you want something to come back gently you throw it to the wall gently; it returns what you throw. If you have a strong pitching arm and you throw it with all your might and it comes back to you as a fast ball and punches you in the chest. That punch's discomfort is simply saying, 'Be aware; throw softer.' You can catch distortion anywhere along this chain and work skillfully at many levels. You can become aware of the contraction of fear in the physical body and with no knowledge at all of what we spoke of above. Each time fear contracts in the physical body you can be mindful of it, work not to throw that fear at another, begin to cut through the identification with that fear, and eventually find freedom from the pattern of that fear. That is perfectly sufficient. You can also work from the ultimate reality side. Each time that fear arises, breath it out and move back to rest in pure mind, stabilizing the experience of this pure awareness. Eventually that will feed back into the relative reality responses to fear. You will start to know that the fear is not who you are and cease your reactivity to it on the earth plane. That's also a viable path. The balance of the two is much more powerful. For those of you who are saying that you want to be finished in this lifetime, here is a balanced path. It is very hard work, but very, very potent, because you're cutting through on both planes, the relative and the ultimate. To work with this balance is to note the contractions of fear, anger, greed or whatever there may be in the physical body; to note the movements of those emotions in the mind; to note the desire to fling them at another, the desire to be rid of them; to open your heart with compassion to this being that's caught in the midst of such violent forces. And simultaneously to note how you are owning that physical sensation or emotion and identifying with it, thereby continuing it because you send it up to the sub-light body and it reflects back repeatedly until you finally can say, 'I don't need to do this anymore. I've learned.' We return to the reading of the transcript.
(Break. After break, people ask Barbara to speak more about the experience at the dentist. Questions not recorded.) Barbara: It was a very powerful experience. I've never had any real dental work in my life. I've never had Novocain. There I was lying on my back in this chair with bright lights shining down on me, the dentist and his assistant with all these sharp looking tools. I was clutching the arm of the chair! Aaron first asked to me to chant, Om ah um, which in itself was an interesting experience because my mouth was propped open. So, I was chanting silently to myself. I couldn't do the 'um' because I couldn't close my mouth, I was just thinking that part. But it did settle my energy. Then he asked my to take my hands and turn them face up so that I couldn't clutch onto the chair and to observe that there was no physical pain. There was discomfort and a sense of the body being invaded, but there was no physical pain. Slowly, as I moved into a deeper meditation I began to feel the stream energy, to feel what I was projecting. Each time there was a pull or scrape and my energy tensed I literally could see the difference. As I relaxed the energy and sent up simply an intention to be present with real discomfort but that I didn't need to reinforce it and have it play back, I could see this energy clarified. I was working in two different places. One was the emotional fear; feeling invaded, wondering what they were doing to me, noting aversion to having my gum cut open, my gum which had been pain free and healthy. One was with the physical distortion that had created a pocket of infection along the root in the first place. I was able to work more with the emotional than the physical distortion, for whatever reasons. I walked out of that office feeling so high, and my energy feeling so clear. I have to go back tomorrow and get the stitches taken out and I don't know what else will be done but I have absolutely no fear of it at all. Whatever has to happen is just the reverberations of old karma that are still working, reverberations of old fear in my body. They need to finish working their way out, but I just need to go sit in the dentist's chair and get the stitches taken out, and whatever work he's going to do, he's going to do. It's a very different feeling and I can very clearly see the way that I was wrinkling the sub-light body and taking the wrinkles for what was real. The way that I'm now seeing through it, seeing the clarity and that that clarity is what's coming down. Important in this experience, for me, is seeing that it goes both ways, that the energy stream which moves from the body is projected up, then is reflected back down to us. There is something that I don't have quite clear yet. I'll tell you what I see but I think that Aaron would prefer to talk about it until I understand it better. I see two things in parallel, the distortion energy and also the light body energy which is always perfectly clear. I am only at the concept level of understanding; my question is, if I shift my focus fully to the light body energy that's coming down, can I end the whole thing? It seems like I could but I don't have an experiential understanding of it yet. (Barbara's note while cleaning the transcript, April 20: Yes, I can end it, but the body may still need to experience the old reverberations of its past distortions.) J: sending that positive energy, or very clear, loving energy back up, in a sense are you bypassing the sub-light body and going right to the light body, which is the clarified energy that is reflected back, but the negative or bad energy hits the sub-light body and bounces back down? Barbara: I'm paraphrasing Aaron. He says think of the metaphor of a mirror, which is just absolutely clear glass with a painted backing of some sort. You can't see through it, it just reflects back. This backing is self; this is the part of us that is self aware with the illusion of separate self. When you send clear energy up, this is basically what scrapes the backing off or moves through the backing. You can't send up that clear energy unless you are resting in pure awareness, empty of the delusion of separate self. Then the energy you're sending up goes straight to the light body. The sub-light body seems not to exist anymore. It's there but it's totally transparent. So, it's no different than the light body. Aaron is saying it never was different from the light body, it was all illusion that it had this backing on it anyhow. But we've cut through that illusion and removed the backing. So what comes down is perfectly clear, it's just from the light body. J: So in a sense the distorted energy 'coats' the mirror and doesn't allow the energy through. Barbara: Yes. Let me give you Aaron. Aaron: I am Aaron. Visualize yourselves sitting on a sandy beach in the sunshine. The sun feels warm, wonderful. You are thoroughly enjoying the sensation of gentle warmth on your body. Suddenly there is a big, snarling dog, barking, growling! Your body contracts in fear. The sun is still shining and the experience of warmth is still there, but you've ceased to be aware of it because of the contraction of fear. This whole distortion we are speaking of is illusion, at least on the ultimate plane. It only has solidity because your mind has given it solidity. Just as the warmth is always present in the sunshine of the beach, the connection with the divine is always there, the connection with clear light is always there. But your contractions cut off your experience of it. Does that answer your question? (Question could not be heard on the tape.) Barbara: I worked on both but it was because the contractions of fear and so on were so strong that was much more directly what was in my experience. I was aware that there was this distortion of the infection in my gum, which is why he was cleaning the root of my tooth. But it was not something that I had felt physically. Back in November there was pain from it, but after an antibiotic there was no more pain from it. We only knew it was there from the x-ray, so, it wasn't as directly a part of my experience. I've worked more with that distortion this week when, following the surgery, I've had a lump like a baseball on my cheek, and it was really painful. So, that lead me into much more work with the physical distortion. But in the dentist's office I was working with what was more immediate, which was the emotional distortion. One can work with either one in the same way. Question: What is the way to work with pain? Barbara: Pain is something different than physical distortion. When I say physical distortion, we each have places in our bodies-a bad back, migraine headaches, constant sore throats, stomach problems, a toe that we stub every few weeks or whatever it may be-we've all got those places on our bodies where there is recurrent problem. That problem is something that we carry through from past karma. When we understand how we're re-creating that over and over we can begin to release the tension around it. This does not mean that it's going to cease to repeat itself. For example, I've released the tension around my deafness but I can't cure the deafness itself. If we've created a physical problem that's gone beyond medicine's ability to repair we still can make some indentations into it. I used to have very bad dizziness related to my deafness and that is far less severe than it used to be. We work with the physical distortion in exactly the same way: seeing the way that we have contracted around the distortion with, 'I don't want this, I want to get rid of it.' Relax, just let it be there. You don't have to see it visually as I did. Some people will see it, some people will simply sense it. We each are more comfortable with one sense or another. We have physical senses and our extra-sensory perceptions' strengths tend to run in the same lines as our physical senses. If we're a very visual person then extra-sensory vision is very clear. If we're a very auditory person then extra-sensory hearing is very clear. So, we each experience these distortions of the light stream in different ways. Aaron: I am Aaron. What I've asked Barbara to do this week is to focus on the perfect gum and tooth that's part of the light body template, that's distortion free. She is simply to receive that energy, to release the energy of the distortion. This is part of that four step meditation process that we did several times this winter and will repeat tonight. When you see that the emotional or physical distortion is no longer useful, that the incarnation has finished its learning from that distortion and is simply carrying it as old baggage, then you are free to release it and to focus on that perfect light body template, allowing that to replace the distortion in the physical manifestation. Do you understand? Barbara: Aaron says that he wants to do two different guided meditations tonight, one of which will be working with that physical or emotional distortion. Aaron: I am Aaron. The meditation that I want to do here tonight is a very simple one: simply expanding outward. Breathe out. (pause) Watch your breath move outward. (pause) What you will need to do is take one breath, one exhalation, and while you continue to inhale and exhale as is necessary for the physical body, focus on that one exhalation. Breathe in and out a few times and then choose an exhalation which you will watch while the body continues its breathing process. (pause) Follow it out. (pause) Follow it out beyond the walls of this room. (pause) See it moving through the clouds, and beyond the earth's atmosphere. (pause) One breath and it is everywhere. (pause) From that furthest place far beyond earth's atmosphere, breathe in. Again, let the body breathe as it needs to, but focus on what is moving towards you, entering the atmosphere. It has touched to stars and the planets, and now it touches the clouds and tree-tops. Through the walls of the room, draw it into your body. I will be silent. Please do this a few times. While doing the exhaling part of it, it may help to focus on each exhalation, seeing the breath moving further and further and further away. Then focus on the inhalation. Once that inhale has come from the furthest reaches of the universe back into you, begin again. Now we are going to do precisely the same process with energy. Sit very straight and feel your energy mass at the core of you. Then simply expand outward. Use the breath as a prop if it helps. Focusing first on the exhalation for as many breaths as you need. With each exhalation expand outward, simply letting go of the boundaries of self and allowing your energy to move out and out and out, into the universe. Allow it to rest there for a moment and then shift the focus to the inhalation and draw it back. Think of all of the energy that it has touched. Bring it back into intactness. Then, work through the process again. Do not try to expand outward, simply expand outward. This is not a effort in pushing, but a gentle release of the illusion of boundary. Finally, we move this process to awareness. I will not try to define this work, simply let that within you that knows it is aware focus on itself. Awareness resting on awareness, and breathe it out into the universe with each exhalation. Let it encounter whatever it will; you may find a sense of void, of nothingness, or absolute fullness and brilliant light. At the end of your journey out do not come back, simply rest there for as long as you can stably stay there. If you lose it, come back without the inhalation part of the process; simply come back and start again, sending awareness out. Let awareness float free of the body and dance in space. If thought or physical sensation interrupts and you lose it, simply start again. Pure awareness resting in the light of its own perfection. Pure mind dancing free in the universe. This is who you are. Gently now, allow awareness to return into the physical body. (pause) Come into the body and note the inhale and exhale. (pause) Move your fingers and note the motion. (pause) When you feel fully back in the body again, open your eyes. That is all. Barbara: Aaron is saying that some of you had a very nice vacation. Questions M: What is the difference between love, light and energy? Aaron: I am Aaron. M, what is the difference between the river, the cloud and the rain? Each is clearly unique and yet they are all the same, they are different forms of the same matter. Love, light and energy bear the same relationship. That is all. (Could not hear question on tape.) Barbara: Light is a physical manifestation of energy, but also light is a physical manifestation of love, energy is also a physical manifestation of light. Love comes first, it doesn't matter if you put light or energy first. Question: How do they change from one to the other? Aaron: I am Aaron. Love naturally creates energy, just as the clouds naturally offer rain when the conditions are right for clouds to become rain. The condition whereby love becomes energy is simply thought and intention, the intention to expand outward. Love by its nature can not be still, it moves outward. The force of that outward expansion is energy, not creates energy, is energy. Light is a physical manifestation of that energy. Because Barbara is so much not an auditory person we tend to leave sound out of this. Sound is not as strong a manifestation of that love as is light, but it's very present. The sound of the whole universe sighing in joy and sorrow. It may be 'Ohm' that is all pervading. That is all. Question: What causes the light and sound to come into being? Aaron: What caused the river to come into being? The rain fell. What caused the rain? The gathering of clouds and certain climate conditions. What caused the gathering of clouds? The evaporation from the sea. What fed the sea? The river. There is no beginning or end. What you are asking me, essentially, is to tell you how God began. But God didn't begin. By its very nature God is eternal; the Unborn, Undying, Unchanging, Uncreated. It has always been and always will be. So, it is God's eternalness that causes the sound and the light. Are there questions? (Could not hear question on tape.) Aaron: I am Aaron. You comprehend those aspects of the Unborn and Unlimited which are within your grasp. You are in human incarnation. You have physical senses: ears, eyes, touch, taste and smell. If a dog were able to comprehend that which we call God at all, It would manifest more as taste and smell than in light and sound, because taste and smell are primary senses for the dog. For the human they are more secondary senses. God manifests itself in myriad ways. The ones to which the human is attuned are light and sound. Energy which is felt through that extra-sensory perception, touch. (Could not hear discussion on tape.) Barbara: Aaron is saying that as L just said, they are all vibrations. Aaron: I am Aaron. We have this distortion that we call love or God. It is a projection. Because it projects it creates a vibration. So, sound, light and energy are all manifestations which we call love or God. Love and God are not completely synonymous but I don't want to further confuse this. Love is the first distortion of that which I call God. In other words, love is the fullest expression of God. M: How empty is the emptiness? Barbara: Aaron says absolutely full. L: Are you saying that God is a pure form and that love is a slightly impure form of God, or God being aware of itself in its purest form? Barbara: I'm paraphrasing Aaron who is saying yes, because love is a distortion of the expression of that projection and vibration which we call God. God is completely pure and can not be anything but pure. Aaron: I am Aaron. The purest expression of what? That which we are calling God can never be impure, and yet it contains within itself all harmony and all disharmony. There is no duality in that which we call God. This is all. (Question not recorded.) Aaron: The disharmony is also completely pure. This relates to the pure awareness work that we're doing. When you come to see that the distortions within the physical incarnation need not reflect back to the wrinkled sub-light body, but are distortions that fit fully within the divine, then you cease to react with aversion to those distortions and you cease to re-create and practice in order to learn equanimity with them. Once there is no reason to re-practice them, because there is complete equanimity, they fall away; they cease to be useful to your lives. This does not mean that you react in harm to others in those distortions, or you plant new karmic seeds and create suffering. You simply make space for this distortion. That, too, is valid. That is all. Are there questions? J: The word God. Does that mean a supreme being, higher than Jesus, sitting on a pedestal pulling all the strings in the world? I mean, is there such a thing as God, or do people use that word too loosely? Aaron: I am Aaron. No, there is no one up there pulling all the strings. The divine energy is in each of you. Use the sun and sunbeam image. The light body, which is the core of each of you, is that perfect sunbeam, which composition is no different than the sun itself. But, just as a cup of water is no different from the sea, but is also not the sea and only a small part of the sea, so each of you is not God but is a projection of God. Each of you is infinite intelligence seeking to expand and know itself, seeking to love more fully. The one who was known as Jesus, and other avatars that the earth has known, are beings in whom the physical manifestation is no less pure than the light body. There is no illusion of distortion. The sub-light body is perfectly clear, and everything that is within the manifestation of that being is perfectly clear. There have been many such avatars in the history of your earth. There have also been beings, such as the Buddha, who began with distortion in the physical and emotional bodies and so completely clarified that distortion that by the end of that incarnation there was no distortion. What makes the story of Jesus so beautiful, and makes this such an extraordinary energy, such a powerful projection of the God energy, is that this being willingly left the light and full merging with God in which it dwelt to come to the earth plane and teach; to move into an incarnation in which it knew it would suffer. In the gift of that incarnation is the fullest expression of this distortion of love through positive polarity. Within that distortion can be seen both the tremendous learning offered by His gift, and also the pain because there has been much murder committed in His name, as well as loving kindness. He was a catalyst, asking each being to reconsider its move to positive or negative polarity and recommit itself. You are pulled to positive polarity because you see the tremendous suffering that negative polarity creates. But please understand that service to self is also a viable path to learning. In sixth density there is a dead-end to that path. It is a very painful path. Our goal is not to convert every being to positive polarity, but for each being to extend that infinite intelligence and love in the ways that free will dictates for that being. I do not mean to imply that there can not be an earth that is positively polarized. When earth becomes fourth density it must be positively, or negatively, polarized. Much of the work that is going on today in the higher spheres is to create a positively, rather than negatively, polarized earth. I want to speak to this question: do we use the word God too loosely? This is one of the objections to the word God. When they hear that word many people envision this puppet master up on his throne. They are uncomfortable with the word God, because of those connotations. That which we call God is in no way contradictory to the law of free will. And while I can not say it pulls the strings in terms of things being predestined, there is a flow of this God energy towards the distortion of love. For those of you who are positively polarized it exerts great influence over your choices because you so deeply aspire to purify your energy to be worthy of that divine love. This does not contradict free will, it is your choice to merge with the positively polarized path, There's no puppet master, but there's something holding out love and something holding out fear and hatred, and obviously you are pulled towards that which holds out love because that's the direction of your own distortion. Negatively polarized beings are pulled towards that which holds out fear and hatred. This leads to the whole question of what is good and evil. I believe that we are close to being out of time and can not do justice to that question in the five minutes that we have. I would welcome it on a future week. That is all. |