Wednesday, May 25, 1994

(This is the first 'anything goes' night, to be held the last Wednesday of each month. Questions on any topic are welcome. We have deleted those questions not applicable to the book.)

Aaron's talk

I am Aaron. My greetings and love to you all. Many of you have dim but real memories of times when you were not incarnate. You may not regard them as memory. They may come through as dream or in meditation. You may think of it as fantasy. But at some level, you are remembering. Most especially, you are remembering your deep connection with all that is.

On the astral plane, you have no physical body. You are telepathic. You still have an emotional body and there may be reactivity to that emotional body. But for those of you who are fairly evolved, as you all are, there is at least the ability to view the emotional body with some degree of equanimity on the astral plane because there is no veil that separates you from your spiritual truth. Because you are telepathic and do not feel any sense of separation from the divine while on the astral plane, you very fully rest in one another's energy and find tremendous joy with that.

Each of your bodies has its own frequency vibration. The physical body is the densest and has the slowest vibration. The spiritual body has the highest vibration. Most of you have seen a stringed instrument where one string is plucked and held on a certain note, another string that is in tune vibrates along with the plucked string, even though it has not been touched. In just the same way, on the astral plane when you are in tune with another, your spirit and mental bodies vibrate in harmony with one another. In a sense, you keep each other moving, keep each other vibrating at higher and higher and higher pitch because the joy of that experience heightens the frequency vibration. There is such gladness. As you vibrate at a higher frequency, so does your partner-or partners, it may be plural.

When you are experiencing that, the emotional body, for that time, seems to dissolve, or at least the heavy aspects of it seem to dissolve. There may be joy, gladness, love. There will not be thought, in terms of conceptual thought, but very pure awareness, and the spirit body itself which vibrates.

With this as background, what I would like to talk briefly about is some of the sexual issues you get into when you move into a body and it doesn't vibrate in the same way, leaving you feeling bewildered, separate, and unsure how to work with this dense energy that is the physical body. I do not want to make this a long introductory talk. I am going to touch on certain ideas. If you are curious to hear more, raise your questions during the question time.

One of the most frequent questions that I hear privately about sexuality is about the discrepancy between the experience of the physical body and the experience of the higher bodies. Some of you find that you can move into deep harmony with another on the physical plane while withholding your higher energies, not feeling a spiritual merging at all. Or you can feel a deep spiritual merging with another, but as soon as touch and physical sensation is involved, you pull away. You want to hide in that spiritual merging and disown the body. What's happening here?

I see several issues as primary. First, many of you are working with fear, wanting to be in control, to feel safe. You don't want mess in your lives. You want to know that everything is orderly and neat and then you feel secure and comfortable. No surprises. Your physical bodies simply are messy. Bits of skin flake off. Hair falls out. There are small sores, places of varying degrees of sensitivity to stimulation.

When you are touched in certain ways the physical body responds. It's like that knee-kick response when a doctor taps you just under the knee and the foot shoots out. You don't like not being in control. That's one part of it. When we take that to its logical conclusion, extreme sexual arousal and orgasm leave you feeling out of control. It may be minor, and certainly there may be pleasure involved, but that sense of being out of control does create fear and contraction of the energy field.

That contraction takes us directly into the lessons of the past few months. When the energy field contracts with fear, you feel cut off. You feel cut off especially from the divine energy that is moving into you. When you experience that sense of being cut off, you immediately reach out to grab at energy where you can. A fear reaction. Then, instead of merging your energy fields with your partner, you begin grabbing at each other's energy fields. How could you possible experience a spiritual merging when you're like chickens picking at each other, each trying to get the worm? And then you ask, what's wrong? Why do I lose the sense of spiritual connection when I move into a deep sense of physical arousal?

My dear ones, you are here in physical bodies for a reason. Some of the sensations of the physical body are highly pleasurable and some are very painful. As long as there is grasping at one and pushing away the other, or as long as there is extreme desire to control the experiences of the physical, your energy fields are going to be contracted. That does not preclude physical arousal, but it cuts you off from mental and spiritual connection when physical arousal is present.

The other way some of you handle it is to tune out the sensations of the physical body. You connect deeply with your partner with love and profound spiritual connection, but you don't let yourself feel the physical sensations because to do so is to lead into that fear of losing control. You've learned that you can maintain the spiritual connection by denying the body.

So many of you ask me, how can I bring this together? How can I experience physical arousal and orgasm and, simultaneously, maintain that sense of deep spiritual connection? To do that, you are going to have to look at the fear of loss of control. It's not just in sex, it's in all of your life: the fear of heavy emotions, the fear of someone being angry at you or your own anger, the fear of all the small messes that enter your life, the people that change their minds, the plans that fall apart, the relationship that doesn't work or the job you didn't get. The more you work with fear in a conscious way, using all of these practices we've been learning to keep your energy field open, to be mindful of the contractions of that fear and work to release it, the more you are going to be able to bring that practice into your sexuality, to be aware of the contractions of fear that occur within the physical body during sexuality and not to get caught in them.

There's one other area of sexuality I'd like to talk about. So many of you feel guilt about your sexual fantasies. A fantasy is simply that: a fantasy. There are no good or bad fantasies. If you can only achieve sexual satisfaction by acting out that fantasy and it discomforts your partner, then you've got a problem. You cannot force your fantasy on another whom it discomforts in terms of acting it out. But if you enjoy a fantasy, what harm is there in it?

Some of you who have spoken to me have sexual fantasies of violence. You don't need to act them out, but you fear that they separate you from the spiritual connection with your partner. It's very hard to feel spiritually connected and loving with a partner and, simultaneously, to have a fantasy of being beaten or tied or beating another. It confuses you. You ask, 'Where do these fantasies come from? How do I get rid of them?'

You do not get rid of them by judging them. You release them, if you feel they are not useful to you, by moving into deeper understanding of them. You ask yourself, what if I didn't have this fantasy? What if, instead of a fantasy that involved force, there was a fantasy that involved gentleness? And then you may begin to see that that gentleness is very frightening in some ways because it does draw you deeper into a heart connection.

I simply raise this question, do your fantasies protect you by keeping you within the physical aspect of your sexuality and separate you from a deeper mental and spiritual aspect of sexuality? If so, are you choosing those fantasies because it is too frightening to move into that intense connection with a partner on the spiritual plane, to then experience the arousal of the body and lack of control and not know what to do with the fear and tension that may accompany that lack of control?

There are many other reasons for your fantasies. Many of them spring from past lives. Many of you experienced arousal of the physical body at some time in a past life in a situation in which that sex act was forced upon you. The body was touched and it responded. There is a certain excitement in a sense of helplessness because you can let go of your fear of loss of control. There's nothing you can do about it, so you let it go. Then you begin to repeat that pattern, to move into fantasies similar to that actual experience because that sense of helplessness is a protection against fear of loss of control. Can you see that?

So, many of these fantasies relate to control issues of one sort or another. I simply ask you to remember there are no 'good' or 'bad' fantasies, but some fantasies do make it more difficult to move into a heart connection with the partner. If your fantasies are doing that and you want that heart connection, then you need to ask yourself, why am I not allowing the heart connection that I want? Begin to look at the reasons, at what fears may be present.

There are many, many other questions that are frequently asked privately about sexuality-so many, that we could do a weekend workshop on it. I've promised a short opening talk tonight. I would be glad to answer any other questions that you may have. If you're timid about speaking them, please write them. That is all.

Barbara: Aaron is saying that one other area of questions that comes up frequently in private sessions is the confusion when we experience a mixture of our masculine and feminine energies and don't know how to deal with those truly harmonious but contrasting parts of ourselves.

Questions

(J asks about whether it is useful or advisable to work with mudras with an acupuncturist, i.e. giving the acupuncturist the charts of mudras and asking that needles be placed in those specific points.

Barbara briefly explains mudra meditation practice.)

Aaron: I am Aaron. My answer here would be conditional upon the degree of awareness of the one who was receiving the energy work. One who is a qualified acupuncturist generally is sensitive to and aware of which meridian or meridians need to receive these needles, which chakras need additional stimulation. If you are going to an acupuncturist, are you simply going to someone who is knowledgeable about the insertion of needles to put in the needles, serving as your hands, or are you trusting yourself to their insight about the blockages in your energy system? That's question one.

If they are serving simply as extensions of your hands with the skill to properly insert needles, and if you are qualified yourself and aware of where the blockages are, then it's reasonable and useful to direct them. However, my preference here would be to entrust yourself to this being, to give them feedback about what you are experiencing and not need to direct the show. There may be some combination of your energies, but the one who is outside of your physical body, receiving your energy feedback, is in a better position to ascertain what is needed sometimes than you are. Your feedback is very valuable, but I do question why the need to control it.

A second and related question: Is it more useful to insert a needle than just to touch at that point wherever it may be. The needles do stimulate energy at a deeper level for most people, except for those who are very sensitive to and receptive of energy stimulation. Once you have come to an understanding of the energy meridians in your body, you don't even need the touch of mudra meditation, only the thought brought to that area. Some people develop such a high degree of sensitivity to that stimulation that the insertion of a needle would be overpowering. So this is individual.

Finally, should it be combined in any way? I would say absolutely not. Let me qualify that. If the needle is inserted at a chakra point and twirled in that point, creating that stimulation of that channel, your own attention to that chakra is very similar to the touch of the mudra and is fine. But if the acupuncturist is putting the needle in, I would definitely not suggest that they also bring their energy, separate from the needle, to that point. This would overstimulate. The needle in itself or the touch, but not both together. Your own attention is different because you have a strong sense within you of how much stimulation to allow and when to back off. Does that sufficiently answer your question? If not, will you voice any further questions? That is all.

K: I've been reading a book about a physical condition where people's senses are linked in such a way that some of them hear colors and some of them taste shapes. Yesterday, Aaron was talking about how beings who have had sensory experiences on the Earth plane have a richer sensory experience on the spirit plane. So, when I was reading about these people whose senses are linked together, I wondered whether that was a movement toward what Aaron experiences. Do we hear colors on the spirit plane? Are the senses experienced together in this way?

Aaron: I am Aaron. Here you are, encased in a body. You have a tongue that tastes, nostrils that take in scent, ears that hear, and so on. Each part of the body is especially created to pick up a certain kind of stimuli. When you no longer have a body, what part of you hears? There no longer is a mechanism with bones that vibrate and nerves that carry that vibration. You no longer have the retina, lens and other eye equipment. What sees?

In the physical body, your range of vision or hearing is extremely limited, only to that which is considered audible sound or visible light. Because you have no sensory tools in the non-physical body, you are not limited anymore. Now, truly you are not limited in the physical body. I'm not making an audible sound, but Barbara hears me perfectly and sees me as well. Those of you who see auras or energy, what part of you is seeing that? You've learned that you must look at it in an unfocused rather than a focused way.

On the astral plane and beyond it, then, once you let go of the illusion that you see through eyes or hear through ears, you learn that your whole energy field absorbs sound and hears it. Your whole energy field absorbs light and sees it. It's not something you have to learn. Rather, you unlearn the physical experience, the limitations of the physical experience, and then you move naturally into sensory input through the entire energy field.

Those in incarnation who hear light or smell shapes or whatever may be remembering that ability from a discarnate stage. It's not going to put them ahead on the astral plane; they're simply able to do it here. Actually, it's something all of you could learn to do here, to sense with your entire energy field. Is there any use in doing that? Not particularly. It's not that there's reason to avoid it, but you also do not need to train yourself at it. As you relax and allow yourself to listen deeper and deeper, you do hear your spirit guides, for example. You do hear what I could call 'the great hum' of universal energy. As you relax and allow yourself to see, you do see the vibrating energy from everything around you.

But you are in incarnation. You must continue to relate to the incarnation as human. That doesn't mean denying these extra senses, but there's also no need to grasp at them. Rather, relax. Get in tune with your energy field. Start to feel how it relates to other energy fields and all of these extra senses will start to be more and more available to you. But don't think of it as practicing so you'll be better at it when you leave the body. When you leave the body, you'll experience what comes next. Just that.

I do not see as you do. The way I see all of you is very, very beautiful. And yet, when I look through Barbara's eyes at all of you or at a butterfly or at a rainbow, it's exquisite. Can you compare a Rembrandt with some abstract modern painting with exquisite color and harmony and say that one is better or worse than the other? They're just different. Does that answer your question? (Yes.) That is all.

Q: How does surgery on the physical body affect the mental, emotional and spiritual bodies?

(Aaron asks that those who have had surgery share their experiences with the group, especially how the surgery affected the other bodies. Several share and their experiences are very different from each other, ranging from extreme feelings of being invaded to relative peace during surgery, including a near death experience. The idea of surgery as being a form of rape is introduced. These comments are on the tape but are not transcribed.)

Aaron: I am Aaron. If you have a flowering plant in your backyard and simply walk out and whack off some branches with the intention of bringing them in and putting them in a vase, with no explanation to the plant, it traumatizes the plant. The plant will not offer you as profuse future blooms. When you speak to the plant first, explain what you're going to do, thank it for its beauty, ask, 'Which branches shall I cut?' and cut just those, the plant continues to bloom profusely in enjoyment of being appreciated. Your energy and the plant's energy are interacting with one another.

Unfortunately, this idea is not taught in medical school. Most surgeons do not speak to the body part nor to the body itself before they operate. There is simply that organ that needs to be removed, or this area that needs to be stitched. Occasionally, there is a surgeon whose energy has profound respect for that upon which he or she operates. It has the patience to explain, not just to the conscious mind of the patient but, while the patient is anesthetized on the operating table, to address its energy, to apologize to that flesh before it cuts. This makes a profound difference.

I know it's awkward to ask your surgeon, 'Will you talk to my stomach or heart or whatever before you cut?' The surgeon may send you on to a psychiatrist! However, if you can find that surgeon who hears and understands you, then there will not only be less physical trauma, but there will be less trauma to the other bodies. They will participate with the surgeon in the healing rather than contracting and shielding against this rape of the body. That is all. Is there other thought that you wish to share?

C: I believe it is most important for the person who is going into surgery to speak to their own body parts to explain themselves what is going on and to ask the body to cooperate in the process. Could Aaron speak to that?

Barbara: Aaron says yes, considering that most surgeons won't understand what you're talking about and even if they did, yes, that is your responsibility to your own body part. But the surgeon's energy is directly working on your body and if that is done with love it really makes a profound difference regardless of what you do.

Q: Does surgery put wrinkles in light body?

Aaron: I am Aaron. The surgery itself does not put wrinkles or scars on the light body. Your relationship to the surgery puts the wrinkles or scars there. When you are contracted in fear and your energy is fighting the experience, then there are scars on the light body. Of course, they're illusory scars. The light body can't really have scars. But there is the illusion of scar. Let's call it a painted line over the top of the light body. It doesn't penetrate in, but it is so finely crafted to look like a scar that you believe that it's a scar and react accordingly. Does that answer your question?

(Barbara talks about the dental surgery she had a couple of months ago, and how she worked with the light body to 'erase' the illusory scars from her appendectomy as a child.)

Q: For the past several months, my partner and I have had a lot of conflict. In fact, it seems that all we do is have pain because of conflicting needs. While I do not have a specific question to ask right now, can Aaron address this issue? How can I deal with this conflict and pain?

Aaron: I am Aaron. There is someplace basic where you've all got to start. In agreeing to incarnate you agreed to experience pain. Even if somehow, miraculously, you get through the entire incarnation without physical or emotional pain, eventually you're going to die. Unless you are truly a fully realized being, there is going to be some emotional pain around the loss of this body to which you've become attached. Realistically, none of you are completely free of physical or emotional pain.

There are two different questions here: one concerns relationship and conflicting needs, the other concerns dealing with that pain. In actuality, the questions are connected because once you relax a bit and stop fighting the pain, you find that the needs are not quite as conflicting as you had thought. When you are able to be relaxed you can hear your partner's needs instead of needing to defend against them. So, as long as you're fighting and trying to stay free of pain, you're in a position where it's very difficult to hear what seem to conflicting needs which jab at you.

Let's talk about pain first, briefly. Nobody wants pain. I am a sixth density being with a deep sense of equanimity and I don't want pain. I'm not saying I fight against pain, but I certainly don't invite it in. I said to you earlier that incarnation is messy. A part of you wants so deeply to be secure, safe, in control. People come along and have different ideas than you do and challenge your ideas and opinions and you tense up against that challenge. Messy! Fix it!

The literal expression of this is two people who share a home, one of whom is very neat and organized and one of whom is chaotic. Their chaos is tossed all over your order. In fact, that happens figuratively in all human relationships because somebody else's order is your chaos and vice versa. You each see in a different way.

Several months ago somebody volunteered to file some information for Barbara. Barbara was not explicit as to how she wanted it filed. She said, 'Put it in alphabetical order.' So the filer put it in alphabetical order, not by last-name-first as Barbara would have done it, but alphabetically by subject matter. It was his perfect order. To Barbara it was chaos until she relaxed her fight with it. Then it became order.

When someone inflicts their chaos on you, you tense up. When you are in relationship with another, regardless of whether it's partner, parent/child, friend, you are constantly confronted with another person's seeming disorder. When you look at your response to that and begin to see how much tension it creates for you, begin to allow yourself to relax. This doesn't mean becoming a doormat to another person's debris. If you share a home with somebody, you have a right to insist that the shared rooms meet both of your standards. And in the same way, that your shared experiences meet both of your needs as best as is possible. But to do that you have to hear one another. And you can't hear one another when you're busy shielding.

The happy aspect of this is that a relationship is the perfect situation in which to practice all the work that we've done this year: When I feel threatened and my energy field contracts, can I be aware of it? Can I attend to it with compassion and an open heart? Finally, when I see that that contraction is simply conditioned mind, can I use these energy practices to release it?

Why are you in incarnation? Why are you in relationships in the first place? This is a classroom. Yes, the relationships are there to bring joy, but they're also your learning tools. Think about it. Are you in relationships so you won't be lonely? If you're in relationships simply so you won't be lonely, cease incarnating. Stay on the astral plane awhile. There's no loneliness on the astral plane. Come back to incarnation when you're ready to move into relationships not only as avoidance of loneliness, but also as tool for learning.

I'm not saying that your relationships don't give you joy and connection and alleviate loneliness, but that's not the primary reason for them. Get it in focus. Once you have that clear perspective then the other person's disorder or chaos ceases to be a personal affront to you. You can be relaxed about it and say, 'Great, here's another chance to practice.' It might be a 'Great' with clenched teeth, but still you know here is chance to practice.

So, there's going to pain. Can you change your relationship to that pain, end the war with it? Can you end the war with the chaos? In short, can you allow yourself to be vulnerable to whatever pain, chaos, confusion is around you and keep your energy and heart open? When you can do that then you are going to be able to hear your partner and to work out mutually satisfactory compromise, and to become more tolerant of those areas where compromise is difficult. That is all.

C: Yep! We are responsible for it all.

Barbara: Aaron is laughing and saying that you keep trying to find a way out of that. It's very basic. But, most of us, even though we know better, still spend our incarnation trying to find a loophole.

Aaron: I am Aaron. The only loophole is that there are no loopholes. Do you understand that? You're looking for a loophole to find freedom from your pain, a way out of responsibility, a way out of suffering. The true loophole is complete equanimity and acceptance of the fact that there are no loopholes. Once you fully accept that, you allow yourself to stop struggling with your life and move into a place of relaxation. When the energy field ceases to get tense and fight, then you find great happiness and an end of suffering. So that's the loophole. That is all.

C: That sounds like a Zen koan.

Aaron: I am Aaron. The entire idea of the Zen koan derived from life experience. For some people it's too difficult to see it within their own lives so an artificial construct helps to focus attention. Your life is a koan. The central riddle is, is there a loophole? Once you discover that the loophole is that there is no loophole, then you can relax and stop fighting, stop trying to find it and just get on with it. That is all.

Barbara: Aaron, I think of a loophole as being a shortcut that makes things easier. Somehow I'm feeling resistant to what I think you said. I'm not sure if I got the whole thing. But you're suggesting that resignation is a loophole and that sounds pretty harsh to me.

Aaron: I am Aaron. Resignation and equanimity are not synonymous. When you think of a loophole that way, as a shortcut, I ask you to visualize yourself walking from point A to point B and there's a steep mountain in between. There's a path. A signpost says very clearly: To B. You start climbing. It's steep and rocky. You see a path off to one side and you think, 'Maybe that would be easier.' It leads to a hundred foot cliff. You come back to the trail to point B. You see another path. It leads to a steep ravine with a raging river running through. Where is your shortcut?

Truly this acceptance, 'There are no loopholes so let's get on with it,' is the easiest way. If this is the road to point B, just lift your feet and walk. Can you see how much pain you create for yourself in your struggle against this road and your desire to find an easier route when in fact you know there is no other route? The only way out is the road, one foot at a time. And, in fact, although this mountain may rise three thousand feet in elevation, one foot in front of the other isn't going to rise more than a few inches. You don't have to climb three thousand feet. With each footstep you only have to climb three inches. What's hard about that? Don't look for point B, look for the next step and stay there, one step at a time. Be here in this moment, fully, and before you know it you'll find yourself at point B. That is all.

F: Can the lifestyle of a monk or the sanctuary of a monastery be a shortcut? If we can eliminate much of the gross external stimuli, can't we accelerate and deepen our practice?

Aaron: I am Aaron. I hear your question, F. It depends where you are. Let us use an example of an athlete that needs both to sharpen his or her throwing or catching skills and his or her stamina. If he or she has worked hard to deepen the specific athletic skills, then it will be most useful for them to move into a training that heightens the stamina. If they've already heightened the stamina, it is not useful to heighten it more and disregard the specific skills.

You need to do both: to come to a place of deep rest inside yourself where the small ego self is not violently flaming out, where you begin to have a deep sense of the truth of who you are, and then you need to bring that truth into the world and see how you can learn to maintain it in the face of outside catalyst. Many of you then have been monks in many lifetimes. For the many of you your final lifetimes incarnate are not as monks, but are learning to use that wisdom within the world. That doesn't mean it has to work that way. Some of you have learned how to use that wisdom in the world and need the final time to go deeper and come to a place of rest. So there's not one answer. Both are useful.

There is no one presently in this room who would best be served by joining a monastery in terms of your present spiritual path. There is no one within this room who would not benefit by lengthy-by which I mean not just a weekend or even a week, but several weeks or months-periods of solitude and intense spiritual practice. Then take that back into your daily life and see how it works. When you're feeling a little bit lost, you come back to the solitude again.

There are different kinds of monastery experiences as well, those in which the participant lives simply in a cave or hut very isolated from the cares of the world and those where the participant is asked to be in the world although with certain vows of poverty, celibacy and so on. Those vows which protect you from the catalyst of the physical body and the material nature of the world also slow your learning down in some ways. Does that answer your question?

It is after ten but if we may have a just a minute of silence and thought to this loving world which we aspire to bring into birth, not grasping at that creation, but enjoying the wonderful potential of an Earth that is free of suffering and filled with loving kindness, joy and peace. (Long pause.)

I thank you for your kind attention and wish you a good night. That is all.