February 11, 2004

Aaron: My blessings and love to you all. I am Aaron. This trip and the work done at the casa so perfectly brings out to the physical plane the core of the work that we do here. As I speak, I am stepping outside any role as a vipassana teacher, it's one of the things I teach here in spirit. You are spirit. What does it mean to be spirit? You are here in a body in human form, what does that mean? Why are you here?

Many times I have said you are here to bring love where there has been fear, to bring light where there is darkness, and the work we do here is to teach you how to bring that light, which is your true nature. How to bring forth that love, which is also your true nature.

There is a term tossed about, "New Age." This term is often quite misunderstood. You have been in an age of what we might call "human man." Man and woman; I use the term "man" non-generically. This human is often confused, often afraid. She seeks leadership. He wants to be certain. There is fear and doubt.

Despite the great teachers who have come in the past two to three thousand years proclaiming your divinity, you have not until recently been ready to know that divinity fully. There was a time when the divinity was at least remembered, if not fully experienced. The earth mother was known, the divine feminine was known. The loving power of the divine was known and trusted.

As I see the progression of history, in the centuries after Jesus lived and died somewhat over-zealous caretakers began to twist the meaning of his teachings. I believe the intention was good, at least to begin with. You don't let a young child climb on a chair and play with the dials on the stove. You know the child does not yet understand fire. He must be protected until he has that knowledge and maturity to handle fire.

But throughout history, and back to very ancient times long before Jesus and the Buddha, there have been those who have not trusted that humankind has this divine potential, that humans can deal with what comes their way and learn from it.

There is a transcript, - I'm not going to go into the details of it, I will ask Barbara to send this also to Alice to send out to this class - a transcript talking about the origins of the fear on the earth plane. The first to express fear was one of the guardian angels who helped to create the ground for this earth plane. Like a parent watching its child and afraid for the child, this great entity's energy contracted in fear, and he became unable to respect the free will choice of each being, and that each being has the ability to learn through its choices, to create pain and learn through that pain, to create joy and peace and learn through that. With fear came the distortion of control.

So the seeds were planted early. But still there were cultures in the world that were much more fearless, not deeply immersed in those teachings of control. Distortions in many of the major religions shifted into this control bias, in Christianity and Buddhism, in the Moslem faith. They all picked up this fear distortion.

At the time of Jesus' birth, the Essene community was a large force in Judaism. For those who practiced in the Essene tradition, man and woman were equal. The strength of a man, of the masculine, and the receptivity and nurturing of the feminine, came together in every human being, male and female. There was deep respect for both male and female. There was deep respect for the earth mother. God as Father was not separate from Earth as Mother. They were part of each other.

In the Essene tradition in which Jesus was raised, there were many trainings and what we might call initiations, trials or tests, to see if you had learned what you needed to from the training. Your life gives you these tests constantly. You're running late and you get a flat tire; there's an initiation. Have you learned how to work with impatience, how to recognize patience right there with impatience and fear?

I want you to read these 4 pages before I discuss them at greater length, but this series of trainings is the ground on which I have built all of the work at Deep Spring Center through the years. The first trainings are none other than being present with your experience: the physical, the mental, the emotional, and learning not to take them so personally, not to build stories around. In those days 2000 years ago, young children were trained in this way.>

The second grouping of trainings carries it deeper, so that it becomes increasingly an habitual response when a negative thought comes to make space for it rather than contract around it. This is what we have been teaching here for all of these years. And then the third grouping of trainings, 11 through 15, these take us to what we are doing here in this class now with the Four Empowerments and Seven Branch Prayer, and the whole practice of truly living the non-duality of the dharmakaya and nirmanakaya. For those new to the class, I know you will read the transcripts from the first semester and get to understand these terms. They are important to your continuing work.

So we have dharmakaya, this divine ground of being, this place of full presence, which is uncontracted and radiant, and we have nirmanakaya, the form body, the form of an emotion or physical sensation. If you stub your toe, there will be pain. Contractions may arise. You don't deny the pain or the contraction of energy. You don't have to contract around the pain or around the contraction.

When these trainings are mastered, the next logical step is into what Joao is doing with the entities in Abadiania. Before such mastery is attempted, you have to become familiar with the innate lightness of your being. You have to feel the contraction and how it moves through the body, to experience the release of the contraction even while the body is still tight around it, and finally to know the full opening, no more tightness. You have to experience the sensation of high vibrational frequency, of light, of joy.

I've used an example of a spring bursting out from underground, running down the hillside, and finally forming a stream that 10 miles away may have become polluted. Incidentally, near the casa, there was such a spring-fed waterfall. Barbara found much joy going to sit beneath the falling water. Not a big falls, perhaps only 10 feet high, but powerful, made of pure water of a very high vibration.

But when you get 10 miles downstream, the water may be muddy-looking, polluted. You don't drink the water unfiltered, you'll get sick. You also don't die of thirst. You need a filter. You attend to the water and know that which is pure is right here. You don't have to climb back up the mountain to the spring. And you don't have to get a bellyache drinking this; you filter it.

Your meditation is the filter. It observes the lower vibrational frequency of fear and negativity, and without denying the existence of those, it ceases to find a self-identity in them. What we call Awareness knows right there with fear is the fearless. Right there with jealousy is ease and joy. Right there with grasping and fear is generosity. It begins to know these beautiful states as essence. The more you come into that knowing, the higher the vibrational frequency.

This leads us into this coming "New Age," often called the Age of Aquarius, the age of Divine Man and Woman. You are that. You are not becoming that; you already are that. You just have not quite fully discovered and trusted it. You are as the child stepping beyond the limits placed by the parent and ready to take responsibility for itself, to choose wisely and with love.

To make this transition, you must stop living with a belief in the fear vibration as deepest truth. There is always this choice, fear or love, and fear cannot be dispensed with by negativity but only met with kindness until it dissolves.

This coming semester we're going to go further with our exploration of this high vibration, how we use it in healing of the physical, emotional, and mental bodies, and how we do that while still acknowledging the truth of the Ever-Healed. In other words, there is nothing to heal, and yet we still will attend to it and heal it. There is nothing to fix, and yet we still attend because these negative thoughts and energies still do arise. But it's important not to become a somebody fixing negativity, because then you lose the essence of divinity, of radiance, of openness, which is what you most deeply are.

We will continue the requirements of this class. I hope to see you here for each class unless there is real sickness or some need to be out of the city. But your regularity of attendance is important to yourselves and to each other. There is a commitment also to meditate regularly. In this class, we do not ask you meditate every day, although I would be delighted if you do so. But at least 3 times a week. Your meditation may take different forms. It is not necessary that it all be formal sitting meditation, although I hope some of it will. But you may walk, or garden. It may be mindfulness practice. The important thing is that you spend some time regularly being as fully present as is possible, because only then can you discover who you are, what you are.

The scientist can only see what's in his slide in the microscope if he stops to look. If he just walks through the room, he'll never see what's under his microscopic lens. He'll never understand. So the practice of presence as meditation in some form is important.

We will again divide you into groups so that you may have small group discussions. Now that we know who you are, you'll make your decision how big or how small these groups will be, and whether they will meet every class or perhaps only alternate classes. If you wish to offer any feedback to that, please email Barbara, that is based on your experiences on this semester. Your thoughts about the structure of the class are welcomed.

Mostly in the coming classes I'm going to be giving some very precise instructional talks-precise practices, exercises which I wish you to practice. The groups will provide an opportunity for each of you to talk about your experience and hear from others so you have more clarity about the exercises.

In the 2 weeks until our next meeting, please read the handout that will be emailed to you on the trainings. Please continue your practice with the Four Empowerments and the Seven Branch Prayer. At this point I would like you each to bring those 2 practices together in whatever way seems most suitable for each of you. You may not wish to do the entire Seven Branch Prayer. You may wish to do more than the Four Empowerments, which is a piece of the Seven Branch Prayer. I want you to personalize this practice so that when negative emotion or body sensation arises, when there is tension and feeling of contraction, the response becomes almost automatic, seeking support, gratitude for these beings of the past who have come to teach you through their lives and their written words. The compassionate regret for the deep habit energy in which anger or fear or greed still arises. The resolve to learn what is necessary to balance this energy, and the clear seeing of where it is already resolved. It is the mundane level resolve and the ultimate level resolution. We focus more on discussion of that in the next class. And finally the bringing in of balances in whatever way is appropriate.

So we're going to work equally on the mundane level with compassionate regret, resolve, and balance, and on the ultimate level, knowing that which is joyful even when there's sorrow, knowing that which is compassionate, even when there's anger. Seeing that already existent resolution.

Please do the groundwork so that we may go deeply into this in the next class and you will be able to follow me. Please bring this practice into your complete daily life, even nightlife. If you dream it, so much the better. Let it be so much a part of you that whenever anything pushes at you, this practice comes forth as a loving response.

I thank you for your attention and I apologize for having held you beyond your class time. I will try to be certain that we close at 9:30 in future weeks. That is all.

(taping ends)

Copyright © 2004 by Barbara Brodsky