April 20, 2005

The tape recorder was not started for the first 10 minutes of the talk.

Aaron: I can only smile to myself and apologize. I'm not used to working in this deeper trance state and Barbara is the one who is responsible for turning on the tapes.

For the class who reads these notes, we've been describing kyo and jitsu energy. We will find this material in the archives and paste it. It may not be available in the transcript for your next class, but we will make sure that you get it as quickly as possible. My apologies. Some things even a wise old master cannot master!

Note from Barbara: I have not been able to find the statements I know are somewhere in the archives. Some material is pasted at the end of the transcript.

Think you now about rebirth, the rebirth of a flower that has lain dormant underground. Through the winter, it's in a kyo state. It's not hyper-kyo, it's simply dormant, at rest. With the building up of the energy with longer hours of sunlight and the warming soil, the energy builds up in the plant, and it begins to grow. With this energetic thrust, it's in a jitsu state. Think of a blossom about to burst open and how strongly you can feel that thrusting energy. Jitsu.

It bursts open. If you have spent some time with flowers, you know what comes next. As the radiant energy begins to fade a bit, it shifts back into kyo. The petals fall off; the blossom falls away. The plant itself may be putting forth many different blossoms so this one may be in a different stage of life than that one. Each flower will have a distinct energy, and the plant itself will have a distinct energy. Those flowers that grow and live for a day or two and die away, you'll experience the bud is very jitsu. Then as it fades a bit, it becomes kyo. Energy then seems to transfer into another flower that's open elsewhere on the plant.

The plant itself has a longer but balanced kyo and jitsu cycle. In the spring it moves from its dormant state into jitsu energy and the plant itself blossoms up through the ground. The growing plant becomes jitsu. The whole plant may hold that jitsu energy through the entire summer. Then in the fall it begins to shift back to kyo. A plant of that sort rarely experiences a hyper-kyo energy, which is an imbalanced state, but moves very gracefully through the progression of kyo and jitsu, and kyo and jitsu, as the seasons turn.

What would happen to a plant that experienced the jitsu energy of its bursting life in the spring and then had the thought, "I'm not trying hard enough. The plant on that side is ahead of me," and tried to push itself? It might become hyper-kyo and then it would die. And the plant that comes out of the ground and says, "Well, I've done enough, I'm 3 inches up, maybe I'll take another nap," it will never blossom. It's that balance, the seasonal flow of jitsu and kyo, that allow it to take rebirth each year.

So for the plant it's an annual cycle. With your breath it's a moment-by-moment cycle. (Breathing…) The rising breath, the falling breath…As you hear the sound (bell), the energy is kyo. Watch the shift as my voice comes in loud. Can you see the jitsu? Try it again.

(Bell)

And then my voice. It's not strongly jitsu but the energy of coming to listen has a jitsu quality. Then I'm going to tell you now my voice will stop in a moment, and then I'll sound the bell. See if you can feel the shift back to kyo. Now I'm going to do this.

(Bell)
(Pause)

And then the voice comes in again and you move from kyo back into jitsu. Neither is good or bad, they are simply life energy offered in a balanced cycle, the perfect expression of yin and yang. That is a vast simplification,

When kyo and jitsu are out of balance in you, that imbalance is seen in every aspect of your life. There is either trying too hard or the refusal to bring forth energy, holding the self in a shell, in that cave we talked about (referring to a guided meditation in a past class).

That period of dormancy resting in the cave where the rocks cannot hurt you, you lock yourself in. Then, just as with the sun warming the soil, a certain movement in the heart begins to shift the energy and then we see the impulse to move out of the cave, to open the door. This stage of the cycle is a form of rebirth. First dormancy, then movement!

The same form of rebirth can happen in any aspect of your life, a rebirth of relationship, of health, of curiosity, an increase in joy or playfulness, these each have their own cycle. When we talk about what blocks the rebirth of your garden, what blocks the growth of these inner plants, I would like you to think about it also in terms of this energy cycle. Periods of the cycle may feel out of control, but the loving heart and awareness do bring control, control in a positive sense of guidance.

For example, I'm going to make some noise. You may feel agitated. Watch the jitsu energy grow, and then just breathe into it, the noting mind noting, "Jitsu, tension. Breathing in, I am aware of the tension. Breathing out, I smile to the tension." And feel the balance come back. I'm going to do this now.

(Making noise; bangs on various objects for several seconds)
(Pause)

Could you feel that jitsu build up and then relaxing back into kyo? See the difference? I'm going to do it again. I want you to bring forth an unbalanced mind state that feels tension at the noise and says, "It's got to stop." Or, "I've got to stop minding it. How am I going to stop minding it? Close my ears to it." Feel what that thinking does to the kyo/jitsu pattern.

(Bangs again on various objects)
(Pause)

Can you feel the difference? Sometimes we hold jitsu energy in an unbalanced way because we have been led to the belief that we're more powerful when there's jitsu energy. Kyo is sometimes equated with helplessness, quiescence. Jitsu is much more active.

When you have engaged that pattern for long enough, it takes a lot of awareness that it's going on to break through it, to come to the point where you can see the tension building up. Take a deep breath and make the skillful decision to just release. You can't force release, that's just more jitsu. Rather, you come to that place that's already released. You find that place of quiet spaciousness, peace in yourself. With a lot of your habit energies, they are pushed by jitsu patterning that was laid in place because of feeling powerful when energy is jitsu. So that although I say you have the choice, you don't seem to have a choice because you're so attached to the jitsu patterning.

Think about this in your own life. Think about the last time you were agitated about something. On the one hand, you may have noted aversion to the agitation, but on the other hand, you kept building it up. Attached to it with the idea, "When I'm agitated, I have power."

A large part of the work is learning to find the power within the kyo. Kyo is not the power of the fist, kyo is soft and relaxed, but it's powerful. Can you feel that? Can you feel the possibility?

For most of you, all it takes is looking deeply at the habit energies. You're attached to fear. You hate fear, and yet you're attached to it. You're attached to problems. As soon as we say "problems", somebody says, "Oh good, how can we solve them?" It makes you feel useful. Some of you say, "I don't want any problems." But as soon as you don't have any, you'll go out searching for other people's problems to solve. You don't want to be free of problems; problem solving makes you feel powerful. This is why retreat can be so difficult for some people. People sit and watch thoughts and physical sensations arising and passing away, and within the retreat it's not appropriate to go out and fix what's coming up, but just to watch it. And to watch it asks you to come into a more balanced kyo and jitsu pattern.

We have on the other hand people who are very lethargic in their lives, or people with an illness like chronic fatigue syndrome, who are deep into a kyo or hyper-kyo state. The bringing in of energy doesn't feel safe sometimes because they're afraid of the power that comes with the bringing in of energy, so they hold to that quiescence whether it's truly kyo or hyper-kyo. They prefer that impacted feeling because at least they feel they can't burst out. Afraid of their power; perhaps afraid of their anger.

What is this to do with the garden? Perhaps I ought not to answer that but to ask you to answer that. I think I'll stop here for a bit. Let's have some dialogue here and then I'll speak more. Let me start with a simple question: is anger a kyo or jitsu state?

Group: Jitsu.
Aaron: Jitsu. Is grasping a kyo or jitsu state?
Group: Jitsu.
Aaron: Is lethargy a kyo or jitsu state?
Group: Kyo.
Aaron: Kyo. Is impatience a kyo or jitsu state?
Group: Jitsu.
Aaron: Jitsu. These are all clearly kyo or jitsu. How about joy? Is it a kyo or jitsu state?
Group: Balanced.

Aaron: Balanced. Can you feel how it's balanced? It has the aspect of jitsu, and yet it's spacious. Jitsu becomes increasingly jitsu as it compacts. With joy, there's a jitsu energy but it's just bubbling out. It arises and softens, it arises and it softens.

Thinking of your gardens, and I do hope to see the drawings I know some of you have brought, think of the emerging plants in your garden, those that you drew that are small. Is that quality that you wish to express a kyo or a jitsu quality? Or balanced? Patience, is it kyo, jitsu or balanced?

Q: Balanced.
Aaron: Balanced. Generosity: kyo, jitsu, or balanced?
Q: Balanced.

Aaron: Balanced. Equanimity. This can fool you because it feels like equanimity would be a kyo state, but it takes energy to have equanimity. It's balanced. Take a look at the weeds in your garden. Are most of these weeds kyo or jitsu? I doubt if they're balanced. Some of the weeds will be kyo, some will be jitsu. For each of you, one will be predominant.

In order to allow the plant to flourish, you need to attend to the weeds. I know that is already clear. Hopefully this discussion will give you some more tools for attending to the weeds, being able to see them as kyo or jitsu, and to bring in the intention to bring balance. Someone who seeks, let's say the plant you are encouraging is harmony, and the weed is fear and control, which expresses as agitation. It's shading out the harmony plant. Fear and control are not only jitsu energies, they're almost hyper-kyo. They come up suddenly, heavy, that they become solid.

Sometimes just seeing this is enough, the seeing, "Here is fear. My whole energy field is closing in. I offer the intention for openness, for spaciousness." Sometimes a helpful visualization is with the elements, visualizing space, as the view sitting on top of a mountain looking out. So when the energy is very tight, bringing in this openness can be very helpful.

This leads us into the 4 elements, and I don't know if I'm going to get into the 4 Element meditation tonight. I want to have discussion first and we'll see what time we have left. But working with the elements is very helpful.

If the jitsu energy is very hot and fiery, visualizing cool water or even sitting with your hands under cool running water can help to bring balance. An example would be to do so if there is a lot of anger. If there is great lethargy, almost inertia, literally lighting a fire in your fireplace and sitting and watching it crackling and burning, breathing into it, breathing it into yourself, can help break through the inertia and help bring balance.

Visualizations can help, such as visualizing fire burning behind the navel, a hot sun burning there. It's almost impossible to maintain inertia and work strongly with this visualization, just as it's almost impossible to maintain fierce anger if you visualize or literally experience flowing water. I would make that statement more precise. Certainly one can experience great anger in the midst of a terrible flood. I'm not talking about uncontrollable forces of nature. But visualizing literally the water element in the self, the water running through the veins, through the body, feeling that water element, when you feel that, it's very hard to maintain gripping anger. These are just some of the tools.

With certain states that are ungrounded, going out into the garden, just sitting in the grass, can help to ground you. But if you have a very low, sluggish, imbalanced kyo energy, going out in the garden and sitting in the grass can make it heavier. Getting up and walking, feeling the wind blowing on your face, these can help bring balance. Contemplating qualities can bring balance. If you are angry, simply contemplating somebody that you think of who really epitomizes equanimity, this can help to bring balance, just seeing that quality in another. If you're feeling very sluggish, visualizing someone whose energy you appreciate, who is energetic.

At this point I would like to give you the chance to share 2 things. They relate to each other so I think we can do this together. Some of you may wish to share about one, some about the other, some about both, some about neither and that's OK too. If you worked with the cave meditation at home, I'd like to hear more about what drew you out of the cave. If you drew a garden, what did you discover from that drawing? Would you share it with us? I'm going to pause here. I will remain within Barbara's body to lead the discussion, not return it to Barbara at this point.

Barbara: Two things I would like to share. I was looking at the garden drawing that I made when Aaron first assigned this to a class 12 years ago. It was wonderful to see that the garden has changed! It's grown, it's different.

Friday I go back to Emerald Isle for this year's retreat, the place where the wave battered me last year. I admit mixed feelings about going back. I've always loved the ocean, and I have swum in the ocean a few times since last April. But there's still some fear. Even without the idea of swimming, just coming back to that place. I sense there's something unfinished there and it will be good to go back and spend many hours meditating on that beach. I'll tell you about it when I come back.

Some of you have asked me how I'm doing. Almost 2 weeks ago I went back for another eye appointment and the vision had improved again, 20/30, which I was very happy for. But also there were some irregular blood vessels growing and the doctor was very concerned about them and said they must be removed. So we did laser surgery to remove them, which sent the vision plummeting again, almost gone, and gave me a black eye, which is healing. I have an appointment with him tomorrow so we'll see what he says. I'm OK though. I trust that the lapse in vision is temporary and will come back.

So Aaron has told me that you've been talking about your drawings, and other people have seen the drawings in trance but I haven't. Aaron saw them. I see them here and there around the room. Hold them up for me…They're all different…

Those who haven't either shared a picture or just talked, did anybody else do pictures? You don't have to share if you don't want to, but you're welcome to share if you'd like to.

Q: My garden has not enough water or sunshine. So I was interested in the interpretation of meditation and mindfulness lacking in my garden. I will meditate on whether that fits for me. Thank you.

Barbara: Tears also give water. I'm not advocating sadness but the tears of compassion, the tears of empathy and really opening the heart. When we open the heart, sometimes we cry until there's a more fertile climate. Joy and sorrow.

New Q: An observation: they're all flowers. There are no vegetables.

Barbara: Did you draw a vegetable garden?

Q: I didn't draw one, no. It's just a very sensitive subject for me right now.

Barbara: OK. I don't know if the sensitivity is about drawing skills as it is for some people, it may or may not be, but one thing that some people have done in the past with this assignment, if they were not comfortable with drawing, is to use playdough, and make a playdough garden. Others?

New Q: I didn't do my garden until today, but I thought about it frequently for the last 2 weeks. I kept recognizing grasping as the largest obstacle to the growth of my flowers. That's why it's the big tree shading the garden.

Barbara: What I'm impressed with is, I didn't hear the conversation, the dialogue about these, but I would guess that you learned things about your gardens by drawing them, and about the rebirth process. This is me, Barbara. Aaron is here and I may paraphrase him some, but I'm not going to move back into a trance state. I would ask each of you to think in these next weeks about what quality lies closest beneath the surface but still dormant. What is it you really want to see just start breaking through the soil? Now you've got your gardens. You're getting a sense of what's strong and what's still weak. So the next question is, what is there that's dormant? What really wants to emerge and what would invite it?

During the break Aaron said he talked to you about kyo and jitsu energy. I would like you to watch the energy patterns in yourself. When there's a very openhearted energy, a lot of joy, reflect, don't stop the joy flowing then and say, "What is it?" and get too analytic about it, but afterward look back and try to reflect what kind of kyo/jitsu balance was there? How does it feel to be in balance? When there's something tough and your energy contracts, be aware of that. It's sometimes jitsu or sometimes hyper-kyo.

This evening before class I thought I had plenty of time. It was 4 o'clock and I didn't have to leave for class for 3 hours. Lots of time. And suddenly 17 things came at once. You know how that happens sometimes. Several emails that were "right now", somebody needing information that didn't come through right for printing the materials for the retreat this weekend. Somebody else needing some other information. Seeing all the plants I had left out on the deck thinking I had lots of time to plant them, and realizing, "Oh, I never got them planted." One thing after another. And I watched myself getting into a more and more jitsu state. Do this, do that; do this, do that! Ridiculous! I was planting beautiful flowers with this jitsu "do" energy! So I finally just stopped. I've got a little pond in my garden. It's pretty mucky right now, but I stick my feet in it. I just sat there and put my feet in up to the ankles, felt it cooling me down. Literally, it was icy cold! But just sitting there. And I opened my eyes and I started just to breathe the flowers in and out of me.

There's a beautiful practice by Thich Nhat Hanh. I don't remember all the parts of it, but he talks about identifying with different objects. Breathing in I am a mountain, breathing out I am solid. Feeling strength and solidity. Breathing in I am a flower, breathing out I feel fresh. Breathing in I am a river, breathing out I am flowing. Finding these qualities in yourself and really connecting to the place of that quality, the flowing river in the self, the mountain in the self, the flower in the self. Where is it?

So I sat there with the sun beating down on me and flowers in my lap. They were out of their pots and I was sitting there holding them, my feet in the pool. Just 10 minutes doing this meditation opened up everything. Now obviously I could not be creating something, it already existed. What it did was making the skillful choice to stop, even if I didn't get everything done, stop. Ten minutes just sitting here on my deck. Hot sun, cool breeze, feet in the pond, flowers in my hand. It allowed me to open to these qualities that were already there that were being blocked by the tension of, "Got to get it done." I'm feeling a lot of tension because I have to leave early Friday morning, and I thought I had all afternoon tomorrow but the eye doctor wants to see me tomorrow afternoon. Suddenly there went tomorrow afternoon to get my flowers planted and pack and finish things up. It's at that point when he said on the phone, "You must come in tomorrow afternoon," that tension started. I must come because no vision in the right eye, another area of tension as he didn't expect that to happen. Tensions!

We all run into this. I talked with Aaron a bit before class tonight and he gave me some thoughts about what he might share, but I don't know what he did share, so I don't know if he talked about this or not. Did he talk about holding on to fear, our attachment to fear? Using fear because it lets us feel powerful? We hold on to it. So I realized as I was feeling out of control, there's just all this to do, how am I going to get it done, fear about vision, tension, and building up that fear state was a way of feeling more in control and powerful. Anger. It's not just fear, it's the anger under the fear. Anger at my eye, at this situation, anger at… I don't know what, just, not fair! Anger.

Then one makes the conscious decision, "I don't need this. This is not where I want to go." And sometimes it takes just a few minutes, sometimes it takes days. But once we make the conscious decision, "This is not the garden I want, this one's all filled with thorns. I want one that's filled with flowers and pleasant scents and attracts butterflies," how am I going toinvite that? I'm not going to have it by sitting there enhancing anger. What will bring balance? Just the ability to tune into the body energy. For me it was getting to a hyper-kyo energy. I had been meeting with somebody and had a pleasant meeting, and then it was 4 o'clock and my answering machine was blinking and my email was blinking. At that point I talked to the doctor and he said, "I want to see you tomorrow afternoon." In 15 minutes tension just closed in.

I know I'm talking about something you're familiar with. So the question I really want to raise for each of you is at that point where there's that much tension, what helps? This comes back to, what are those dormant qualities we want to awaken? So much of Aaron's teaching is about the bringing together of dualities. Right there with impatience is patience. Right there with fear is love.

I find when I consciously bring awareness to the attachment to tension, to problems, to power, wanting to bring in that energy, and there's a very clear statement, "I don't really want this, it's just habit energy." The dormant quality for me today was, it's not really a dormant quality, if I were to draw a garden I'd see it as big, but today it wasn't big, is equanimity and gratitude. Just seeing, this is what's needed right how. Sitting here holding the flowers, feeling a lot of gratitude for the sun shining and for the cool water. Gratitude. And with gratitude, equanimity came. And the whole thing shifted so fast, like a cloud blocking the sun completely and then gone.

So this is what I'd like you to investigate in these coming weeks. We do not have class in 2 weeks, we have a 3 week break because I'm out of town in 2 weeks… (more about schedule) Are there people who have not talked tonight who would like to talk? People who did the cave or the garden exercise who would like to share about it?

If you did not do a garden drawing, I encourage you to do one. (Inquiring if everyone is receiving emails and class transcripts). OK, then I think we will end here. (More about starting class at 7:15.) Next class on the 11th, we will include the open Wednesday for the month as part of our class. We did that once before… We will not be speaking to that small group, we will be speaking to you. They're just here to sit in and participate as they wish. It won't be a normal open Aaron session, but it's also an opportunity if you do have friends you'd like to share the class with and let them know what's going on, you can bring them to the next class. It's OK. If we have another half dozen or 8 people, it's fine. So there will be a few people you don't know here for the next class. Any questions? OK. Good night. I'll bring you back some seashells.

(taping ends)

From Barbara: I have found some contained material about Kyo sand Jitsu from work back in 1995. I know there are some shgorter and more clear statements but can't find them. I'll paste this below, but will continue to try to find the shorter statements.

Inserted from Feb 8, 1995 Project Light, reading from Life Medicine for the 21st Century: Tao Shiatsu by Ryokyu Endo, pp. 178-179.

"The kyo-jitsu pattern is as essential to life as the opposition of yin and yang. Kyo is a deficiency or yearning. All bodies create desires for what is lacking. For instance, the desire for food when one is hungry results in the action of eating. Jitsu is the concentration of energy essential for action. The action of someone picking up something, for instance, creates a jitsu condition because certain muscles are tightened and employed. In other words, jitsu is the concentration of energy essential for performing an act to fulfill a desire or kyo. From this point of view, we may learn to understand why kyo-jitsu disorders occur in the body and what treatments may be used.

"As all life functions are carried out by kyo-jitsu patterns, ultimately, after the function has been completed, it is natural for the body to return to a state of rest. Even animals return to a state of rest after performing a function. However, since humans are not easily satisfied, we continue to think about a task even after it is completed. Disorders in the kyo-jitsu pattern are generated when a certain task occupies our mind even when we are not actually performing that task. If a desire, kyo, is not fulfilled even after a task has been completed, a disorder in chi sets in and creates an induration or jitsu (contraction). In such cases, regardless of how much Shiatsu pressure is applied to the area, the jitsu induration cannot be dissolved. Even if the disorder seems to be relieved during therapy, it returns later and manifests more severe symptoms than before. This is because it is created by a concentration of energy or chi for the purpose of fulfilling the initial desire. When the kyo-jitsu disorder deepens and settles in, it may manifest various symptoms. Conversely, when the disorder resolves and the pattern is in constant change, the person is healthy. Likewise, nature and life are in constant change and fixation means death."

And from Feb 22, 1995 Project Light:

Aaron: I am Aaron. We note here that Barbara's pronunciation of Japanese terms is merely adequate. We spoke at our last meeting of this kyo-jitsu balance. We think of kyo energy as the concave hand, open, reaching out. An example of kyo energy is seen in the body's drop in blood sugar after a period of fasting. Jitsu energy is the reaching, the contraction and, to some degree, the fullness: the hand that is being filled. Because the hand is in process of being filled, there's a tension in it, holding that fullness. As the fullness is completed and the message "full" is absorbed, the hand gently relaxes. There's no more need and nothing to be held, so the hand comes back into a state of relaxed balance. When need is perceived, it becomes more concave again: hollow, open. When the need is being filled, it becomes rounded, with a tension of sorts. These words are hard to express precisely. There are innuendos of meaning which the book does not properly convey. Let us simply say that this is the balance.

Coming back to our blood sugar example, the body instigates movements of hunger. The body's chemistry is changed. There are those signals that are sent to the brain that nourishment is needed. The body reaches toward that nourishment. Kyo-jitsu are not inflexible states but a process. The movement of reaching-out-toward is part of the jitsu process - the message sent to the brain to reach for food. When that food is available and is taken in, the kyo state relaxes and the jitsu state relaxes because the message to-reach-for has been fulfilled.

As we talked about at our last meeting, when that food is not available, the contraction is held and certain messages are sent, both to the body cells and to the brain. Thereafter, if the pattern becomes deeply ingrained, one movement of it is enough to start the pattern flowing. If it becomes more deeply ingrained, the low blood sugar, instead of sending messages to the brain to look for food, begins to send fear messages causing contractions in certain of the meridians. The physical body begins to contract with the sense that it must grasp at. This is what we talked about last time as the "holding" of the contraction, instead of the releasing of it as that which is needed is brought in.

Now, in ultimate reality, what you need is always available. So, part of the distortion of kyo/jitsu pattern is the learning of illusion instead of ultimate reality. Part of your incarnative process is to explore the illusion so as to master the illusion and return more firmly to the ultimate, knowing the illusion to be illusion. As part of that process the body moves into, at times, severe distortion. Neither kyo nor jitsu are good nor bad. The balance of them, the body's constant movement toward harmony, is what is desired. Therefore, if there is too much of that kyo state, the feeling of being empty and of yearning for completion, and the body becomes too quieted, then a certain amount of stimulation is needed. This stimulation takes the form of offering energy. If the body is too much into the jitsu state - filling itself, oversaturated - then we release some of the energy to come back into balance. Please remember that while we speak of kyo as "quiet," kyo offers as much a tension as does jitsu. It is a tension of emptiness, of need, rather than one of taking to fulfill need.

There is a fundamental harmony in the balanced kyo-jitsu pattern. This pattern includes the relaxation or rest phase. Kyo-jitsu imbalance is quite different. One is stuck in such a way that there is no flow and no rest phase…

… Aaron: I am Aaron. The kyo-jitsu relationship is one manifestation of yin and yang. It is correct that is is the manifestation of that in the body, but it goes deeper. It is the specific aspect of yin and yang which is giving and receiving. Within that giving and receiving, kyo-jitsu balance - harmonizing of the physical body through kyo-jitsu work - focuses specifically on the cellular distortions based both in body and mind which result from a disbelief in the constant flow of giving and receiving. As soon as one sees giving and receiving as dual, there is contraction in which the body holds. It holds it in the meridians which have been most deeply affected by that which it thinks it needs and didn't get. We focus on the physical distortion, but even more on the energy distortion of which that physical distortion is symptom.

We are not attempting to balance anything. This is where I go beyond Shiatsu. We're releasing the idea of imbalance to invite back in the balance that is already there. So, I am not here trying to teach you Shiatsu, but using that as one tool by which we transcend the whole thing. What I am primarily teaching you transcends all of these practices which seek to balance the body's energy as if it were imbalanced. You are not inviting in balance; you are inviting in truth. There is a vast difference.

March 17, 1995:

Aaron: I am Aaron. I want to get deeper into all the above questions today. First, my love to you all. Let me begin by speaking one more time about this kyo-jitsu pattern. The kyo movement is an expression of desire. For instance, regard hunger pains you may feel in your abdomen. When there's true hunger and desire for food, there's an emptiness and the body expresses that emptiness and the yearning for fullness or completion. The jitsu pattern is the energy contraction which builds up around satisfying that desire. When there is balance, as soon as the process of receiving is begun, the energy relaxes. This is the rest phase. Then a new need may be discerned and there is kyo again.

Imbalanced kyo-jitsu occurs because even if the desire is satisfied, one may still entertain the concept of neediness. Thus, there was a desire and then there was food but, if one keeps thinking about how much one wanted or needed the food and was almost starving, if one fixates on that, it sets up the jitsu contraction of grasping, holding and also maintains an empty kyo which hides behind the jitsu. Notice that there is no rest period between kyo and jitsu. They are both out of balance.

Now, I'm going to use a rather simply allegory. I am not saying that one is air or water or solid, simply using this as example. The kyo (desire) movement we might relate to empty space. If you fan your hand in a vacuum, nothing happens. There are no molecules of oxygen or whatever to be moved by the moving hand. We could relate the jitsu response to a thick pudding. If you move your hand in the pudding, there's so much resistance that not much happens. The energy is contracted, is heavy. If you move your hand in water, you set up a good current. There's not so much resistance that you can't move the water, but there is enough resistance that the water responds to the movement and circulates.

Again, I am not saying this is specifically what happens, in the sense that one becomes vacuum and one becomes pudding. This is merely for illustration. And yet, there is some degree of reality to it. In the kyo response, there's a certain emptiness; the kyo response does establish that emptiness literally at a cellular level in the body. The jitsu response sets up a pudding-nature within the cells. It does this for this reason.

I want you to picture two dozen balloons, half-inflated, within a very specific enclosed space. Each balloon represents a cell. The exterior of each cell is also a specific enclosed space. It can expand and shrink, within limits. So take this two dozen half-inflated balloons and put them into a larger container in such a way that they float about, they have space between them. One might call this the cell that is not fixated in either kyo or jitsu response. Now, I want you to blow into all of those twenty-four balloons until they are full, but they still must fit in the space. Can you see how dense it gets?

The energy contraction from the jitsu response creates a density, literally within the cellular structure of the body, as if you had blown up these balloons. It gets tight in there. Then, very literally, energy cannot move through. In the jitsu response, there is excess energy. Barbara's book uses the example of a traffic jam. All that energy is jammed into one place and there is nowhere for it to go. So, you work with the jitsu response by release of the energy, the release of some of the air in the balloons, so there is space.. In the kyo response, these balloons have deflated completely and they're just lying on the bottom of the larger container. There's no energy or little, so there's a need to bring in more. We semi inflate the balloons.

The most wholesome movement is a continuity of the deflated balloons lying in the bottom slowly picking up air, moving into life. As they fill themselves and push against the wall of the container, that begins signal to them to relax and the air goes out of them again. It's not that they stay in the middle, but that they move back and forth continually, first being pushed one way and then the other, very fluid. This allows for a full energy movement within all the cells, in the organs and everywhere in the body

The organs respond in the ways that the cells within the organs respond. If the physical cell is kyo, the whole meridian on the physical body level becomes kyo.

We first ascertain, then, what the seeming blockage is, remembering that on the light body level nothing is blocked or obstructed, but that the body has begun to believe in this movement, either toward too much kyo or too much jitsu, too much emptiness or too compacted. Remember the very simple image of the hand waving in a vacuum or in the bowl of pudding. You are trying to allow it to come back to a "water" level so the energy can flow again. And this happens on all levels: within the energy meridians, within the organs which lie in the meridians, within the cells that make up the organs. Every level of the body is involved - not just the organs, but the bone structure and skin structure of the body, the nerves, all of it.

April 5, 1995:

Aaron: My love to you all. I am Aaron. Today I want to go deeper with you into an experiential understanding of this kyo-jitsu pattern, so that you have a clearer idea what you are doing when you work with a client who is experiencing imbalance of this pattern. I also want you to understand with more clarity how it relates to karma.

When we speak of a kyo-jitsu pattern, please remember that there's nothing bad about this pattern. It is essential for relative reality existence. An imbalance of it involves energy contractions which create the illusion of blockage and the manifestation of that blockage on the relative plane. As a very small example, when Barbara first put the tape in the recorder today and recognized that it needed to be rewound, she went to a second tape. There was no contraction, just reaching for a second tape. That tape would not work. Then there was contraction. As she pushed the rewind button, first there was a kyo contraction of need, then a jitsu contraction, almost of determination. The jitsu didn't relax though but continued itself, into a "fix-it" contraction because there was fear that things were not as they should be. There was need to control.

That "fix-it" can be very useful if you do need energy to provide impetus for movement. As movement occurs, the "push" relaxes and the momentum of the push carries it. There is no need to maintain the push. Such maintenance is a manifestation of fear. When the energy gets stuck in "push," like the needle gets stuck in the groove of a record, then it is no longer useful.

Barbara has become very sensitive to the kyo-jitsu imbalances in kyo jitsu patterning and, at that moment, was able to perceive the energy field contracting around "fix-it," and need to control. She has learned that she holds that imbalance, that contraction, literally in her gut, and in the spleen meridian. With a few seconds of awareness, simply noting it as "contraction, contraction...," the contraction relaxed itself. There is no fixation on the contraction, neither to hold nor be rid of it, just awareness of its presence as manifestation of fear, voice of old conditioning. Then it's nothing, just a wisp of smoke, gone....

The point is, all that was needed was enough contraction to serve as impetus to movement to put the tape in and press the rewind button. The rest of it is all old mind conditioning, needing to stay safe, needing to stay in control, You all go through this a thousand times a day, stuck in those grooves where the needle has worn a bit too deep.

When you are working on a client, you will feel the places of discordancy and imbalance in their energy fields. You can follow the meridians and see which meridians have the most seeming blockage. I use the word "seeming" because of course on the ultimate level, nothing is blocked, but you note on which meridians they hold the illusion of blockage.

We've already discussed many times the fact that if you use your energy to reopen it, it just snaps shut again. And yet with each client it is not useful, or always possible, to have them understand the emotional, mental and habitual factors of imbalance in themselves. You can help them acquaint themselves with the direct experience of that imbalance though, so they know sooner when it is present.

Copyright © 2005 by Barbara Brodsky