October 5, 2005

Aaron: Good evening. My blessings and love to you all. I am Aaron. I greet you in love and in light.

The human path is a difficult one. It's a bit like coming onto a stage as an actor, having been given a preview of what might happen on the stage, but no real script. Then you're asked to act spontaneously. You don't know who any of the other characters are. You don't know where the play is going, what it's supposed to be about. Actors confront you and put you in situations to which you're expected to respond. You feel lost and react according to habit.

So there is spontaneous movement according to the habit energies. You try one thing and it doesn't work, so you try something else and it doesn't work, so you try a third thing and it doesn't work. And finally you try something that does work. Then you repeat it over and over, afraid to try something new.

I am told one should not mix metaphors, so please forgive me for leaping from stage to kitchen. Think of a kitchen with many ingredients piled on the counter and in the refrigerator. You're just invited into the kitchen and asked, "Please prepare dinner." What's here? Oh, I see a chicken. I see some carrots. Here's some curry paste, hot chili, cinnamon and raisins. Ice cream too! What are you going to do with it?

So you experiment a bit. The first dish that you create, you taste it(ptooey!) Awful! Well what am I going to do with this hot chili and raisins? You begin to modify the spices, modify the ingredients, until you come out with something that's delicious. But you can't cook that for every meal. Next meal, add something new to the repertoire!

So we come back to the improvisation on the stage. Imagine how it would be to face this cast of characters when you don't know who any of them are or what they're going to present to you, only that you are asked to respond as authentically and lovingly as you can. This is the true life experience.

Sometimes you can respond with love and wisdom, and sometimes you can't. Then you're in despair and you say, "I just can't get it right." I know that at one level you want to "get it right" but on another level, there's nothing that can be wrong. Let awareness hold the entire experience of the mind and body. Is the dish that tasted awful truly wrong, or is it a necessary step to the delicious dish? How are you going to get to the delicious dish unless you make some errors?

You've got to experiment to learn, so the effort wasn't wasted. And yet you tend to think of the errors in your life as wasted effort. How could it be wasted? The only it way it can be wasted is if you throw out all of the ingredients and say, "I just can't cook." Then you've wasted that experience because you've not used it to learn how to cook.

I would ask you to imagine a time and place where this group might be assembled, non-material, each of you radiating different colors, your energy bodies glistening with light, swirling in wonderful patterns. Each of you is recognizable to the others, sitting in a circle like this, talking about life; "how was the incarnation for you? How was it for you? What about you?" Talking about getting ready to go back for the next one. How is that one going to be?

One of you might say to the other, perhaps wife to husband, "My job in the next incarnation, I think, is to help you more fully to open your heart." And the husband or wife says, "Yes, thank you." Or another may say, "My job will be to be a catalyst for you, to get in your way a bit so you can practice patience." And then somewhere, many years later, there you are in bodies. You meet each other and there's some dim memory of something you were supposed to do together. You're not sure what it was. And, I'm not speaking of this loving couple (pointing to 2 people) at this point, but for those of you who have difficulties in relationships, there you are fighting with each other and holding blame. And there's a strong feeling, "This is not what we came to do. How can we shift this?"

So there's the giant improvisation going on, and little deep insight into the nature of the play, just enough to help you know, yes, I came to do something. This is a play. It has a beginning and an end. And through the practice that I do here in this incarnation, there will be shifts, shifts that I may not understand until I leave the incarnation.

So you despair. I doubt if there's anyone that does not know that feeling, "I just can't get it right." How does it feel at that point, where you're ready to throw all the food away and say, "I cannot prepare the meal"? That sense of despair. It's midnight, all the restaurants are closed. Everybody's in the next room, hungry. "I just can't prepare the meal."

At one level, we do need to acknowledge, "OK, right now, I don't know how to do this." Then we can ask for help. But on another level you have to remember, "I do know how to do this."

Now I'm not much of a chef. In no lifetime have I been what you call a gourmet cook. Quite the contrary. But I can cook rice so that it's tender. I can add just a few herbs to it to give it some taste. I can catch a fish and cook it to perfection and lay it on the bed of rice. If you give me a hundred ingredients and there are rice and fish among that few hundred ingredients, that's what I'll choose because I know I can make a very palatable meal. And then I might try adding a bit of this new vegetable, or a bit of that new seasoning, slowly adding it. I don't ask myself to combine all hundred ingredients into the gourmet meal, simply what's necessary for nourishment. Some rice and herbs, this fish, a fresh vegetableenough.

Do you see how often you want to take all the ingredients and make the perfect gourmet meal? You forget you can keep it simple. Things in life become very complex. Work affairs, chaotic relationships, upheaval of emotions. "What shall I do?" Step back. Instead of saying, "I can't do anything right," turn to the thing that you know you can do well and just do it. It may be something very simple like making a cup of tea for your neighbor or your boss. When you don't know what to say in a tumultuous moment with other people and you can just take somebody's hand.

The point is to remember to come back to what you CAN do, to that place wherein you can trust yourself deeply. And then build on that rather than move into that mind state that says, "Oh, I can't do it!" Because one can get so deeply lost in, "I can't do it."

Please come back to my image, you are all energy beings, gathered together. You're about to go on stage. After the incarnation, there will be the opportunity to review the parts you played and how you played them. Was there clarity, or did habit run the show?

(tape off and on)

We're going to have some fun for a few minutes. Let's make 3 groups of 5 people… (counts off 1 to 5 three times). Improvisation group one, group 2, group 3.

You're going to go into separate corners of the room. I'm going to give you a topic. Some of you are rescuers coming into New Orleans and some of you are people who have been struggling, suffering in New Orleans, people who have lost families. Reporters? Looters? Stray dogs? I'm not going to tell you who is who; you play with that. Immense suffering. A few rescuers, a few people who were trapped there. What's going to happen? It's just an improvisation. Just play with it. Don't be afraid to go slow. If somebody speaks to you, it's OK to stop and reflect and let yourself feel "What is appropriate here?" How to respond.

Watch the impulse responses. In other words you might start with one of you lying on the floor looking dead. (One person falls face down!) Who are the rescuers? Quick! We need some help! Immediately! Somebody's going to have to say, "OK, I'm one of the rescuers!" How does it feel to be a rescuer? Suddenly you've put yourself in a certain category. What are you going to do with that?

What about the other people? Is there more than one rescuer? Does everybody start to climb on the rescuer? What happens? If so, how does the rescuer say no appropriately? Or what if there are 4 rescuers and only one person lying on the ground? Everybody wants to be the rescuer. Everybody wants to save this person. Watch the tensions that might develop. It's just a mindful improvisation.

Let's keep the same topic for all 3 groups, the basic plot. Anybody who really doesn't want to participate can simply lie down on the ground and be dead! It's okay. So if you're feeling a bit shy and don't want to get too involved in this, just be dead.

Before you begin, as homework assignment, I asked you to watch what was happening in each of the bodies: the physical body, the mental body… I want to read you the assignment.

"Become more aware of these lower bodies…And using a stream analogy, watch the place where we recognize all of a sudden, 'This is the pure spring, right here. This is it. This muddy, gunky water, this is the pure spring.' Here you stop creating the duality of 'This is gunky and muddy and this is pure.'

I want you to watch this especially in yourselves. If "don't know what to do" in terms of the improvisation comes up, watch both that which doesn't know what to do and that which does know what to do. We've got 2 different things happening here. One is the improvisation and one is the class in which we have the improvisation. Some of you may feel, "I really don't want to do this kind of exercise." Then just be dead and watch "not participating, don't want to actively participate." And I give you full permission to do that if you choose.

Watch the one who is not participating and watch that which is fully participating by simply lying there pretending to be dead. Can you see that that's full participation? So on one level you're saying, "I won't participate," and yet you're participating.

Try to find this place where it comes together, where there can be turmoil and clarity. I think each of your improvisations will go differently. Perhaps in one, "Quick! This person is dying! What are we going to do?" A lot of chaos and high speed movement. Tension. Can you find that which is not tense right there with the tension?

In another perhaps you find out that everybody is helper and there's nobody who was victim of the flood. You're all looking around at each other saying, "Do you need help? Do you need help? Do you need help?" Watch the tension.

Whatever happens, see if you can find the place where right there with tension in the body, and awareness knowing, "This is body tension." Feel it in the mind and know, "This is mind tension."

Consciousness knows tensions. Awareness knows the consciousness with tension. That which is aware of tension is not tense.

At any time you can stop the play.just stop. Let's make a signal: hand up means the whole improvisation stops. Time out. Two seconds, ten seconds, thirty seconds. Time out. I need to get centered. Then put your hand down and the whole thing picks up again.

Are there any questions? I planned this 30 seconds before I brought it up. I did not come to class with this plan. I don't know how it's going to work out. I know that some of you dislike this kind of activity, and I ask your forgiveness for foisting it upon you. But I do give you permission to just flop down on your cushion and close your eyes. We need some bodies anyhow, so you'll be taking a useful part in that way.

I'm going to be quiet now. We'll give this about 20 minutes and then come back and do a circle and talk about it…

And if all 5 in one group are lying on their bellies, some of you from another group may want to come over and see what's happening. The groups can also interact if desired.

(tape off and on)

Aaron: I am laughing at the very unlikely looters at work. Trying on a new way of being in the world!

Groups doing the improvisation.

Aaron: The group is gathering now to discuss the exercise. So just as I was describing, you went into the incarnation. You had a part to play and you played it. Sometimes it was a loving part, sometimes a challenging part. In being the looter, you were challenging people how to respond to that, playing the devil's advocate for that round. People play different parts and then you leave the incarnation and here we sit talking about what really happened in that incarnation. What did I experience? What did others experience? What was learned? I invite your participation.

[Private material omitted.]

Q: I chose a role opposite my usual role. I usually rescue. I needed to be rescued.

Aaron: So it was an opportunity to learn how it feels to be helped, to explore that. Can you see how this plays into the whole experience of the incarnation that you put on different roles, some of which you stick with through the incarnation, and some of which you put on and take off, like trying on a suit of clothes. How does this fit? How does that fit?

Within the incarnation it's very helpful to allow yourself to play different roles; don't get stuck in just one role. Then reflect. How does it feel to be the helpful one? How does it feel to be the one who is helped? To give and to receive?

Others who would like to share?

Q: I feel like in my life that I rescue and need to be rescued, so I chose tonight to be rescued. And I chose the character of an 87-year-old who hadn't eaten but she was also kind of calm. So then I just got to sit back and watch. I do that.

Aaron: How did it feel?

Q: Comfortable, and like something that I need to overcome.

Aaron: For any of you, once you established to the character that you were, did any of you regret that choice and want to be something else?

I spoke at the beginning of the experience of simultaneity, seeing perhaps the feeling of helplessness and that which knows it's strong, of confusion and that which is clear. To see the arising in the physical body of turbulence, tension, and to be able to hold that tension with that that is not afraid, tranquil. I'm using that as one example. Were any of you through this exercise able to see that simultaneity of relative and absolute, let us call it. Of the human with its various turmoil and innate calmness of being? Yes, for one; anybody else feel that? A few of you.

Q: I think I was able to feel that because part of me knew this was a game.

Aaron: This is what life is! It's all a game, it's all an improvisation!

Q: That is what I have said in private for years with you, and we argue!

Aaron: It's all a play. But your parts are often forced by habit.

We find two people who are bitter enemies on earth and after the incarnation they link arms and go off for a cup of tea together. It's just like actors on the stage who kill each other during the play, and then go out and have a beer together. These people you think are your enemies, they're just people who agreed to come into the incarnation with you and play the catalyst. And your children agreed to come into the incarnation and play the children. You agreed to come into the incarnation and play the parent.

How can you hold that bigger space that knows, "It's safe to feel the feelings I'm feeling, and here's the opportunity to observe the habit energies and perhaps transcend those that are unskillful? And if I don't, I'll get another chance tomorrow". This for me is why the movie Groundhog Day stirs the imagination soeach day you get a new chance. What is this habit energy? Where am I stuck? How can I shake it loose a bit? And most important from the perspective of the subject of this class, how can I not take myself so seriously? How can I step back and get that bigger picture at the same time as I must involve myself on the human level with the small picture? How can you hold both at the same time? Because it is that capacity to hold both that really gives you freedom.

When the human is so wound up in its tensions and belief of the ultimate importance of each moment, and there is an ultimate importance to it, but when the human can't see beyond that, they get drawn in, with more and more tension, more and more fear. But from the bigger perspective, there's so much space, and the open heart has a chance to respond skillfully to the situation.

I didn't see any of you in this room running around in a panic. I don't know if anybody in the back room was panicked. But so often when there's a difficult situation, the mind focuses into it and instead of seeing things clearly, panic ensues. Everything is driven by fear and the habit energies, whatever they are.

There's an excellent teaching on the habit energies. Consider a herd of cattle standing in a field. The farmer opens the gate to allow them inside where food is made ready for them. Who goes first? Sometimes it's just the one nearest the gate. If there's a leader to the herd, even if that leader is grazing rather far back, the other cattle will pull back and wait until the leader goes through. If there's no leader or the leader doesn't come forth, the biggest one near the gate may go first, the bully. If there's no bully, the one closest to the gate may go first.

Reflect on what this means to your habit energy. When there is a leading way of doing things, to be the one who takes charge or the victim or whatever, in any situation often that's what comes up. No matter how far away it seems, here's the situationwhoosh! You're right back into that role. But if you've worked a bit with it in meditation so there's not so much of a leader, a leading energy that constantly comes forth, then when the gate opens into the next moment, the predominant energy of that moment comes forth.

Let's say that if there is a peacefulness in that moment, that's more likely to come forth. If you are agitated and there was a lot of anger and then the gate opened, then the angry energy might come forth. So it's no longer one energy all the time but depending on the moment.

As you gain insight into the way you sometimes respond with anger, sometimes with patience, sometimes with helplessness, see these different facets of the self, then when the gate opens you're able to just be present and move in. Awareness is present. There's no bull that's going to forge its way through, there's just presence.

Some of you said that you purposely chose a role that was opposite from that habitual role, and that's fine. Did some of you choose a role that you found very in accord with your habit roles? Can you see as you played this scene the different habit energies that came up?

One benefit of this kind of improvisation is that because it's not real, because it is on stage, you can watch habit more easily, asking, "how do I react? When somebody pushes me, why do I react that way?" And here it is again, another push, same reaction, same reaction. It's a wonderful chance to watch the predominant habit energies, and to see that these habit energies are only on the surface. You can drop down into the depth below the habit energy into a place where the habit energy may arise but it doesn't have the force to act. Awareness watches the impulse, wanting to withdraw or wanting to speak strongly, and you just see it as impulse. Within that spaciousness there's no need to act it out. Then the force comes in, let us call it the force of the open heart, that's able to ask, "What is the most loving and skillful response here? What is it I really wish to do?" Not just based on habit energy. Who am I when I'm not being the one who's the powerful one or the victim or the confused one or the helpless one?

It's all a play. You must take every scene seriously, and yet you must also hold it loosely and know, it's all a play. And we're right back full circle, how do you do both? I would like to hear more from you about this question.

See the muddy water and know, "This is the pure spring right here. This muddy, gunky water, this is the pure spring." I can give you exercises to guide you into this insight, but I cannot give you the insight. But if you watch carefully in your lives, the moments of tension, of alarm, of helplessness, of feeling the need for being powerful and controlling, you'll see through them, and that right there with that impulse, with that habit energy happening in the physical, emotional, and mental bodies, there is this vast calmness of being, this vast centeredness and love. And that you can choose to step back into that.

Again, I invite discussion.

(pause)

Q: The analogy of the muddy water and the spring being there all the time has come up every day since the last meeting, and it's a profound and very simple concept that, even reflecting on the simple concept and then reflecting on the improv, I can see how there it was again.

Aaron: I thank you. Can you give me more information about how it has come up every day?

(tape turns)

Q: … times during the day, if I experienced emotional, either turmoil or situations that seemed nebulous or less clear, I could step back and see that really that was the mud that was hiding the spring right in front of me. And knowing that spring was right in front of me helped me to sort through the mud, if you will. Mainly emotional arisings.

Aaron: Thank you. Does this resonate for anyone else?

Q: Something that I noticed is that I can lose all perspective. This analogy, I hadn't understood it really before. So in the last few weeks when I have lost perspective, several times I have remembered it, and a few times S has said to me, "It's just the mud!" And then I said, "Oh yea." I sometimes sit, (and) when I remember that the emotional overwhelm is just the mud, I just imagine that I am (in?) the spring and I filter the mud. But it's very helpful.

Aaron: You are the spring and you are the filter. Intention is the filter. Thank you. Others?

Q: A few months ago I broke up with my boyfriend and I felt broken. And at the same time, I knew I was whole. It was like I had to sit in mud for a few months until I felt the spring.

Aaron: The mud doesn't go away, you just pick yourself up out of it. Then move deeper into the fresh water. Though I think the importance here is also beyond what you said, the remembrance, "I don't have to get rid of the mud." Because the spring is right there.

Have any of you ever tried to get mud out of water so that you had cleaner water? It's an impossible prospect because the more you stir, the more the mud is mixed in with the water. And yet, if you let it be, the mud will settle and the water will have a clear appearance.

Q: Is that the physical and mental bodies acting out, and underneath that's the causal? Or the understanding connection with the universe or love being? How to balance both?

Aaron: In a sense, yes. The physical and mental bodies, the emotional body, have the nature to be in movement, with agitation, sometimes imbalance, and the pure spirit body is the clear water. The etheric bodies relate to mundane consciousness. The causal body relates to the awareness that holds mundane consciousness as object, but does not get caught in the highs and lows or that consciousness. One can always access that pure spirit body no matter what is happening in the mental, physical, or emotional bodies. Sometimes the process is to just let it settle. So when there's a lot of agitation, instead of trying to fix the agitation, let it settle. Open back into awareness.

Sometimes it's important to be actively responsive to the agitation. In other words, if you're in a very heated argument with somebody, sometimes it's important to bring forth some kind of words that help to quiet the argument, you can't just walk away from it. Sometimes if the heated argument is with the self, it's more productive to just let it go, step back and let it settle. Does that answer your question?

I've asked you to get to know the experience of these bodies. Basically we are not going beyond the etheric template right now, into the clear water. The clear water is not yet the cosmic template, which we can't reach, but the transpersonal body. But now we are working with the etheric template where the water is still muddied but the mud has settled so mud and clear water can be distinguished.

In the place where there's agitation felt in the physical, mental, and emotional bodies, the etheric template is that point where the physical, emotional and mental bodies are not agitated. We're not talking about the spirit body here; we're talking about the physical, mental, and emotional bodies. The place of non-agitation is the etheric template.

It's helpful to watch both, but all I had asked you to watch was that level where, perhaps where the physical body is agitated and the level where it's not agitated. That level where the mind feels restless and agitated and that level where the mind is calm. Mud settling! So we're not really going up into the pure water yet; it's a different metaphor and it doesn't work as a parallel. We can look at the metaphor in one way with the mud being the agitation of the bodies, the clear water being the clear spirit body. The transpersonal body, let's call it; the pure spirit body. We can look at the metaphor in another way with the agitation being the muck and the clear water being a level of clarity in the physical, mental or emotional body. Various metaphors… I'm afraid I'm not being entirely clear here as I say this.

I'm pulling an experience out of Barbara's mind. Do any of you like rollercoasters? A few rollercoaster lovers? This idea will work for some of you, then. Big rollercoaster going up, going up. Really enjoying the tenson, "Ooo! It's going to be a big drop!" Fun tension. Not a dangerous tension, fun tension. And then it goes over the top and drops. And a shift, for just a moment, a shift into the big picture, "This is perfectly safe." Total calmness. All the tension gone out of it. And then looking at the people in front of you with their arms up in the air, screaming, "Ooo!" Mind says, "Let's get into it again! Eeee!" But you are playing in the game, making that decision. So at one level there is authentic agitation. On another level there's complete peacefulness.

In the physical body there can sometimes be tension. Let's try this as an exercise. Please form pairs… You've done this pushing exercise with me many times, but I want you to watch it with a different experience here, different focus. Person A, Person B… The A's will receive the push first, the B's will push. The A feeling the push. You won't have a lot of tension. You know it's safe. But there will be a subtle tension. What I want you to focus on is if right there with the tension you can feel spaciousness, that non-tension. It's safe. I'm okay.

The one who is pushing might feel a subtle tension in pushing, and right there with the tension, feel the spaciousness. They're not alternating, they're together, simultaneous. Mind can only touch one or the other so it seems to be alternating, but they are really simultaneous with mind only being able to focus on the tension or the spaciousness. Moving back and forth, but they're happening simultaneously. Try it with the B's pushing and then try it with the A's pushing. I'll be quiet.

(tape off and on)

Aaron: What I would like to here is if you experienced the simultaneity of which I spoke, can you talk a bit about it?

Q: What I found was that when I was pushing, there was no resistance. And there was so much ease to the push that tension was not there for either of us. That it was like pushing a clown, a bobble clown. Without the anger, without the tension, just the love and the fun of it.

Aaron: So there was no contraction, just the spaciousness. Was there any subtle contraction in the body, even at first? (Q: Yes.) So there was a subtle contraction and then the spaciousness. But the contraction died away and just the spaciousness was left. Thank you.

Q: In my mind I didn't like being pushed, but in my body I felt the need to be soft and absorb it. So I was in two places at once.

Aaron: And you were in the physical body and you were in the mental body, mind doing one thing and physical body doing another. And were you also in a third place that could hold the big picture? Was there a place where, the ride down the rollercoaster, that moment when you say, "Oh! It's all fine," and then "Wheee!" again?

Q: I felt very open.

Aaron: Thank you. Others?

Q: At first when I was being pushed, I felt angry and I wanted to push back. And then when I let go, it was fun just to be moved around. Then I tried resisting and found that resistance takes a lot of effort and it's hard work. It was much easier to just go with the push.

Aaron: When there was anger, you could feel the tension in the emotional body and I would presume you could feel the reverberations of the tension in the physical body, yes? (Q: Yes.) It sounds to me like you experienced a linear progression of the anger and release. Can you see through that the possibility that it's simultaneous and you're just looking one way and the other?

Q: Yes. My typical pattern is to feel an emotion first, and I get hung up on staying with emotions and not letting go.

Aaron: So here is a wonderful learning opportunity to see how you can step back into that bigger space. And it's a space of vast stillness. It's not that it's still, it's simply that it's infinite. So it feels still because there's no place to go with it, it's vast. Peaceful. And there's the opportunity to make the choice, and we come back to the improvisation. Coming into each new moment as a new improvisation. Something pushing you. Habit energy comes forth and you respond in a certain way again and again and again. When you can come back into that stillness, it is in that moment of stillness that there can be that reflection. Not necessarily a mental reflection, just an insight, a deep seeing. Ah. It can be otherwise. And then new possibilities come forth. Others?

Q: I was very relaxed and enjoying the experience because L was so gentle. But at the beginning, I had a small moment of tension when I considered the possibilities of closing my eyes and waiting to be pushed by someone I had just rocked! And it was an interesting moment.

Aaron: Some interesting reflections there. Others?

Q: I felt very relaxed, no fear, but some of the pushing caused pain in my hips and my legs. I felt the contraction from the pain but still <>.

Aaron: So there was a contraction from the pain, not the pushing. But the pain is just another kind of push. And right there with the pain you can see both the contraction and the stillness. Yes.

Looking at your hand-outs again. I want you to take this home and look at what is a physical body experience. When the physical body contracts or opens, movement in the physical body, be aware of it. What is a mental experience? What is an emotional experience? Coming to know, just to be able to say, "Ah, this is a mental experience. This one's an emotional one. This one's physical." And often they'll come together, of course. Ee the various components.

Don't worry at this point about whether we're at the cosmic template level or the etheric template level. This is something we will clarify several classes from now. Right now I just want you to feel the spaciousness. Call it spaciousness, not needing to decide what level of spaciousness. Just come to know the simultaneity of stillness and movement, tension and non-tension. Of confusion and clarity. That's what I would like you to do in the coming 2 weeks.

Q: Last Saturday I was at the Art and Spirituality Workshop, and we discussed the right and left sides of the brain and the nature of those. And how left brain can be very detail-oriented and time management and very, I kept thinking mundane, and how right-brain is spacious and free and out of the box. And I was wondering how that fits on the template, because the brain is physical and yet it's mental. And I couldn't help but feel how it reflected the mundane vs. the ultimate.

Aaron: I don't think we can divide it, C, because very few people live and act solely from one side or the other. Most people, it's not a 50-50 balance, but there's some balance. [Typed verbatim; Aaron corrects below.] The right brain expresses more tension, the left brain is more aware of spaciousness. The person who learns to connect better into the left brain is more able to access the spaciousness.

One of the helpful results of doing this kind of work, of reflection, is that it helps you to bring more balance to right-brain/left-brain activity. So if you have been predominantly right-brain, it brings more openness into the left brain, and vice versa. And both are necessary to live your life. There can't be relaxation--we see it in the breath. We've talked about this with kyo/jitsu energy. The tension and the release. The heartbeat. The muscle pumps and releases, pumps and releases. The action is not a problem. The imbalanced action so everything stays tense, in the body, in the mind, then you're suffering.

Does that answer your question? It's an interesting topic and one I would like to speak more about.

Q: I experimented with using my non-dominant hand while doing art, which meant I was accessing freer-thinking, my right side of my brain, and it was very interesting to observe. It was very interesting how different it felt.

Aaron: I may have mixed up the two in my prior statement, and so I apologize. Are you right-handed or left-handed? Right-handed. So using the left hand there was more freedom. The left hand, an interesting experiment is to take a large sheet of paper, a good size crayon or chalk in each hand, and just draw the same shape, whatever kind of shape it is that you want to draw. The right hand, left brain, can learn freedom from the right brain.

I'm confused here with right and left. I need to ask which is the right. I don't know the words. Barbara has always taken care of that level of the functioning of this body. This one is the right, this one is the left; Thank you. Not concepts I've paid much attention to as spirit without a body, no right or left side to me!

We'll talk more about it. We need to stop here. I'm going to return the body to Barbara…I thank you for participating in my activities tonight. With much love to each of you. Please as you look for this place of stillness, see the radiant spirit that you are. Let it shine through. Good night.

(taping ends)

Copyright © 2005 by Barbara Brodsky