May 20, 1998 - Elements

Barbara: I want to talk about background here, about our trip and the island of Santorini. This is the southernmost island of the Greek Cyclades Islands. It was once a round island about 5 miles in diameter, highest elevation over 2500 feet, with a volcano near the center. The volcano erupted around 1500 BC. What's left is a crescent shaped island around a deep caldera or crater filled with the sea. On the far rim and within the circle, through and across about 5 miles of sea, are several small islands which mark where the center and far side of the island once were. In the center is the still smoking volcano, about 2000 ft high.

The land on the outer rim of the crescent called Santorini rises gradually from the sea. There are beaches, then farmland, up a rising hillside to the summit, 2400 feet above the sea. Then there's an abrupt edge and the land falls away, not a sheer drop but close to it, straight down to the Aegean Sea 2400 feet below. The two biggest towns are built right on this edge. There are towns on the outer side but because there is no sheltered shore on that side, the harbor is within the crescent. Ships pull up, you disembark, and an engineering miracle of a road winds back and forth up the sheer cliff, literally carved into the cliff side. Buses meet boats and take visitors to town at the top. Needless to say, it's a breathtaking trip up the hill!

Some of the houses are built as normal houses, on land at the top. Most of the houses and other structures are built into caves that pockmark the face of the cliff. Thus, many of the streets are little more than stairs, each level of houses and other buildings perched atop the next lower, and all built into the cliff side. The house where we stayed was two rooms with a courtyard about 35 feet deep in the front. The far edge of the courtyard had a railing and then plunged straight down to a courtyard a flight below, then another, and finally, down all the way to the sea. The incline was almost vertical. The outer living room and kitchen had a window and door. The roof arched like a cave. The rear room with the bed was simply cave, whitewashed or stuccoed, with rocks projecting in. It was cool in the heat of day, and dim. There was a stone slab floor. It wasn't very rustic but polished, lovely, but it was unmistakably a cave!

I could sit in the courtyard on the roof of the dwelling below, which was accessible down a steep flight of steps. My view was of an enormous sky, endless sea below me and as far out as I could see, and there was the rock under me, not a building but literally the island itself - rock! The hot sun and smoking volcanic cone in front of me completed the picture. I spent several hours a day meditating in this setting.

Aaron had told me before we came here that this was related to the lost island of Atlantis and that there would be much to learn here. We visited the volcanic island and there was nothing there but lava flow, totally barren, even after all of these years. It was very powerful. He talked about the earth forces which create such an eruption and how they relate to the energy in our selves.

I spent a fascinating few days with Aaron talking to me about this and teaching me some meditation practices that pertained to this. He promised me at that time that he would talk about it in more detail the Wednesday night when we came back. So this is his program for tonight. Now I'm going to let him talk.

Aaron: I am Aaron. Good evening and my love to you all. This instrument has provided you with some background. I want to establish a vocabulary so that we're all communicating clearly.

I use a term "density" in a specific way referring to present-day human as "3rd density". By density I mean the density of the entire structure of the bodies, the energy density, the light density. Mineral on your present planet is 1st density. Plant and animal is 2nd density; human, 3rd density. You are evolving into 4th density. And the planet itself is evolving into 4th density. This is the meaning of this term, "new age," an age of 4th density earth. Beyond that there are 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th densities. I am a 6th density being.

Third density on the earth plane has the 4 bodies with which you are familiar: the physical, emotional, mental and spirit bodies. The emerging 4th density human also will have these 4 bodies. The difference between 3rd and 4th density is that for the 4th density being there is deep equanimity with these bodies. By that I mean whatever arises has no contraction around it. There is no need to cling to it or get rid of it. I do not say there is no judgment, but when judgment arises, there is also equanimity about the arising of judgment. There is a clarity that whatever arises does so simply because the conditions are present for it to arise, and it is not you or yours, me or mine. Everything that has the nature to arise has the nature to cease. Therefore one does not get caught up in the resultant forms but sees those resultant forms as the very natural outcome of the conditions and understands that if the forms are unwieldy in some way, and create discomfort for beings, the direction to work is not in attacking the outer form but in understanding and releasing the conditions.

At present time, those who finish 3rd density, and who are at a point where they do not need to incarnate again on the earth plane, move into what I call 4th density energy groups. These are loosely structured. You always have free will. You are free to come and go. Nothing holds you there except your own free will decision to stay within the group and learn what you came to learn. Because there is equanimity with emotion and thought, if emotions and thoughts arise within you, there's no shame about them, and if they arise in others there's no judgment. In 4th density you are able to fully use your natural telepathic ability. I phrase it in that way because you do not suddenly become telepathic, you've always been telepathic. Presently you do not allow yourself to use your telepathic abilities because they're so uncomfortable, because there's so much shame and judgment.

I often ask people, if everybody in the room were telepathic, would that be okay with you? Usually people say, "No! I have had thoughts this evening of which I am ashamed. I don't want people to know my thoughts." When there is this complete equanimity with thought and emotion, then learning becomes possible not only through your own experience but through shared experience. There is complete understanding of another's experience. So learning comes much faster.

The chief learning of 4th density is compassion and secondarily, wisdom. The being that has moved through 4th density and into 5th density slowly withdraws from this group, moves back into a more individuated self with that self being more a tool, a convenient container within which to work, and not anything that is taken as ultimately real. Many 5th density beings are teachers of one sort or another. Many of your guides will be 5th density beings. Fifth density beings are advisors to 4th density energy groups, the elders of those groups, so to speak. The chief learning in 5th density is wisdom, and secondarily compassion, with wisdom being primary in 5th density and compassion primary in 4th density. Beyond 4th and 5th densities, there remain 6th, 7th, and 8th density. I'm not going to explain the details of those here tonight, because they are not directly relevant to my talk. Further discussion is available in my talk "The Universe According to Aaron" in the book Aaron.

What comes next is a bit of ancient history. All of this is already available in transcript form so I'm going to summarize, and if you wish more detail we will be glad to make a transcript available.

Through the universe, there have been many different kinds of civilizations on many different kinds of material and non-material planes. The earth plane provided the first opportunity in the universe where all 4 bodies were expressed together and grounded in positive polarity. The foundation of the earth plane literally is love. There were deeply loving beings who have become known in your myth as the guardian angels of earth, very highly developed, evolved beings who gave of their energy and became literally the foundation of the earth plane. The whole myth of creation really springs from the willingness of these beings to be the foundation out of which the earth itself and all that grows upon the earth, evolved.

In the old transcripts of which I spoke, it has been told in detail by me and by my teacher Ariel, that there was no fear on earth. Then some of these guardian angels began to be protective of that which it had helped to co-create. There were two laws that governed the earth: one, a non-intervention policy, and second, that beings must be left to their own free will. Non-intervention means nothing can approach the earth but through human form. For example, I certainly have the ability to appear here in the middle of the room, but that would violate this non-intervention policy. My thoughts must be filtered through the human, through this dear instrument. Free will means each being must choose for it self and is responsible for its choices.

Since all beings have free will, however, they also have the free will to break this non-intervention policy. Beings of some negative persuasion were attracted to the earth. It is a primary piece of real estate, in galactic terms. Those who would guard the earth and maintain the nonintervention policy cannot maintain it in violation of the free will of a being that would intervene. Here, fear arose among some of the guardians, and an idea that they must protect the earth plane. The situation was one perhaps of a parent whose child picks up somewhat questionable playmates. Does the parent say, "No, you may not play with them," or does the parent trust the child to use this as a learning situation, to begin more deeply to differentiate positivity from negativity, love from hatred?

These guardian angels were of differing opinions. Some of them felt that humans needed to be protected against the negative influences. They were able to create a force field of positive polarity around the earth. Negative polarity has free will to come to earth despite the non-intervention policy, but positive polarity has free will to create such a force field of positivity. Negative polarity is repelled by positive polarity. Thus, what approached the earth was not highly negative at that point in your history but more neutral with a slight negative slant. Humans did not learn fear from that negativity that approached the earth. Humans learned fear from the guardian angels themselves, who moved into the negative stance of fear, based on their love for the earth plane and that which dwelled upon it. So we could say that fear was a distortion of love, that grew out of love.

We come now to the beginning of my story tonight, the civilization of Lemuria. At that time of Lemuria, beings on earth were still fully telepathic. They were not really 3rd density, it was a 4th/ 5th density civilization and of crystal essence. There were emotions, not fear-based emotions, but such as sadness. If one loves someone or something and it dies, there's going to be sadness, a sadness that could be differentiated from fear based clinging, or a desire to hold to that which has departed. One can let go completely and still feel sad. So, there were the love-based emotions of joy and sadness. There was an emotional body. But there was no fear-based emotional body until such fear was introduced into the earth plane.

Centuries passed; millennium passed. Earth slowly devolved into a 3rd density planet but there was still memory (we pause for a moment. This instrument and I are debating whether one can use the term "evolved" here, since it was a step backwards. She offered the word "devolved" and I suggested that this is not a proper English word. I will let it go.). At the time of the civilizations that you know of as Atlantis, humans were 3rd density. They still had the memory of how they had dwelt as co-creators of the earth, living in complete harmony with all that is. Some of the skills involved in healing and creation and so forth were still available, but there was a basic and unforgiving distortion. It is about that distortion that I wish to speak.

First I want to clarify my plural use of Atlantis. Lemuria was literally a civilization. As it, we coined the word "devolved", stepped backwards, beings who had been creators and healers, fully in tune with the universe in that civilization, spun off, going here and there. By the time of Atlantis, this high knowledge was held only in memory of what had been. Very few could enact it. Those closest to it dwelled in 3 different parts of the world: one in part of what is now South America, one in part of what is now Philippines, which was the home of Lemuria itself, and one within this island of Santorini and the surrounding islands.

What had these beings lost? Basically, with the arrival of fear came the contraction into the idea of separation. This is circular, each contributing to the other. The emotional body becomes solid and one is reactive to this body. We could say that this regression was a necessary part of the course of learning on the earth. That is another topic. But with the solidity and sense of separation came karma.

You are all familiar with the 4 elements, of earth, air, fire, and water, and what some consider a 5th element of ether or energy. The higher density Lemurians, before the beginnings of fear on the Earth plane, had no veil of forgetting of their true nature as you experience that veil. There was an absolute clarity of who they were, what their true nature was and what the reality of their existence was. They understood that they were not separate from each other or from anything. With this , what you might call Buddha nature, Christ Consciousness, pure awareness mind, or whatever name you wish to give it , with this came awareness there was a Light within everything and that everything was also bound together by the balance of elements. The secrets of Lemuria are very simple. They knew how to hold themselves in balance and harmony with all that is, and they allowed the universe around them to reflect that inner harmony.

When I speak of reflection, this process is no mystery to you. When you are angry and send anger out into the world, it is reflected back to you. You call forth the anger as reflection of your own anger. When you send out love, that is reflected back to you. Your outer world reflects the inner. The Buddha says it very elegantly in the beautiful scripture known as Dhammapada. The opening words are, "We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world."

The Lemurians primary concern was to bring into the physical plane the deep harmony of the non-physical planes, to enact that harmony into this earth plane. Whenever there was an imbalance in the perceived self, it was noted immediately upon its arising and because of the deep intention to do no harm, to create balance and harmony, or more correctly, to serve as co-creator with all else in the establishment of balance and harmony, a being immediately did what it needed to do to bring itself back into balance. There was no judgment about imbalance. If you are walking on a log and begin to topple off of it, you hold your other arm out. You don't judge yourself and say, "Why aren't I in balance?" you simply bring yourself back. It's as simple as that. There was no thought about being good or bad. There was simply the living of what one might call the Law of One, as a brother, Ra, has phrased it, or "All beings, one body," from the Bodhisattva vow. Each being is its own unique expression of that One.

So each being learned how to balance itself and keep itself in harmony. This was the expectation made of any sentient being as it participated in the world. Thus, if it struck its arm on a rock and there was a cut, it perceived the imbalances and brought it back into balance. There was instant healing. If it fell off a cliff and broke its leg, there was instant healing. If there was contraction, it balanced that contraction. No miracle, it simply knew how to rebalance, how to restore harmony. Likewise it reflected these skills into the world,

Just as the sentient being in Lemurian times could still fall off a cliff and break its leg because the leg is fragile and can break, so the pressures under the earth could create the conditions for earthquakes, volcanoes, tidal waves. The one who broke his leg found instant healing with no scar tissue or deformity. Just so, the distortions of the physical planet were balanced before damage could be done. Many beings, feeling the changes in the earth and the subtle imbalances immediately helped to draw the earth back into balance. Their own wholeness was reflected in the earth and the earth's wholeness was in them. Every thing acknowledged its responsibility to the whole of which it was partial expression. This ability to balance is what was lost. It was lost as "self" fell into an illusion of separation, fear and distortion.

You all have this ability. It is innate. To claim this ability you must acknowledge your own wholeness and divinity. There is nothing "other than," meaning everything is an expression of the Unconditioned or of the Divine. Everything. Not just what you see and judge as beautiful and good, everything. Some are distorted expressions, some are clearer expressions, but everything is constantly expressing, the whole conditioned realm bursting out of the unconditioned. In this knowledge comes awareness of wholeness.

So to begin to use this skill of harmonization or balance, you first must cease to consider yourself as separate in any way, must understand that you "inter-are" with all that is. Second, there must be the deepening of moral awareness. Buddhism uses the term "sila". I try to avoid specific terms from another language where I can, but sometimes one term sums up what would take me a great many words to express. Sila doesn't just mean moral purity; rather, it is a moral awareness that grows based on the foundation of one's sense of connection with all that is. One cannot possibly consider harming another when there is no self or other. So sila carries not only the idea of moral awareness but moral awareness as grown from this deep place of understanding of interbeing.

Sila must be nurtured. It's available to all of you. It must be nurtured by investigating that which experiences itself in some way as a separate self, and becomes greedy or possessive or finds judgment or aversion to others. This is not a statement that you get rid of greediness or aversion, so much that you are willing to consider not perpetuating greed or aversion. So often the human emotional field chooses to perpetuate because it finds it safe, or merely from habit. As soon as it perceives a self and other, then it can feel threatened. Then it has the habit to move into a place of more power, more separation. It grows boundaries that are even more solid, protects and attacks. You are working in the face of a millennium of animal instinct. You are no longer animal-man. You are human man and the shift to 4th density is taking you into a different realm, let us call it divine-man. But you're still acting out of the instincts of animal man, who does not perceive the inter-being of all that is.

There must be a willingness to be present with fear, to allow the experience of fear without need to get rid of the fear, greeting fear with some judgment or aversion, or to hold on and enact the fear.

This is difficult. There are teachings in every religion that say, "Abandon that which is negative." That idea is so easily shifted into "get rid of." So many of the Christian concepts of sin grow out of this distortion. This thought or that thought is evil, get rid of it. Buddhism is no better. "Abandon the kilesas". Directly quoted from the scripture. You've got to understand what abandon means. When there is a difficult energy, the absence of that energy is also present. To restore balance one has not to "get rid of" one so much as to return to the other. It doesn't mean attack.

There's a beautiful Buddha sutra, the Bhayabherava sutra. The Buddha tells the story of how, before his enlightenment, he wanted to meditate at a haunted forest shrine. Monks liked to go there at night to meditate. It was a place of great energy and power. But it was also fearsome. He was terrified. How was he going to do this? His instructions are so clear. "I asked myself to sit with the fear and dread and allow the experience of it until it dissolved itself." This is a very difficult thing to do, not simple at all. Yet, that which is aware of fear is not afraid. When you sit with and allow the experience of fear and dread, or the experience of craving, the experience of anger or prejudice or pride, or any other emotion, and simply allow the experience of it, it does dissolve itself. You can watch it fade and cease.

We've done a practice here where we've practiced with a small object like a piece of crystal or a rock. This instrument has asked you to hold out your hands and placed a small rock or other object in your hands, asked you to sit there with it and just allow the experience of it, not try to figure out what is it, not try to control, just to allow the experience of it, be willing to take it into your heart, to bring it to you. You feel the characteristics of it, such as coldness or warmth, roughness or smoothness, but do not figure out or control but just know it. Then we take that practice a step further, taking whatever emotion or thought has arisen and holding it in the same way with a sense of tenderness, curiosity and openness. You invite yourself to allow the experience of it and stay with it. Of course it will dissolve itself because it has no permanent self, it's simply a conditioned object which has arisen and will dissolve. Whatever has the nature to arise has the nature to cease, fear included.

These are the pre-requisites, then: a deepening sense of sila and all the implications of that word, the growing wisdom about the nature of the conditioned realm, and a deepening presence in which you allow yourself literally to be present with whatever arises and following the Buddha's suggestion, to allow the experience of it until it dissolves itself, to see it all the way through to cessation.

When you have to a relative degree mastered these skills, I'm not talking about perfection, just that these skills are the starting place, when you can firmly state that your highest intention is to do no harm but only to do good, to do no harm through active doing, to do not harm through withholding of that which would serve others, then you have the inspiration to go further. Then you are ready to look deeply at this process of harmonization. I do not want to present this process as an ultimate step. It's just one step on the path. But it's a very useful step and in fact it is essential to this evolution into 4th density, if the evolution is going to be into positively polarized 4th density.

The practice which I began to teach Barbara sitting on that cliff top is rather simple, part of a much larger practice, a practice of presence, of awareness, of loving kindness and so forth. Let us do this together.

I want you each to get in touch with the elements within you and see if they feel relatively in balance. I know the first question you are going to ask me is, "How do I do that?" Don't get intellectual about it. At a certain level you already know how to do this. If I start to give you verbal instruction, it's not going to work. Offer the intention to bring the elements within the body into balance for the good of all beings. Draw in a few deep breaths and release them. If any element feels out of balance, balance it; for instance if your energy feels very heavy, you might want to bring in more air or water. Which one does it need? Again, trust your intuition. If you're feeling a lot of tension, perhaps there's too much fire and air, perhaps it needs more earth and water. There's no way to state precisely, what "balance" means. It will vary from moment to moment. It's very much like walking across a log. You've seen tightrope walkers with a long stick that they use for balance. If you ask one of them, "How do you know when you're out of balance?" they would shrug, "How do I know when I'm out of balance? It's obvious. I feel like I'm falling." When you're out of balance in terms of the elements, it's the same thing. It's just something you haven't really paid much attention to. If you ask them how they use the stick they will shrug again, "I use it to restore balance!"

I'm going to be quiet for a minute or two while you bring yourself into balance, and then, and I will warn you beforehand, I will make a loud noise. Even though you have been warned you are going to be startled, a little bit at least, I want you to watch the move out of balance with the startling. I request you not to judge that you've moved out of balance any more than you would judge yourself if you were walking on ice and slipped a bit. You would simply reach out your hands and rebalance. Simply notice any shift out of balance as reaction to the startle and the noise. Offer the intention "for the good of all beings, I offer the intention to bring myself back into harmony, back into balance," and do what you need with the elements to balance it. Then watch carefully what happened to that startle reflex. Let's take it just that far and then we'll take it a step further. I'm going to be silent now for a minute and ask you to create this first harmony. I pause.

(pause)

Now I'm going to make a noise. Simply observe in yourself what shifts there are in this harmony and bring it back into balance. No need to get upset over imbalance, just gently bring it back.

(Shout!)

You may find that the shout literally pulled you a little out of your body, that the body needs grounding. To bring in more of the earth element, you can literally visualize forests, mountains. Breathe them into the self. Or you can feel yourself sitting as this instrument did, atop an enormous rock 2400 feet high. Draw in that rock through the base chakra, drawing in the earth energy. Or simply feel the present earth beneath you and draw it in. Ground into it. Perhaps you feel that as you draw in the earth element the energy feels a bit stagnant and needs more water. Visualize a vast sea. This instrument did have the opportunity to learn this practice in a perfect setting, with that vast sea literally displayed before her, a mountain of rock under her, an immense sky and hot sun, all the elements displayed very clearly. But you don't need to be in the presence of it. Use your vision, your imagination. The difficulty is not to find a way to draw in more water or earth or air or fire energy. The difficulty is to come to the willingness to do so, because you are so used to perpetuating the distortion out of the fear-base of the small ego self. So what you must do here is to come back to the pure awareness self first, to that which deeply aspires to harmony and let that deep aspiration guide you. Once you're in that place of deep aspiration, the doing of it is not difficult.

Take a minute to center yourselves again, and then I'm going to make a noise again. Watch yourself shift, perhaps only subtly, out of harmony. Decide what element or elements are needed to come back into harmony. I'm going to be quiet through the process this time. Noise is coming:

(pause)
Shout!
(pause)

Barbara is partially aware of what I'm saying and doing, so she can participate. She found that although she was the source of the noise, she also was startled by it and the first time it sent her out of her body a bit so she needed more of the earth element, more grounding. The second time there was more fire to it and water helped to balance it. So it's not always the same in the same situation. You've got to be present and feel what is distorted.

Now we're going to take this a step further. I want you each to think of something disturbing that has happened to you this week. It might be a memory of somebody who verbally attacked you, a memory of some very unpleasant situation such as having a bad stomach or headache, of sadness or fear or worry of sickness, or discomfort of someone you love. It may be a memory of strong desire or jealousy. Allow that memory to emerge and allow the emotions to move into that pattern. Use your memory. (pause)

Now, aware that there is a distortion in the energy field, a distortion in the elements, I ask you to rebalance but with a very specific idea here. You are not rebalancing in order to get rid of this discomfort and emotion. You can't do it that way. You are rebalancing simply because of the deep stated intention to bring harmony where there is disharmony. Know the willingness to suffer any discomfort in that process of bringing harmony; for instance, letting go of some of your shielding and allowing yourself to feel vulnerable. All you are doing is inviting in harmony, rebalancing the elements. Once harmony is re-established, look and see what happened to the emotion. I'll be quiet.

(long pause)

How are you doing? Remember, you're not after perfect harmony, you're simply inviting in greater harmony, greater balance. This instrument brought to mind the loss of several hundred dollars that seems to have been stolen in her travels. On one level she says, "That's okay, I can accept that." On another level there was a feeling of fear and vulnerability. Bringing in that memory, she saw the anger and the desire to hold onto that anger because it made her feel more powerful in the face of vulnerability. This is ego's answer to the experience of fear and vulnerability. So she saw that first there needed to be a willingness to release the anger, to let it dissolve itself, then to take the steps to invite that dissolution. Her experience of the energy imbalance was, too much fire. And also too much tightness, both earth and water tied together. So she felt the need to bring in more air: more light, more space.

As she brought in that space, the tension and anger around the loss simply resolved itself. Not all of it but a good part of it. I offer her experience as an example of how it can work. You are not doing this practice to get rid of anything. If the emotion stays, it will stay. You're doing the practice because of your highest intention to create harmony and to offer your energy for the good of all beings.

We will hear your questions about this practice in a few minutes. I would request you to take it into your daily life. First, take it into your meditation. We do not practice vipassana to change anything, just to be present and see what is there, so working in this way, you must come out of the vipassana practice a bit, attend to the imbalance, and then return to the vipassana practice. As you are sitting and a thought or emotion comes up, if you feel an imbalance in the elements, offer the intention to allow that imbalance to come back into balance. Ask yourself which elements are out of balanced, what needs to be released or brought in. Then do it. Try to work with it in an ongoing way, rather than waiting for severe imbalance.

And then observe what happened to the heavy energy you were feeling, to the emotion you were feeling. Start it in formal practice and then take it out into your life and let it become a constantly recurring movement. You are walking on a giant tightrope. Actually most of the time you're hanging by one finger or another on the tightrope or trying to get your legs back up. Are you ready to get more centered on the middle of the tightrope? You don't have to spend your life hanging off of it. It is a deep kindness to yourself as well as to all beings to allow yourself to come back to center.

Until you learn this skill, the world around you is going to reflect your imbalances. This is the cause of all the violence and disharmony in the world. It's a reflection of human imbalance. Each of you has the ability to begin the process of rebalancing. Working with the elements of course is only one part of the whole of rebalancing but it's a very important part because it is dealing literally with the physical reality of your human experience and of the setting for that experience.

This has been a long talk. I thank you for your attention and deeply appreciate the willingness of all of you to consider such a practice and the import of bringing it into your lives. I know that there are questions. I'll pause here and be happy to hear them. Perhaps it would be useful for you to stretch a bit first. I pause.

Barbara: J is asking if Aaron is using the elements in the way they use them in polarity therapy. Aaron is saying here, he is using them in the ultimate sense where polarity therapy extracts from that ultimate the relative practice of... so he's talking about the ultimate element, polarity is the practice of that element.

J: Not a question as such. You spoke of this Monday night at meditation class. I have gone ahead and put it into practice. It is pretty interesting and does, it is effective.

Barbara: I find it very powerful. He kept emphasizing to me, you're not doing it to change or fix the emotion, you're simply doing it because of the intention to restore harmony. But I kept finding as I persisted with it and brought myself back into balance, I can be experiencing subtle emotions but I can't be experiencing powerful, overwhelming kind of emotions and still be in balance. As long as I'm in balance, the emotions just fade away. And they may be subtly there on the outskirts but they're not pulling me out of kilter at all. I found it very powerful.

J: It was interesting to observe the sense of peace or equanimity, even with residual energy reverberating. It did not stick, just sort of...

Barbara: I'm finding a parallel between balancing and resting in rigpa or resting in Awareness. This term "resting in rigpa" is part of dzogchen meditation. It's a resting in the pure awareness mind, in the unconditioned mind. When I'm resting there, everything is balanced and everything is in harmony, and the only way disharmony can come up is when I shift back into the small ego self.

Aaron is asking, how did this work for you just now during the exercise. When I shouted, could you feel the imbalance and could you feel your own ability very naturally to bring it back into balance?

R: When you're in balance, don't you also at some point have to go out of balance in order to reach a different balance, a higher balance?

Barbara: Yes, because there's constant change. Nothing can be stagnant. There's a constant movement of balancing, unbalancing and rebalancing. It's similar to what Aaron has taught about kyo and jitsu energy. Jitsu has some tension. Kyo is the complete release of tension. This balance must be happening in our bodies or we can't be alive. But it happens in a balanced way in the healthy body. We follow this pattern with our breath. Before we breathe in, there's a jitsu energy contraction. And as soon as you start to inhale, the energy moves to kyo until tension builds up again because the chest is too full. Then it's jitsu again. At the start of the exhalation, it subsides and goes back into kyo again. It's like waves cresting on the shore and going back into the sea. So we're constantly rebalancing. But there's a difference between this gentle rebalancing motion and extreme unbalance.

Aaron has said we often shift off into that more extreme imbalance, and then instead of simply attending to it and saying, "OK, there's imbalance, just bring it back," we say "Oh, what am I going to do!" (waving arms frantically) We hang onto it or we try to fix it, which creates too much force the other way. Using the elements is a simple way to invite our selves back into center. He says, I'm paraphrasing Aaron here, we all intuitively know that feeling of center and what's necessary to rest there. He says, if you are hot, nobody has to tell you to move into the shade. If you are cold, nobody has to tell you to move into the sun; it's obvious. You know when you're hot, and you bring yourself back into balance by moving into the shade. You don't stay in the sun and move further into the sun and say, "What am I going to do?." He's saying it's the same thing. It's very accessible.

Others?

R: I just want to add... it seems to me that sometimes people stay out of balance in order to access certain creative energies which weren't accessible to them before.

Barbara: Yes! Let Aaron speak to this directly.

Aaron: I am Aaron. You are correct, R. Each being must find the degree of imbalance that is most effective for it. To try to remain perfectly centered creates a very strong negative tension. There's so much grasping at staying at center. Everything is constantly in a state of flux. You can't hold yourself in perfect center. To not attend to imbalance also creates tremendous tension. And these tensions are the basis of karma.

When you speak of people allowing imbalance for creativity, yes, sometimes people throw themselves out of balance or attach to imbalance with the illusion that it helps them be creative. I perceive this as a reaction against the idea of staying centered. The choice is not to stay perfectly centered or be radically imbalanced. If you see it as opposition in that way then you're going to throw yourself into the radical imbalance. But when you begin instead to see it as a constant flow, noting imbalance, bringing it back, but you're never going to be right on center and you don't have to be. It's a flow. However, one must remain attentive. It would be like walking down a road with quicksand on either side. First, just shallow quicksand and then deepening quicksand. The road is wide. There's a line right down the middle of the road. You don't have to walk on the line. But when you see yourself coming to the edge of the road, you do have to be awake, and note, "I'm getting to close to the sand. If I'm too far to the right, I need to go left. If I'm too far to the left, I need to go right."

Some people do have the idea they can create more fully from imbalance. In my experience this is an illusion. There may be strong creative energy with imbalance but it cannot be sustained.

Many of the most creative people in our western culture have traditionally chosen extreme imbalance. But it is a myth that this imbalance is necessary to creativity. Some of the most creative beings that I have known throughout many lives were very highly realized beings who were very much in balance, and induced subtle imbalance as a way of stimulating creativity, creativity here being one of the elements of response to change. It's a whole different concept of creativity.

With the extremes I see the personal creator come forth. Within the subtle energy flow, I see the being that is beyond the small ego self and is working as co-creator. As long as the ego is going to be the creator, there are power and control issues and the human will swing radically from side to side and choose to maintain imbalance. As soon as one resolves the notion of ego self and is willing to live more fully from the pure awareness self, then one is delighted with the role of co-creator and understands that co-creator best manifests when there is relative balance. I pause.

Barbara: Others?

Q: I relived a situation from work. And it came out much better with balance! Much better!

Barbara: It's very empowering practice. For me it really shows the potential of the pure awareness mind when it's running the show rather than the ego self. Others?

Q: I thought of a conversation today that upset me. I wondered if I was wrong in the advice I gave someone. And in feeling myself come into balance while holding the situation, I realized strangely enough, that the other person did need to have a strong emotion to move her in some way. And it was okay for her to be there.

Aaron: I am Aaron. Strong emotion is not negative. Identification with the emotion is very unwieldy and creates much pain for self and all beings when you are owned by the emotion or own the emotion. But the experience of the emotion itself is just an experience. It's like being in the sea where sometimes there are small, gentle waves and sometimes there are huge waves. They're all just waves. There's nothing inherently good or bad about them.

What is the effect of the wave? What is the effect of the emotion? In what ways is man enslaved by the emotion? It's very useful to realize that strong emotion sometimes can be very helpful, very freeing. I pause.

Seeing that that person needed to feel the strong emotion, were you able to release any questions of "was I right, was I wrong?"

Q: I am aware that I still have some feeling there and I can keep working with it.

Aaron returns the body to Barbara

Barbara: He's saying there's reality that sometimes we're skillful or unskillful. He doesn't want to call it good or bad, but sometimes we're skillful or unskillful. And it's useful to recognize when we're being unskillful and understand why and offer an intention not to perpetuate that kind of unskillful action, speech or energy. He's saying so much of this is simply the power of intention. And he is saying intention of course is the root of karma. When we offer the intention to work with whatever arises in loving and skillful ways, we immediately become very much free of it, even while that energy is still moving through.

half hour of questions on other topics not included here.

Barbara: It's almost 10 so we'll stop... Aaron asks you to practice this balancing of the elements. He says don't work at it; play with it. What he is saying here is, don't make it something that takes big effort and somebody to do it. Just delight in it; delight in the freedom and power that you find as you see that you really do have the ability to restore balance. He says, please share your findings with him next week. He offers his love and says good night. That is all.

Copyright © 1998 by Barbara Brodsky