January 27, 1999

990127 WC.doc

January 27, 1999

Wednesday Night Group

(Tape is not distinct, hard to make out words.)

Barbara: I want to start a bit different tonight. I want to share something that I've been enjoying all day with all of you. Today is the 10th anniversary of my meeting Aaron. We'll have cake later.

I was reading this in my journal this morning. This is an old journal from 1989. I'm going to read part of the Friday, January 27th, 1989 entry.

Journal, January 27, 1989: I saw a new figure standing beside my higher self. Unlike her, he radiated a white light so brilliant that at first I had to look away. It was hard to tell if he shined out of that light or if it radiated from him. I felt myself trembling in his presence, yet felt a deep love pouring from him, a love so familiar but unlike any I have known in this life. There was a comfort and joy in his presence that washed away all fear. I got up and I looked out the window, got myself a cup of tea and came back and Is at again. It was still there, so I decided, “OK, I guess I have to go into this. What is it?” Here's our dialogue, as accurately as I can give it.

B: Who are you?

Figure: A friend; a teacher.

B: What do I call you? Are you God?

Figure: No. Call me anything. I am everything.

B: But not God?

Figure: No

B: Can I call you “teacher?”

Figure: That is suitable.

Barbara: (talking, in present time) It was many months before he gave me the name Aaron.

B: Are you a guide for me?

Figure (A): Yes.

B: What are you to teach me?

Figure/ teacher/ Aaron: Nothing. You already know it. I will help you put the parts together.

B: Are you here just this once? Can I find you again?

A: I'm always here if you need me.

His energy was so brilliant and so filled with love, I was just dying into it. I asked, “Are you Christ?” And he said, “Yes, and Buddha and all the other great teachers. You must learn my wisdom. That is your next work.

Barbara: That would take forever. Aaron: No, but many lifetimes. You must start now. Barbara: Where? Aaron: You already know Christ. Start with Buddha. B: You are not God though? A: No, He is my teacher as I am yours. B: How about, my higher self?

My higher self answers here, “I am you. You know everything there is to know but you've forgotten it. This teacher will guide you and help you learn.”

B: Does each person have a teacher like each has a higher self? A: No. There is one teacher. He has many forms.

Added while cleaning up the transcript:

I soon came to understand that by this “one teacher” he meant that while there were many separate entities, the teachings were so much one, and the teachers were so much one through the heart we all share that it was as if there were one teacher. For Aaron there is no sharply defined self or other among the spirits with whom he dwells. Clearing up this misunderstanding, he has explained to me that this is why he often says “we” instead of “I.”

B: Only one? Yet he is here? Aaron cautions me to observe ego taking this idea.

A: You are all mankind. When I teach one I teach all. You must release your ego so you can be all mankind more easily. You see yourself as too separate. Your separateness prevents you from understanding that you are all mankind.

B: How to release ego?

A: Read. Study. Meditate. Love. It will come.

B: How are you different from God?

A: It IS.

Barbara, talking: It's hard to explain exactly what happened here. Aaron tried to show me God, separate from himself. Light, incredible light, with a brilliance I have never known before. I know I can't be in the fullness of that light, but experienced it from Aaron's sheltering shadow.

Journal: That energy was the most powerful force I've ever experienced, and yet it does not push in any direction, but simply surrounds me. There were colors more vivid than any within my memory and a pervading sense of love, peace, and bliss. Beyond that it felt empty in a way I can't explain. There is no person there, just energy and light. The experience of it brought both deep rapture and an outburst of tears. We remained with it for a while.

Aaron: Praise God. Love God. Thank God.

B: How?

A: Use the prayers you know. The words don't matter.”

Then there was some period of prayer.

A: Now do you understand that I am not God? Do you understand the difference between us? B: Yes A: As your higher self and I am always here, so God is always here. It doesn't answer your questions. It just IS. It is all the love and all the light. B: What is your relationship with it? A: The same as yours. It is God. B: Why are you here now? A: You are ready. You are learning to see the responses that build more karma. ... You can hear these words without ego adding karma ... Listen for ego. Don't let it block your openness.

Aaron gave me more information here on what I need to work on. Then he stepped back and I again experienced that brilliant, all-encompassing light. I was crying again.

A: Don't be so solemn. Be joyful.

I sense a return to my body. Was I away? I feel a great joy, although I am still trembling. I open my eyes and my arms. The sky is intense blue. A large bird slowly flies past—soaring—wings moving slowly and easily. I feel it is me.

So that was my first evening with Aaron. Very amazing.

Thank you, Aaron, my forever friend. Thank you.

I was in Florida this last weekend to visit my mother. She took me to a place near her house called Butterfly World. It was a big beautiful butterfly aviary. And Aaron was laughing, he said to me, “Maybe you can get me a job here.” <can't get the rest> We all enjoyed it very much, sat on benches for a long time while butterflies landed on us.. That was my anniversary gift to Aaron. and his to me.

Okay, let us get on to the evening.

One question, “Can one combine desire to work with intention and co-create to work with intention, and co-creation, with metta practice? How best to state it?” Aaron said It's exactly what he needs to talk about tonight.” I'm paraphrasing him, he says, “What reinforces our ability to work from this state of capital-C Co-creator? <> small ego self is shouting and yapping.(tape unclear here)

He wants to speak about metta and other tools to help us stay in touch with the center, even when the clouds of ego seem to be separating us from that center.

An interesting question came up with somebody today. He was talking about the difficulty he had that there was a rat in his garage. He didn't know what to do about it. He said, he explained his confusion by adding that he had had some moles that his cat had brought in. They weren't badly injured. so he put them in a box and nursed them a bit and then took them out and set them free in the field beyond his yard. They seemed to have come back into his yard and they were burrowing in his yard. Then the cat caught and killed one. He wasn't sure what he might have done more skillfully with the moles. So now he has the rat.

He said, “What is the highest intention for the good of all beings?”

Aaron suggested a live trap. He said, “If I set a live trap and take it outside and let it go, my neighbor might say, ‘Why didn't you kill it?' That's not for the highest good of my neighbor.” We got into a long discussion about this. Aaron wants to share about this and how it relates to this question of co-creator.

Other questions?

There will be an opportunity for questions after the talk. If there's nothing pressing, let's let Aaron give his talk and then go into questions.

(tape paused)

Aaron: Good evening and my love to you all. I am Aaron. Positive polarity does not mean 100%. It does not mean there's not still any negativity. When you have a very loving intention, you are still human and you do experience occasional contraction of fear, even fear that you will make a wrong choice, that you will do harm, that's still a kind of fear. Fear creates a contraction of the energy field.

When there is balance to expression, largely positive but with tension contractions, the expression is like a very open, clear sky with wisps of clouds. You would not say it's a cloudy day, there are only occasional wisps of clouds. And yet sometimes one of those clouds may come between you and the sun and there may be a few moments of shadow.

My dear ones, you must understand that your work on earth is not to get rid of every cloud but to find an equanimity with the clouds which allows you to rest in the clarity of the sky regardless of the presence of clouds. This is not a denial of the clouds. This is not a denial of the presence of clouds but it is an affirmation that regardless of the density of clouds, the blue sky still exists. The pure awareness mind still exists regardless of the presence of the contractions of fear or negativity. Thus you cease to relate to negativity as the enemy.

This instrument had an interesting dream this weekend. She was in Florida visiting her mother. The visit brought up some of the old issues between her and her mother, around her mother's tendency to be fearful and controlling, issues which she found she was able to relate to very skillfully. But there was still some anger that came up. We do find that negativity creates a doorway for negatively polarized energy. She awoke in the middle of one night quite startled from a dream. She very, very rarely has what you call nightmares. In this dream there was a creature that exuded a sense of nastiness, an icy cold grasping energy. It radiated a very brilliant light but icy cold. From the moment she awoke, she felt that it was an external, negatively polarized energy. In part of the dream it seemed it was after her. She thought it meant to kill her just before she came to an awakened state. But toward the end of the dream, not quite awake, she realized that it was bodiless, that she was seeing the energy, and that this had no body. At that point it said to her, “Yes, I need a body.” The idea being that it would somehow push that mental-spirit body which is Barbara out and take over this body. Is that possible? I would be untruthful if I said it was impossible. It's very rare. It is not impossible. It was attracted to this instrument because of this instrument's very strength of polarity. Using negativity as a gateway, it felt it could insinuate its way in and take over.

When I speak of this kind of takeover, takeover is really not the right word. It is a giving over. Your own fear and negativity are what give you to negativity. For such a being to completely take over another being would be extraordinarily unusual. But negativity does influence you, sometimes frequently. You notice in your own lives when you're with someone who is very angry, how much more you tend to pick up and enact your own anger. You are influenced by their negative energy. You give yourself over to it to some degree.

Aware of this nightmare and without much intellectual comprehension of what was going on, this instrument intuitively reacted in the most skillful way, which was to open her heart to the pain this entity was expressing. Truly a lost soul. Lost in the land of shadows, wanting to come back into the earth plane to express its negativity more forcefully in the earth plane. Seeking a body for a home to express that negativity. Very troubled. Very lost. She said a very firm, “No, you cannot have my body but you do have my prayers. May you find happiness.” She began to do metta with it, which of course was the last thing it wanted to hear and fled. She did not do it to blackmail this being and cause it to flee, she did it with an honestness. There was a real willingness to let this being hang on and listen if it wanted, to begin to learn positive polarity. So instead of waking up afraid, she went from that fearful nightmare state into a very deep intuitive compassion.

I often use this example simply to point out how deeply positively polarized loving energy is present, and also, in each of you, that there is still some of that shadow and it's not going to disappear. “Darn it!” you may say. But it's not. How are you going to learn to live with it? It did not matter whether this was an external negatively polarized energy or some aspect of this being's own internalized negativity. The response is the same. Have you become so habituated to the approach of negativity as to offer it this kind of loving response?

The more deeply negative the presentation, the more urgent this response is. It was not my intention to get off into one of our traditional Anything Goes nights, but this is the last Wednesday of the month and the subject matter thus far is a rather out of the ordinary. So I'm going to take it just a little bit further and then come back to the whole work of co-creation and intention.

You are, each of you, becoming ready to become citizens of the universe. One of the things I particularly enjoyed about this butterfly display was when this instrument watched several butterflies literally emerge from their cocoons. There was a large laboratory with windows filled with cocoons and you could see the larvae at different stages of growth.

The emergent butterfly wings are small, compressed, it seems. Slowly it unfolds them and shakes them free. Whatever moisture has been there dries out. They seem to triple in size. This is such a metaphor for all of you coming into readiness for 4th density, coming into readiness to take your full place as citizens of the universe.

While each of you has some aspects of negativity and some very strong positivity, you are on the whole either negatively polarized or positively polarized. You cannot straddle the fence for long. Negative polarity's movement is to be deeper and deeper into service to self. This service to self path of negative polarity is a viable path all the way until the end of 6th density. There is a whole series of talks from many years ago about this.

Positive polarity moves increasingly into positivity, or service to others. Since you are part of that “others,” this does not exclude but includes the self, but it does not hold the self above others any more than it holds it below others. Service to all beings, unconditional love. The most difficult part of this process is to learn how to handle the occasional negativity which surfaces in a loving way. All of your teachings on duality, the misunderstandings which have been furthered in so many religions. I emphasize, misunderstandings that have been furthered - not the basic teachings of the religion as it was produced by a great master, but the misunderstandings of that master's teachings - have so often pushed into this duality of good and evil and created a fear of evil, a stand against evil to conquer and destroy it. Well of course you don't want to enact this negativity in the world. But to seek to destroy anything is simply to express your own negativity. This is your work, then, to discover how to work with both the positive and the negative in the universe from a place of positivity, a place of inherent kindness.

Returning to our friend and his rat. The rat is not an enemy. The desire to be free of the rat is also not an enemy. Our friend and his rat co-created this situation. In some way he participated with the moles and then with the rat in this opportunity to learn how to say no with kindness but with firmness. You do co-create all of the experiences in your lives. You're never a victim. I want to emphasize that. I am not suggesting that the child who is brutally abused has caused or invited the abuse. I would phrase it quite differently. Because of the child's deep intention to learn and/or to teach, it has permitted the self, this relative self, to become involved in what may turn out to be more painful experiences than were expected. Comfort was not its primary consideration. Its primary consideration was to teach/learn love. So each being has free will. The being may make choices that get out of hand, that go beyond what was anticipated, and so the situation may become quite difficult. One cannot point to the child and say, “Well, you asked for it.” Not at all.

This is very difficult to express because there is so much confusion about it, varying from those who would absolutely delineate a victim and abuser, to those who would say, “You create your own reality. You created this.” and neither extreme is really true. Rather, between the relative and ultimate plane there is some balance. If a child is being abused, you cannot shrug your shoulders and say, “The child asked for this abuse to learn something so I'm not going to intervene.” Perhaps just what the child most needs to learn is that others will stand up for it, will protect it and help it. You can't know that. So you must always say no to negativity in as kind but firm a way as you can. When you find yourself in a difficult situation, learn to ask, “Why am I here?” Not, “How did I invite this?” so much as “What is to be learned here?” Trust that in some way you participated in the arising of the situation. Now what are you going to do about it? What karmic patterns are being replayed? It doesn't matter if it's a rat in your garage or a human rat who lives in your house. What are you going to do about it?

We have spoken of the various levels of creation, from the dictator, the small ego self, which is bound in fear, all the way to the divine level (capital letter) Creator, where co-creator really dissolves because you are at such a deep level of connection in the (capital C) Creator. Most of your creating is somewhere in between, a place where you are co-creator (with a small c) and also co-Creator (with a capital C). Only very rarely do you come to that place of pure creator for brief times.

From this place of co-Creator, with a capital C or with a small c, two stages are evident. One sees that the small ego self is still present but has increasingly less influence. The best you can do in human form is to note the presence of the small ego self and relate to it in such a way that it does not have the opportunity to be the dictator. I would say this is not too dissimilar from going into the supermarket with a hungry, tired three-year-old. The child starts grabbing food. “I want that! That! This!” You don't have to smack the child. You also don't need to load your cart with cookies and candy and all the child demands. Who is in charge here, the child or the adult? So first you must say no. And second, how do you say no? If anger comes up and you're likely to smack the child, if you see that tendency in yourself and freeze up, you're likely to dissociate, to withdraw from the whole scene. Then the child just screams louder because it's no longer heard. The compassionate and wise adult says, “I hear how much you want something. You're feeling hungry and tired. We are going home to a dinner very soon. Meanwhile, would you prefer an apple or a banana.” And so you give the child a bit of choice. You choose the objects from which the child may choose. You don't say, “One object” and let it choose a giant candy bar. You set the limits.

Can you treat this fear-based small ego self with the same wisdom, compassion, and skill? It is not going to shrivel up and disappear no matter how much you might wish for it to do so. Even if it seems to have disappeared and is gone for months, it's still there, and given the right situation, it's going to come out. This is the shadow side of the self. It is that which is afraid and has the tendency to express its fear. How are you going to relate to it?

In this practice of co-creation, this whole movement from ego to pure awareness self, we continually see the uprising of the small ego self. Yet the pure awareness self, this supreme, wise, compassionate aspect of being, is always there. The absolute clear blue sky is always there despite the presence of clouds.. The amount that negativity influences the final manifestation does not depend on how much you rest in the pure awareness mind, or how much ego self is present. It depends how the pure awareness mind relates to the ego self. Whether the ego self is 1% present or 30% present, the question is not whether it's present but how do you relate to it.

I've used the example several times of a conduit, a pipe. The water pouring through it is absolutely pure. If the pipe has a very smooth inner surface, the water flow will not pick up bits of impurity or debris. If the water pipe has a very rusted and pitted, filthy surface, this will create friction which impedes the flow of the water and it will flake off and merge itself with the pure water. Nevertheless, the pure water is still there.

You cannot always be a perfectly clear, pure pipe. But the pure water is always there even if it's got particles of rust in it. Kindness is your strainer. Mindfulness is your strainer. If there are going to be particles of rust and debris in the water, just know they're there and strain them out. Attend to them. You can attend to what flakes off. Many of the practices we have done are great assistants in this process. Balance yourself with the elements. This is described in the two talks in the last newsletter. Bring the elements of earth, air, fire, water and ether into balance. Metta is a way of balancing. The practice of generosity or patience are ways of balancing. Tonglen is a way of balancing. A practice such as clear comprehension of purpose is a way of balancing. When you are ready for it, taking vows such as the Boddhisattva vows, which strongly heightens your intention and mindfulness with your resolve to honor these vows, to stay attuned to your highest purpose. All of these are very powerful assists. Practices throughout the whole book, Awakened Heart, these are essentially the Boddhisattva practices.

All of these practices of moving from the awakened heart, from the true self, help allow you to stay in contact with the highest intention and to co-create from that pure awareness mind and from the place of highest intention, even when negativity or fear are present. You no longer need to disown your fear. And you no longer need to act it out. This is the basic practice of equanimity and of kindness. I was asked, “How do we bring metta and co-creation together?” Co-creation without metta is hollow. The pure awareness heart which is Co-Creator (with a capital C) is the Loving Heart. Loving is not an adjective that describes it, Loving Heart is one noun. The “loving” and “heart” cannot be separated. This is your inherent truth. You don't have to make the heart loving, the heart is naturally loving. I repeat, loving is not a qualifier here, it is your inherent deepest truth. But the practice of metta helps to open you up to its truth, to remind you of who you are so you can stay in that place of (capital C) Co-Creator. And offer your intention to speak and act for the good of all beings including the self, even when fear is present in you. This is the highest human potential. If there were no fear present, anybody could act from that highest place. Can you do it from a place where fear is present?

I don't want to add too much tonight so much as to deepen your understanding of what we have spoken of in the last 2 weeks. I want to emphasize that each of you is opening into this highest level of self as a mature being, as co-creator, citizen of the universe. Each of you has the opportunity constantly to be responsible for your choices. When that slips your mind because of fear, simply note that it has. Acknowledge the distortion. And come back with a resolve to pay closer attention, to practice a bit harder. We call this training. It is a lifetime's work. Your life will give you all the practice that you need. If there is a rat in your garage, bow to him as your teacher and set a live trap for him and move him out of the garage. That is all.

(Break with cake and tea, continuing while we eat.)

Barbara: They're asking if we put 10 candles on the cake, then Aaron can blow them out. Then we asked, can we manifest the energy without actually physically blowing, to put out one candle. Aaron says maybe. Once many years ago in a class here, he had us sit for 15 minutes at the beginning of each class trying to light a candle in the middle of the room. We could never get it to light.

Q: Aaron seemed much stronger to me and I wondered if it is because I am so sensitive right now because of the last few days.

Barbara: Did his energy seem stronger? (Yes.) He says he has spent 10 years getting used to our humanness and being on the earth plane. So now he's having a 10th birthday party and he is graduating into the next decade. He's teasing. He says naturally he's stronger, he's getting older. (still teasing) He says, like graduating from one of our education classes, learning how to deal with the human child element in us in a very different way than he had to do when he was incarnate. He said it was different completely when he was the human. Now he's learning about our humanness from the outside in.

He is saying, this is interesting, he's always had a clear picture of what he wanted to teach. But it's just like if you were a math teacher and you had a child for a number of years, and you eventually wanted to teach them algebra, first you'd have to teach them to add and subtract. And it would not make much sense to start talking about x's and y's until they understood what a 1 and a 2 meant. Literally, how many are 2, how many are 1. So, he's saying that he's had and still has a clear picture. He says we're by no means finished. He says he has a clear picture of what he came to teach. And he's teaching.

He says his energy field is enormous and he has had to learn by trial and error how much of it we can tolerate, that if he gives us too much, we all fall asleep. He says, literally. He says, do you understand that? Have some of you not experienced falling asleep? When his energy is too strong it tends to be too high a vibration and we can't handle it. If it's not strong enough then it doesn't capture our attention. He says he's really just starting to feel skilled at this after 10 years. To be able to read our energy fields as a group, just as skillful means to know how strong he can present himself. So he says he finds the whole experience fascinating, teaching in this way. He says, enjoy our cake.

Q: Why is it that I sense Aaron's energy so strongly right in the beginning when you are about to start talking and then usually, not tonight, but usually it fades out.

Barbara: He says because he comes into me very strong and then he turns it down when he begins to speak. Part of my process of channeling is really to just sink into his energy field and when I do that, he says it's like a big safety net and I'm jumping off a building, he's got to give me a big target, not a little target. Then once I'm there, and really out of my body, then he turns his energy down to come into a balance in me, for me to come back into my body and to simply hear his thoughts and state them.

Q: Did he do anything differently tonight?

Barbara: No. He says it's your own sensitivity tonight. He says, when I trance-channel Ariel, I stay in that space out of the body and the energy that comes through is very powerful as trance-channeling. That many people who have experience Ariel have felt this blast of energy through the whole talk.

We're going to start. We have just put candles on a cake and enjoyed a cake and tea. And we're going to start. What questions do you have?

Q: How does one state the intention while doing metta?

Barbara: I'm paraphrasing Aaron. He says that one does not state the intention while doing metta, one states the intention as a preliminary. He says one lives with the intention. It becomes so deep and constant it's almost like a mantra. The intention to live one's life in non-harm, to live one's life in service to all beings. He says eventually this becomes the Bodhisattva vow. This is the way that vow deepens in meaning and pervades every aspect of one's waking and sleeping consciousness and subconscious life. He says, if you have taken a vow, for example, he's going to use a very simple example here, taken a vow to fast for the day, and around dinnertime somebody brings in a bowl of food with a very fragrant aroma, desire may come up in you. Seeing the desire, ... let Aaron say this.

Aaron: I am Aaron. Seeing that desire, you don't simply give into it. You can, but the vow to fast had meaning to you. The desire does not mean you've got to eat that fragrant food. You simply note desire as desire. You also don't have to kill the desire. The intention to honor the vow is there. And it is held with a certain amount of reverence in the heart. Seeing the desire to act in a way that breaks the vow, you turn with kindness to that which wants the food. Simply note, “desire, desire.” It may be desire simply because of the fragrance, or awakening certain old conditioned responses. Or it may be that the fragrance awakens real hunger if you've not eaten for 20 hours. Note hunger, note the pain about it. Real hunger. “May I be safe. May I be happy.” As you honor the fact that there is desire, is hunger, and offer lovingkindness to yourself, the hunger doesn't go away but it becomes superfluous. It's like having a mosquito bite. If you scratch it, it's going to bleed. When it itches, you don't have to scratch it. You don't scream, “I'm going crazy! Somebody stop this itching!” You simply note, “Here is itching. It's uncomfortable. By tomorrow it will feel better.” You may put a little bit of ice or lotion on it. Or you may simply touch it with loving thoughts and relax the skin around it. Does this answer your question? I pause.

Q: I'm interested in the hologram and the fact that we can be everywhere at one time.

Barbara: Aaron says not that you *can* be, that you are. He asks, do you have any specific question about that? Or is it just a statement of your interest.

Q: It appears under certain circumstances we can be in cultures that aren't ours. Or be animals that begin to know how they feel and think. And I'm wondering how that may be accomplished on a more conscious level.

(Clean to here. There may be significant errors in channeling or transcribing or caused by poor recording, beyond here.)

Aaron: I am Aaron. Everything is present but some of it is beneath the surface. If you see wonderful flowers blooming atop a sand dune on the beach, you know that they must have deep roots. That somewhere there must be sufficient soil to hold water and to offer the nutrients needed by these flowers for their growth. If you look at it up close, all you see is the flower, or the flower and sand. If you were to take a slice into the earth, you'd see the whole root structure and how the sand gives way to more decayed material, organic matter.

Learn to view yourselves this way. The other human expression is just the flower. Always you must be aware of not only the flower but the roots, the soil in which the roots grow, and the conditions that are being experienced and have been experienced. You must be aware of it as a non-linear time frame.

For example, if you come to a river and there is some pollution floating in the river, just right here where you're standing, you use something to gather up the bit of oil that you see, to soak it up. You scoop out the bits of trash. The water is flowing very slowly so that you have time to clean up this 20 feet of river. Finally you say, “I'm finished,” sit down for a moment and open your eyes, but here's an oil slick again. There's more trash. It's a continuum.

You are a continuum but it is not a linear time continuum. Rather, it is as if we were to take a snapshot of you in each moment of this and every lifetime and overlay them as transparencies on each other. What point of a snapshot like that is your favorite pose? You would begin to see how frequently there was a pose like this, with the arms in a protective attitude, warding off danger, or how often there was a pose with the arms open, waiting to receive. Then you'd start to understand the characteristics that you have carried with you repeatedly. You'd start to know those characteristics not as self but simply as inherited tendencies. This is a way of cutting through from the surface down deep into the earth, cutting a slice, a cross-section.

Get to know the whole self, the beauty and innate perfection, and the distortions. Don't be afraid of anything that comes to the surface. Q, there was no real question so this is not offered as answer, just as comment. I pause.

Q: I have a question about intention and vibration. If intention is preceding each and every thought and feeling we have, whether we realize it or not, does intention have a specific vibration pattern that changes with each intention?

Barbara: It has a predictable pattern related to your karma and your habitual tendencies. If the pattern has been one of self-service, and attending other people but only after you're comfortable, then when a new situation arises, the intention is going to be based on that habitual tendency. If you begin to investigate that habitual tendency and come to a place of willingness to trust the situations in your life and not move into a defended stance immediately, then the intention changes and has a different texture to it.

There is a story that I think relates here that a colleague told at a Buddhist teachers meeting and I found myself very moved by it. She said that they were invited to dinner at the home of very dear longtime friends and the man for the past year had Alzheimer's and was moving deeper into that experience of forgetfulness of the people around him, who they are, and so on. All his life he had been a teacher and a very loving, giving person, very kind to others. It wasn't a forced kindness, it was a very genuine kindness, grown out of a place that really did not separate between self and other.

So she tells how she and her husband came and rang the doorbell. This man opened the door and looked at them very blankly and then he said to them, “If you're here at my door, I know that you're friends. Forgive me but I don't remember your names. Please come in.” This is who he was, and so it came out, it didn't matter that he forgot the details. The basic quality of his character was so deep in his being, in his intention toward, kindness to others and openheartedness and non-separation, that it just expressed itself in each situation.

Does that answer the question?

Q: I think so.

Barbara: Okay. Think about it. We just become clearer and clearer. We become more and more able to respond to a centered place. You've heard me talk about that story when the car ran over my foot. Have you?

Some years ago, I was at the train station very early in the morning sending one of my children on a class trip. I had been talking to people and I turned around and put this foot down, stepping off the curb into the parking lot, and somebody tapped my shoulder. So I turned around to talk to them, one foot up on the curb, one foot out in the parking lot. I turned around and was focused on what we were talking about. The car that was parked there backed up. People started to scream. It stopped on my foot. Ran over my foot. People started to scream, “Stop! Stop!” So she stopped right there with the car on my foot. She got out, she said, “What's wrong?” She came running around the car, “What's wrong?” She said, “Oh, my God! What should I do?” I said, “You may get in your car and move it off my foot!”

Now, it was very painful, but I didn't get hysterical. I didn't tense my muscles and try and pull my foot out. There was nothing to do with this car on my foot! So I was able to just relax, and she got in her car and she moved it off my foot. And I did go to the emergency room and have it X-rayed. I almost didn't do that because I could move it and I could feel it was bruised but once she got the car off it, it felt OK. They told me if I had tensed up I probably would have had many broken bones, but because I was completely relaxed, it just ...

C tells a story of a woman who was her teacher many, many years ago. The teacher had gotten old. Her name was M. She lived in a bad section of Cleveland or some town in Ohio. She didn't want to move out of that neighborhood that had been her home for many years. A man broke in and wanted to rob her house. He grabbed her to choke her, and her first reaction was to tense up, to try to fight.

Then she thought, “He's twice my size. I'm a frail old lady. If he's going to kill me, I'm not going to die with an attitude of hatred and fear.” So she just relaxed. She felt herself blacking out. And they found her and took her to the hospital and she was fine except for bad bruises. They said that it would have broken her windpipe if she had tensed. It's the same situation, exactly.

Gandhi comes to mind, the moment of his death, “Ram!” He's shot. He's dying. “Ram!” This is the effect of all of our training. The more we train the more it becomes so deeply centered and intuitive that even if the fear-based response comes up, we don't react to it. It's still karmic, it's still an habitual tendency, but it's much easier to find freedom from habitual tendencies toward openness and centeredness and non-harm than it is for the fear-based tendencies.

Q: So there are 2 major factors that contribute to the energy pattern of each intention. One is our personality or karmic pre-disposition and the other is fear or absence of fear.

Barbara: Aaron says no. Let him speak. He says, not quite.

Aaron: I am Aaron. You are constantly creating the ability to act and live from the divine self, from the Christ or Buddha nature. That divine self has always been there. Your habitual tendency is to live your life in a defended, reflexive way, simply reacting to stimulus, slapping at the mosquito. Those are the tendencies for all of you, in your immaturity.

As you moved into a more mature mode of being and became more awake, awake to your interconnection with all that is, you no longer could symbolically slap at the mosquito. You had to investigate your relationship to the pain of its bite and to the mosquito itself, and to that place which we call God where you come together, you and the mosquito.

The voice of fear is very loud so you had to learn how to listen to the whisperings of the loving heart. You're learning now to change your relationship to fear, not to become fearless, but rather to discover a fearlessness that is inherent to you which exists simultaneously with the experience of fear. Do you understand that? Fearlessness and the experience of fear are not mutually exclusive. So you are learning to be present with fear without being sucked into the stories of fear.

You call this, simply, training. Your vipassana practice is a big part of it. Day to day mindfulness is a big part of it. Conscious statement of intention, practices such as clear comprehension of purpose, the taking of various vows and precepts with deepening of sila, all of these are courses which participate in your training.

Many of you have experience lifetimes of what I would call a false training in various religions, and I use here Buddhism and Christianity merely for example, where you were taught as Buddhists, “Abandon the negative. Abandon the kalesas,” or unwholesome states of mind. You were taught that the interpretation of “abandon” was “Destroy them. Strengthen your will to fight against them. Don't let them get a hold of you.” And so each of you that got that kind of training, moved into a deeper duality with negativity. In Christian lifetimes you had the same experience. “This is a sin, a deadly sin. Confess. Do penance. Destroy it from your system.” Again, the teachings of duality. Every religion has picked up these distortions, every one, some more than others. Every major world religion also has at its core the teachings of nonduality.

Of course, no teacher speaks to everyone. The people who find my teaching of most use are those who have come to a place in that progression toward maturity where you are ready to confront these distorted teachings, to cease to bring attack to negativity in any form, but instead to more fully focus on positivity. This then becomes the new frame. Whatever arises, be present with it. See how you can make space for it. Don't get caught up in its stories and become a victim of it, or dictated to by it. Stand firm and willing to say no to it but with kindness, and when fear may arise, bring that fear also into the heart. Whatever arises, embrace it.

The more systematically you embrace this truth with a gentleness and a love, not a dogmatism, which is also a voice of fear, then a willingness-- let me phrase it in this way... You know the word grace. Each of you wants to control what happens in your lives. You seek to understand and understanding can be a part of wisdom, but understanding can also be a part of the whole mechanism of control.

When you relax enough to acknowledge, “I don't really know what's going on here. I only have as guide my highest intention to offer my energy lovingly and without harm to other beings, to all beings including the self,” then you relax and allow the occurrence of what I would call grace. Grace is that point where you truly may become Co-Creator (with a capital C). When you allow the divine to work through you and your own highest divinity to express itself. Your own divinity and the Divine (with a capital D) are not two, so you allow this purest expression of Divine to come through you and you become the channel for it. This is grace. The human...

(switching tapes)

Aaron: I am Aaron. I continue. So truly as I mention it, is this ongoing willingness to be present in the moment with the moment's experience, to observe the whole pattern of contraction which is so deeply ingrained in you, and not to become caught in that contraction as self. Not to get sucked up by the stories of the contraction, but simply to notice that it's unpleasant, to notice mind's aversion to the experience of contraction, to offer metta there.

When this training becomes deep enough, the old habits of fear-based behavior simply dissolve. There is nothing left for the old karma to stick to. Think of walking through the meadow with fuzzy pants, how burrs will stick to you. Velcro, it's sticky. But if you walk through the meadow with very smooth pants, nothing can stick. This training smoothes the surface so there's nothing left for karma to stick to. The old karma will dissolve itself gradually when you cease to be reactive to it. Right then there's freedom.

We have talked of this before, how on the ultimate level the karma never existed. It existed only because you believed in it and perpetuated it and gave it something to stick to. Your training smoothed the surface. Teflon, no stick. I pause.

Barbara: It's 10 o'clock, we need to stop. Next week.

Q: I find my questions being answered as I think of them! So, thank you, Aaron.

Barbara: Aaron says, you know he is telepathic and he does pick up the questions around the room and he does speak to them without your voicing them. Sometimes he feels it's better for you to voice them because you learn by voicing. Sometimes it's more helpful to the group when several people are asking the same question for him to simply to speak to it.

Q: Are there questions that cannot be answered by anyone?

Barbara: Aaron says no, but there are questions that it is not useful to answer. (Laughter) Who needs to know all the answers? He pauses. He says this is that question of surrender and grace. Letting go of control.

Some of you, I don't know if any of you knew K. She did almost all the transcribing of Aaron for 4 or 5 years. She is the one who with me worked on the private transcripts that many of you have read and was part of our classes for a number of years. She lives in Colorado now. She taught us a poem years ago. Her grandmother taught it to her when she was a little girl. It was a prayer.

I am the place that God shines through

For God and I are one, not two.

I need not fret, nor will, nor plan

God wants me where and as I am.

If I'll just be relaxed and free

She'll carry out her will through me.

I find that a very beautiful reminder, whenever I'm tensing up and saying, “I've got to control ... “ Relax. That doesn't mean we become non-participatory, it means that we can then tune in from higher self level, and it becomes more effective because fear's voice is not predominant. It's that place of grace.

You may have all heard this story of my friend and her puppy in the street, that was hit by a car. Have you heard this story? Most of you? Most of you have not. This is about 30 years ago. She was in India to attend a vipassana retreat led by Goenka, who was a very famous vipassana teacher. It was the night before the retreat and she was walking in the village where it was going to be, when suddenly she saw a car run over a puppy, a little tiny baby puppy. And it squealed and yelped. Nobody paid any attention. So she ran out into the street and it was crying and yelping and bleeding all over her. She stood there holding it and saying, “I don't know what to do! I don't know what to do!” Just so taken by its pain and fear. “I don't know what to do!”

She felt a hand on her shoulder and voice, she didn't see a face, just a voice that said, “You do know what to do.” And as the hand let go, as he disappeared in the crowd, she realized she did know what to do. It was just that one moment of letting go of fear, coming back to center. “Of course I know what to do. A puppy this little must have a mother nearby.” She went and found the mother. The mother was frantic. The mother started licking the puppy. The wounds were superficial and the puppy started to nurse so she left him in the care of his mother.

The next day she went to the retreat and she was sitting with a hundred other people in the meditation hall, waiting for Goenka to come in. Her eyes were closed. She felt from the stir of energy that the teacher had entered, but she was sitting with her eyes closed. Then the voice came through: it was the same voice!

We know what to do. Part of us knows what to do. We really can touch that, we can learn from that. We all need occasionally that message, “You do know what to do.” Say it to ourselves.

We need to stop. Joys and sorrows?

Q: I like the mystery.

Barbara: Aaron says, so there are no questions that do not have an answer, but why look for the answers? That's not what the human is here for. He says you're not here to get enough answers so that you can control better but to learn how to let go enough to allow that which is infinitely wise to offer skillful direction in your lives.

Q: I have found the people I am working with are much more cooperative and I think partly this is from a change in my attitude.

Barbara: The more we come from center, the less there is in us to grate on other people. When we're not grating on them, even if they're not very much awake, they don't get out their claws. And they are much more cooperative and helpful.

I don't know where I saw this. It was something on TV about 2 years ago but I don't remember what kind of show it was, where they were just demonstrating how people reacted to different situations. Two groups of high school age kids were part of the experiment. One group of kids, one or two at a time out of the group, were to walk up to a stranger and say, “I need a dime” or “I need a quarter. I need to make a phone call. Give me a quarter.” In an in-your-face kind of way. And the others were to be better groomed and to walk up very kindly and say, “Hello, my name is Johnnie or Susie. I need to make a phone call and I don't have any money and I'm looking for a kind stranger who could give me a quarter. Could you do that please?” in a kind and gentle way. And there was such an overwhelming response of “Get away from me!” to the aggressive ones and, of course, generosity to the kind ones. It's not surprising, of course.

We need to stop. I just want to say that I had a wonderful trip to visit my mom. She is doing pretty well ...