February 10, 1999

990210 WC.doc

February 10, 1999

Wednesday Night Group

Barbara: I gather that Aaron wants to start with something a bit different tonight and use it as a basis for his continuing discussion on intention and manifestation. I am not sure where he's going. I'm never sure where he's going! But this afternoon Hal and I went to see what's called an “open captioned movie.” It's something new that they have on a big screen in a movie theater. Over here at Showcase cinema where they have many screens on one movie, certain very infrequent showings they have what are called open captions. It's like the closed captions they have on TV. So I can go into a movie theater and see a movie. This is new for me. I've not seen movies in a theater in over twenty-five years.

(Speaking to some confusion about what we mean by captioning.)

Do you know what closed captions are on TV? For people who are deaf or for anybody who can benefit by them, the whole dialogue is captured like a foreign film would be. It's written underneath. The movie is in English but it's still captioned. These are pretty clear captions, they're pretty much word-for-word so they get most of the dialogue. So it's the big screen and it's large enough to be very legible, but it doesn't interfere with the picture, it's just at the bottom of the screen.

Q: Was it a foreign film?

Hal: Maybe I could give it a little try. When they make movies, one out of every hundred prints is made with the spoken words on the screen. This is American films that are made and under Hollywood productions. The actors talk and hearing people can hear the sound. Like I can hear the sound. And for deaf people they can read the words in English. So the language spoken and the language written are the same. It's for deaf people, older people who sometimes have hearing problems or anybody that's hard of hearing. But they only make one out of every hundred prints ...

Barbara: Also for foreigners also whose English may not be perfect. Enough background, you've got the idea ...

The movie was over three hours long and we were in it as a private screening, we were the only ones there! About two hours into, we were stiff and we got up and we were waltzing up and down the aisle, watching the movie and dancing ...

The movie we saw was called Meet Joe Black. Has anybody seen it? Aaron was wonderfully entertaining through the movie, telling me all kinds of things that he wants to share with the group and he says are directly related to energy, intention and so on. So we're going to start with some movie analysis! (Laughter) ...

Aaron: I am Aaron. Good evening and my love to you all. This film brought up many interesting concepts. This instrument was filled with questions as she watched it and so we spent some time conversing. And I think you would be interested in the subject of that conversation. It is not extraneous to the work we are doing here.

As a very basic introduction to the premise of the story, an energy that calls itself Death comes to fetch a man and bring him through that transition. It seems he is curious about the human experience. He therefore takes a body, in other words, a being is killed, hit by a vehicle, and Death steps into the body and inhabits it. Watching that action, this instrument said she did not yet know the nature of this energy. She asked, “Is it negatively polarized?” So we got into a bit of a dialogue on being and emptiness on the one hand, and nothingness/non-being on the other. Emptiness and nothingness are not the same. And we got into a dialogue also on positive and negative polarity vs. this nothingness that I said by its very nature has no polarity.

Being contains the concept of self. There is some kind of identity. Emptiness is that which is empty of the concept of self but holds the experience of Self. It is not a void. It is not empty of everything. Rather, those of you who have met this kind of experience in meditation, the falling away of the ego self, find that what's left is very full. It is a vibrant energy. It is the place where when you are there (pointing) and you are there and this instrument is there and I am there, we are in the same place.

In his book, Open Secrets, Rabbi Rami Shapiro speaks of the Hebrew terms yesh and ayin for form and emptiness and talks of a teacup. He asks, “Is the cup the shape of the cup, the solid outer form or is it the space within?” and points out that you need both for it to be a cup. If it cannot hold tea, it's not a cup. To hold tea it has to have form and emptiness.

These aspects of being, form and emptiness, may express themselves in positive or negative polarity. Form may be very positive, very negative, or somewhere near neutral, but it always has a polarity. We have spoken of this polarity before and I've asked you to see it as a continuum. A magnet has a positive and negative pole. The magnet itself is not positive or negative, it has a positive pole and a negative pole. Each of you, even the most highly positively polarized, have some negativity, some sort of negative pole. And even the most deeply negative being still has the potential of opening into its positivity. Neutral is a balanced state. Positivity and negativity are both distortions of that state. Positivity is the distortion of love and service to all beings. It is the distortion of the open heart, the distortion of connection and deep awareness of the non-solidity of the ego self. Negativity is a fear distortion. It's expressions are service to self and a firm holding to the fear distortion in which the self is solidified.

For a certain distance through sixth density, negativity is a viable path. There certainly are very negative entities who may cause great pain on any plane. At the end of sixth density, negativity ceases to be a viable path and negative energy must turn itself around and transform itself slowly into neutral and then positive energy. My point is that form and emptiness are both aspects of being, and express polarity.

I would further clarify that one cannot rest in this place of emptiness and be negatively polarized. That is an impossibility. Self, the identification with ego, with mind, with physical body, with any of the squanders, that being ensconced in such identification can express positive or negative polarity. But as soon as one drops that identification and comes more deeply into an identification of being as the pure awareness self, which is simply an expression or aspect of all that is, as one moves into that potential, negative polarity becomes impossible. That does not mean there will no negativity. There will be moments of slipping back into the illusion of identification with the squanders.

What of non-being? Let me explain how I use the term non-being. Non-being is not the emptiness which is full. Non-being seems to be void. It does not carry any vibration. We set the whole range of being, as form and emptiness, on one side, and place non-being on the other side.

That for which this Death was metaphor, I understood as non-being. Absence of vibration. And yet, as I said, it cannot be dual. Nothing is dual. Within non-being there is the potential for being. If you have a bucket that's completely empty, there is the potential for a drop of water to fall into it. One drop, and then it's not empty any more. The bucket shape itself invites that drop of water to enter. Non-being is not a stagnant phase but dynamic. It is the hands just before they reach out to invite that which they may eventually contain. In that moment, just before they reach out, there is no vibration. And yet, with that first intention, it begins the whole vibration process.

I found this film to be a wonderful metaphor for that transition of non-being and absence of vibration into vibration with the distortions of vibration. I am using the word vibration here in a certain way. You each have a vibrational frequency. You resonate to that frequency. For most of you, that resonance is harmonious with light, with love, with the expressions of kindness. Your four bodies hopefully each resonate more or less in harmony. Sometimes you experience discomfort when there's not a harmony between these bodies. If you are positively polarized, you are constantly inviting in a higher vibration, coming to the highest vibration you can stably hold in the four bodies. And it is through that vibration that you express intention out into the world. This point is where we connect with these ongoing talks on manifestation.

I want to say a bit more about the movie first. Just before Death first entered the earth plane, he had no vibrational frequency. He could not possibly be either positive or negative. It was flat. The intention to experience was the first drop of water, so to speak, the first move into being. It existed before, as a kind of vacuum through which beingness could pass, but expressed no intention and carried no vibration, only the potential for these.

Because it moved from flatness into the receptivity of the empty container, from non-being to emptiness, the energy of vibration was able to accumulate and it began to move into a polarity. Coming into beingness, it could have gone either way, to the expression of positive or negative polarity. In this story it moved into positivity. What happened to this being was that he fell in love. Furthermore, he learned from the beings around him the power of respect and kindness. The taking of this body in the beginning was neither good nor evil. It was an absolutely flat expression. There was really no concept of self or other. Simply, picking up something that was no longer useful to its owner and reprocessing it, recycling it. He simply picked up the body after it had been killed. Or seemed to be killed; the ending is a bit ambiguous and I don't want to tell you the story for perhaps you will wish to see the movie.

If we follow this being as his heart is touched, one can literally feel the beginning of vibration in him, the shift into polarity.

So we have non-being as one expression of being, not dual with it, and, as non-being moves into being, the non-dual options of form and emptiness, the notion of self and the notion of no-self. Then follows the move into polarity and vibration.

H falls in love. And love leads him from non-being through service to self and into service to other and to positive polarity. That's the essence of the story. Now what do we have to learn from it in terms of the subject of recent talks?

Intention is energy. It can be negatively polarized or positively polarized energy. It cannot come from non-being. Non-being cannot manifest energy, so for energy the bucket must begin to fill, or at least it must cup itself in expectation of that first drop. Then it will process the experience of slowly filling up, go through the entire repertoire of possibility of negative and positive polarity. I do not mean by that that it will necessarily become deeply negative but it will experience the taste of negative polarity and the taste of positive polarity.

Barbara: While cleaning the talk, I asked Aaron here “what leads to the first intention?” He replied, “That is the sweet mystery which shall remain mystery.” I get a sense from him of his experience of this which creates the first intention as “life force,” or perhaps as “God.”

Here we return to the relation of vibration and intention, and the relationship of these to manifestation. Negatively polarized intention carries a specific vibration, and positively polarized intention carries a different vibration. Perhaps you have seen with a stringed instrument, how if you hold a certain harmonic on a string and pluck it, if the next string is in tune it will vibrate. In the same way, the vibration of your intention literally draws that which is like itself to it. In the usual case where there are multiple intentions, that which is of the highest intention, the most powerfully expressed, is what will most forcibly attract like to itself.

What this means on the relative plane is, in a very simple example, if you have the highest intention to help another being who is experiencing difficulty, not for any reasons of self-gain but simply because you are touched by their situation and moved from a deep place of love and kindness to offer your assistance, and if simultaneously the thought arises, “I wonder if anybody is watching. I wonder if somebody will praise me,” that deep move of kindness and love offers one kind of vibration and the thought, “Will I get praise? What will I get?” offers a different vibration.

If that thought of wanting praise is noted without any contraction around it, without any fear of it or criticism, just noted with a smile that says, “Here I am, noting desire for praise, nothing I need to do about that thought,” it doesn't draw anything back to itself. The energy of the thought simply releases.

If the thought of “What will I get out of this?” arises and there's a contraction around it, as the further thought, “I shouldn't be thinking this,” or an obsessiveness with the thought, “What am I going to get?” then it the thought begins to resonate and it draws energy on that negative level of being. It draws forth competitive feelings, blame and so forth.

The loving intention also has no contraction and but it does not release, but invites back reciprocal energy. It draws back goodness, kindness. This is because while there is not contraction, there is still relationship to the thought as self. Thus, with this positive thought, there is still karma, but it is a wholesome karma. Only in the emptiness of “no-self” does karma cease.

(Barbara: I have asked Aaron to speak further on this point another week.)

We have been talking here for a number of weeks about the whole process of creation, from within the whole range from what I call the dictator self, or small ego self, through co-creator and on to a clearer form of Co-Creator, and on to the place where the ego falls away completely and we move into Creator. All of you are at the level of co-creator/Co-Creator. Very few humans reach that level of Creator in a sustainable way. So it is the level of co-/Co-creator, with both small and capital C, that range, which we wish to investigate.

Each of the four bodies vibrates to a different frequency but will increasingly be in harmony with each other. If you choose to co-create, let us say, within your work, to co-create a work arena where people's needs are met, where there's joy and fulfillment, where the work that flows out of that arena is of service to all beings, that arising intention carries with it a specific vibration in each of the bodies. If that vibration is strong and stable in all of the bodies, you will rarely find yourself in a work environment that is not harmonious to it. What then of those of you who find yourself in less than perfectly harmonious work environments? And of course the same question holds true for any kind of environment in which you find yourself.

Q, I hope it will not be an invasion of your privacy here to refer to an incident that we talked about here on a Wednesday night some time ago, well over a year ago, of your difficulties with your neighbor. Q has a cottage on a lake. This neighbor has a large area of lakefront but he insisted on putting his dock just at the edge, and at an angle, really intruding into Q's lakefront area. Q was quite angry and did not know what to do. He has since done considerable work with it and pretty much resolved the problem, although the dock still intrudes on Q's lake view. But it is no longer a big issue for Q.

There were two different energies coming out at first. One was the intention to harmony and one was the fear-based intention to control. As long as he carried that fear-based intention, it invited his neighbor's reciprocal negativity. When he began to understand that fear-based intention, to send kindness to himself when that fear was present, his energy field changed drastically and he ceased to send out that vibration.

Because the resultant forms in the material world take much longer to die down, the neighbor is still putting his dock there, touching Q's property. My conjecture is that soon he's going to weary of this. He may or may not move the dock. It may be such an established habit that he won't move the dock but the grasping energy is dying out of it because there's nothing from Q to hold it in place. Of course, the man has his own fear which perpetuates his grasping energy, regardless of Q. In just that way, just because a situation is resolved, does not mean it ceases to exist. We could use this instrument's deafness for example. The various vibrational patterns which invited certain experiences of separation are totally resolved. She has no more need to investigate separation vs. non-separation. But because of the heavy density of the physical body, the ear does not miraculously then restore itself.

In a similar way, using this instrument as an example, there was need to draw the whole self into a compassionate place within the self, to explore that which had been persistently put out of her heart in lifetime after lifetime. Symbolic was this left leg. There was certainly no conscious intention to create an affliction which would damage the left leg. There was conscious intention to end the war with the self. That conscious intention sent out very positive energy, but there was the residual energy of war with the self, the dying reverberations of that energy. There was always that little bit that could not yet be embraced. The contraction around that separation sent out a confused energy.

The bacteria had to be there, the genetic situation had to be there. She did not cause the infection; the loving intention to resolve the confusion and the ongoing fear which was not quite ready to resolve the confusion and embrace even the negativity within the being, came together and invited the situation of the leg. Doing her work with this illness, the confusion is resolved. The karma that has existed on a cellular level in this body for innumerable lifetimes is resolved. The leg itself perhaps can slowly repair itself but cannot at this time fully repair itself. But the karma will not be perpetuated into another lifetime. The leg and circulation of the leg will cease to carry a karmic imprint that might invite dis-ease in future lifetimes.

This is a very hard concept to understand. What I am speaking about here is really very confusing for many of you. I'm going to give you one more example. You imagine a new business. The highest intention is to offer something that is of service to all beings and that will support the self, because kindness to the self is part of this general positive polarity. The kindness to the self does not come from a place of grasping or fear but is borne out of the notion of kindness to all beings. You make up a brochure with a plan to mail it out and to ask yourself, “Who would benefit by this service?” If you do not highly limit the possibilities but instead mail it out to certain beings ...

(We pause, the tape will be turned.)

If you mail this out choosing a certain audience, perhaps to teachers or to social workers, but with an unlimited intention, “May it move through these people and find its way to the hands of those who can most use it,” then you are not limiting yourself in any way, and yet since you cannot send it out to 100,000 people you must choose an audience to whom you may mail it. But if there is the stated intention, “For the good of all beings, and not to these people but through these people,” you leave room for one of them the look at it, drop it in the trashcan, and it to blow loose at the city dump and somebody else pick it up. It flies in their face. Your open energy and vibrational frequency literally draw to you that being who is seeking, “For the good of all beings, may I find the information that I need.” Whoosh! There it is! Of course.

If the fear vibration is dominant so that the mind is obsessive and saying, “I'm sending out how many thousand, how much will it cost me? What percentage of them will pick it up and read it and perhaps call me? Will I make enough money?” then all of these fear-based motivations become primary and you draw to you those who are similarly enacting their own fear-based vibration. They may call you and bargain with you about the price. They may express their own uncertainties.

Most likely, you are going to be somewhere between these two places, sending it out with the highest possible motivation but also encountering your own fear. Here I come right back to the statement, which is primary? And what will your relationship be to that fear? You cannot stop the fear from arising. When you relate to the fear with love, with kindness and spaciousness, it stops it in its tracks in terms of the karmic energy it generates. It's no longer generating fear-based energy. It's vibrating more to that kindness that you are expressing toward your own fear.

We can learn how energy invites positive or negative result, can deepen intellectual understanding, but ultimately the question is this; how do I learn to love more fully, to open my heart even to that which is painful or frightening? It is for this purpose that you took incarnation.

We have by no means exhausted this topic. I'm going to pause here. I will welcome your questions after your break. And I expect that we will be going deeper into this for quite awhile. I thank you for your attention. May each of your deeply loving energy lead you to those vibrational frequencies which connect with the loving energy of others so that you may join in that manifestation of joy, peace and harmony in the universe. May you come to know your deepest pure energy, that divine energy of the very highest vibration, and share that with all beings. I thank you. That is all.

Barbara: Aaron says that this talk may have felt confusing to some of you, that he is dealing with very subtle issues. If you are confused, he invites your questions, number one, and number two, he urges you to simplify it for yourself. The primary question is, considering that I am a representative not of non-being but of being, with its form and emptiness, and that I therefore carry both positive and negative energy, how am I relating to the negativity in myself? That relationship is the most definitive statement of what I am putting out into the world. He says, that is all.

A glass jar which was left in my mailbox before Christmas, and I've been intending every Wednesday to bring them out and share them. There are little slips of paper, maybe 100 of them, with messages. We're passing around this jar of little messages, people pulling one out. People are reading them . (Recorder off and on.) One of the things on Q's said, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.” Aaron asked, “Does Q see how that aligns with what he mentioned earlier, about Q's experience?” (Yes.)

Q: “I have a purpose in living to shine forth the light of God. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Let your light shine forth before—”

Barbara: These are perfect! I guess I will leave the tape recorder on ...

Q: This is an ongoing conversation with Aaron. “Let that old soul come out.”

Q: “God blesses me with overflowing abundance.” No grasping!

Q: “I find inner peace when I honor the presence of God within me and others. Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image according to our likeness.'”

Q: “For everything there is a season. Ecclesiastes.”

Barbara: I am moved at how fitting these are, each one.

Q: “I live a Christ-inspired life. All of us, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. Corinthians.”

Q: “God inspires me and shows me the way. If we live by the spirit let us also be guided by the spirit.”

Q: “I am fulfilling my divine potential. Be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you may discern what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Just what I needed!

Q: “God has blessed me with a special gift: individuality.” (Applause)

Q: This one says, “I am a wise saying stuck in a jar.” (Laughter) “The joy of God reaches out through me and I rejoice.”

Barbara: “I rely on God for great answers. Before they call I will answer. While they are yet speaking I will hear.”

Barbara: With thanks to whoever anonymously left this in my mailbox.

(break)

Barbara: We just had break and we're starting with questions.

Aaron says that this whole question of the energy vibration of intention and how it invites in like energy, he finds very fascinating.

Q: Some time ago, I gave a large sum of money to some friends of mine who were in bad shape. And in order for her to get a job, she needed a car. And I gave a lot of money which I thought was adequate to get a used car. I didn't lend it to them, I said they didn't have to pay it back. And I thought my motives were pretty pure. But since then, because I don't hear from them very often, they live in Plymouth, I've started feeling resentful. And I realize that my motives weren't 100% pure, that I wanted to really give to them out of kindness, but I expected them to be kind back to me.

Barbara: That must have been very painful, when you then didn't hear from them.

Q: Well, it's okay, but I'm thinking that my motives weren't that pure.

Barbara: Aaron says, can you see that both are there? Let Aaron speak here.

Aaron: I am Aaron. Here we get into the question of adhering karma and how it works. Let us break karma down into what I might call adhering and non-adhering. The non-adhering isn't sticky. It's a smooth surface, nothing for anything to stick to. The pure motivations are non-adhering. They still can invite response but in themselves there's nothing there that needs to be resolved. The adhering karma is sticky. That which wants to be loved, that which wants others to relate to you in a loving way. That which feels discomfort at trying to buy love. All sticky! Any “self” which wants to be the giver is also sticky. To win admiration or love was not the primary motivation, of course. Nevertheless, it was present.

Beyond all the above, there was intention to resolve all of the negative views of the self and begin to more fully experience the divine self. This was the highest intention. The opportunity to give and to experience the results of giving was a vehicle to the fulfillment of this intention. Small self seeks confirmation. Wisdom seeks the opportunity to experience that confirmation from within, to experience Self. What if you do give in this way and they don't give back and therefore confirm the view of self ego ask to have confirmed? It throws it back on you in the larger sense of “you.” Which view of yourself are you going to hold to? Nobody else is going to do it for you.

So what I see here is a bit of wishing that somebody else could reflect the positive back to you in such a way that it would shatter the negative self view, and at some level, a deep intention to transcend any negative self view and the realization that for that to happen, you've got to do it yourself.

You've all heard the statement, “Be careful what you ask for, you might get it.” My conjecture is in some way what you are asking for is exactly what you got. While the conscious mind thought it wanted affirmation, a deeper level of self did not want that affirmation but wanted, not the pain of being neglected by them, but the reminder, “If any negative self-view is to be shattered, I have to do it myself.” And then the knowledge you can do it yourself.

As you come to more peace with the fact that they do not call you frequently, do not give you back what the fear-based self was seeking at some level, you have a much stronger and centered aspect of self within which aspect the negative self-view does or will shatter. This is exactly what you were seeking. I pause.

Barbara: Paraphrasing Aaron. He says this is tricky. At some level we all want to be safe, want to be taken care of, want to feel loved. Those messages, desiring those things, can be fear-based or love-based. What is sending out that message is much more important than the nature of the message. It's the same message, “I want to feel safe. I want to feel loved.” Is there a grasping that believes you're not worthy of love? “I am unworthy” or “I expect lack of safety.” Or is there an assurance that says, “I want to be loved and I am worthy of love and I invite it into my life.” He says, here is the energy of the intention. Is it a grasping energy which grabs at safety and love, or is it an inviting energy, a very open energy? Can you feel the difference in yourselves? He pauses.

(Time of silence.)

He asks, can you feel that difference? He says, of course you cannot get rid of that grasping energy. Right there is freedom because right there is where you can begin to relate to the grasping energy in a different way, with kindness instead of contempt. And that opens up the vibrational frequency and shifts it into a much stronger positive polarity. He pauses.

Q: I was thinking about how this applies to childhood and infant experiences—of the need for love being associated with fear, in the caretaker. It was helpful to see the fear is the real problem, rather than the dependent need. I was helped to see that just now.

Barbara: Aaron asks, do you understand, all of you, that fear is just fear? It carries a certain uncomfortable vibrational frequency.

Aaron: I am Aaron. The fear doesn't set off negative vibrational patterns, your relationship with the fear sets it off. In fear, there's just fear. Watch that whole contraction without the stories that need to avoid fear, force it away, control it. Just know how unpleasant it is and be there with it, as a witness to it, kind, enduring, patient. Then the negative vibrations are not set off. Fear itself is not a negative emotion. Fear is just fear. The negativity is in the contraction which believes it needs to do something with fear. I pause.

Aaron: I am Aaron. But the infant and child do experience fear. Increasingly on the earth plane they have role models who are able not to be engulfed in and identified with their own fear. When the role model is thus engulfed in and identified with, that's what the child learns. One might really ask, how many lifetimes do you have to go through this painful identification with fear as self before finally the light goes on and you realize it's not self, I don't have to perpetuate this. If the infant were to be born into an incarnation where it was highly protected from fear and offered a positive role model with fear, then it would learn a different pattern with fear. In some ways the infant draws its situation unto itself, just as any of you draw any situation unto yourselves. It relates to what we just said to Rebecca. It's about needing to play with it and play with it and play with it, to perpetuate all of these negative myths until you finally exhaust them and come to the conclusion, “I don't need to do this any more,” and then there's a breakthrough. I pause.

(Barbara: with Aaron while reading the transcript) Are you saying the spirit about to incarnate does not choose the incarnative experience which will model this lack of negative relationship with fear because it needs to experience the negative relationship in order to realize the nature of mind?

Aaron: Yes, precisely!)

Q: Over the last months in listening to Aaron's comments about negative or negativity, it is my understanding that the energy is not so much negative than that it is more out of harmony or synchronization as it steps down. I wonder if it would be more useful to describe negativity at times more as out of synchronization which causes the pain due to the frequency difference.

Barbara: He says this is suitable because negativity is simply discordance. Lack of harmony. Everything is vibrating at odd, irregular paces because of the contraction.

Q: Part of my thinking is by describing it as discordant takes away from the labeling of negative and supports it is just out of synch.

Barbara: He appreciates your wisdom. He says he has used these terms simply because they are the conventional terms and he is trying to employ those terms with which we are familiar. But what you are suggesting really is a clear vocabulary. He says there really is a negativity and negativity is the result of discordance that becomes more and more stuck and kind of freezes that way. It becomes more and more lost in darkness, less and less able to create any kind of spaciousness, and that pushes it off into what really is a negative distortion. He says, we do experience that kind of fear at times, but if mindfulness sends enough light in, it shifts it into discordance, not really negativity.

Q: The strength of the light or love supports a reminder of the Ever-Perfect and the deeper intention can be supported by that energy of love light to remember a more coherent path.

Barbara: He says at the same time, all of us do have experiences of real rage, jealousy, even hatred And he says this experience of discordance and our relationship with aversion to discordance as being one of increased contraction that carries us further and further into what he can only call a negative vibration, this whole process is the teacher. But ... he repeats something that he has said many times, there is not evil, only relative absence of light. Thus a negative vibration is closed into a very dark, tight place. He says he does see your point, Jack, and values your suggestion, but we also do want to see, he says, that as we get further and further into our own negative potential, the more we get socked into that kind of tight place. There, just any glimmer of light breaks it up and makes it more spacious again. We observe the process and it leads to non-identification with the negativity as self.

Q: The image of a black hole comes to mind, where the motion of the erraticness of the energy patterns become less and less stable, and at the same time create its own gravitational pull.

Barbara: He says, yes. He asks, what does this mean to your experience? Those of you who may have experienced real rage or other heavy emotion in recent weeks, can you feel that black hole aspect of it, how it sucks your energy, and how any act of kindness really breaks into that? He asks, would anybody like to share anything about that.

Q: I find that my unnoticed, habitual contraction and tension is more challenging than strong anger. The strong anger at least wakes me up! (Laughter)

Q: This was a couple years ago but at a time when I was being sucked into a lot of excessive thoughts about my family and my situation, all very angry and negative. And I would try to break out of it but usually I would be sucked right back in. And one of the things that actually broke through that the best was at my job, I was working in a corridor at the university where all the doors were always shut and there were no labels or signs. My office was next to the loading dock so every day a half dozen people or so would show up and have no idea where to go or what to do with their load of supplies, whatever. My predecessor in the office had warned me, keep your door shut or they will drive you crazy all day. So I discovered that if I did not shut my door, they all came to me and would ask usually very simply questions, “Where is such-and-such?” Simply by telling them the answer, I would feel totally different. It was not even a conscious, “Oh, I will be nice and then I will feel good,” it was simply a connecting with someone and it would change the day.

Barbara: Aaron says thank you, a beautiful example. He says, can you see how symbolically they represented confusion and by shutting the door, you would have been refusing to allow yourself to be intimate with confusion, just creating a sense of separation? Keep my confusion locked out, keep all confusion locked out. But by opening the door and allowing yourself to experience their confusion, you also become intimate with the experience of confusion and thereby ending the fragmentation of the self. He pauses.

Q: Interesting, I had not seen that, that direction. Thank you.

Barbara: He says, there's more to it. There's also the simple kindness which connects. He says thank you also.

Q: I understand how I get locked into anger. I have

The main recorder was not turned on when we began tape two. This is from the reserve recorder, with poor sound quality. There are gaps and it may not all be correct. Aaron has filled in his own statements where possible

Q: <> ... especially when it's ... <sounds like ‘competes with my oldest sister, ... exploded three weeks ago.'> I remembered what we had told him to do after the fact. Once I was able to disengage, I was able to keep my distance <> I answered the <> from my sister and essentially my father died <> my part <> and assured her I would cut out all ties with her. <> And I have kept my word <>. I finally understand that one draws to themselves what one is <>. I do not know how to stop the <>.

Aaron says the question was about the negativity experienced with family members at time of a family crisis.

Barbara: It's really difficult when one gets that locked. <> answer one of them and I want to offer this second one of <>.

Aaron Beginning sentences lost. When a pattern continues, first remember that there are several factors, and often several people, involved. You are both co-creating the situation. This reminds me of Q's difficulty with his dock. He began to see the ways his anger was inviting the response. But once he was more spacious, that didn't stop his neighbor's setting the dock out and acting rather irrationally. The neighbor will be as the neighbor will be. Your sister will be as she will be. That is your sister's work. At a certain point, when somebody becomes exhausted of the repetition of this or that situation, one realizes, “I do have some choice here.” If you're a fish and someone throws a baited hook in the water, you don't have to grab it. It's old conditioning. Each time you do take the hook you perpetuate the karmic stream. Can you see the baited hook and say, “not this time”? That which watches the desire to grab the hook, which opens its heart to that painful dilemma, is en route to clarity. This reflection that you all are offered a choice and are capable of loving wisdom is the first step. Then there are all the skillful means that may support this wiser choice. When the energy contracts around that catalyst, know it has contracted. Ask, “what is my highest purpose, to protect myself or to take the risk to opening this new doorway of deeper understanding?” .(this has been filled in by Aaron from the transcript)

Barbara: He says this is all very difficult for us, one of the most difficult for the human, because we literally feel ourselves to be unsafe and it calls out all our fear-based reactions. At that point what helps make space and clarity.

Q: <inaudible> Some suggestions were offered here. Most were lost in the tape noise.

Q: The company I work for is experiencing <> It has been going on for many years before I worked for them. So when I go to work it's hard not to feel <>, or at least it's easy to be aware <>. If I feel myself feeling sucked into that <> I try to stop and focus my energy on <> what I like best in that job. And that is reaching out and touching and serving people that come across my pathway, whether they be co-workers or customers or managers.

Barbara: So, Aaron says what you're doing is finding a place of center and light and stably resting there, just letting the negative energy move around you with the very clear decision, “If I get caught up in this negative energy, I'm going to be skillful with that experience.” He says that's a very loving statement. He says thank you and invites other suggestions.

Q: In the infamous dock situation, what I have found was helpful is to just remind myself that I do have a choice to not contract around the fears. That didn't necessarily stop me, at least in the beginning. But I truly believed I had a choice on the contraction. At some point, a shift occurred and I realized that I was starting to take responsibility for my contraction. And that's when the shift occurred.

Aaron: I am Aaron. I want to point out in the statement just made, that the realization you do have a choice, and that you can choose no response, is a very important realization. One must acknowledge that aspect of self which wants to remain in a combat zone, at odds with another, drawing up more adrenaline with thoughts of blame and anger and control, because this is the conditioned reflex that the human has used to seek the experience of what seems like safety. Here is this fight-or-flight mechanism. To relax and give it more space, to note that you do have a choice and don't have to get locked into the whole story of the anger, is very clarifying. So to accept that choice is to accept the risk of exposure to what has seemed dangerous, and let that very tender self that you've habitually protected be exposed. This is what is so difficult. When you understand this, it shines a light on the situation because you can increasingly allow that tender spot to be exposed. You start to find a strength that knows that even if the tender spot picks up barbs, you will survive, so you don't have to close up and move into blame, rage, and so on. It's a circular process.

Barbara: He asks for other input.

Q: I am grateful to Aaron/everyone for the clear expression of the <>. I find myself <> sense of self-blame and <> I can't seem to <heal> something the way I think I should. And that is one of the greatest <>.

Barbara: This is <>. He says a leading question is simply, “Do I need to do this?” And he says the part of you that wants to barricade and stay safe and cling to those old habits is saying “Yes! Yes!, I DO need to do this.” Just watch that voice and allow compassion for the fear. Just open to the new possibility, to allow more intimacy with the experience. He says one has to do it many times for it to start to feel like a viable option. But each time you do it, you increase the possibility of doing it more.

Q: One of the things I have found is in practicing this opening to the pain, anger, grief, that not only does it come easier but also a sense of witnessing the transformation of the energy from negative to ease and grace. <>

Barbara: Aaron is saying that <>. The practice of <> yourself can be very powerful when you're not locked in that space. He says that which observes the anger and allows the experience of it is not the anger itself. Right there is freedom and clarity. He says this is crucial to recognize. He says, our intuitive response to pain is a sense of compassion. As soon as you can see yourself contracting, he's saying, if that compassionate voice can send loving energy to that contracted aspect of self, that that aspect of the self can begin to come open again. He says the process works both in an energetic way, really helping to create space, and in the physical realm, and it also works because it brings you back to this center. He pauses.

Q: <someone> wrote a book called The Soul's <Code>. Essentially he talks about the fact that when you're born, you're born with a certain code that unravels <>. It seems like our choices are based on that <> as it unravels. And I have often wondered how much choice we really have in terms of <>.

Barbara: I'm paraphrasing Aaron. He says humanness experiences the fullness of confusion and clarity, love and hate, contraction and connection. Karma is energy and is a thread which runs through the above experiences but does not control them. Free will, awareness and intention are more important. Forgiveness shatters karma. We always have a choice. He will talk more on this question of free will, karma and intention. He pauses.

It's after 10, we need to stop ...