December 13, 2000 - Christmas story

Doing what's appropriate; manifestation and co-creation

Barbara: We' have 15" of new snow on the ground and more coming down hard. K and V have braved the storm and are here, so it's just the three of us. Aaron is not going to give a set talk, but just hang out and talk about whatever it is we want to talk about.

Q: We were hoping Aaron could tell us why we are here now. (giggle)

Aaron: I am Aaron. Good evening, and my love to you. I suppose you are here because you love me and enjoy my company. I pause.

Q: True, and many other people also love Aaron and his company but...

Aaron: But other people live further away. (laughter)

Barbara: He says probably you are also here in part because you knew it would be a smaller group and a chance to ask more personal questions. But he says he is not going to state those questions for you.

Q: I was thinking that maybe a five minute or ten minute sitting to gather some thoughts would be useful. (group agrees)

Barbara: Do you want me to ring a bell in ten minutes, or do you just want to offer a question when you have one?

Q: the latter.

Some time of silence

Aaron: I am Aaron. I want to break into the silence here to share a story. A memory that came to me as we sat here and watched the snow fall. It's really a Christmas story. Official Christmas story telling will be next week, but I would like to offer out this short memory and then perhaps return to silence for a bit.

On such a day as today, I walked with him through hills between two villages. It was late afternoon, but already dark. A light snow was falling. The hills had the same lightness you see outside the window here. We descended and were perhaps two miles from the village at the bottom of this hill. when we heard a noise, a crying noise. He immediately stepped off the path, moving toward the noise, at first a soft crying and then snarling. Coming over a small rise, there ahead of us we saw a mother goat on the ground, a very young baby close to the mother and in a small circle around them several "cats" is the best way I can describe them, mountain lions, who were snarling. The mother had a broken leg, and was very gaunt, emaciated. Reflecting back, I realize she must have been there for several days unable to find food for herself. She had continued to nurse her baby until her milk ran out; she was injured and without food and water; she was clearly dying. And now these wild cats had come, seeking food.

I remember the way he picked up the baby, the way the mother looked at him with a sense of trust knowing that this one would not harm her baby. The cats slunk back into the shadows at our human presence. He opened his shirt and tucked the baby in against his bare skin to offer it some warmth, closed his shirt and robe over it. "Build a fire," he asked us, and we did so.

By the time the fire was going, the mother was dead. It seemed she had struggled to remain alive to protect her infant, and seeing it safe she had released her hold on life. As we built the fire, the cats kept coming in closer, hungry, wanting meat. Sometimes they came close enough that he stood up, still holding this baby to his chest, "No, this one is mine. You will not harm it." But he saw their hunger, too. When the fire was started, he had us take some water and bread that we had, mix it together and make a paste. I remember how he sat there, this tiny creature's head peeking out from beneath his robes. He dipped his fingers into the warm paste and held it to the creature's mouth, again and again. Each time this small animal took a taste of nourishment. But he also asked us to clean the carcass and place it over the fire. Because it was so emaciated it was a lean goat, not something we would have chosen to eat at that time, knowing we were descending the hill and would have ample good food. "Heat it," he commanded, as it had begun to freeze. He cut the carcass into small parts and tossed them out to these hungry cats. He had no less compassion for their hunger than for this small baby's hunger. I have thought of this image many times, through many centuries. How he held that baby goat, his statement, "This one is mine." Here was a statement not only of the redeeming power of his love, but also the redeeming power of love. He was a metaphor for love, who literally was love, and his love embraced all of us. "This one is mine", this one I cherish, this one I care for. Darkness may not harm this one. But not choosing one over the other, I feed all who are hungry, love all beings alike.

How do we do that in our lives? As humans we do choose one over another, a friend over an opponent, one who we appreciate and like over one who brings us discomfort. We offer our love to the ones we appreciate. Do we feed those who bring us discomfort? These beasts spent the first part of the evening snarling and threatening him. He didn't take it personally. He understood their hunger. They were a kind of animals despised in those parts because they did kill people's flocks. They were treated as the coyote is treated in your west. But he saw past that. It reminds me of Maharaji's (speaking of the Hindu saint, Neem Karoli Baba) "love everyone and feed everyone," literally and figuratively. How do we feed those that we see as our enemies? What can we learn from him about seeing each being's hunger, not belly hunger but hunger for love, for safety. How can we offer that even to those who discomfort us? It is an image that will always remain with me. He was holding that infant in one arm, warming it against his bare chest, dipping his finger into the gruel he had made and feeding it, and at the same time picking up pieces of the carcass that had been this baby's mother and tossing them out to the hungry cats. That is all.

Barbara: He says we will sit until one of you alerts me with a question.

Q: I wanted to ask what would Jesus have done if the mother had not died, if she might have been saveable?

Aaron: I am Aaron. I cannot tell you what he would have done, only what I think he might have done. He was not overly sentimental. If the mother were badly injured and it would have been difficult to carry her out because she was large, he might have killed her himself and offered her to the cats. If we were able to splint her leg and to create a litter for her, he might have carried her, if he saw the cats were hungry but not starving, I presume he would have given them all the bread and food we had with us and chased them away. He understood compassion and metta (lovingkindness) , that metta does not choose one over the other, that all are equal. You cannot kill the mother for the cats, but if the mother is going to die then it's kinder to kill her more humanely, quickly, than to have her living body torn apart. If the mother can be saved, then you save the mother. You don't prefer the cats to the mother and you don't prefer the mother to the cats. So, what if the cat was injured on three legs also and had a small baby? I think somehow he, with his powers, would have found food for them. He did not do miracles of that sort in front of crowds of people, but he was capable of healing a cat if it had a broken leg, in fact he would have been capable of healing the mother at the time when we came to it and it was dying. He did not. If I may put this in quotation marks, he did not "play God." He did not choose to make life and death decisions, especially decisions that would hold one being as more valuable than another being.

So I don't know quite what he would have done, only what he would not have done. He would not have sacrificed one to feed another, unless in the natural order of things that one was dying. And then he would not move to use some special power to save it and create starvation for the other. But he had a trust in the natural order of things. I pause.

Barbara: I want to ask Aaron a question related to this. Aaron, you say he did not prefer one being over another, you are talking of two animals. What if he had come upon a human mother and infant, the human mother with a broken leg? Would he have saved her?

Aaron: I am Aaron. In those days it would have been considered a sacrilege to feed the human to animals, even if the human was starving. The dead human body would be buried, stones placed over the grave in a way so that animals could not molest the body. This is a bit beside the question. Again, I can not tell you what he would have done, only what I think he might have done. It would depend on the lions, on the cats, if they were healthy or starving.

Certainly if it was a woman with a broken leg, deeply emaciated and suffering hypothermia, he could have worked with his power to heal her. If there was also a cat with a broken leg and an emaciated baby, I think he would have used his special powers then and tamed the cat, healed the cat in some way and fed the cat with whatever food was available. I think this is a time when he might have used his special powers. It certainly would have been , not so much a dilemma, but a question for him. I think the way he would have answered it would be to ask himself, "What would be appropriate here?" Is it appropriate to save a human infant? Of course. Is it appropriate to save the mother of that infant, and especially is that can be done without a special power, just providing her with a warm fire and then some food and then helping to carry her or going for help and bringing back some beast of burden to carry her? Certainly that would have been appropriate. With the wild cat it is no less a living being and he would not let it suffer.

In my experience with him, he seldom did obvious miraculous acts. In other words, very rarely did he just pass his hand over someone and snap, they were healed, fully healed. Very rarely. But more often things seemed to happen around him that he assured us were not based on any miraculous power on his part, but were based on the ability of co-creation which we all possessed.

It was very likely at that point had it been a human and the wild cat, that some dying animal would have turned up to serve as supper to the starving cat. If it were clear that the cat mother could not survive, I think he would have taken the baby cat just as he did the baby goat, nursed it back

to health, supported it until it was ready to be released back into the wild. The primary principle for him was to do what is appropriate. "appropriate" meaning based on loving concern for all beings, without preference of one over another, but respecting all life, cherishing all life. I pause.

Barbara: He says it's an interesting question. He says he has wondered that as well, reflecting on that scene. It was easy to give up that mother goat - and he has wondered what if it had been a human? He says Jesus' power was so vast he would have found another way but that does not give us answers because our power is not yet that vast. The only answer it gives us is to do what is appropriate.

Q: I am curious about the statement that letting the mother goat die was in the "natural order of things." I agree with that, but if so, then if it was a human and Jesus did use special power to heal then is that somehow interfering with the natural order of things?

Aaron: I am Aaron. This is like the question about karma that we sometimes discuss. The child falls off the boat and people turn their backs saying, "It's his karma. He fell off the boat and he will drown." But maybe it's his karma to fall off the boat and be rescued. Maybe the natural order of things is for her to come this close to death and because of the power of love to be brought back into the realm of living? Again, we seek guidelines as humans who do not have the powers he had. Your heart's intention toward kindness must be your guide. What are you going to do? There is a woman with a broken leg and dying and yet she can be saved. The leg can be bound up, she can be warmed and fed. She has no incurable disease. Something led you to her in time, before her death from starvation, or before her death by the mauling of these animals. What is appropriate? You can never turn your back on suffering. If the animals are healthy and this is not to be their dinner, they will go and find another dinner. If the animal is also badly injured and incapable of finding another dinner, again, what is appropriate? I don't have an answer to that. Each being will have to answer for him or herself.

Perhaps it would be appropriate to hunt? Perhaps not. This question was raised for many of you during your summer retreat. ( part of the center where DSC June retreat was held was an animal rehabilitation facility). Small rodents were killed and fed to some of the animals that were being healed. Many of you brought up the question, "How can you heal one animal by killing another to feed to it?" And yet if the injured animal is to be brought back to health it needs to be fed and it needs to be fed on an appropriate diet. There would be an answer, of course. If the organization to do it were possible, there is adequate road-kill certainly. Recovering animals could be fed from that. Each person must come to the answer for themselves. In my mind, it is never appropriate to kill one being in such a way as to consciously and intentionally cause it suffering, in order to feed to another. And yet I am also aware of the inconsistency there in that I do not support vegetarianism, do not find it necessary. I think there is a difference in intentionality here. This may sound hardhearted, I don't mean it that way, but what kind of karma is there in being a chicken? Or a steer in a herd that will be cut up into steaks? What kind of karma is there in being an animal kept in a small pen and being raised specifically for food? Why such a birth? What may that animal learn from its situation? What karma may be balanced?

On another side of this question, we have the Native American example of deeply cherishing the animal you eat, thanking it, considering it's great qualities and bringing it into you and offering the intention to continue to manifest those qualities in honor of the being you have eaten. One cannot be dogmatic and say, "No, one should never eat this or that; one should always do this or that." The situations are different. Whatever must be done, must be done with respect, really with reverence, with gratitude, without malicious intention to harm. Of course, when you kill an animal for food you harm it. But there is a vast difference between seeing that animal as an opponent that you will conquer, kill and eat, and seeing that animal as a revered spirit that has come to you in some kind of co-creation that you may be fed, that you may perpetuate it's spirit and noble qualities, and each day to express gratitude to that specific animal and all it's brethren. I come back to "do what is appropriate." I pause.

Barbara: while cleaning the transcript, Aaron and I talked more about this. He pointed out that, with Jesus' power, he could have saved every being who was near him from all discomfort. Yet that is not "appropriate." We seem to need to experience the results of our actions. Nothing can prevent this experiencing without violating our free will and harming us in yet another way. We need to trust the life situations of beings and not constantly try to manipulate our environment out of fear. He is saying, "we must attend, with wisdom and compassion in balance."

Barbara: I'm paraphrasing Aaron. He says that since most of us are not in the kind of situation we discussed above, how does this translate into our daily lives? The question is of not of literally eating another, but figuratively eating another, the way we use or mis-use another's energy, the way we take what isn't ours, the way we act out our fear to hoard, misuse, take control.. If a friend has a disagreement with you, if your friend says this and you say that, Aaron asks "in what ways do we "kill and eat" our friend" by attachment to our own view and to enacting that view?

Aaron: I am Aaron. What I am speaking of here is the ways we may try to control or manipulate another, praise or blame another, to get our way. Do we use unskillful speech or action because our own fear prompts us to act in ways that are self-serving and to prefer one being over another? This is a hard question. If all beings could manifest this non-preference, we would know that others would treat us fairly and with reverence. Then we would feel safe. But you cannot wait until others are ready to offer you that safety for you to offer it out to others. And yet, simultaneously, you must say no to another when they begin to manifest fear-based behavior. Where is the balance to be found? I pause.

Barbara: So this all derives from our seeking to be safe, to be happy, yet not understanding where safety and happiness lie. We know the experience of fear, want to be in control, and we then habitually mis-use our energy in fear-prompted ways that cause harm.

I see the cats and believe they are going to attack me and I've got this baby goat. Do I toss the baby goat to the wild cats? He asks, "what is appropriate"? What does that love which knows no preference suggest? Aaron says can you see the ways we tend to toss the goat to the cats, figuratively, in daily life and how can we avoid doing it?

Q: Can Aaron please repeat the part about how we cannot offer another safety?

Aaron: I am Aaron. Every sentient being wants to be happy and safe, wants not to suffer. This paradise that you may co-create at some time in the future as a heaven on earth is a place where all beings revere every sentient being and recognize that no being wants or needs to suffer, that we cannot harm another for our own good. You might ask, then how would we eat? To this I reply, "what is harm?" When this instrument planted a garden this summer she would come out and ask which tomato would like to be a part of today's salad, and was intuitively led to those who were ready to become salad and take on a new life, moving from a tomato to something that was a part of her own body energy and finally to return to the earth. But this is for now.

When you finally reach the point when you understand that nothing is separate and that everything must be treated with reverence and are wise and compassionate enough about your own fear not to be reactive to fear so that it creates separation and lack of reverence, then I think there are going to be answers that are not readily not apparent in the world today. Ways to feed and care for beings, without sacrificing one for another, will become apparent. I do not know how this will work. My guess is that it will work energetically, that your system will evolve to no longer literally need food. I think the eventual fourth density human will not need food. They may find the enjoyment of certain kinds of food like honey, bread, nuts, fruits, grains and nuts and things that replenish themselves. But these will not be necessary for your energy. You will know how to draw energy you need to support your system. I think the whole idea of eating, the whole creation of the digestion system, is just a temporary phase of your progression from second through fourth density. It's the third density phase. I pause.

Barbara: He points out there are known to be beings who have not needed food, humans who bypassed the need for food and are able to draw energy to support themselves. Meanwhile, here is third density and we do need food. But we can at least learn how to cherish that which we do eat. But to take it back to his question, what does this mean on a figurative, metaphorical level, not "eating one another?" How does this relate to safety?

Q: I want to address that question and also to say I'm not sure I heard Aaron reply to my last one. I will go ahead with the current question. When Aaron shared the story, my initial response was a deepening awareness of how quickly I can move into either/or response or reaction. How quickly if I walk into a situation and something is happening, my mind so quickly goes to this or that, good or bad, right or wrong, noble or not-noble motivation. And how comparison or competition both enforce that either/or wheel.

Barbara: He says this is an important insight to see how quickly you move into opposites rather than seeing the full range of possibilities.

Aaron: I am Aaron: The human wants to be safe and in control, so it looks for answers, results. The human is very uncomfortable just waiting and not knowing. It wants to draw things to a conclusion. The more you understand how this tension forces sometimes unskillful action in yourself and learn how to be more present with the tension without reactivity to it, the more you can begin to co-create a more skillful and acceptable result with the universe. In other words, talking about if the mother goat had been well enough to survive, if the wild cat had been injured and starving, what are you going to do? You can't choose one or the other. You also can't just turn your back and walk away from both and say, "let them fight it out" because you have already gotten involved, just by being present. You were drawn to the scene, karmically you were already involved even before you arrived.

As soon as the mind picks up one answer or the other, it moves away from the infinite possibilities. This option is not acceptable, that option is not acceptable. One can be created here that is acceptable. If you leave the goat, the cat is going to kill the goat. Take the goat back to the village. Come back up the mountain with some meat for the cat. There is always a way. I pause.

Barbara: He says and if the cat is not there when you come back, you just leave the meat. You can't tie the cat up and say you have got to stay here, the cat has free will. The cat can go off somewhere else if it's capable. Your part is just to tell the cat "I'm going to bring the meat back for you" and bring the meat back.

Q: Of course, the meat came from some other dead animal.

Barbara: He says there will always be a dead animal somewhere. He says this is what he brought up at Howell. When they were feeding rodents to the fox or some other animal, he said to me there, "Why don't they use road kill?" And when we asked them why they didn't use road kill, they said, "Well, it's not convenient."

Q: That would be quite an organizational chore to go look for road kill.

Barbara: Aaron is saying yes, but these people are concerned with the welfare of animals. How can they state the life of a fox is worth more than the life of a mouse?

Q: But people do.

Barbara: He says but this is because they are not considering the infinite range of possibilities. He says, I'm paraphrasing him now, he says certainly if they put it in the newsletter they are concerned about this and they need a crew of volunteers to bring them road kill regularly that some people would be delighted and relieved and many people would do this.

Q: Doing something like that would ask us to open up beyond our own independence and be more accountable to a community. It seems easier for Americans to be independent and set things up so they can take care of every need by themselves and we can. But is it really the most open-hearted way of living? Just an observation.

Barbara: What does it mean to allow ourselves to be vulnerable? I can't remember where I read this, but it was written by someone who realized, while with many people, that he was used to timing it so he got to the food line at the right time. He realized how much he was trying to control and manipulate. He asked himself, what if I just let go, what if I just get there and if there's a line I'll just wait in line. And a little voice inside said, " That's not efficient. You have work to do." Well, everybody has work to do, so he said he tried it. He just got there and stood in line, watching his impatience, not wanting to wait in line. Once he allowed the impatience, it was okay; it was just waiting in line. Can we show up and if it's uncomfortable, just let it be uncomfortable? He pointed out how much less tension there was once he gave up that form of control, and how his heart opened looking at everybody in line waiting patiently when the food wasn't ready yet.

I'm paraphrasing Aaron now. He's saying here that the fear-based need to get things just right, keep things under control, be safe, - creates so much separation for us because we can't allow ourselves to be vulnerable. We're trying to protect ourselves from predicted, foreseeable pain. He says he's not talking about carefulness. One puts on shoes before one goes out to the mailbox. One does not wade through the snow barefoot because one knows it is very uncomfortable for the feet. It's a great kindness to put on shoes. There's no tension there. But if I share the shoes with 6 other people and try to figure out when I can get them, then there's tension. These are the ways we think about our daily lives-- how am I going to get an edge? Not only does it create dukha (the Pali word for the unsatisfactoriness of experience, sometimes stated as ‘suffering') but it creates separation. It not only creates the dukha of tension but the dukha of separation. Me against everything instead of all of us working together in a smooth flow. We're all stuck in traffic. He says again it can be skillful to note "this is rush hour and I have work to do, so I'll stay at my desk another half hour." This is not a fear-based statement, not controlling; this is a kind statement. It's different than the mind that churns three hours early, "what time am I going to leave? I want to get out of here in five minutes to beat the rush hour." That's fear and control. He wants to speak.

Aaron: I am Aaron. I will say this. Slowly and through your own experience, there has got to develop at least some small amount of trust in the innate goodness of things, the innate rightness of things that whether you see it or not your needs are being met. If it feels like that needing is painful, perhaps what needs to be clarified is what the needs are - in what way are you inviting that pain? Because when you relax it may not always be comfortable, but there won't be suffering and it may not even be painful. It's not painful to be stuck in a traffic jam, unless you think you have to be somewhere else. If you have promised someone you would be somewhere at a certain time and you recognize you promised them and you can't do anything about traffic, that's how it is! Even then you can relax. Just sit and meditate or read a book or listen to music. Do metta with yourself and all the other drivers around you. What I'm trying to get at is the mind that thinks it needs to control things and the enormity of suffering created within that need to control versus the co-creative process that is not control-based but is a very different process.

Barbara: He asks, can you see the difference between that fear-based need to control and co-creation that is based on a very loving assumption of wanting to offer goodness to yourself and all beings? When you do that, what is needed generally appears.

Q: But if I were the manager at the wildlife refuge, I would still keep some frozen mice around for the days when no road kill showed up.

Aaron: I am Aaron. This is part of a progression. Unfortunately, as long as you keep the frozen mice around as insurance, at some level you are co-creating the situation where no road kill will show up. If you make the statement, "I surrender completely, these animals are dependent in road kill," road kill will appear. You must also manifest what is necessary in order for the road kill to appear; in other words the manager can't make that statement without telling anybody about it and expect it to miraculously to appear on the doorstep, he has got to announce and promote it. Once that is done you let go of the frozen mice. There is a sense of assurance that what is needed will happen. I truly can trust my world and that whatever happens next is just right. The worst that can happen if there is no road kill is that he will go into the market and buy some chicken or hamburger. He can do that if he needs to. Do you see how that differs from keeping the frozen mice on hand?

Q: I don't see much difference.

Barbara: He says, with the frozen mice there is an assumption, "maybe things aren't going to work out." But if he says, "Things are going to work out" and then day after day there is road kill and then one day there is not and where is the road kill today, and if he has to he can go and get some hamburger.

Q: Or one day if there is too much road kill dropped off and cannot be consumed, he can freeze it.

Barbara: Yes. That's a way of saying there will be enough. It's a way of trusting the abundance in our lives., not grasping out of fear. Paraphrasing Aaron, he says it's very subtle. A simple example, if I have two pair of socks and I am wearing one and wash out the other, I may choose not to wash the pair I'm wearing until the other is dry. There is kindness in that, and wisdom. You don't just say, "I let go of everything." and expect the socks to dry instantly. That's not how things dry. We know that. One doesn't ask miracles. One doesn't just expect road kill to turn up daily on the doorstep uninvited.

He is saying, for example, I have to pay the gas company to provide the gas that runs my furnace. I can't just say "my house is going to be warm" and expect that to happen with no means to provide warmth. I need to pay the gas company. I participate in this by earning money to pay the gas company. So it's not just blind trust saying some miracle is going to heat my house. I need to participate in it in appropriate ways, in this case by paying the gas company. He says that's different than having three back-up systems. When you do that he says what you're doing is setting yourself up for a situation in which everything goes out, because you're playing with the idea that there won't be heat by trying to create all these different means of heat. But there's still the "there won't be heat" idea so you manifest heat and also lack of heat.

Where there is fear based concern ‘will there be enough," the flip side is that there won't be enough and one creates the "there won't be enough" alternatively with "there's plenty", exploring both rather than just letting go and saying "I know my needs will be met, there will be enough". and still doing what is appropriate to meet those needs.

He is using me as an example. He's saying I have really let go of any fear about how I will make a living, will I be paid. But I also know that I do need to do some kind of work. I no longer work to earn a living; I work because the work is meaningful and brings joy to me and serves others; I trust my needs will be met. I don't measure what I give by what I get.

Q: I am curious how Aaron sees health insurance with this context. Is having average or appropriate health insurance inviting health conditions or is that considered wise planning?

Aaron: I am Aaron. It depends on how you relate to it. I see the potential to relate to health insurance and all kinds of insurance as part of your entire fear based habitual tendency. And yet, I can perceive of a relationship to health insurance that is not fear based at all. It's not the health insurance but how it's used. If there's a basic grasping energy, a fear based "will I be safe" energy behind it, then one may also practice the not-safe. When you trust that your needs will be met, and participate in that safety, then to have health insurance is no different than paying the gas bill to heat the house. There is no fear of lack, no grasping.

What about a system where there were farmers, doctors, clothesmakers, carpenters, grocers, and all traded their services as was necessary. In a sense this is not much different than health insurance but it would be based on mutual respect and not fear. I can also see a system of health insurance and health care based on co-created intention for the good of all beings and not in fear, a system where everybody put money into a fund to pay doctors regardless of whether they needed medical care that month or not. This sounds like present health insurance, I know, but the focus would be in giving, for the good of all, and trusting the care you would receive when it was needed. Because you are still caught in personal fear, many people would not tolerate such a system because if they were not sick they would feel their money was wasted. And indeed it is wasted because there is so much misuse of the system, precisely because so many people have not addressed their fearful and grasping mind. Thus it is not "insurance" that is at issue, but whether insurance is created from a place of kindness or fear. What are you manifesting along with the insurance plan?

Barbara: He says can you see the difference?

Aaron: I am Aaron. The difficulty here is that when you start with the fear base, you are creating something that is quite in conflict with what you wish to create. As long as you focus on polarities, well-being vs. suffering, health vs. illness, abundance vs. hardship, you keep creating one after the other. You cannot focus on abundance without focusing on lack or hardship. The place where it becomes totally love-based is when you give up the idea of abundance and hardship and simply trust, "my needs are being met, my needs will always be met" and let go. You are no longer trying to create abundance, you are trusting the natural abundance in the universe and inviting yourself to participate in that. To grasp at creating abundance is to come from a place of fear, of lack of abundance. I pause.

Barbara: He is saying what is primary here is watching these fear reverberations in us and learning how to respond to them in kinder ways, just to acknowledge "feeling fear" and to work with metta. We observe the results of acting on fear, and know "this is not what we want". He says it's primarily about trying to control. Because when there is control it's the ego controlling. When you shift out of this control mode, it's the higher self that no longer needs to control because it's interrelated to everything; from the higher self we co-create, from the ego we control.

Q: Talking about proposed surgery in relation to the above discussion.

Barbara: Aaron says to please reflect on everything we've said here tonight. IF you are going to do it or not going to do it, either way, you can do or not do it in a spirit of co-creation rather than control which means knowing the fear and being more spacious with the fear. Make the decision from this higher place which does not get entangled in the fear. Just, he says like having a trembling animal ; you pat and soothe it and offer it love.

Q: I don't think we need to get into any detail stuff for me now, but I guess it has to do with looking at health issues but from a place of co-creation and love and not from fear or trying to control and eliminate all possible negative outcomes.

Barbara: We have just made the decision to end the evening now at 9:30 and enjoy the fresh snow from outside in the hot tub.

Copyright © 2000 by Barbara Brodsky