January 24, 2001

Aaron: Good evening and my love to you all. I am Aaron. My welcome to you on this cold night and my gratitude to you for braving the winter weather and coming together in this way.

Your intention to gather as a sangha to support one another, to hear these teachings and reflect upon them, is a very strong force not only in your own growth but in that light which brightens the world. It is a statement of faith, of hope, of intention to overcome that which is seen as darkness.

I often base my weekly talk on the primary questions that have been arising during the week in private meetings and in e-mail and in telephone calls. There is one question we seem to come back to again and again and again: working with negativity, with fear, with confusion, with resistance, and expressing your energy with love, with kindness, having faith in your ability to do that.

You are human. As a human there are certain movements of the mind and body which are a very natural human experience. The body, for example, breaks down and has aches and pains, has a virus or a fever sometimes. This is just the way the body is. If you prick your finger and bleed, you do not say, 'I shouldn't be bleeding," you simply attend to the wound. You understand this is how the body is.

The teachings of so many religions seem to say, 'Do not be angry. Do not be jealous." We see these in the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments. We see a presentation of them in the Buddhist scriptures, as 'abandon the unwholesome." But I think what is being said here is not 'Do not be angry" because that would be akin to saying, 'Do not bleed." Rather, the meaning is, do not enact your anger in ways that cause harm to beings. Do not enact your jealousy and your pride, but use these experiences as teachings for compassion.

Wherever there is anger, there is also that which is not angry. Wherever there is fear there is also the fearless. Think about this for a moment. This instrument had an interesting experience last week. She had a very, very tiny wound on her lip, just the tiniest sore. It bled profusely. She literally sopped up towels full of blood from this tiny wound. It seems to me there was an artery in the lip that was just pumping out blood.

At first she was spacious with it. But somewhere into the third day of the repetition of bleeding, fear came up. She began to tense around this wound and around the experience of bleeding. There was aversion to it. It wasn't painful. It was just the nuisance and the constant presence of this little scab which kept breaking.

I asked her as she sat in meditation pressing a towel against her lip, and feeling tension, 'How much area of your body is bleeding? What percentage? One one hundredth of one percent?" I said, 'What about the rest of your body? Is it bleeding? No? Can you bring attention to the rest of your body? Can you be aware of all of the skin that is intact, all of the body that is not bleeding?"

Immediately she saw how she was exaggerating the situation. Such a tiny thing and yet it had captured so much of her energy and attention. Immediately she relaxed.

When it bled, she held a towel against it for an hour or so until the bleeding stopped. Since there was little she could do with her hand pressed against it she just sat and meditated. When it stopped she went back to her work. If she was talking, she just talked with the towel pressed against her mouth. The tension was gone.

Can you think of anger, greed, impatience, jealousy, pride, confusion, as tiny bleeding cuts? Maybe some of them are bigger cuts, but in any situation your anger-I'm using anger here as the example but of course it could be any so-called negative emotion-your anger is only a small part of the whole.

Why do you give it so much energy, trying to get rid of it, fearing it, even hating it? Do you think your goodness ever leaves you? How can you be in touch with that goodness when all of your attention is focused on that which is negative?

The first step is to know negative thought as negative thought, to understand that it arose out of conditions, that it is impermanent and it will cease. You don't have to get caught up and take it personally. Just as your body is not betraying you if there is a small sore that bleeds, so your mind is not betraying you if certain conditions give rise to the experience of anger.

When you know anger as anger then you also can know that which is not angry, that which recognizes anger as anger and allows some spaciousness. Right there is kindness. The next step is to recognize kindness as kindness. You've got to recognize it right there with the anger, not separate from it. Where there is confusion, that which sees that arising of the confusion and knows it, that is clarity. The clarity isn't somewhere else, it's right there with the confusion. When there is fear it is love which knows fear and is able not to become entangled in it, not to express it into the world. Right there in fear is love, not someplace else, right there.

The beginning of your practice, then, is just to know what's what. Here is anger, here is fear, here is confusion. 'This arose because certain conditions were present and I will sit with it patiently and watch it until it dissolves." Right there in the intention to be with it spaciously, kindly, non-judgmentally, patiently, you nurture the conditions which will allow the negative energy to dissolve. But when you tense and say, 'I must fix this," then you nurture negativity. You nurture judgment. You nurture contraction. And upon these, fear feeds and will not dissolve.

This is the core of your spiritual practice, just to see what's what, to be present. You do this when you sit on the cushion and you do it throughout the day.

Now, of course, because you are as you are, that spacious presence is also difficult to maintain. Judgment does arise. Aversion does arise. If noting is strong, you say, 'Here is anger," and then 'Here is judgment of anger." So far it's spacious. Then comes, 'Here is judgment of this flow of experience and I will stop the judgment." The mind contracts and pushes judgment. One must also see the contraction here. This is part of seeing what's what, seeing how one experience becomes the condition which gives rise to the next experience. Then one can smoothly note, 'anger … tension … judging … aversion …" It all flows past, all impermanent and not self. There is no need to react in any way; the heart stays open.

If you're standing in a long line and impatience arises, after a moment you recognize, 'Here is impatience," and then the judging thought, 'I should not be impatient. Am I not learning anything? Look at me. However many years of meditation practice and I'm still impatient. I'm hopeless." The impatience is no longer predominant. The impatience has long since gone. Mind has settled in on judgment and aversion. This is why I say, know what's what. Impatience is impatience. Judgment is judgment. Aversion is aversion. The aversion energy is an energy that wants things to be different than they are. It wants to get rid of impatience and judgment.

So first there is impatience, a kind of tension. It's also wanting energy, wanting things to move along. Then judgment may arise, here self-judgment: I shouldn't be feeling this. Or, maybe judgment of others' slowness, an angry energy. And then, a specific form of aversion-wanting mind-wanting to be in a clear space, not to have this contracted experience.

What happens is, when you see each of these mind/body moments and how they arise and how they cease, you are less likely to be caught in the story. There is an experience of impatience. It's a direct experience. The mind contracts. The body contracts. There is no further story, just the direct experience.

The stories of impatience are not the experience of impatience. As soon as mind spins out into a story, such as, 'Is that an untrained clerk? Why don't they train people before they put them behind a cash register? Don't they know I have more important things to do than stand in line?" Then if you are present with the tension you note, 'ah, stories, stories."

Here is where a certain degree of self-discipline comes in. What is your primary motivation? Do you air your anger, so as to release it by expressing it? Do you want to feel powerful in the face of the helplessness you may feel standing there in line at the whim of the store managers? If that's your primary intention then by all means keep telling stories. Maybe you can build up the stories enough that you're ready to stalk out of the store in a rage or punch somebody in the nose.

Or, is your primary intention to find a freedom from identification with difficult mind states and the need to act them out. The acknowledgment of this intention to non-harm, the intention to focus on growth, wholeness, and so forth, these support your resolve to let go of the story. I think this is the hardest part. It's one thing to know what you might do, and another thing to do it.

The story-telling really is an addictive pattern, so deeply is it ingrained in you. It's one thing to say, 'I will not smoke cigarettes," or 'I will not drink," and it's another to watch how, when tension arises and that smoke or drink is placed near you, habit reaches out. This is the habit to release the tension by taking the object. It's one thing to know the intention not to get caught in the stories and another to manifest that intention. Habit reaches out. You need to give yourself a bit of space here and real kindness, and at the same time, to be very firm in reminding yourself of what you intend, what your aspiration is. 'For the good of all beings I release the story."

Clear comprehension of purpose and of suitability are predominant forces here. Clear comprehension must be supported by metta, not by aversion.

When you release the story of who did what, how they shouldn't have done it, the story that enhances the anger, you are left with the direct experience of the anger and perhaps of helplessness. There may be old, old feelings that your needs will not be met or that you will not be safe.

Here insight starts to develop. You begin to see how you have repeatedly reverted to these stories as a way of avoiding the discomfort of this direct experience of threat, helplessness or loss. The stories give you a sense of empowerment and control, but you also start to see that you don't need to do it that way any more, that it is an old habit, and often all that's holding the story repetition in place is the habit energy.

So you can do this. You can note the arising of impatience in our example. You can note how mind runs into the story. You can note, 'I have a choice: to follow the story or to deliberately let it go, which does not mean that impatience ceases, it means the stories grown out of impatience cease, and I come back to the direct experience of impatience in my body and in my mind. If it is unpleasant, I know it is unpleasant. What is impatience? How does it feel?"

Then-we're following a hypothetical example here and of course it will not be the same way for each of you nor every time, this is just one example of how it might be. There with the experience of impatience, a little thought comes up: 'I should be past this. I shouldn't be impatient. Ah, judging, judging." Maybe the stories draw out the judgment, too. You open your eyes and look around at the man behind you just reading a magazine. 'He's not impatient. I shouldn't be impatient." Stories, stories. Here is judgment.

What is the experience of judgment without the stories that it advances? Then maybe another thought comes up. In our example, wanting it to go away. 'This whole experience of impatience and judgment has been unpleasant. I don't like the way I feel when those are present in my mind and body. I want it to go away." Here's another story. But wanting also is a direct experience. We come back to the experience of wanting. What is the energy of desire? Where does it settle in the body? Is it tight or spacious, cool or hot, sharp or smooth?

At this point you may note the impatience is long since gone. The judgment also may be gone. All that's there is wanting for things to be different, and the irony is that they already are different.

My dear ones, this is just a lot of noise running through this conditioned brain of yours. It's nothing you have to get excited about. Give yourself credit. You did not run screaming to the store manager. You did not smash your cart into the slow person in front of you. You have skillfully handled this arising impatience and the related mind states. The question so many of you ask me is, 'Is this going to go on all through my life with the same intensity?" That depends on how you practice. When you practice with kindness and with presence and also with a commitment not to get caught in the stories, you stop feeding energy into these habitual mind states. Clarity develops in which you see that they are simply conditioned and not self. There's more and more spaciousness and patience with it. You become increasingly able to rest in that spaciousness and patience. There's nothing more to feed them. It's like the class bully in grade school. The more people fight back with him and give him energy, the more he bullies. But when people ignore him there's nothing more for him to feed on. These energies will die away of their own accord as wisdom and an open heart develop.

Now let us take this talk someplace else. So many of you struggle with feeling unworthiness. So much of this sense of unworthiness is based on the idea that you have not been able to conquer this kind of negativity. There is the self-judgment, 'After all these years I should not feel these emotions." Again I ask you, should you stop bleeding if your skin is pricked?

So there is also this habitual tendency toward feeling unworthiness. In part it is based on the aversion to discomfort; the habitual tendency with that aversion is the story 'unworthy." In part it is grown out of the deep aspiration to find peace, to come to a place where heavy emotions no longer arise, where there is calmness, gentleness, mercy.

In part it is grounded on the deep aspiration to do no harm. In part it is grounded on the desire to come home. There may be feeling that the divine, however you name it, is pure and perfect and that your own essence seems to cast such shadow before this brilliant light. You erroneously believe that all the shadow must be wiped away before you are worthy to come home. And so you judge yourselves unworthy.

You have heard me use the metaphor before of the perfectly clear sky. When a cloud moves through, or some heavy mist near the ground, the clear sky hasn't gone anywhere. It's still there but you can't see it because of the mist.

Ocean water is salty. The clear water is there and salt is there. This purified self that you seek, this purified energy or being, the more you strike out at the shadows, the more you call forth the shadow. The more you relax and notice that which is already clear, loving, present, skillful, compassionate and wise, and learn to rest in that essence of your being, the less space the mist seems to take up. The less heavy the shadow seems.

Some years ago on an airplane trip this instrument had an interesting experience. The sky was very clear, the ground was very visible ahead, below, all around. In the distance she could see that they were approaching a chain of mountains. Somehow the mountains had held some clouds in such a way that the plane seemed to fly from that absolute clear air directly into what seemed like an enormous gray cloud. In just one moment the view went from clarity to total obscuration.

Then in another minute, perhaps, they flew out of the other side of the cloud and it was clear again. In that moment of being in the cloud, it didn't seem like there was anything else. But upon approach and departure one could easily see the limits of the cloud.

Your own sense of unworthiness grows in proportion to the degree that you hold the distortion that the cloud of your negativity is unlimited. That distortion is held in place when you do not attend to that which is clear. If you only focus on the distortion, war will erupt. When you focus also on that which is able just to be patient and observant and see the distortion arise, there's no war. You cannot maintain this strong sense of unworthiness when you practice in this way.

And so here we have another question. Most of you realize this. And yet when the thought of unworthiness arises, you get lost in its stories. My friends, what is your attachment to your myth of unworthiness? Why do you perpetuate it? Do you not see what you are, see this clarity and goodness that is your essence? What does the myth of unworthiness protect you from that you attach to it?

The opposite of unworthy is not worthy, there is no unworthy or worthy; they are both myths. When you transcend those myths, you find this divinity which is your true nature. I've asked you what the myth protects you from. When you recognize your true nature, you also recognize that you need to be responsible to that nature, to that truth of your being. You realize how powerful you are.

There's a quote I was shown some years ago by Nelson Mandela, from his inaugural talk in 1994. He said, 'Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate … Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us."

What does it mean to be powerful beyond measure? How can you deal with the seeming inconsistency, to be so powerful and yet recognize impatience still arises, greed still arises. There is such a strong fear, 'What if I misuse this all-powerful true nature and enact my greed, impatience, or whatever?" But you don't do it. You've learned that degree of skill. You would not recognize the extent of your power and limitlessness if you were not ready to manifest that. I think this fear of misuse is at the core of your resistance. It's not so much a resistance based on self-protection for most of you as a resistance based on the fear of the enormous harm that you could do if the shadow side of the being came forth into control, and if you fully recognized your unlimitedness and power. And so you back away from it.

My dear ones, trust yourselves. Be who you are. The human and the angel come together to express the great luminosity, the radiance of your true being as a candle shining into the darkness. Find that which is fearless in you, that which is all-powerful, that which is good, and trust it, for this is what you truly are. And the rest is simply conditioned and will fall away. Meanwhile the human must continue to work not to enact that negativity. But trust yourself also to do that. Give yourself permission not to do it perfectly. Smile. Ask forgiveness of others where appropriate and forgive yourself.

Remember there are no mistakes. There are only situations which are teachers. I thank you for your attention. That is all.

K: An observation. When I am physically tired, I notice that I can be very spacious with whatever comes up. And things like unworthiness that Aaron spoke about, really lose their punch when I am tired. It is much easier to just see it as, 'Oh yeah, that." And I have noticed at times in my life where I seem to keep myself busy or perpetuate the pattern of going, going, and getting tired so that I can then let go into whatever. I guess I see this more clearly in my mother but I know I do it also. She won't let herself have anything the easy way. She has to work and work, burn herself out unnecessarily before she can just, 'OK, whatever." Just an observation.

Aaron: I am Aaron. There is no question so this is not an answer, just an observation. I hear you talking about two different although related things, K. One is that a certain shift in your energy which happens when you are tired allows you to open to what I would consider the already-present spaciousness which you could not open to when you were not tired. So there's a step-like process where fatigue creates the conditions in which some of the controlling energy declines and allows you to see the inherent spaciousness in letting-go mind. That's one part of what I hear you saying.

The second part of what I hear you saying is that this seems to be a difficult way to do it, that there seems to be an inner drive to exhaust yourself to create the conditions which allow the experience of this spacious mind. And that you see your mother has the same pattern. I'm not clear whether you say that it leads her to the spacious mind.

The question that this arouses in me is, what is that habitual tendency that does not permit the experience of the spacious mind without exhaustion? If you came to that spacious mind and were not exhausted, what might it mean? My conjecture is that if you came to the spacious mind and were not exhausted, you would feel the inclination or even the need to further investigate the ramifications of that spacious mind and the responsibilities inherent in such recognition. When you are exhausted you can rest in the spacious mind but there's no need to take that spacious mind and use it as a ground upon which further action may be built. I pause.

Barbara: He says, the question to him is, what would it mean to come to this place of spacious mind and letting-go without exhaustion? He says what you might do when you're experiencing that sense of letting go is to ask, 'If I were not exhausted, what else might happen besides the spaciousness?"

K: I can see that and it is true. And on the top layer of it is a story that letting things be easy is equated with laziness, or somehow is not respectable.

Barbara: Aaron asks, is letting things be easy and letting things be spacious the same thing?

K: No, but they are close.

Aaron: I am Aaron. I don't experience them as close. Please tell me how you see them as close.

K: I see easy as being able to stop searching for something on the first try. Just finding an adequate answer or whatever and saying, 'Oh, enough," without looking and looking and looking. I experience spaciousness as soft belly sense of ease with a process, any process.

Aaron: I am Aaron. I would be interested in hearing how others find this. My own experience is that there is always spaciousness in 'easy." Said another way, when things feel easy and relaxed, I'm in a non-contracted space. When I am in a non-contracted space, then, things are not always easy. It may be very complex. Sometimes very difficult but there's not contraction, just a readiness to keep effort moving, touching one object after another.

I remember experiences of long ago, climbing very difficult stretches of mountains. If I came to that climb with fear, it was neither spacious nor easy. If I came to that climb without fear, not over-confident, knowing it was going to be a difficult climb, whatever obstacles there would be, there would be. If I could do it, I would do it. But if I could not do it, I would have to climb back down. There was some danger. There was a spaciousness which allowed all of these possibilities without a lot of preference that it be one way or the other.

It was then easy in that there was no preference, but very demanding in terms of the energy output. I see here as I talk that part of this depends on how we define easy. I am defining easy as non-complex and not highly demanding of energy. You may be defining easy in a different way, as spacious and uncontracted. I pause.

K: I see it the same as Aaron. That was my sense of those words.

Aaron: I am Aaron. Let us take this back a step to your situation. When you are tired, that serves as a condition to invite this spacious mind, a place of no preference because there is not enough energy to dwell on preference. This is not an authentic no-preference, sometimes. Sometimes it may be. Sometimes the no-preference may simply be based on energy.

There's a difference between reaching that place, let's call it 'don't care," and reaching a place of harmonization with all things where you are truly functioning as co-creator, moving in complete harmony with all the energy around you. Then no-preference is fully there and also it's easy, there's no effort. This is a different kind of effort here than what we're talking about climbing a mountain. There may still be a physical strain but there is no sense of your energy field in opposition to anything else. In climbing a mountain there is physical effort required but you are not in opposition to the mountain but supported by and climbing the mountain.

Then what we're talking about is coming to this place of harmony with all things, co-creativity with all things. I would then have to look at your statement of experience and ask, is there something that does not want to give over power? That does not want to fully enter this place of selfless co-creation and can only do this when exhausted, in a sense when the ego self is exhausted? I don't have any answers here, K, I'm just bringing up some reflections which grow out of your stated situation. I pause.

K: I can see the two different layers of release, one being from exhaustion and one being from a truly co-creative intentional force.

Barbara: Others, questions?

K: One of the questions was, what might happen if I were not exhausted and came to this spacious mind? On the surface the first thing that comes to my mind is that I should have to do something greater than I am doing now and I am not sure what that should be. And this makes me feel very anxious and I am haunted by this, to an extent.

Barbara: Aaron says, so there is both desire for this selfless co-creation and also fear of it because it means a complete surrender of the self, and because one worries, 'If I completely surrender the self, what will happen? And who will do this and what will be done?" There's a letting go of control.

M: That's why I am not sleeping these days!

Barbara: He says, can you explain that?

M: In our private meeting you asked, how does this insomnia that I am experiencing protect me or serve me? I am feeling very driven to do something different these days, especially in line or concerning my work. For several years I have been feeling anxious there. Like I am supposed to be doing something different. But I don't know what to do with myself. So the other night after our meeting when I again experienced insomnia, I asked myself that question in the middle of the night. And the first thing that came to my mind was, I won't have to move ahead in my life with the next thing. And I can't figure out what the next thing is supposed to be, but I feel the pressure to change. So if I don't sleep, then the next day I simply have to concentrate my efforts on simply recovering from lack of sleep.

Aaron: I am Aaron. I think part of this for both M and K is what I would state as the dialogue between the ego self and the true self. The ego self wants to stay in charge. It wants to feel safe; it wants to control. At another level of being, you are making a commitment to entering this space of no-self, of co-creation. The more committed you become to that, the more the ego self fights. Then in K's situation, she has to exhaust herself in order to conquer the ego self. In M's situation, if she has insomnia and can exhaust herself, has to focus her energy on simply getting through the next day, no further reflection is possible. In a sense the ego self is winning and she cannot conquer the ego self because that which would conquer the ego self is only the ego self. The pure self has no interest in conquering the ego self.

What I would ask you, M, is to pay attention to that which is observing insomnia, which comes as a voice of the ego self. What aspect of being is it that can watch all this? Can you rest there, not warring with the insomnia? There will probably be a strong need to attend to the experience of fear, and that's difficult right now because fear is not presenting itself as part of the insomnia. But I think you've got to recognize underneath at some level there is fear. We can start with the fear you that won't do what you think you're 'supposed to" do. A fear that you'll do harm, not by action but by inaction. See if you can find a contraction in the belly or elsewhere in the body which is even partially identifiable as fear. Can you be more spacious with that fear? Again, the effort here is to shift from that which is afraid, that which is holding on to the insomnia as an escape, to that which observes it, not caught in the stories or the action at all. Just to recognize, even here in the midst of fear and its expression as insomnia, there is the spacious mind, and there does not need to be any war. Insomnia cannot pull you into a war if spacious mind refuses to get caught in the war. That means the insomnia will just be there.

Now, this is very hard because when the insomnia is there you get trapped in the pattern to fight with it, but I think that just seeing that the pattern is there and working very consciously with acknowledgment, 'Fear is present. Even if I don't see it as fear, fear is present and I am going to offer kindness to this fear," I think these two forces together will allow the insomnia further to reveal itself and then resolve itself. I pause.

V: I also am trying to work with some heavy emotions this week as I look toward this major surgery. Obviously anxiety and fear and others. So Aaron's talk was very relevant. And when I am feeling clear and spacious, it all makes lots of sense. Obviously this week is a particularly difficult one for me. In addition, yesterday the doctor told me that I must stop taking St. John's Wort this week, which I usually take to help if there is some level of depression. Yesterday I was very afraid about that and today I am calmer. But obviously that is a crutch I would rather have had this week.

So I in particular see that I could use any advice about how to stay clear, particularly when I will probably be feeling more depression than I usually do.

Barbara: I'm paraphrasing Aaron. He is offering a couple of very specific ideas. First, he knows that A is going to work with you with energy work after the surgery. He thinks it would be very useful to work with her at least once before the surgery and this will just help to open the body energy channels and that will help some of the depression.

He says, pamper yourself. Find the things that really give you joy and as much as possible over this weekend curl up on your sofa with your cat and a good book, not a working kind of book but a really good novel, your favorite tea, or whatever it is you like to eat. Invite a friend over and watch a movie. Do things that really give you pleasure. He says, don't be afraid to indulge yourself.

Aaron: I am Aaron. V, along with fear about the upcoming surgery, it's not a fear that you'll die or anything drastic, it's just a natural fear, 'There's going to be pain. I'm going to be helpless. I don't like what's going to have to happen. It's going to change my body." There's fear and there's a lot of self-judgment about the fear, a lot of contraction. I would strongly request you to, as I said, to indulge yourself, take long, hot baths if that's pleasant to you. Curl up with a favorite book, blanket and cat. Be conscious that you are offering this indulgence as kindness to yourself in response to the fear. Depression is direct result of a contracted state. The contracted state can exist without so much depression when there is a kind response to the contracted state instead of trying to push it around or judge it. So the kinder you're able consciously to be to yourself, as a direct statement, 'This is hard and I'm going to be as kind to myself as I can," the less that contracted state can close in to cause depression. I pause.

Barbara: He says, it's also important that you begin the letting go and grief process as much as may be, both for the uterus, and for the cut in the skin that will happen for the surgery. He says, it's important that you just sit and talk to the organs, to explain why they're being taken away, explain to the body why these organs will be taken, to explain to the skin why it needs to be cut into and what it will experience. And as you do this you acknowledge both fear and grief. This also will lessen the contracted state. He pauses.

Q: I have been trying to do that.

Barbara: He says he knows you have and he honors that you have, and he says just keep it up. He asks did you work at all with the smiling into the womb meditation from Stephen Levine?

Q: The heart of the womb, and I have been.

Barbara: He says especially be aware of the body's strong aversion to the trauma of cutting.

Q: I am very aware of that.

Barbara: He says you're aware of that in an intellectual way but because of the degree of trauma from past experience, you're not letting yourself feel how much fear and anger and 'don't want this" there is, and that's so natural, that those feelings will be there. He says, hold yourself as if you were your own child, sobbing because the mother said, 'You're going to have to have your belly cut open." Know how afraid the child would be and how you would hold the child. And just let it sob, not judge it or say, 'Don't cry, be stoic."

My blessings and love are with you.

Barbara: It's 9:30. Let's sit in silence for just a minute or so.

(Taping ends.)

Copyright © 2001 by Barbara Brodsky