October 9, 2011 Sunday Evening, Seattle Retreat

(A gathering of retreat participants, 3 of whom are from Venture Fourth, and 8 or 9 more Venture Fourth people via Skype.)

Aaron: My blessings and love to you all. I am Aaron... No formal dharma talk tonight. I'd simply like to hear your questions. Most of you worked with the various journals Barbara sent out this summer. We received a number of emails, not from all but from many of you. You're each following your own areas of resonance with this akashic field practice, which is fine. Each of you is unique and will be practicing in your own way. I don't want to focus solely on the akashic field. This gathering also seems like a good opportunity to talk about where we are we now, 6 months after Venture Fourth. What's happening for you? What questions come up? I pass it to you.

Q: I'm trying to figure out, I'm been thinking that the sensations I feel, I think that they are my chakras. When the different arisings come up, they're represented by different feelings.

Aaron: When you say feelings, do you mean emotions, sensations, feelings of pleasant/ un pleasant/ neutral,  or something else?

Q: Contractions. And I think they are in the chakras. I want to see if I can get confirmation of that from Aaron.

Aaron: Q, everything is experienced in the chakras, either strongly or subtly, every emotion, every sensation. The chakras are part of the prime energy meridian of the body. The various contacts and consciousnesses are read through the chakras. So everything that comes up will be experienced through the chakras, and everything that arises will be interpreted by your conditioning. The chakras serve as a touchstone or recording or receiving device for the arising, and then the conditioning interprets it. And then, to whatever degree there is reactivity in that conditioning, certain tensions and subtle movements will arise.

Q: That's really cool, about the recording aspect. But now I'm wondering about the four elements expressing out of the chakras.

Aaron: The four elements do not express out of the chakras, the four elements express out of the dharmakaya and through the akashic field. They are broadcast into the primary meridian, that channel upon which the chakras are based, read by the conditioned mind and also by something deeper. I would call that something deeper the One Who Knows.

So, there's a chain of communication. The elements are constantly expressing up from the Dharmakaya and through the akashic field. Different chakras are touched in different depths by different elements. There is an interpretation of this, almost like somebody typing a message, the eyes see the message, and then there's interpretation. Here the message comes through energetically. The chakras read the message, and the chakras interpret the message according to the conditioning. Or if there is some degree of freedom from conditioning, there is more pure awareness, One Who Knows, interpreting the message rather than a self.

From Barbara while reviewing: Aaron, are you saying the chakras have an intelligence?

Aaron: No; the object touches the chakra or energy system as contact and consciousness occurs. As I said, the energy system records that entire transaction, of contact, consciousness and conditioned response and responds according to its own conditioning.  Your body is conditioned in this way, that whatever arises is noted and even held within the energy system, but it does not have intelligence, only conditioning.

Q: Aren't certain chakras more resonant with particular elements, like the throat with air?

Aaron: It's not that different chakras are more resonant with different elements; different chakras are more resonant with a balance or imbalance of the elements. If the elements are unbalanced so that a lot of fire is coming through, you'll probably experience more contraction in the lower chakras. If the elements are fairly balanced, you'll probably feel it as opening in the upper chakras. In other words, unbalance is felt in the lower three chakras. Balance is experienced more directly in the heart and upper three chakras. Imbalance is felt as contraction and balance is felt as opening. Is that consistent with your experience?

Q: I'm confused!

Aaron: Let's put this in another way. Let's say that somebody has said something abusive, and anger arises. Tension. You feel that anger in the belly, if there's mindfulness. If you ask, “What is this anger?”, you may feel the excess of fire energy and that the elements are somewhat out of balance, that there's an excess of fire, and that's what you feel burning in the spleen or solar plexus chakras, pulsating there.

Then you breathe in more water, more air, more space, more grounding. The elements come into balance. As the elements come into balance, you begin to feel that balance more in the heart center. Then there may be an impulse to speak that's more in the throat chakra. If the elements are balanced, that impulse to speak will be speech from a place of compassion. If you're still immersed in the anger, you'll find the energy dropping down to the lower chakras again.

Q: I have a question about trekchod and resting in rigpa. You said that when resting in rigpa one could note what was arising without following it, just arising, noting and letting it go. It is my understanding that when resting in rigpa there is only pure empty cognizance, no noting and no one to note. It is also my understanding that most people can only rest in rigpa for a second or two. We then must practice for short periods repeatedly.

Aaron: All of this is accurate, Q, to a degree. A person may be able to stand on one leg only for a second or two, but with practice they develop the balance to stay on that one leg for minutes or even hours.

Similarly, with practice one develops the ability to rest in rigpa for longer and longer periods of time. At first with that resting in rigpa there is only empty cognizance, as you noted. That empty cognizance then takes different objects and watches them arise. Gradually it becomes able to notice the conditioned mind that is simultaneously there with rigpa.

This is why, as we practice with trekchod, when some strong object pushes you out of rigpa, and you ask that question, “What is it?” or, “Anything here but an expression of the Unconditioned?”, you return to rigpa.

This is a superficial understanding, though. You have never left rigpa. It's more like the experience of the clear blue sky-- big empty sky and a cloud. If you focus on the cloud, you will lose the empty sky. But even if the cloud seems huge and solid, somewhere you see a little piece of the clear sky. Or even if you don't see it, you know the clear sky is there beyond the cloud.

Where do you place your focus? If you place your focus on the cloud, you lose the empty sky. If you keep your focus on the empty sky, you deny the existence of the cloud, which is simultaneously present. In true rigpa you learn to hold both. Empty cognizance holds the spaciousness and the objects, and sometimes those objects are what we call impure objects like fear or anger or desire.

As for, “no noting and no one to note,” Can you see the simultaneity? In rigpa, no noting and no one to note, but rigpa includes the field of mundane awareness. That awake mind watches everyday mind observing objects. That is just one thing held in the spaciousness of rigpa. Rigpa is present with “fire” as just what is in the moment, and everyday mind notes “fire” and offers the guidance to pour on water and douse he flame. There is no fear as the entire field is held in awareness, but there is the ability to respond appropriately.

Q: It is a little different understanding than the dzogchen teachings...

Aaron: Daughter, I have never called myself a dzogchen teacher. I call myself a teacher of presence and pure awareness. There is a strong overlap with dzogchen, and the dzogchen practice is helpful here. But I am not promising that it will be entirely consistent with what you might learn from a Tibetan teacher. I can only pass to you how I experience it.

Q: Thank you.

Aaron: You are welcome, Q. Please remember that when you rest in rigpa, the infinite capacity of rigpa, of the awake mind, can hold whatever arises, both the infinite clear sky and the objects, and it does not differentiate and create a duality. That is the important aspect of rigpa, that it sees the clear sky and the overlying clouds as one and the same, the clouds as just an expression of the Unconditioned. So it does not react, does not contract around the clouds. It is in that non-contraction that we find liberation.

Q: So the everyday mind, sem, is that the mind that is contracted around conditioned objects?

Aaron: Sem is the mind that can be contracted around the everyday objects. Rigpa watches sem contract with an, “Ahhh...” spaciousness.

Q: Can rigpa hold everything, conditioned objects, uncontracted?

Aaron: Rigpa holds the conditioned and the unconditioned knowing that there's no duality between them because the conditioned objects are simply expressions of the Unconditioned. No contraction, with rigpa. When there's contraction, you've lost rigpa temporarily. In other words, you've closed in so you only see the dark cloud and are saying, “Oh, a storm.” Contracted. And then, eyes open, you take in the whole spacious sky, and if there's going to be a storm, you get your umbrella. No contraction. Sometimes there are storms, sometimes no storms. Resting in rigpa is not a guarantee there will not be storms, because you live in a human body in this conditioned realm. Resting in rigpa is a guarantee that you will not become reactive to the storms and therefore create new unwholesome karma.

Q: So does Barbara rest in rigpa outside of her sitting practice?

Aaron: Does she rest in rigpa outside her sitting practice? Certainly. This is the effort-- when I say effort, an effortless effort, not a grasping effort. But to carry rigpa with one constantly, at least to become aware when one is losing touch with rigpa, If you suddenly find your body contracted, “tension, tension,' the first question is, where is rigpa? Noting tension, where is rigpa? Before one responds to the tension, one wants to come back to rigpa so that that which is responding to the tension is pure awareness and not sem.

Q: I have been aware lately of this kind of all-over contraction that I'm living in, and wanting to shift in the moment instead of just in my sitting practice. It's the contraction of must-do.

Aaron: The first step, Q, is the awareness of the contraction, and any awareness of such habitual tendency to contract further and want to fix, even if it's a subtle pushing it away or trying to control the contraction. Then, bring in the highest intention for the highest good, for doing no harm. Work with love and spaciousness. Based on that intention, even though there's fear or tension, allow and invite the opening back into pure awareness. From that pure awareness, noting again the residual contraction that's there, and at this point taking care of the contraction from the state of pure awareness rather than fixing the contraction from the sem mind.

It's an ongoing process, and the more you do it, the more facile it becomes. It smoothes itself out, as fruit of practice. I can only think of a musician practicing his scales, hitting the wrong note, freezing up, trying again and again, and the harder that musician tries, the more he keeps hitting the wrong note. Coming back into spaciousness. Hearing the inner music. Relaxing, and then trying the notes again. The music starts to flow again. It's about right effort, in large part, which is effort coming from rigpa, from pure awareness, rather than effort coming from the ego self.

Q: That sounds like working from the fourth foundation of mindfulness, as Rodney Smith teaches it. Discernment is a word he likes to use.

Aaron: Discernment is a good word there, yes. Discernment of what is predominant, sem or rigpa. What is predominant, pure awareness or ego? Discernment is imperative, here. It's the discernment of the presence of the ego. It's fine if the ego or small mind is present, but the discernment as to which is running things, and where you may habitually shift your balance into ego running things versus pure awareness in charge.

It seems to me we did an exercise with this on the beach at Emerald Isle, perhaps two years ago, with people watching their balance as the wind blew and the waves (rolled in) at their legs. Feeling themselves unbalanced momentarily. Inviting balance back in from a place of spaciousness and ease while watching the subtle fear that came up because the waves were about to knock them over. They were only in ankle deep water; they weren't going to fall. It was a sunny day s warm even if one fell and became soaked. But there was still that intention, “Wanting to stay upright. Not wanting to fall.” The small ego self grabbed hold. Needing to notice the tension and return into the spaciousness that invited back the already and always existent balance. And people found it amazingly easy to stay balanced with the waves hitting the feet once they rested in that spaciousness. I think some of you will remember that exercise.

Q: He (Rodney) speaks of discernment to clear out distortion, kind of a supramundane investigation.

Aaron: I would not use it quite that way, Q. If discernment is used, it's too easy for the ego to be using it. Discernment distinguishes what is running the show. When discernment relaxes back into spaciousness, the distortion releases in itself. There's nobody releasing the distortion; it's gone.

Q: A sensation of spaciousness is my entry into rigpa. I don't then lay my intention in the akashic field. I am able to exercise my discursive mind while in rigpa, and I feel a continuity with that feeling of spaciousness. When you compare rigpa to the infinite clear sky, I think of my consciousness without the sensation of spaciousness. The question is, do I assume this feeling associated with spaciousness is not rigpa but sem?

Aaron: This feeling associated with spaciousness is rigpa. You said when you think of your consciousness without the sensation of spaciousness.... (rereading question several times to understand)... You're saying that when you experience rigpa as the infinite clear sky there is no spaciousness, is that what you're saying?

Q: Clear sky/light is shining all the time, even when I'm not in rigpa.

Aaron: Isn't that clear light spaciousness? Perhaps you're in rigpa more often than you realize. I can't answer that for you, Q. My guess is that if you're experiencing that kind of clear light a lot of the time, you're experiencing rigpa.

There are no degrees of rigpa, but there are degrees of experience of it. By that I mean that if I go outside in the morning and the sky is getting light but there's a mist, I experience light but still some mist. As the sun burns the mist away, I experience more and more light. As awareness burns away the mist of separate self, you experience more light and spaciousness. However, even in that early morning mist you are still outside in the clear light. There's just some fog.

Just consider the possibility, Q, that this is rigpa, this spaciousness and light, as I do think it is for you, and this rigpa can become ever more clear and present as the mist burns away. Ask what supports the increase of spaciousness and light and what deters it. Just experiment with that and explore.

Other questions?

Q: I feel confident that the track through spaciousness is truly leading me to rigpa.

Aaron: Spaciousness is not rigpa; spaciousness is an expression of rigpa. Light is another expression of rigpa.

Q: A question about chi and energy. I find that energy can be an entry into rigpa.

Aaron: Yes.

Q: But the energy isn't quite chi because it doesn't move, it only radiates.

Aaron: I'm looking in the akashic records, here, Q, trying to get a picture of your experience of this. The energy IS moving but you at some level are attempting to control it and pick out pieces of it, to use it in some way. You're experiencing chunks of it rather than the flow of it, like taking one slice of the river that your foot is in rather than the whole flow of the river.

I would ask you to shift your attention to the whole flow rather than the bits and pieces of energy. Breathe with it. Try to bring it into the breath. Feel it coming through the chakras, raising up from the base, coming into the crown chakra. Use the orbit that comes up the back and over the crown of the head and back down into the hara and back into the base chakra. Begin to invite the experience of movement of energy, and then relax and watch it. Then see how that relates to the akashic field.

We talked a bit about that this morning, quite a bit actually, and it will be on the transcripts. The question this morning was about the relationship between the kundalini channel and the central channel that leads into the akashic field, that's described in Circle of the Sun.

Q: It doesn't move because it's ever-present.

Aaron: if you're focused on the ever-presence of it, then you will not feel the movement. That doesn't mean it's not moving, only that you are so deeply connected to the simultaneity of it everywhere that you don't pick up the movement of it.

I don't think it's urgent that you experience the movement of it. If you're experiencing the chi energy in any way and it leads you into the akashic field, that's fine. Don't tinker with it.

Q: I recently had an experience where I felt like I was accessing the akashic records. I wasn't skilled enough to retrieve the answer from the akashic records. Can an earth plane being access the akashic records?

Aaron: Yes, absolutely. One learns a technique. Often there is fear.  

Noting fear. Noting fear of seeing what's written in those records. Is that the fear?

Q: Fear of being found out as a fraud.

Aaron: That's a familiar one to many people. And it's only a concept, Q, because of course we're all frauds and nobody is a fraud. What is a fraud? A fraud is one who is dishonest with the totality of their experience. You, being who you are, are quite honest with the totality of your experience. You are demon and divinity all at once; all of us are. Even I am. We all have positive and negative in ourselves. So the idea of fraud only comes in if there's a concept, “I should be this and not that.” and that other people believe you should be this and not that. When you are the fullness of what you are, it invites others to open to the fullness of what they are.

Q: I have many questions! I will ask one. In the journals from this summer, Aaron talked about a half-chakra between the crown and the third eye. Can you show me...?

Aaron: (pointing it out on Q) Yes, the half chakra. If you'll go to the third eye and touch there with the little finger, and then put your thumb on the crown chakra, feel the energy of both of those. Now gently slide the thumb from the crown chakra forward toward the third eye until you come to what feels like a pulsation and a softness. It will differ for each of you. For Barbara it's about 2 inches forward of the crown chakra, almost equidistant between crown and third eye, but perhaps a little bit further from the crown than the third eye. Pretty much equidistant, back about a quarter of an inch... (adjusting on Q) Can you feel the pulsation there? That's the half-chakra.

Okay. Others?

Q: I have been getting the impression that human consciousness is moving rapidly now, and the sense of interconnection is growing strong. (Aaron: Absolutely.) It seems we may be on track for 4th density.

Aaron: It's not that you're trying for 4th density; there is intention to support the inevitable movement into 4th density and to participate in that movement. Part of that movement is the changing of the DNA, which we talked about in Venture Fourth. And this is happening for all of you. There is a shift. Some of you are more conscious of the shift; some of you are much further along in the shift. There are many beings on Earth now who are very lodged in 3rd density and not ready for that shift. And as Earth becomes a 4th density planet, their next incarnation will take them to a different 3rd density planet. They're not ready to graduate into 4th density. But for those of you who have been practicing and are old souls and are thusly ready, there will be this shift into 4th density.

We see so many telepathic children these days. I have many children who come and talk to me about their experiences because they are looking for some kind of validation, that maybe none of their peers-- maybe some of their peers, but they don't talk about it-- experience seeing auras, telepathic connections, pre-cognition experiences, and so forth. It scares them a bit, so it helps to talk to me and normalize it. These are children who are born as 4th density beings. And some of them will turn their backs on these experiences.

For example, Barbara when she was a child, experienced all of this. Then she went through perhaps 20 or 30 years of pushing it away, just being an everyday human being. And then her deafness came and knocked her on the head and reminded her, “You're here to do certain work. Wake up.” You don't have to experience that kind of trauma to wake up. Paying attention, trusting your experience, helps.

So much of what we're working with here, especially in the akashic field, is your interconnection with everything and your responsibility for that interconnection, using your vipassana practice to help you become more centered, live with more wisdom and compassion, to make more wholesome choices so that you feel more confident to be thusly responsible to live your interconnection and your power, and not to run away from that power.

Q: I am reminded of the Chinese folktale of the rainmaker. It's about a village that was experiencing a terrible drought in the land and it was so bad that the people were ready to leave the area. Their crops were dead. Either they hired a rainmaker or he just came to town, I don't remember. But he came, and he sat in a hut and sat and sat, and then it rained. And they asked him, what did he do? And he said that he sat and felt where he--he-- was out of balance in that place, and then worked to bring himself--himself--into balance.

Aaron: Exactly. A wonderful story. That's it. That's exactly it. Each of you, as you take responsibility to bring yourself into balance and harmony, brings the world into harmony. Each of you is constantly co-creating the next moment. Some of you allow your selves more power in that co-creation than others. So, while all of those in the village were desperately trying to make it rain from the ego point of view, separating themselves from the elements and not seeing the lack of rain was their own dryness, their own heat, fire without moisture, their own fear, he was able to look into that and find the living moisture in himself, bring everything into balance, and through his own balance, to help balance that of all the people around him in the village.

This is what manifestation is about. Sometimes I think we ought to do a whole series of workshops on manifestation. But there's so much that must come before we can do that, that only with a group like all of you who have done the two years of Venture Fourth can we really talk about it with clarity.

Q: Is the central channel the same as the line of energy that goes from the heart to the area behind the eyes?

Aaron: Q, a very brief answer to this, and please read this morning's transcript when we get it because we talked about this at length.

There are two channels. One is the channel through which kundalini flows through the chakras, from the base up to the crown, and going down from the base into the earth from the crown. The kundalini flows around back into the hara, below the ribs, and down back into the base. This is the channel on which the chakras lie.

There is a second channel, the one mentioned in Circle of the Sun. The energy comes up just in front of the central channel, comes through the heart and it's experienced forcibly at the heart center and up behind the third eye, behind the eyeballs.

So there are two different channels we're referring to, here. They relate, of course; everything relates. But they are two separate channels.

Q: How can there be separate channels?

Aaron: Nothing is separate. And yet if I touch hot water with my right hand and my left hand, one arm carries the information and the other arm carries the information. It's the same information. It's carried to the same place. And yet there are two separate channels that carry that information.

Q: How are each of these channels to be experienced or identified?

Aaron: The channel through which kundalini arises through the chakras is experienced more beyond the self, grounding into the earth, bringing in the energy from the heaven realms into the crown chakra. There is a flow to it. One can feel the chakras opening with it.

The central channel described in Circle of the Sun is experienced more in the heart center and in the third eye. There's not so much awareness of it at the base or at the crown. It's more a place of inward focus rather than moving energy.

Q: Which is the white energy?

Aaron: I can't answer that, it's unique to each of you. I personally experience both as having white energy, but I experience the kundalini channel as a more golden light and the core channel as a more intense white light. But that's my personal experience of it; it's not a statement of “this is how it is.” Then again, I have not been in a body for a long time so it's hard for me to tell you how the kundalini experience is. I do experience the central channel without a body but not the kundalini because I don't have chakras anymore.

How do you experience them, Q?

Q: How do you experience them, Aaron?

Aaron: When I was in a body, I experienced the chakras more as a golden kind of gold-white energy. I experience the channel described in Circle of the Sun core from the heart to the third eye as an intense white light.

Q: But without a body, how are you experiencing it?

Aaron: I am experiencing Barbara's experience of it. Without a body I still experience the central channel. There is still a heart and third eye energy, I simply don't have a body in which that heart and third eye center exist. But not being in a body anymore, I don't really have a base chakra. The heart and third eye exist but they're not really heart and third eye anymore. They are the base for presence, the basis for awareness. There is a heart center which is compassion. There is a third eye which is wisdom and insight. And the channel between them is a brilliant white radiance. As long as I'm centered on that radiance, I know that there's balance between the two.

If I move into compassion without wisdom, it becomes a bluish colored light. If I move into wisdom without compassion, it becomes a very sterile, stark, cold white light. The balance is just right. But that is my experience. I can't say that's how it should be for you.

Q: My experiences are always different. There was a time when I was working with white energy. It was just after an experience of primordial purity. The white energy was very heart-centered so it sounds like the central channel. I was dissolving arisings into it.

Aaron: Perfect! Yes. Others of you that we have not yet heard from?

Q: When you spoke about the chakras as being recording devices, is that where contact and consciousness arise in the chain of dependent origination? You told Q that we record experiences in the chakras.

Aaron: Okay. Record is probably not the best word. I'm spinning back through the akashic records to what I said. We register through the chakras. Record is like this recorder, something that plays it back again and again. More, we register through the chakras. The chakras are sensitive to, yes, contact and consciousness.

So, there's contact and consciousness within each chakra which registers according to your conditioning and sends you into certain emotions or mind states, if you are very much in the everyday mind. On the other hand, if you are more in rigpa and they register certain vibration, there's no needing to pigeonhole that vibration. It still registers as contact and consciousness but there's no pigeonholing into saying, “This is this.” It's only the sem mind that needs to control everything and put it into its own slot.

Q: So is contact and consciousness through the chakras the sense door?

Aaron: That is the sense door, yes. Let me expand this. Contact comes through the sense doors of the five physical senses and the mind. Contact arises and then consciousness. Seeing, contact, eye touching the object, consciousness. Then that contact and consciousness are registered, remembered or recorded in each of the chakras. If they are registered from a place of pure awareness, there's no stickiness to it and no conditioning that says, “Oh, this one is bad, that one is good.” If it's registered from pure awareness, it just flows through. Then it doesn't contract in the body.

Q: Yes. When it contracts in the body, it moves into greater density into the emotions and the physical body.

Aaron: Correct. And it solidifies the sense of a self.

Q: I have been working with the akashic field by following that vortex down to the place where it emerges from the akashic.

Aaron: This sounds perfect, Q. What I want to point out here is there is no one right way of accessing the akashic field. Circle of the Sun gives you a specific path through Tibetan togyal practice. This is one path. What Q is describing is one path. Q2 accesses the akashic field energetically through her energy bodywork. Different of you will access it in different ways, and no one way is right. Barbara often accesses it visually with color and light. I've spoken to some of you who access it with tone.

I think the most important point here is that you begin to recognize that there is an akashic field. Not to be frightened by that experience but simply to note that it's viable to be able to access it. And then trust your intention to access it for the highest good, for healing for yourself and all beings, to diminish dualistic experience, and so forth, and trust what comes. Ask your guides for help. Trust your own intuition. Don't try to follow somebody else's path to it. This is why we could not introduce it two years ago; you all had to establish a lot of practices and tools first. Now you're ready to open to the akashic field.

Seeing as it's 8:30pm here in Seattle, we're going to end here...

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