May 10, 2014 Seattle Sat night talk: Meditation; Working in the Akashic Field

May 10, 2014 Saturday Evening, Seattle Retreat

Meditation; Working in the Akashic Field

Barbara: I'm beginning by reading  from a chapter of this book,Devotion, a Memoir, by Dani Shapiro. (HarperCollins January 26, 2010)This is Chapter 28. She's talking about the ups and downs of her life, and spiritual quest and life quest.

After returning home from Kripalu, I promised myself that each day I would practice metta meditation for at least 15 minutes. Having been on retreat for three days, I didn't think this was a particularly tall order. Surely I had the discipline to sit still for 15 minutes. To prepare, I ordered an elaborate meditation cushion and a timer that was supposed to chime with the sound of Tibetan bells. The meditation cushion, with its three-legged plastic base shaped like a flying saucer, proved uncomfortable and strange. The timer's chimes sounded like the electronic ring of a regular alarm clock.

So I gave up on props and tried to just sit, using the comfortable metta phrases that Sophia Boorstein had taught. "May I feel protected and safe. May I feel contented and pleased." My mind would break through the words almost instantly. "Got to call the dentist. When's the school picnic?" These first thoughts were all on the level of the utterly mundane. I tried to be a neutral observer, to simply watch the thoughts as if they were clouds in the sky, but it was difficult. I was full of self-judgment. This was what was in the mind? My first layer of consciousness felt like a trashcan full of post-it's and to-do lists. "May my physical body support me with strength. May my life unfold smoothly with ease." I couldn't get all the way through the four phrases without some bit of detritus from my daily life intruding. "Why hasn't that health insurance reimbursement come in yet?" It seemed impossible to quiet down.

Again and again I was overcome by an intense desire to open my eyes, to move, to check the timer, to stop. The desire felt physical, an uncomfortable surge of energy. As soon as one passed, another would start up again.

On some days I discovered I was able to tolerate these surges of energy for at least a little while. And when I did, I began to see the endless circular monologue beneath them. No wonder I didn't want to go there. Worry, fear, doubt, resentment, envy, anxiety, comparison, sadness-- apparently these were the themes, the complicated stories churning through my head. Rather than being like a still clear pool of water, an image often used in visualizations, my mind was a stagnant pond badly in need of dredging. The checklists and tasks were the debris floating on the surface. Either way it was murky territory, and I didn't want to go there.

But go there I continued to do, because really, what was the alternative? I had gotten a peek at the enemy and she was me. If worry, fear, doubt, resentment, et al, were part of the fabric of my inner life, didn't I need to know about it?

Each day it took longer and longer to prepare myself to meditate. Simply plunking myself down on the floor wasn't going to do the trick. I started to worry that this was becoming a full-time job. What was an ambitious, sociable, urban-oriented 45 year old woman doing spending her mornings sitting in dead silence with her eyes closed in a house in the middle of nowhere?

I'm skipping a bit... She talks about first starting with an hour of yoga, having to exhaust her body before she could do it.

As the last of the music and chanting faded away, I was ready, or at least as ready as I could make myself. I folded my legs into a half-lotus and began the internal struggle to let go. I repeated Sylvia's phrases, focused on the out breath, focused on the in and out breath. Became aware of the birds chirping outside my window and the distant rumble of a truck straining uphill. What was this exploration? I was like a scientist experimenting in a laboratory of the self.

I watched the thoughts come, tried to label them simply as thinking. "Why did she do that to me? I never..." – thinking. "How are we ever going to be able to afford..."–thinking. "I hope he didn't think that I..." – thinking.

The surges of energy continued. By now I knew that these surges meant there was something more. Beneath the painful but still mostly mundane concerns lurked something pure and deep that this simple process of sitting was stirring up. I couldn't touch it yet. All I knew was that sitting helped. And by that, I don't mean that it helped me to feel better. Let me be perfectly clear: meditation was not helping me to feel better. It was hard, scary, and sometimes felt silly. What was I doing? I had deadlines to meet, students to teach, food shopping to do, but it was helping me to make out the vaguest beginning of an outline. I was starting to see what was there.

Aaron will incorporate...

(Aaron incorporates)

Aaron: Good evening, and my love to you all. Thanks to Barbara for reading these pages. So what is this stagnant pond, and why do we need to look into it? No, we don't want to go there. There is one elder in the Theravada tradition, a teacher who when asked, "What is meditation?" said, "One insult after another." Just finding all this inner debris.

If you have a house and it becomes very dirty, very cluttered, and you just keep piling things on top of the clutter and dirt, not looking to see what's there, just piling more and more and more, eventually you run out of space. Eventually it starts to stink. You've got to look and see what's there. Then, like that attic or cellar, we start to see what's in the top layers first. The top layers are just debris, but that's not where the stink is coming from. We need to go deeper. What is it that's festering, molding, down at the bottom?

At times it's simply existential pain, the pain of human life. The pain of the reality that, no matter how hard you try, you're not going to outlive this particular incarnation. You and everything you love is going to die. You can't keep things together and right. No matter how hard you plan it, something's going to go amiss. Everything is perfect, and you throw in the last load of wash and the washing machine leaks water all over the floor. You put the roast in the oven. The timer doesn't work quite right and dinner burns. Nothing is going to be perfect. You look back on your childhood, perhaps with some delight, perhaps with horror, and think, "Why did it turn out the way it did?" Could my parents have done a better job? Could I do a better job? Why is it all the way it is? This is how life is. It's messy.

We meditate not so much to make everything bright and beautiful as to find out that it's okay that there's garbage at the bottom of the pile, and we can sweep it out; that eventually the stink will go away, the floor will be clean. But the pain of the experiences may not be completely gone, the old anger, the old confusion. Rather, we have a sense of peacefulness with it. "This is how he body is. This is how the mind is. This is how my mother's or father's mind was. This is why I met the anger that I met. This is why I met the sadness. This is why this or that parent died." This is life.

This insight is different from resignation. We're not just talking about, "Oh, I'll get through it," but a genuine peace that comes when you recognize everything is really clicking along just as it needs to, sometimes pleasant, sometimes unpleasant. It's not safe. It's never going to be safe. And yet in its lack of safety, it's safe. Do you understand what I mean by that? Life is dangerous, but it's safe to live life, that's why you came here. Before you made the decision to incarnate you knew it was going to be tough and you were eventually going to die.

Why come then? Because of love. Because of the intense aspiration to touch your own life, your own history, the people around you, and the whole world around you, with loving kindness. This is the only way we can change things. The Buddha said it in a very simple way. "Hatred never resolves hatred. Only love resolves hatred." But how do we bring love into the places of greatest pain, greatest sadness?

Again, it's not a matter of resignation but a matter of wisdom. In this case, seeing what has come before is all the arising and passing away of conditions. It has led me to this moment. And this moment is fresh, it's new. In this moment,anything is possible. In this moment, even love is possible, even release of old fear, anger, and pain are possible. In this moment, no matter how many thousands of times I have made an unskillful decision before in similar circumstances, I can make a different decision that's going to change everything.

I look at the garbage in my hand, and instead of throwing it back up into the attic or down to the cellar, I say, "This goes into the compost pile." I use the pain of the past as a transformative force. We see it with the compost. You throw away the garbage. It goes into the compost pile, turns over, and becomes rich new soil. As you in meditation explore the old history, old pain and confusion, with love and shine light on it, it transforms everything. It becomes the ground for kindness, and you no longer feel you have to keep burying it so that at the bottom of the pile, it stinks.

Let's add a bit more metaphysical link to this. For the three of you who have been following Barbara's and my akashic field teachings, when we come down to this ground, this essence of everything, everything expressing out, all the light and all the darkness, all the kindness and all the anger, all flowing out, erupting out, from our practice we learn that we have the potential to hold with kindness that which we never thought we could hold with kindness. As we do this for ourselves and truly touch ourselves and the immediate world around us with kindness, and our deepening aspiration to be of service to all beings holds us steady, using the akashic field practice we literally begin to see the ripples of distortion that we have created for ourselves in our own life and through the world, and to attend to them.

Have any of you ever had the experience, before something truly disruptive happens, just sometimes in the moments before, of somehow sensing a distortion?(Yes). Before 9/11, many people spoke of having sensed some wrongness somewhere and just sent out metta to it, before the planes crashed into the towers. You are tuned in to everything. These are people without training. But as you train in these practices, you start to live more deeply grounded in the akashic field.

I used an image earlier for some of you, some of you have read this image from my talks, the person 200 feet long. First you're up at the surface. The sea is getting rough. Hundreds of people in little rafts that were floating peacefully on the surface of the water are suddenly getting tossed and turned by the waves and are afraid of being drowned. They're all screaming for help. You're also being tossed and turned on the surface. How can you help them? The waves are smashing you and toppling you over.

Imagine yourself, legs stretching down 50 feet, 100 feet, 150 feet, 200 feet–how far down do you have to go before you come to a deep, still place? Anchor yourself there. Feel your feet held in this stillness. I don't mean like lead, there's a little motion to it, but it's deep, peaceful and still. You may have to bring your head all the way down there, too. Let's imagine you can breathe down there. You may have to let go of the surface briefly. Anchor yourself into the stillness and loving kindness of your heart, and then gradually stretch yourself back up to the surface without losing touch of that still anchor of the depths. Reaching the hands up. Stabilizing the boats. Lifting people up onto a big Coast Guard cutter that's come to help. Can you feel the possibility of being in both places at one time or at least a rapid alternation that allows access to both?

Q: It's a stretch!

Aaron: It's a stretch. This is why you're practicing, because it's a stretch. If it was easy, you wouldn't need to practice. But with practice you find yourself able to stay in that still space and to attend to the vast currents and turmoil in the world.

First you do it for yourself, with the tumultuous emotions and physical sensations and such that come. You do it for your children, your parents, your friends. And then you start to tune in to the turmoil of the world, the pain, the agony of the world. And it's no longer you tuning in to it; rather it's love tuning in to it. The ego drops out. Just love attending.

The world is in a period of transition, literally, shifting into a higher vibration, higher density. As it shifts out of the heavier density, there is more of what I call the loyal opposition, those beings who are more negative in their polarity, more in service to self, more wanting to create havoc, taking delight in fear. They see people extending themselves in love and say, "Oh no, we don't want that!" And they create more havoc. I'm not just talking about spirit but people, people who don't want the world to be a place of love because they thrive on fear and hatred, lust, and so forth.

As the Buddha said, the only answer is love. Hatred will never resolve hatred. So this akashic field practice and your vipassana practice, which is the foundation for the akashic field practice, become a way of shifting the distortion before it can take root. I'm hard-put to find a good metaphor for this.

Imagine yourself on a vast sunlit plain. Millions of people are there picnicking, families enjoying each other, lovers, and friends all enjoying each other's company. Happy, light-filled. Because you have very distant vision, in the far distance, far beyond what anyone else can see, you see the beginnings of a cyclone, a tornado, coming toward this field from many miles away. You're not the only one that sees it; there are others like you, hundreds of them gathered around this meadow here and there. And suddenly all of them are alerted to this impending danger coming toward you.

You co-create everything, so in this situation, you and others, not from the ego but from that 200 feet down, hold the intention that people not be killed. That this swirling weather move a different direction. You do have that power. You doubt that you have that power, but you do have that power, to attend. And here I'm using the tornado, which is a physical object, but I'm also using it more as a metaphor for the energetic ripple of distortion. Fierce hatred. People who would say, "Let's fly planes into these towers." If enough love comes to this, it can divert this entire ripple of intention, this whole distortion.

Some years ago there was a movement that never gathered much force but which idea delighted me. I don't remember what the circumstances were in the world, but it was a time where there was a lot of fear and hatred. Somebody proposed, let's send an army of grandmothers there, weaponless, to simply sit in this city where there was so much turmoil and so much hatred, just to go and sit. Others said they would be killed. Perhaps. How many grandmothers are they going to kill before they realize, "We can't do this anymore."? Grandmothers who simply smile at them and say, "I love you," how many?

Love heals hatred. The ripples of fear and hatred that keep your whole world spinning into frequent distortions, are healed by love.

So what I'm pointing out here is this akashic field work is not just to resolve your own karma and discomfort. But it is your choice, those of you who come with a fullest intention to bring healing to the whole world, to resolve some of the hatred and pain on the Earth. It's an amazing tool.

You don't have to get together as a group of grandmothers and go somewhere, you simply get together as group of grandmothers and grandfathers, children, sons and daughters, lovers and all people and send out energy. Not, "Kill the distortion!" but to hold space for the distortion and see it releasing. You have that power. You are growing into the power. You have memories, many of you, of once having had that power, and you think it's an illusion. But you once did have this power, long ago. And now you are ready to reclaim your power because you are moving into a spiritual maturity. Not all of you, not the whole world, but many of you, and that's what this whole transition is about.

To do this you have to have the courage to take out the garbage, to do your work. It really is as simple as that.

I'm going to keep this a short talk. I'd like to hear questions from you. We'll have some discussion for a while and then a final sitting.

Q: It's interesting that you said the things you said today. I have been thinking along those lines for the last few days. But the words are different. The healing I received at the Casa was unexpected. It was a vibration, a higher vibration. And I understood everything as a vibration when I left, starting from love as the highest vibration. But I started using crystals and scent. And I didn't know why. But something you are saying tonight brings this together. And I don't know why.

Aaron: I would guess it brings it together because I'm offering a bit of a map, helping you to make sense of a variety of experiences and be able to say, "Aha! I begin to see how this all fits together." Why I am having these experiences. Why the Earth is shifting, why I am shifting with the Earth. I begin to understand my responsibility that I chose before I took incarnation-- my commitment, is perhaps a better word than responsibility. This is my commitment to love, to bring myself within this high vibration so that I can be a force for love and help to invite the whole Earth more fully into this high vibration. I cannot invite the Earth into this vibration if I'm outside of it. And the only way I can move into it is to resolve the variety of turmoil and conflicts and fears in myself. One can do that. By resolve, I don't mean get rid of; simply make peace with it. This is the human condition. Let's use it to make compost, not let it stink things up. Does that make sense to you?

Q: Sort of.

Aaron: Please don't let it scare you. I misused the word responsibility, but that feels like a burden. Rather, a loving commitment, long since forgotten. But many of you are remembering that commitment now, that intention to bring love where there has been hatred, connection where there has been separation.

It's interesting. You came here long ago to experiment, to learn. You had to create some havoc. You had to experience a sense of separation, because how could you step away from it with your free will intention if you didn't experience it? There was a need to know distortion in order to choose non-distortion. A need even to know fear. We've talked of this at times as the choice, figuratively, to leave the Garden of Eden. Living in that perfect, sublime bliss, but with some immaturity. There was then the willingness to take on the chaos of distortion in order to learn about distortion, in order to learn about the power of love that you each carry and can bring to bear on that distortion. Finally, willingness to see that the distortion itself was an illusion that you created in order to know it, in order to see the ability to respond with love. If there's no catalyst for love, why would you bring forth love?

Q: I often think that I can do what you are saying, but then the real world is very different when I try. I am not skilled at all.

Aaron: This is why we practice. We just keep practicing.

Q: It's almost like this is fantasy, what I'm trying to do is fantasy.

Aaron: No, what you're trying to do is reality! The whole world of illusion is fantasy! But we've all co-created the fantasies as catalyst. If there was never any turmoil, any anger, any fear, what would be the reason for enhancing your ability for compassion? You have unlimited ability for compassion. Because something is pushing on you, it gives rise to either impulse to push back or spaciousness and compassion. And for eons the whole world has practiced pushing back in hatred. Now the world is shifting its polarity into a positive mode. Love, hold the high vibration. This is possible.

I used an illustration once of paddling a boat down a river. The river forks. You've been warned there's a place where you have to pull to the right, and there's a gradual way around a steep place. But if you don't pay attention, you go over the waterfall, over steep rocks. You're going to be bashed and bruised.

You look at the map. You really see where the fork is, and you say, "I'm going to go on that roundabout smooth path." But as you're coming up, you're really not paying attention. You're day-dreaming. "Oh, it's so beautiful! Oh!" And suddenly you see the fork going that way, and the current is pulling you over the waterfall, so you are bashed and bruised and beaten. So you portage back up to the top, with your stiff rubber rafts. You climb back on. You've got your paddle. "This time I'm going to get it." The current is pulling you. You see the fork approaching, "Here's where I must paddle." And suddenly there's a big bird streaking across the sky. "Oh!" Distracted! Off you go down the waterfall again. A third time, a fourth time. How many times do you have to be bashed and beaten going down these rocky falls before you finally say, "I will pay attention."? It's the strong habit energy, the karma, that keeps pulling you one direction.

But as you approach this time, you say, "This time I've got it." And you paddle. It takes effort because the habitual tendency to go over the waterfall is so strong, the current is so strong, in metaphor. It takes effort. But this time you catch it and you go around. And it's just a lovely, gentle movement down a gentle slope, way off that way and back, and you come out to a pool at the bottom of the waterfall. Easy, lovely.

Now you've got it. You carry your raft up again. You do it again, and a second time. The third time down you're thinking to yourself, "Gee, now I've got it." And you're so stuck in the "Now I've got it" that you miss the turn! The fourth time you get it smooth again. But after a hundred times of going that way, there's no longer habitual energy to go over the falls. No longer habitual energy when somebody yells at you to yell back, or when something frightening comes up, to tense up and try to fight it or fix it.

We start to respond with compassion, and the compassion becomes the habitual pattern. This is where your practice can take you.

If enough of you continue to practice in that way, basically you're all going to be flowing off that way, and those few who feel they have to bash themselves going over the waterfall, well, they will have to do that. But you don't have to do it with them. And gradually you basically set up a force field on the river so that some of you who are guardians are there where the fork is, just pointing people, "No, go this way. Go this way. Go this way." And if somebody says, "No way! I'm going over the waterfall!" -- "If you wish. You have free will." But you don't get caught in that energy.

Eventually those who want to go over the waterfall and get beaten up will go elsewhere. The Earth is transforming itself into a positively polarized higher density planet. Those who wish violence and hatred and fear will no longer find it a suitable place to incarnate and they'll move to a plane, which is grounded in that kind of violence and fear. Eventually, eons from now, they'll tire of it and come, saying, "How do we get out?"

Others?

Q: A year ago you were still saying that the transformation can go in either direction, positive or negative.

Aaron: It still can go in either direction, but it's picking up momentum to go in a positive direction because so many of you are responding with love. The more you respond with love, the more that loyal opposition says, "No way!" So there will be more outbursts of violence, perhaps, on the Earth temporarily, more outbursts of negativity, giving you the chance to work with compassion. Remember that compassion is strong. It doesn't just say, "Sure, kill us all." It says, "No, you may not be abusive. You may not be destructive. If you wish to be self-abusive, self-destructive, suit yourself. But you may not do that to others."

Q: One of the biggest problems that I see is population growth that is out of control. I say that because every time that I hear news about some new medical breakthrough or...

Aaron: If you believe population growth is out of control and the Earth will not be able to support the population, then you'll have to start thinking in terms of killing off the population. If instead you believe that the Earth can support the population, but we have to  and are willing to change our lifestyle, not to a lesser lifestyle, just a different one, eating differently-- There's enormous possibility from the sea, sea vegetation, different kinds of farming that can be done in the sea. This Earth can easily support this population. But when we say it can't, then there's fear. The fear becomes a blinder so you can't see the possibilities. Then you start to go down that bumpy waterfall. "I guess we've got to kill off the population, or force people to stop the population." Eventually people moving into a deeply positive polarity will work out the optimum population for the Earth and keep it at that.

Don't create "problems", because problems just create fear and bring up negativity. Instead, ask, how do we do this with love?

Q: Today, this afternoon and evening, I was meditating with the heart field as a primary object. I was also watching as I started going into sinking mind, and really paying attention to that just... right at the beginning. And going into sinking mind, I felt this transition of tingling and then contraction. I think the contraction was me noticing seeing, "Oh, sinking mind." As I contracted I felt it within the heart space, like a different space of contraction layered somewhere around this more open space. And I wonder about becoming, and is that a contraction, becoming? And is this heart space, how is that connected to the akashic field, the heart, that open heart energy right here?

Aaron: The open heart-energy is always there but not always accessible, just as the blue sky is always there but not always accessible. When you feel something that separates you from the open heart-space, simply note it. Contraction, tingling, confusion, pulling away, whatever it is, just note it, "separating, separating." What happens to this object when you note it? We don't have to call it separating. The tingling could be an opening, not separating. Just note it as tingling. You don't have to know what it is. If you're with it, it will either show itself as contraction or it will open itself into spaciousness. Watch it.

If you see that it's wholesome and beautiful, be with it. If you see that it's leading you deeper and deeper into a place of fear and negative thought, then note that. Use your clear comprehension practice: What is my highest intention here? If it's for loving kindness, then to follow any stories that are coming up built on this tingling or other sensations, the closing heart, this is not suitable to my highest purpose. So I do not follow the stories, but I don't cease to follow the stories by attacking the stories. I simply back up and into the spaciousness and let the stories dissolve.

Q: I was experiencing a contracted energy at the same time as the open heart. It just depended on what I focused on.

Aaron: This is like that space where the stream is just about to fork that gentle way or about to go over the rapids. And at that point you note the pull, the old habit of being pulled into the contraction, and offer the strong statement, "Not this time. I choose the open heart." Breathing in, I am aware of the contraction. Breathing out, I smile to the contraction. That's another way of choosing the open heart. "I choose to live in the open heart." Use some metta phrasing, if that's helpful. Offer metta to the contracted energy, old fear, old thinking. "I am not going down that waterfall again. I don't want to cause pain."

Q: So is the going down the waterfall, is the contraction, is that the point on the chain of dependent origination where it is becoming?

Aaron: The moment where the choice is made is the active moment. Even the moment where there is consciousness of choice, before one moves one way or the other.

Q: Is that the same way it happens in the akashic field, as it does here in the heart?

Aaron: Yes. That active moment, you feel yourself ready to go either way. The old way, which is filled with the distortion of old habits, old fears, karma. The new choice, which is also karmic, based on the wholesome karma of many lifetimes, for expansiveness, for space, for love. And saying, this time I'm not going that way.

Using a very simple image, the neighbor who has really been abusive. You have a big apple tree on the property line. Your apples are falling on his grass. He comes over, yelling at you. He throws apples and breaks your windows. He screams at you. "Get your apples off my grass!" So you say to him, "Okay, I will cut all the branches off that hang over your property." "No, I don't want that. It will look ugly." You've tried to please him. You've tried to figure out how to fix it. You've gone over every day and raked them up, but not fast enough for him. You feel like, "There's nothing I can do that will please him. I'm stuck." And the anger and the frustration are building up.

At some point, the active moment, you're suddenly filled with immense compassion for the two of you caught in this battle of so many years, caught in this energy. And you realize, "I don't have to do this anymore." You simply tell him, "You may not harass me about this anymore. If the apple branches hang over your yard, they're going to drop, and you're going to have to make peace with it. Otherwise I'll be glad to cut them off and they won't fall on your yard. It's your choice. This is the end of it. What is your decision?" If he says to leave the branches, and he harasses you once, you just say, "No, you promised." But you're saying it from the open heart. You're not saying it from a contracted space. You've changed the whole pattern, because you come into that active moment and see how you've been re-creating the same karma over and over and over. And again, with clear comprehension, you note this is not suitable to the outcome I choose. I let it go. I stop it.

There's a story of the Buddha walking through a village. The village seemed empty. Somebody beckoned to him from an open doorway and said, "Come inside, quickly! Come inside! This bandit who kills people, Angulamala, he cuts people's fingers off and threads them as a mala. He kills the people and cuts their fingers off. He's dreaded all over the land, and he's in town. Come in to safety." The Buddha hears the man's fear, and he nods and says thank you and he goes off down the street.

Suddenly he hears a voice behind him saying, "Stop! You-- stop!" The Buddha keeps walking. The voice gets louder. "Stop! Stop!" He just keeps walking peacefully. Finally this man runs around in front of him, saying, "I told you to stop! Do you know who I am! I told you to stop!" He has his knife out. The Buddha looks at him and says, "Ihave stopped. It's you who haven't stopped."

You can imagine where the heart has to be, to be able to say that. And there's no guarantee that he's not going to kill you and cut your fingers off. But you have stopped, you have stopped the karmic flow. And you can't guarantee what's going to happen to the body. There's never any guarantee. Maybe he'll look at you as he looked at the Buddha and he'll stop. He became a foremost disciple of the Buddha. Maybe he'll look at you like that and say, "I didn't realize." And then a minute later, lightning will strike a tree and drop it down on top of you. You never know what the next moment will hold. In this moment, can we respond with love?

It's 8:30pm. Let us stop here. I thank you all. I will see some of you tomorrow.

(session ends)