September 7, 2014 Sunday, Intuitives Group on discernment and choosing positive polarity

Practice to hold positive polarity and release negative; discernment.

Barbara: I just introduced myself (speaking to late-comers). Aaron will incorporate, but first, a bit more from me.

We are all evolving into a higher consciousness. There are some detailed chapters about consciousness in the book Cosmic Healing. There is negativity in the world; of course there is. There is also enormous love in the world. There's a beautiful phrase from the Buddha, “Hatred can never resolve hatred. Only love resolves hatred.”

But the dilemma we find ourselves in is, when we find something truly negative is happening, how do we not hate it? How do we hold it with love? Aaron is going to talk more about this in his talk. But for me, a major tool is vipassana practice-- vipassana is a word from the Pali language. The word passana means to see, seeing. Vipassana means deeper, clearer seeing. It's just a way of seeing deeply, seeing deeply into this moment and what's happening in this moment.

So this is not a meditation practice where we try to maintain some blissful state and avoid the unpleasant thoughts and sensations. I have nothing against those practices. They simply serve a different purpose. All we're doing with our vipassana practice is to see deeply into our mind and body experience in this moment. As we move deep into that, we start to shed the beliefs of being the body, being the thoughts. We start to discover who we really are beyond the body and the thoughts. We find this heart of light, of love, which is our true nature.

This is what we've taught for 25 years at Deep Spring. We're not a Buddhist center. We're open to people of all religions and strive to offer something all can use. People take these practices back to their own religion and find that they become a clearer Christian, Jew, Muslim, whatever they might be. It's just a tool, and a very valuable tool.

Just a couple more details. Through the years, Aaron has written many books. Human is one of my favorite of Aaron's books. He channeled this through me 20 years ago, 15 years ago maybe. I was at my cabin for the summer. At the beginning of the summer he said, “We'll write a book this summer.” Okay. I thought he was going to dictate it while I channeled it, that I was going to record it and have it transcribed. But he said, “Sit down. Start typing.”

He gave me one page and said, “That's enough for today.” Stopped not mid-sentence but after a paragraph, not finishing a whole chapter or thought. The next day I opened it up. He didn't reread what he had written, he just said, “Start from where you are,” and he dictated more. By the end of the summer, we had the book Human.

It's only been available in a spiral-bound format, and in past years out of print. It was time to publish it in a beautiful version. I'm going to read you the first page or two.

(tape paused during reading)

I just read the opening lines of Human. We just published it; three weeks ago we received the books. I rejoice in sharing with you that the photographs are from my son, Mike, who is a professional photographer, and who grew up with Aaron as a friend in the house.

I want to say a few more things because once Aaron incorporates, I'm gone, and when I come back, I'm not clear for a bit, not able to think clearly.

For those of you who would like to work more with me and Aaron, there are 3 opportunities this fall.

One is the class that meets Tuesday nights here. It's open to all levels, but for people who have not had any vipassana experience, you must take an introductory vipassana class as well as register for the ongoing class. The class is called,, “Be a Lamp Unto Yourself.”  We will focus on how to really know our divinity. How do we manifest that divinity in the world? What blocks it? How do we release our erroneous ideas about ourselves, our self-concepts that are limited, that something's wrong with us, and so forth. So the class is geared toward helping that lamp burn brighter.

There will be vipassana practice as part of it, and other kinds of meditation, including something we worked with last year called akashic field practice. I'm not going to go into that. If you're curious about it, it's on the archives on the website. Loving kindness meditation, exercises, discussion. Anybody in this room is welcome to join that class, if you'd like to.

We have a meditation retreat at Howell Nature Center Oct 17-19, Aaron and I with my colleague John Orr, with whom we often teach. It was open just to experienced meditators but we decided to open it to others as well. There are flyers about it. It's a Friday night through Sunday afternoon with meditation instruction, practice and small discussion groups.

And third, a workshop Oct 29 - Nov 2 at a retreat center on Lake Michigan near Holland, called “Living From Our True Nature.” What we'll be doing in this is a mixture of things. Vipassana. Another entity who channels through me, that we call The Mother, simply looks in people's eyes, and holds their hands, offering “darshan” or spiritual sharing. People look in her eyes and say suddenly they see their own divinity because they see her divinity. It awakens them to their own divinity. We'll have daily optional sessions with The Mother.

But then instead of ending that session and just going back to talking, we'll go back into a period of silence and spend some time meditating. In the afternoons we have some wonderful things programmed. Something called soul collage, where you use many pictures from magazines and create collages that resonate with “Who am I really?” What are your power animals? What does your guidance look like? What colors resonate for you? What are central themes, central passions? So, in silence, people will create these collages.

We'll have a sound bath with Markus and Amy. Energy work. Aaron leading exercises, a shamanic journey with Aaron one afternoon. There are many different tools to help us remember our true nature. I'm really excited about this opportunity to bring together the silent retreats that I've led for 25 years and the workshops that I've led as separate events, and really draw it together. This is open to anybody.

There's a 2-day pre-workshop with two different options. One is vipassana, and we encourage anybody who is new to vipassana experience and is coming to the rest of the workshop to come to this two-day pre-workshop on vipassana. And the other option is conscious aging, how we can allow our bodies to age in a conscious and loving way. This will be led by Aaron.

When Aaron incorporates I have a process I go through. Usually I do it silently, but for this group I'm going to do it out loud because I think it will be helpful to you. I begin with stating my highest intention. This is me, Barbara, in the body at this point. I invite spirit to come in for the highest good of all beings and with harm to none, spirit that is fully grounded in love, that is fully harmonious with the Christ consciousness or Buddha nature. For me, because Jeshua, Jesus, is a very central figure for me spiritually, I make the statement that whatever comes in must be fully harmonious with Jesus. People can vary that to whatever figure stands in the center for them. It's a statement of intention from the heart. It's a way of grounding myself in positive polarity and my deepest loving intentions.

Having made that statement, I reach out. For me, I use the four archangels: Ariel, Gabriel, Michael, Raphael. I invite one to each corner of the room and ask them to protect the space. I do not have the intention to forbid the presence of anything with negative polarity, but that it may not speak, it may not intrude itself. If it wishes to come and learn, it may come and listen. It may not incorporate into this body, and it may not push its way into others in the room, so spirit is holding the space safe.

I wait until I feel them in place. Some of you may be able to feel their energy in the room, surrounding us. When I clearly feel Aaron's presence, and do not feel any negative distortion, I take the next step. But if I feel any negative distortion, I pause. This is feeding into what Aaron will be talking about. In some way, I and others must be inviting this negative distortion. Is there anything in me I've brought in to this session that I need to look at and release? Maybe I had a fight with my neighbor this morning, or my car had a flat tire and I'm angry. Any old tension, anything that I'm carrying that I need to pay attention to and turn to with love, because it's this subtle negativity in myself that can invite external negativity.

So at this point, I've made my statement of highest intention. I feel the archangels holding a protective circle around this space. I feel Aaron's energy very strongly, present with me. And the next statement I'm going to make it, and as I make it, literally release my consciousness out through the crown chakra and Aaron will come in.

I consecrate this body to the light...

(Aaron incorporates)

Aaron: My blessings and love to you all. And here I am! I'm curious, how many of you could feel my energy come in? Many of you! If you don't feel it, that's okay; there is nothing wrong with you. As you work with this process, you become more and more attuned to energy. Now I'm going to bring my energy up so it's stronger. When I first enter a room like this, I always come in at the lowest possible level because I don't want to knock people over.

(pause)

Can some of you feel the energy coming up in the room? It's a pleasant energy, and yet, it can be uncomfortable for people who are not used to it. I'm going to turn it back down a bit, putting it in the comfort level of everybody. The energy that I need depends on what I'm doing. Simply to talk, I don't need to hold such high energy.

You are a group who are interested in learning to work with your intuition, which I would term as to work with your higher selves, because when intuition comes in, it's really your higher self; and in learning to work with your guidance, which is not your higher self but a separate entity.

All of you in this room, I could say, are very much intending to work with love, to do no harm. Yet all of you, because you are not fully awakened beings, do carry negative distortion. The negative distortion is not the problem but how you relate to that negative distortion.

If something frightens you and there's tension and contraction, then energy cannot move smoothly through you. Think of a radio that must be tuned to the station; if you tune it a little too far one way or the other you get static. If you are contracted in your energy field you might say, “No, I won't have contraction!” How can you do that? Can you get rid of contraction by saying, “I won't have contraction!” It has arisen from conditions and further contraction will not cause it to resolve.

This is where the vipassana practice becomes, I would not call it a vital tool, there are other kinds of practices that can do something similar, but a very viable and important tool, because that which is aware of contraction is not contracted. Shall I say that again? That which is aware of contraction is not contracted. Vipassana gives you the ability to watch the contraction without self-identity, no attend to it and hold it in spacious awareness.

What is this awareness? What is your true self? This is why we're offering the workshop, “Living From Your True Nature,” to answer the question. How do we come back to awareness when pulled away? First we have to recognize our true nature. Then we have to observe what blocks our living from it and step past it. Then we are able to live from it.

You are all angels. I call you angels in earthsuits. The earthsuits can be challenging, with body pain, all kinds of mental stories, impatience, feelings of unworthiness, shame, anger, greed; this is part of the earthsuit. If you wanted to just be the angel, you would not have come into incarnation. You already knew the angel, free of heavy density catalyst.

You came into the incarnation to learn how to live in this earthsuit and use the earthsuit, the mind and the body, as a tool. You came into the incarnation to learn how to live in the earthsuit and how to use the earthsuit as a way to find the true potential, to truly live from the angel even when there is challenge. If there was never any negative catalyst, how would you learn compassion? If everything was always perfect, beautiful and smooth and there was never contraction, how would you learn to transcend contraction and ever more deeply ground yourself in this innate radiance of your being? This is why you have come into the incarnation.

Many of my books talk about this, many of the talks on the archives. I've given week-long workshops called “Angels in Earthsuits,” so I'm not going to expand too much on that topic here. I want to get down to our main topic today: discernment of negativity in the self and outside the self; how to release negativity in the self; how not to get caught up in the negativity outside the self; how to develop a level of trust of this inner angel, this deep, let's call it “the one who knows,” this deep essence of love that's within.

At the beginning the work is not about what's happening out there, but what's happening in yourselves. I'm going to try a little exercise here, and I'm going to warn you first so you know what to expect. With some surprise, as I'm not going to tell you when, but I am going to shout, a loud shout. You've all heard me say this. You know it's going to come at some point. Do you feel a little tension in yourself already? He's going to shout. Okay, stop, breathe. Put a hand on your heart. Breathing in, I am aware of the tension, breathing out, I smile to the tension. In the shout, just hearing. In the body jangling, just shaking. If I hit the knee, the leg will raise up. It's the same thing.

So I want you 1) to discern the distinction between hearing, hearing a shout, 2) the body contracting, and 3) the thoughts that may come after the contraction: “I didn't like that.” or “I shouldn't have contracted,” judging. The thoughts that come. Just watch it. I want you to watch very carefully (shout!)

Seeing the contraction. If there's a loud shout, the nature of the body is that it will contract. It's not bad; it's just how the body is.

If there are any stories coming up—by story I mean just a thought, “I didn't like that. I don't want more of that. I shouldn't have reacted. Why can't I remain calm even through that?” just note, “Ah, thinking, thinking.,” or , “judging, judging.” Use the little syllables, “Is that so?” for that kind of judgment. “I shouldn't have reacted.” Is that so? “I shouldn't dislike that shout.” Is that so? If you walked barefoot on the floor here and stepped on a tack, there would be a drop of blood, yes? There would be some pain, yes? Would you say, “I shouldn't feel pain?” This is how the body is. “There shouldn't be blood.” Is that so? This is a human body.

But when it comes to emotions and thoughts, we're so judgmental of ourselves. The first part of learning discernment, of not taking negativity into yourself, and of releasing negativity that has come in, is seeing contraction and negativity in the self and the habitual way you respond to it, often with more negativity. As long as you're responding to it with more negativity, you become vulnerable.

Your loving guidance is there and let us pretend this negativity is sitting beside you saying, “Oh, this one is vulnerable. This one is self-judgmental. I can get in through that channel and exert influence.” So the first part of the work is purification of the self; perhaps purification is too strong a word. I do not mean stopping all reaction, but purification of the judging, of the self-condemnation, of the grasping. It comes from knowing your divinity, knowing, “I am light. I am love.” (shout!)

Was there a little less reaction this time? More spaciousness, more ease, more kindness to the self.

There is negative polarity, both human and spirit. Negativity is based in the distortion of fear. Essentially there is only love, but when love gets caught up in the ego and the separate self, it shifts to fear. Watching fear and contraction arise in the self, one finds an innate spaciousness of being, and that spacious awareness reduces, doesn't end but strongly reduces vulnerability to negatively polarized energy.

There are two parts to this practice. One is mindfulness, being aware of the arising of fear; fear-based thoughts, angry thoughts, and so forth, and some non-self-identification with these. Anger has arisen. Imagine it is a beautiful day. If the atmospheric conditions change, storm clouds might blow in. It might rain. You don't say, “I'm bad because it's raining on me,” you simply put up your umbrella.

When negative thoughts come in, most of you at some point say, “I shouldn't be thinking that,” because it's such a deeply ingrained habit to hold aversion to such thoughts.  So, I said two parts; three parts, really. One is the mindfulness to watch this habitual pattern in the self. One is the deep intention toward love and service to all beings. And one is the willingness to do the work to release the habitual energies.

A practice that I often teach with this is based on the Seven Branch Prayer, and its four central parts, the Four Empowerments. It would take me too long to teach that to you today but it is in my book, Path of Natural Light, I believe. Look on the Deep Spring website in the archives. Look for Four Empowerments. The Four Empowerments, in its simplest form, is:

1.  Noting the habitual pattern. Let's say in this case, judgment toward oneself and others. Let's use that as one example.

1.  What we call compassionate regret. No matter how much work I've done with this, it still arises. Here it is again.

1.  Asking for help. This is twofold. Literally you are asking for help, and if you are sincere, you will receive help. But it's also in being willing to ask. Part of you is saying, “I want to hold onto my fear a little. It's my armor. It protects me.” When we ask for help from that sincere heart, we're saying, “I'm willing to let go of this deeply ingrained habitual pattern, this karmic pattern.” So that's the third part.

1.  And the fourth part is being willing to work with the balances to this. For example, perhaps what has come up is greed. Somebody asks you for something and you give it, but you notice the little, “What if I need it?” It's a small contraction, but habitually present. So we start just watching this and giving, practicing with the experience of generosity. With judgment, the antidote to judgment is loving kindness. See judgment arise, and instead of giving voice to it, stop and offering loving kindness to the self and all beings.

Gradually the habitual tendency will go. As you work in this way, you become increasingly less vulnerable to negativity.

A very simple example. You're in a situation where somebody walks up to you, grabs you by the shirt, starts yelling at you. Anybody here who could stay completely calm? No surprise; that's okay. Anybody here who would punch that person in the nose? Maybe one or two of you, but most of you wouldn't. But a lot of anger would come.

Let us do this pushing arms exercise. (Demonstration) Life is constantly pushing you. You are constantly pushing back. Pushing, pushing. Now what if when she pushes I just let it go past? And then I give the energy back, I just let it swing past. And she can keep pushing—push harder—she can keep pushing as long as she wants to. Eventually she'll get tired. I don't have to push back, and I don't have to collapse and let her steamroll over.

So we learn to deal with life's pushes with so much more of an open heart to ourselves and to others, and yet compassion is strong and knows how to say no. Compassion doesn't let itself to be bowled over.

As you develop this kind of strength, you are much less vulnerable to negativity. However, there's another side to this. When you are just kind of wishy-washy, sometimes nice, sometimes not nice, sometimes loving, sometimes angry, negative entities don't pay too much attention to you. They don't see much of a way to use you. But as you become a much more powerful spiritual being with very deep love, you're going to find that you invite stronger negativity who wants to see, where are the chinks in this one's armor? How can I get in and use this person? Now, I don't mean to scare you. But when you are working with either your own higher self or especially with external spirit, you're putting yourself in a vulnerable place. And you need to understand what you're doing or else you inadvertently become a force for negativity, and none of you wishes that.

You need to know, with very deep trust in yourself, “No matter what pushes I am not going to revert to hatred.” And this is a very hard task. And yet this is the work of your lifetime. This is what you came to do in this lifetime, to return love to hatred, to transform hatred through your love.

Working with spirit provides a wonderful opportunity to practice. Working with humans who are angry is a wonderful opportunity to practice. But for those of you here who are opening more to the spiritual realms, if something negative comes in, just say no to it. With all the love in your heart, say no.

A dharma teacher of Barbara's acquaintance was in India on a long metta (loving-kindness) retreat. She had to go into the city to renew her visa. She was riding in a rickshaw, a cart that was pulled by a man on a bicycle, going the hour or so back to the meditation center. He took her through some back streets. A man jumped out from the curb onto her cart, tried to pull her purse away, and hit her. She didn't know what to do. She had just spent a month working with profound practices of loving kindness for herself and all beings. What should she do?

Some help came, somebody pushed him off. The driver pedaled away. So she came back to her teacher. She asked her teacher, “What should I have done?” He said, “With all the love in your heart, you should have taken your umbrella and hit him over the head with it (lost to laughter)!” We don't let somebody abuse us in that way. You can hit somebody, though, with love. It's a hard thing to do. In order to hit somebody, she's not hitting somebody with a steel bar that's going to crack his skull, she's hitting him with her umbrella, but forceful enough that he'll feel discomfort. If she does it with hatred, she's creating more karma for him and for herself, and she's inviting a new situation of abuse of some sort.

The Law of Attraction, are you familiar with the Law of Attraction? We draw to us what we're seeking. If she's seeking a way to learn how to respond lovingly to abuse, she's going to keep bringing in abuse until she understands, “I can say no with love.” Now, hitting him with the umbrella perhaps was one course of action. Maybe just saying, “NO!” would have been enough, who knows?

It must be done with love, and you must get to the point where you are sure of yourself that when something comes along and pushes you, you can respond not by pushing back but by returning the energy.

Let's do this again. (demonstration) I let it go through and then I return the energy. Now she's got it on her side; what's she going to do with it? She returns it to me. She may return it very forcefully. She's trying to punch me in the nose. I push it aside; I let it go past me. I don't get caught up in it.

I was told this summer of some people who came to a workshop last spring, and that the person conducting the workshop seemed to have, I don't know all the details, whether he had negative energy, whether he was bringing in entities that had negative energy. But people came out of the workshop shaky, uncomfortable, feeling that they had been somehow grabbed by something negative. The friend who shared this me, asked, what can we do? That's part of where the direction for today's talk came from, in response to that question.

When you walk into a room and you feel something negative, walk out. If you have no choice, for example, if your boss is very angry and you have to deal with him, come to a place of love in your heart where you're not caught up in his negativity. If you are caught, why are you caught? Why are you in the situation where he is your boss?

We look at Teflon versus Velcro. Everything sticks to Velcro. In what way am I being Velcro? Be Teflon, let it all slip off. What allows it to slip off, what makes it stick? The fact that this man was giving a workshop, offering a workshop in which there was a lot of negativity, the people that came there were not victims. They were there to learn, not about the subject of the workshop, but to learn about not getting caught in negativity. This man was their teacher. Nevertheless, we probably don't want to advise them to go back to that kind of workshop. Why should they need to repeat the experience?

But when you think of people who are habitually negative, when you're caught in some kind of co-dependent cycle of abuse with somebody else, why are you thusly caught? What holds you into it? And at what point are you ready to say, “That's enough,” and walk out? Sometimes walking out is easier than other times. But sometimes when you arrive at that, “That's enough. I will no longer take this into me,” the other person simply stops giving it. They realize, “I can't get away with this anymore. This person is not going to take this from me,” and they stop.

Compassion learns how to articulate, “That's it. That's enough.” If somebody is yelling at you, calling you names, “That's enough. I know that you're angry, but you may not abuse me.” So we begin to speak with so much love. Taking the umbrella and hitting him with all the love in our hearts. But we don't have to physically hit him, we just say no.

I could easily talk for another hour about this. I know we have to stop in a half an hour. I want to leave time for your questions. I've touched on what I consider the two most important points, which are coming to know that which is fearful and contracted in the self, and releasing the self-identity with it. Coming to know the divine, the angel in the self, and learning to ground yourself in that divinity, to live from it, more and more and more. Not expecting perfection. When anger comes, when contraction comes, when fear comes, noting it. Opening your heart to yourself, this being who's feeling fear. Releasing it.

There are some wonderful energy practices and exercises we could do. We'll do some of them in places like the October workshop where we have five days together and not two hours. We do some of them in class, which you are welcome to join I can't really describe them in depth. But in one class we had the group broken into parts, 20 people. We had a group in the middle closing their eyes. People on one end being angry. Now, for some people it was hard to pretend anger, but people did a good job of bringing up angry energy. And on the other side, people opening their hearts and being love. The group in the middle had their eyes closed. We asked them to spin around a few times and then move toward the loving energy. I was thinking of doing that with you today, but that would take the time of any questions we have. Some of you have done it before, with me and Barbara or other teachers to whom we have taught it.

Group: We've done it before, with Anna Marie.

Aaron: So you can experiment with this. You just need maybe a group of 5 or 6 people, two giving loving energy, two giving angry energy, two in the center. See if you can feel the loving energy and be drawn to it. Just begin to trust yourself that you can feel what it feels like.

A simpler form (demonstrating) is for one person to simply sit, two people behind her, one with very loving energy and one with angry energy. I'm going to ask N, can you feel which side of your body I am offering loving energy to, and which side I am offering strong, more angry energy? Which side feels like the loving energy? Raise that hand. It's okay if you don't get it right. (hand raised) She could feel it. Thank you.

What's important here is that you learn to trust your discernment. And then you learn to watch, how am I reacting when I feel myself surrounded by strong negative energy? The vipassana practice supports this. Feeling contraction, feeling tension, and then coming back to the loving heart. Not being self-identified with the contraction or the fear. You begin to trust, “I can come back to center.”

When you work, whether it's with your higher self or other spirit, state your highest intention, as Barbara did in the beginning, challenging, always challenging, stating your deepest truth, and that nothing may approach you that is not resonant with that deepest truth. And finally I would add at the end, if you feel something immensely negative around you, stop. Open your eyes, or, leaving your eyes closed, ask for help. Turn to that Master with whom you most resonate—Jeshua, the Buddha, Kwan Yin, Mother Mary. Turn to a being like me and say, “Aaron, help me. I'm feeling overwhelmed.” Help will come. I'm not going to try to describe how it will come, but you will feel yourself embraced by and supported by that loving energy, and we will help you to deal with it. If something very strongly negative comes, we will help you to deal with it, because maybe you don't have the strength yet to deal with it yourself. We build up the muscles gradually.

So we have 20 minutes. Let's hear your questions.

Q: Is there a way that I can help others with extreme high anxiety, protect them (inaudible)? When they don't understand any of this? Like my mother, from negative energy that either she creates...

Aaron: Are you speaking of someone in a crisis, is that what you're saying? (Q: Yes.) In what kind of situation would you be wishing to help protect others?

Q: My mother. She has pancreatic cancer, and she'll be surrounded by family and activity but so much fear...

Aaron: You can offer loving thoughts, but you cannot make the other accept your loving thoughts. Each person must do this work for themselves. Prayer is so powerful because we surround the other with loving thoughts. But if you have a person who is starving, literally, and so caught up in their pain that they can't see the food that you're offering, you can't make them take it.

You offer prayer, loving thoughts, loving wishes. A very few of you in this room I think have the capacity, not all of you, and it's okay because you're learning, but a very few of you have the capacity, if you are with somebody and they're in a strongly negative place, to take it into yourself; to literally help them say no to that negativity. But you must do it very carefully because if you overrate your own ability you can get sucked in. I don't want to scare you, here, but some people attract very strong negativity. This is their karma. They have inherited the results of that karma.

You can talk to them about your meditation practice. You can talk to them about love. You can try to explain to them what you're seeing, how they're drawing something negative into themselves, but they may not be willing to hear you. And you can open a door for others but you cannot force them through.

That said, there's a practice called tonglen. How many of you know of this practice? It's a Tibetan practice that translates as “giving and receiving.” With tonglen, we breathe in the suffering of the other, the negativity or pain or fear of the other, and feel it as a heavy tar-like mass. Literally breathe it in through the crown chakra into the heart and then release it. We breathe in light, feeling the radiance and love, into the heart, and then breathe it in, breathe it out. Send it to the person who is suffering.

When Barbara has sat with people who are dying in a hospital, people who are not really conscious, she often uses tonglen. For people who are in a lot of physical pain after an accident or surgery or whatever, tonglen can be helpful. You must be very sure when you bring in that mass of pain and suffering, that you release it, that you don't have the ego that says, “Oh, I can carry this,” or you're going to wipe yourself out. You breathe it in, you release it.

Barbara tells a very beautiful story I will share with you. She was leading a vipassana retreat at a Catholic center in Minnesota. It was a 10-day retreat, mostly with Catholic monks, priests, and nuns. They took to the practice very deeply.

There was a nun, perhaps 70 years old, who sat like this (stooped; head down). Every time Barbara walked by, she sat her up straight, and within 2 minutes the woman was in a defended posture again. She came to see Barbara around the third day of the retreat and talked to her about the terrible childhood abuse she had experienced. She knew where the armored posture was coming from but she couldn't release it. She said, “I have been so filled with anger, and I can't forgive. So filled with pain.” Barbara taught her tonglen. The nun asked, “Who do I release it to?” Barbara figured this is a Christian nun, and said,  “Release it to Jesus.” So for two or three days of the retreat Sister did this practice.

The door opened late at night while Barbara was in her room (no knock on the door, Barbara can't hear). A waving hand through the door. Then Sister walked in, radiant, standing up straight, and said, “Jesus took it.”  From thenm on she was open and upright in posture.

It's a very powerful practice. You can ask for help. This is akin to the Four Empowerments practice I mentioned early and inviting spirit to help you. Where there are places within the self that are dark, filled with fear and pain and negativity, ask for help. Release. Release that which cannot be forgiven. Release that which brings terror to you. Ask for help to release it. And in so doing, you become a lot less vulnerable to negativity.

So I would suggest you do tonglen with your mother. Other questions?

Q: You talked about learning to trust your discernments, and if you're patient, that will work. Or if you can keep your ego out of it, it will work better. But my difficulty is both of those.

Aaron: I'm speaking directly to Q, here, who has a deep vipassana practice, and any of the others of you who have a vipassana practice. For the rest of you, this may not be useful information right now.

When distrust of your own discernment comes up, can you feel the contraction that comes with it? (Q: Yes. It's getting better.) Each time you have an intuitive feeling of, “something is wrong here,” whether it's hearing spirit, or what you're writing feels off, or being with people and you feel what they're saying is off and coming from ego, this is discernment. There's no contraction in discerning that something is off, something is imbalanced. It comes from the heart, “seeing” or “Understanding.” . But when distrust comes up, “Am I imagining this?”, with that “Am I imagining it?” there may be a contraction. So there is the thought, or discernment, and then distrust of the discernment.

Get to know the experience of distrust. It's just an object. It has no ultimate reality. It has arisen from conditions, it's impermanent. Be aware of it from the contraction. For you, I think it's more in the heart than the belly. Feel that contraction. Stop; put your hand on your heart. Being aware, “contracting, contracting. Breathing in, I am aware of contraction. Breathing out, I smile to the contraction.”

Then, when you're ready, bring the mind back to the object that triggered the distrust. The “Do I have this right?” or “What's happening here? Am I losing control? Are they safe? Am I safe?”—whatever. It's just an object, also.

As you come back to this spaciousness, you begin to know these arisings simply as objects, and you begin not to get caught up, but simply to rest in the spaciousness and let the rest flow by. You're not trying to stop distrust or tension; you're simply knowing it ever more deeply as impermanent, arisen from conditions, not self, and I don't have to get caught in the story of it. Each time you do that, you deepen the habitual pattern to stay open, spacious and connected. When you are thusly open, spacious, and connected, distrust does not arise anymore because there's not such a strong self and other. Compassion displaces distrust.

Does that make sense to you? (Q: Yes.) So your question is, how? And the how comes just with the mindfulness, what you've done in class, the practices you've been doing. Just bringing attention to that distrust. It may be more subtle. Just distrust. Closing. Closing might be a good word to use. Stop and breathe with it. Bring awareness to it. That which is aware of closing is not closed. You keep returning to the spaciousness while watching the closure and just let any contraction wash through.

Please share with me after you've tried this for a bit, how it's going.

Q: When I go into houses that are old or meet with people who are not well, I often end up with a lot of negativity affecting me and leaving me unwell. Where might that be coming from?

Aaron: I wish we had a full day together and not an hour and a half! First of all, when you go into a house that is old, there are often earthbound spirits there. You're picking that up because you're sensitive to it. When you're with people who are sick, you're picking up not only their feelings, but often they have attracted negative entities because they're in some sense of despair or discomfort about their illness.

We cannot say, “I will not go into old houses or be with sick people.” So the question is how do I set appropriate safety for myself? Love is the strongest force of safety. When you come into a house and you feel immediately that there are some negative spirits there, stop and remember, “These are earthbound spirits experiencing pain. My intention is not to take their pain into myself-- that's just more negativity-- but to help them by offering the open heart.” Begin to use a loving kindness meditation, simply, “May you be happy. May you have well-being. May I be happy and have well-being. May all beings here be happy and have well-being.” Also work with the tonglen practice that I just introduced.

Second, and even more important, perhaps, because this that I just gave is a positive tool, but begin to ask yourself why you feel you must take this onto yourself. It's very common for people who are very dedicated to service to others to want to martyr themselves in some way. We don't have to look psychologically at early life experiences or karmically at past life experiences, just to know in some way there may be the belief that if others are suffering, I should suffer in their place. Is that what I really want, or is that just more suffering? What if my intention instead becomes to help release the suffering from all beings rather than be somebody who can carry more and more and more and more of it?

Just begin to look at that tendency in yourself, and ask yourself when it first starts to appear, even before you walk into the house, why am I doing this? For many of you, the reason is some kind of guilt or shame. “I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough to release all of the suffering in the world.” It probably comes from past lives, but without looking at past lives, one can simply know, “I don't need to do this anymore because it's just more suffering. It's time to stop.” Then work with the tonglen or loving kindness meditation, metta, and begin to release all of that.

So that is a short answer, daughter. It's 4:30pm, one last question?

Q: You talked about how consciousness is rising, and I've noticed that it seems that those who are looking for positivity seem to find it faster, easier, have more access to it. Those who are attracted to negativity seem to find it equally as fast. My question is, in the past we've had ascended Masters such as the Buddha, who was a light unto himself. We also had Masters such as Jesus who was more on a mission to find <> new information. So in today's time, can you speak on some approaches we could take, considering how fast consciousness is moving?

Aaron: Let me put it this way, son. The most important point to remember is that you are now the masters. It's time for you to move into that responsibility for yourselves. You all have guides, all the help you need is available to you. Now, at this stage in your growth, nobody is going to come and do it for you, but with you.

Deepen in the tools that allow you to ascend in consciousness. I would suggest you might like to read the chapter on consciousness in Barbara's book Cosmic Healing, in which both she and I speak more to this. As more of you move into this kind of mastery, it is the most powerful way to say no to negativity and to transform your earth. It is the way to take the next step.

Back in the Buddha's and Jeshua's time, more of you were living in relative consciousness, and now you are all moving into higher and higher states and stages of consciousness. Begin to investigate what supports a stable higher consciousness and what diminishes it. Ask for help, for support, but be willing to take the assignment that you've really accepted by coming into the incarnation, to allow yourself to transcend into higher consciousness. We may call it ascension of consciousness.

We look at Jesus' life, the crucifixion, resurrection, ascension. You've all moved through crucifixion initiations. You are resurrecting yourselves-- not being the broken one, the damned one, the lost one, but resurrecting yourself into your true radiance and light. The next step is ascension. By ascension - it's too long for me to go into now, but I basically mean opening into non-dual consciousness, into Christ Consciousness or Buddha consciousness, and stabilizing it.

I don't know if that answers your question. I think it's an important question, so I hope that's helpful.

We will stop. I thank you all very much. I do invite you, if you would like more of what we've been talking about, to join our class. I remind you that you need some vipassana experience so take the introductory class too, if necessary, because we're basing the class on your having some background in vipassana and being willing to practice it regularly. But beyond that, we welcome you into the class. And consider coming to the workshop, in which we'll have 5 days to go deep into some of the questions you've been raising, living from your true nature.

I love you all. I thank you for sharing yourselves with me and letting me share with you.

(tape paused, Barbara reincorporates)

Barbara: Aaron has just released the body and he's asking me to share with you. When he releases the body and I feel myself come back into consciousness, and I can feel that he's been present and he leaves, I always say, “Thank you.” Gratitude. It's not that he needs my gratitude, it's that my gratitude helps to hold me into a positive polarity, and to really feel reverence and respect for the work we're doing. So add gratitude to your tools, as you work direct with spirit..

(recording ends)

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