October 29, 2014 Day Three: Wednesday - Remembering Wholeness at Geneva

October 29, 2014 Wednesday Afternoon, Geneva Retreat

Aaron's introductory talk for the main workshop; combining vipassana, reflection, darshan with the Mother as support for moving into higher consciousness.

Aaron: Good afternoon and my blessings and love to you all. As has been stated several times today, a dream come true. So happy to have this wonderful group of you gathered here with such love in your hearts, such sincere seeking to live your lives with more wisdom, more love, more compassion, and to support each other in that endeavor.

Obviously I am spirit, and I have a different perspective than a human. I see the big picture. I have practiced many different religions and different forms of meditation and prayer, of spiritual practices, through many lifetimes. One is not better than the other. If you want to screw a screw into the wall, you need a screwdriver. If you want to drive a nail, you need a hammer. To drive the nail with the screwdriver will not work. To insert the screw with a hammer will not work. What are you attempting to do?

So there's no statement of this or that as the best practice, only, where are you going? What will support you? That said, I'm a strong proponent of vipassana practice, not as the only practice, but as a foundation practice  that truly leads to liberation, because it gives you the opportunity to observe what is arising in your mind and in your body and how you habitually relate to it. Only by seeing that can you change the unwholesome reactions to what arises. You begin to see, "Maybe I don't have to do it that way," and the heart opens with new possibilities.

We began reading the other day from my old/new book,Human. I call it old/new because I first channeled it to Barbara, really dictated it as she typed 20 years ago, but it only this fall came a lovely publication as opposed to just a Xeroxed spiral-bound copy.

So I read through page 6, and I'm going to read you a few more pages, because to me this is what this retreat is about. Not many words on a page. I don't want people to get lost in words, but to read the very few thoughts and take them in, make them your own. I'm reading from page 7.

The first instruction is simply to remember that you are divine.

Always and everywhere, in every regard, you are a manifestation of divinity.

The second instruction is to remember that all else is also divine.

Everything emanates from the pure heart, everything.

With this in mind, begin to see how fear divides reality into sacred and profane.

Profane is merely the mind's distortion of the divine, seen through the lens of fear.

With profane comes other-than, the concept that phenomena exist which are other than God, other than Self.

Then you feel you have lost the divine Self or lost God.

Thus begins the frantic search for the ever-perfect.

Why do you seek elsewhere for your Self?You are not out there but right here, here in the pure heart.

I'll read on further from it as the days go by. But this is the core of our work here, through your vipassana practice and through your experience with the Mother, to begin to discover the innate perfection that is you and to trust that perfection.

Now, yes, anger sometimes arises, impatience, jealousy, greed, pride. We attend to them. If we spill a cup of tea, we wipe it up. We don't say, "The tea is bad." or "I am bad." Just, "Oh! Clean it up." If the conditions are present for negative thought to arise, it will arise. Don't worry so much about the results beyond taking care of them so they do not harm another, but look to the conditions. Here is anger, rage. Oh, is there fear here? Is there sadness here? Is there confusion here? What needs to be attended so that I can fully experience this divine essence of being? Come back to it again and again.

This is what we will be doing these coming days. For years we have done this with the vipassana practice, in silent retreats of a weekend or a week, and occasionally through day-long or weekend workshops in which we introduce vipassana but do a lot more talking. What I am so delighted about here is the opportunity to work deeply with all the elements of vipassana; the strong energy of love from the Mother, unconditional love; sangha, discussion between yourselves, sharing from your heart; and the variety of exercises such as Sue and Amy will present, and also I will present, to help support the integration of what you are learning.

I had a thought as you were introducing yourselves-- and some of you have met us at silent retreats like the weeklong Emrich retreat or elsewhere. Some of you have met us at the Casa or throughCosmic Healing or other books. Emrich has traditionally, I think for over 20 years, been a weeklong summer vipassana retreat held in silence, and I respect that silence. In recent years we have brought the Mother in, perhaps the last afternoon or somewhere in there, for an hour.

Now I'm just tossing this out as an idea, and I haven't discussed it with John or the retreat committee, the Deep Spring Board, but I was thinking how wonderful it would be, along with this occasion where you have a lot more opportunity to talk, to have Emrich be a silent retreat that can take you deep into vipassana, but with an optional  daily experience of the Mother in those afternoon optional periods where I usually talk. So I'm just tossing that out as a possibility. Keeping it silent, but instead of my talking every afternoon, letting the Mother come in and offer darshan. If this idea intrigues you, please talk to Amy and Beth (board members) and share your interest with them. Just an idea.

People ask me did I know the Mother before. Of course I knew her. Father John, who you will meet this week, who is one of the beings who comes in supporting the Mother and our work here, of course I knew him. But the time was not ripe for this collaboration, and now it is.

The Mother has worked personally, privately, with Barbara through the years. I don't think Barbara ever had a name for her, just love energy. But there was direct communication. As Barbara became more ready to carry this high energy and began to ask, "how can I best be of service"-- actually perhaps 10 years ago at the Casa, she was at that point still conscious-channeling me, her first year at the Casa. And she said to the Entities, "I am always exhausted after channeling." And the Entity said to her, "Because Aaron's energy is so much higher than yours, there's friction. You need to get out of the body and let Aaron incorporate fully."

It had not occurred to her to do it that way. And I had not felt it appropriate to suggest it to her. It was up to her to choose that. So she agreed, and they taught her how to do it. This opened a way, then, for her to incorporate other entities. And they came to knock on the door! She had to learn to trust her discernment and her ability to invite in only that which is of the utmost highest positive polarity, and to say no to anything that was at all negative or had its own self-interest at heart. When she learned to trust that and then asked, "How can I best serve?" this whole work with the Mother opened up. Perhaps four years ago, is that when we first began it? It was before you came, Amy, the very first channeling of the Mother.

So it's a gradual progression. When you are ready, the next step opens. One heart of Deep Spring work has always been the teaching of vipassana, but another heart has always been living in the highest possible consciousness, and supporting that high consciousness on earth and the transition on earth into a higher consciousness. In short, living with love.

This is what we envisioned back in 1989 when we first wrote up a mission statement for Deep Spring, and this is where we continue to move. Some people want more of this, some people want more of that, and that's fine. I hope this retreat will provide a balance for you, the opportunity to go deeply into silence in your own heart.

We have a handout with which we worked, for the people that were here earlier. Three parts.

Exploring resistance and closure. What are my resistances to being fully present? What are my fears? How honest is my self-inquiry? Where do I not want to look? How well am I able to be with unease, disappointment and suffering? Where do I hold back from love? Where do I grasp for it? Where do I limit my identity? What are the predominant stories I still tell myself? So that's exploring resistance and closure.

And then exploring opening. What supports my ability to release the heart's armor and be more vulnerable and tender? How thorough is my forgiveness of others, of myself? How deep is my gratitude? How generous is my heart? How spontaneous is compassion?

Moving forward. Am I ready to set aside judging and attachment to negative thought? What helps me to experience the presence of spirit? What keeps me from living in that presence?

I'd like this to be an ongoing reflection that's continued, especially in your small groups at meals. Taking one or another area of reflection, as you did the first two days, and discussing it a bit. Touching whatever place the group comes together. Using the time with the Mother as a time of truly allowing the heart to open, to touch that core of divinity in the self. Using the vipassana practice as an opportunity to rest in spaciousness, joy, and ease. But also, when negative thought and unpleasant body sensation arises, to begin to observe your relationship with it. How able am I to be with these difficult experiences? What invites more presence? Where do I hide?

Not only I and the Mother are with you but many loving entities, here now and here with you through this week. Yes, we are telepathic. Yes, we are powerful. But also, we are all deeply positively polarized entities that come fully in non-harm and service to other. You have free will and we will never interfere with that free will. We're here to support your deepest intentions for yourself, never to push something that you're not ready for, on to you. Maybe a little nudge, but it's up to you to say, "Okay," or Not yet." You have free will.

So if you feel we're bugging you, you can say, "Go away! Leave me alone! Come back tomorrow. Maybe I'll be more ready." There is no timeline in spiritual growth, only taking each step as you are ready. Barbara said sometime today to a group that as she looks back on all our years together, she sees how she has been like a child with its mouth open, and the adult takes the spoon, feeds. What is appropriate? Not stuffing you, but feeding the amount that can be digested. And then feeding more, and more.

But it grows in the complexity of nutrients. We start with Pablum but we add a lot more substance as time goes on and as you're ready to digest it. By your being here, I know your digestive tracts are working in full force. You're ready to digest a lot, and to integrate it into your being, just as the child integrates that food. It gives that child energy to live in the world. This is your food for these days, and you digest it and then bring it out as loving presence in the world, for the highest good of all beings.

That's really all I want to say by way of an opening talk. I have this collection of crystals from the Casa. They are beautiful, and yet each one has-- this one has a yellow streak in it and a little, I'm not sure what you'd call it, instead of being rounded all around, here it is concave. This one looks exquisite but it has a crack along one side. This one, beautifully shaped, almost like a heart, but it has some unusual flecks of white on one side. And one might look and say, what is that doing there?

They are all beautiful and perfect, just as you are. And they all have some, let's not call them flaws, but places that catch your attention and lead you to ask, what about this chip? What about this color blemish? Can I hold this in my hand and find it is beautiful and loving just as it is?

I'm going to give these to you, one to each of you, each of you choosing the one that most calls to you, or that I give you. I'll give you a choice. I'm going to ask you to come up, one row at a time. Either hold out your hand and I'll place one in your hand, or take the one that speaks to you. Those of you who may be sitting in the back row might think, "I won't get a choice!" Don't worry. I have a lot of sense of which ones I want to give to which of you and I won't give yours away to someone else. But if someone else takes the one I had in mind for you, I'll have another one in mind for you. Just trying to match your energy with the crystal.

It is yours to hold and take home. Take it as a reflection: this is me. This is self in all its beautiful radiance and in its small cracks. Is there aversion to the crack? What are the cracks in the self? Is there aversion to those cracks? Can you treat them with tenderness and compassion, and see the whole radiant being that you are, not the cracks? But where there is a crack, such as quickness to anger, then you take care of it. Not fix it, just watch it coming up and attend to it. The fear, "I won't get the right stone." Or "The food will be gone." Greed, grasping. Ah, here is this. Take care of it.

So use these crystals in this way. They also have all been blessed by the Entity at the Casa, and they all have strong energy, every one. Some are big, some are small, but the energy in each remains the same. There's not more energy in the big ones.

That said, I'm simply going to turn off all of this mechanical equipment and invite you to come up one row at a time, literally. And as I said, either hold out your hand and I will place a crystal in it, or point to the one you want, put your finger on it, and I will pick it up and give it to you.

Thank you for your presence here, and I am looking forward to these days together.

(recording ends)