October 26, 2013 Saturday Evening, Trainings Workshop

Starting the evening program.

Q: I would be interested in some discussion around my question about releasing the sacred space. (in earlier instructions [from Norma] the group was asked to “release the sacred space” they were holding and return to a  more everyday reality) Part of it is wondering what I am coming back to, and who am I. Am I identifying my energy ripples and contractions as me, as coming back to that? Or the uncontracted, or just all of it? I don't know. And if there is no duality, then perhaps it would not really matter, releasing the space or not.

Barbara: Aaron says he will speak briefly to this, and we welcome Norma's take on it and other discussion.

(Aaron incorporates)

Aaron: Good evening. My love to you all. Norma, thank you for all you contributed this afternoon.

Imagine yourselves cooking in a kitchen. You are competent chefs but not master chefs. So you're busy cooking, and suddenly you're not quite sure how to whip together a certain couple of ingredients. There is a master chef in the kitchen. You go and tap her on the shoulder, “Please come and show me. Help me.” So the master chef comes over and teaches you the process. You watch how to do it and then she has you do it. Somebody else needs the master chef. Now, this is not a good metaphor because I can be in many places at once. Spirit can be in many places at once. But you no longer have need of the master chef in that moment. You release the master chef. The inner master-chef remains within you. It is always within you.

When we release that sacred space, in a sense we're releasing the many entities who have come at your request to support you in your work in that sacred space. It's not that they abandon you, it's simply your need is not so intense at that moment. You come back—where is our little bear (the bear inside 2 red cylinders that nest inside one another, relative and ultimate reality) ... You've been very much here, balanced (showing bear sitting astride the 2 cylinders aligned side by side). Now you've come back to here.  (bear is now moved into the relative cylinder but  that relative cylinder is nested inside the ultimate) You're still holding onto the sacred space. You haven't left the sacred space. But you're dwelling more in this relative reality. The sacred space is always with you because no matter how deep you are in relative reality, you're inside the sacred space.

It's basically respectful to spirit, including your own higher self, your guides, your power animals, all the entities, nature spirits and so forth that are helping, to say, “I am moving back in a more balanced way, more fully into relative reality. I know you will not abandon me. But I consciously make the statement that I am ready to release the full immersion into the sacred space. I free you to go. Thank you for all your help.” They'll never abandon you. But somebody across the room may be calling. As I say, it's not a perfect metaphor because I can be in a thousand places at once. It's not that you are occupying my time and therefore taking me from somebody else. Rather, it's that you are clarifying the statement of your own maturity and readiness for responsibility, that you no longer need to cling to the master-chef because you have remembered the inner chef.

Norma, I would pass it to you.

(Norma off mic says perfect, that's it, she agrees and has nothing to add)

Q: I view it as one of respecting their guide-ness, but also respecting your humanity. In this respect we have a mutual sharing. I just see it as a matter of respect.

Aaron: It is self-respect and self-responsibility. In the beginning of this class, of this series, I stated in the opening announcement that the primary thing we were teaching was self-respect and self-responsibility. So it's saying, “I am the master chef. I'm in touch with that inner clarity and love. And I have no fear or hesitation to ask for help when it's needed, but not to cling to that help.”

Your questions are welcome. Your sharing is welcome, of any sort.

Q: I asked Barbara, I may have asked you, about my true self, higher self. Could it be more than one entity spirit? Could I be more than one in myself?

Aaron: Let's not use the term entity. You are multi-faceted, each like a gem with a thousand different facets. You could call each facet an entity, and yet the gem is intact unto itself, and each facet relates to all the adjacent facets. There is one higher self with a million facets. As you mature, you connect with more and more aspects of that higher self.

Q: Has my self always been reincarnated as the same entity? Could I have been parts of other souls?

Aaron: Have you always incarnated as only one entity at a time? That's a linear picture of it. Picture a spring bubbling out from under the earth. It starts to flow downhill and immediately it breaks into several branches, and those branches break into more branches. It's all the same spring. And it's not linear. Each stream exists simultaneously.

In a different metaphor we could say that each one is informing the others, because there is a shared consciousness. So when this particular outflow of the spring has this experience, it's shared with all the other outflows. But one outflow may have a harder time than other outflows. The other outflows support it. All of these are the facets of the higher self. Yet this human that you are right here and now is one outflow, collecting the information from the many outflows, and also containing the karma, wholesome and unwholesome, of the many outflows. Each one is an end in itself. When you clear the karma of this human in a certain aspect of that karma, it's cleared through all the outflows. When you collect new unwholesome karma, all the other outflows bear the impression of that new karma and work together to clear it in that stream or this stream or this stream.

Q: When you say we're not learning new things in this life, we're remembering, why do I have to do it again if I know it? If I've learned it, why do I still...?

Aaron: Well, you are learning some new things, but you are remembering much. You have to do it again because you forgot. How often have you forgotten someone's name and needed a reminder? Your lessons are reminders.

Q: I don't get that.

Aaron: When you entered into the incarnation, daughter, you agreed to forget much, because part of the incarnation is the expression of free will. If you remembered everything, there would just be a grit-your-teeth-and-get-through-it process. Here you are called upon to remember and enact the wholeness, the radiance and the love that it has been your intention to manifest in the world, despite the many things that push back at you and create pain; not to get caught up in the negativity. Basically you are learning how not to get caught up in negativity. There will be negativity.

You've all done this pushing exercise with me. Feeling the push, (demonstrating) feeling the contraction, the tension around the contraction. The mind wants to build stories: who's to blame? Why is this happening? And then ahhh... letting it go. It's part of what you practiced with the blankets this morning. A little bit of contraction. “Who thought of this? I'm not sure I like being carried around in a blanket.” Or the “Ahhh, I don't want it to stop. Why are they ending it?” Whatever came up.

Seeing tension arise, you do not have to enact the stories of that tension. You choose, and this free will is the essence of your human experience. You choose love. You choose non-contraction, spaciousness. The space behind the back that Norma spoke of, the space under the chair, the space between each breath. You choose to live in that space and not in the contraction.

Unwholesome karma essentially is contraction. Wholesome karma rests in spaciousness. You're never going to be fully in that spaciousness, or at least not until you're a fully enlightened being, and even then there may be some contraction. If a fully enlightened being experiences sharp pain, the body cells, the tissues of the body will contract, but the mind doesn't create stories about it. The body contracts. Ahh... that which is aware of contraction is not contracted. Reopening to spaciousness.

So you in this essence of your being are learning this. Another parallel self in a different space-time may be learning it, or a hundred parallel selves. But you're all facets of that same diamond. There is both a simultaneity and a linearity, because you do have linearly consecutive lifetimes as well as simultaneous lifetimes. When you look back at a past life, sometimes you're looking at a simultaneous life, a different stream of that same spring. Sometimes you're simply looking downstream or upstream.

I don't know if that answers your question.

Q: Is there a part of me or higher self that is the fully realized being or arahant? And if so, why does that not clear all karma in all streams?

Aaron: There is a part of you that is the fully realized being. There is also the original decision to mature, to learn and grow. Let's look at a newborn infant. That infant is perfect. In that moment of birth there is no anger at anyone, no fear, no prejudice, no opinions. There will be body sensations. Things will feel pleasant or unpleasant. That infant at some level is still connected with his higher self and fully awakened, but it is not mature. It has not learned how to express its free will. It has not learned how to release attachment to various negative thoughts, feelings, impulses, and so forth; how not to create all those old stories.

You are here learning this level of compassion based on free will; to enact the power of love, to manifest that power in the world. The 90 year old man and the one-hour-old infant; one is not better than the other, but the 90 year old man has had 90 years of learning, if he has done a conscious spiritual practice, watching negativity arise, holding the intention not to enact that negativity, not to get caught in stories of blame and hatred and greed, there is wisdom. So he's not better than the infant, but he has brought the power of his free will into a mature spirituality, whereas the infant is just the new seed of that multifaceted gem.

Think of the seed of an apple tree. The apples are right there in the seed but they haven't matured yet. So in each lifetime you start as the seed and you become the mature tree, dropping either blighted apples or lovely sweet apples.

The karma is cleared by intention; it is not enough to be the arahant in those streams, but is necessary to enact that wisdom and compassion in this real-life situation, so the seed of arahantship takes root and blossoms.

Other questions?

Q: Are you saying that there is another rendition of me out there living with other people, creating other karma, clearing other karma?

Aaron: Probably! I haven't looked, but for each of you, probably. And perhaps on a different plane of being. I don't mean there's a twin walking around on earth. I'm talking about a different realm of experiencing. Consciousness is vast. Only one small portion of your consciousness is in this human. Where is the rest of it?

Norma: (the transcript of Norma's comments have not been reviewed by Norma) I have a simple way (of explaining it). If the soul were a thousand party streamers, your body can only contain ten at a time. (clarifications, group comments, laughter) If you're only able to contain ten at a time, and say one wants to do kindergarten again but that's all it needs to do. And it leaves and a different one comes in that wants to do second grade and the first kiss with the boyfriend, right? Do you see what I mean?

Q: At the same time?

Norma: No, no, no—one leaves and then another one comes in. So there's a little bit of interplay.

Q: So they come and go. It's not at the same time, then.

Norma: It's another story, to sort of frame this idea that we are a tiny portion of who we really are.

Q: I could do a big one-at-a-time thing, but are my husband and I somewhere else having a better life?

Norma: Or a different life, or maybe a totally different...

Q: Like right now?

Norma: The other party streamers could be—I know this sounds weird, but hey, this is weird, right? The other party streamers could be in a 5 year old someplace in Asia. They could be on another planet. They could be in another dimension experiencing a consciousness there. They could simply be part of your guides, your angels, your higher selves.

If we could understand it with our brain then it wouldn't really be real, because our third dimensional little brains can't possibly understand. It's like looking at a huge beautiful picture at the art museum where it takes up the whole wall, and your nose is right at it, and you're seeing this much of what is actually 30 feet by 30 feet, right? And you're going, “It doesn't make sense!” And only when we disincarnate can we step back and go, “Ohhhh!” This is the remembrance, this is what we remember. My guides always laugh when we try to figure this out. They're like, of course it doesn't make sense!

Aaron: That's a good example. Look at the Sistine Chapel ceiling. What is the Sistine Chapel ceiling? Is there any one part you can point to and say, “That's it, this image, this image, this image.”? But we call the whole thing the Sistine Chapel ceiling. It's an intact whole made up of numerous parts. You are an intact whole made up of numerous parts, and one part is expressing here as M. The consciousness that is the essence of M has the ability to express in many ways.

Look at me. Who am I? I've told you many times that Aaron is just a handy label for me. I'm not Aaron. I've told you about many lifetimes, and you think of them as linear lifetimes. I've never really talked about lifetimes on other planes because you would have too hard a time relating to them. But of course I have lived on other planes as well as on the earth plane. I've only shared earth plane memories.

When you think of Aaron, you think of a perhaps wise and kindly old man. ( then speaking powerfully and projecting more powerful energy)  Is that really who you think I am? -- Can you feel the shift in energy? I'm still only giving you a small portion of my energy here, a minute portion. You are equally vast. But you're still afraid of yourselves, because you have not fully resolved the negative emotions.

Q: My question is in regards to consciousness versus awareness. Many times Barbara will state or you will state with regards to consciousness, as an example, “My eye sees a chair. Seeing consciousness arises. My mind sees a thought. Thought consciousness arises.” However, in between thought consciousness arising, I can still relate to a field of awareness. That is, consciousness appears on the back < > of awareness.

Aaron: (demonstrating with the canisters) I use the terms in a specific way. Consciousness I use as (in) the mundane senses touching mundane objects, and awareness as the supramundane senses. However, most of the time they are together. The bear looks out and sees that whole infinite field of the Unconditioned, and yet he's still living in this conscious body that sees and hears and touches and thinks.

When there's no self-identification, so that conscious thought comes up, or conscious body sensation, and we don't say, “*I* am experiencing this or that, what am I going to do about it?”, but simply, “This has arisen from conditions,” then we're still experiencing it, but very much also connected to that infinite field of the Unconditioned. We cease to think in terms of the small self and think of the bigger container, and yet still relate compassionately to the experience of the small self.

In terms of the words consciousness and awareness, though, these are simply the specific terminology I give because it's a mouthful to say supramundane consciousness versus mundane consciousness. So my shorthand is simply consciousness as mundane consciousness and awareness as supramundane consciousness. Awareness is aware of everything within the field of consciousness, in the mundane field, and awareness is also present with the Unconditioned, the infinite. It doesn't lose touch with the conditioned. Conditioned loses touch with the infinite. Awareness is the aspect that rests in the akashic field. Consciousness may discern specific mundane expressions of that field.  Does that clarify it? (Q: Yes.)

Q: For a number of years I hear or sense simultaneous conversations. If I try to remember what was just said, it vanishes. It's like another radio station. It doesn't feel like there's any wisdom or anything more evolved. It's a simultaneous... conversation.

Aaron: And are you picking this up as part of human conversation, or an inner conversation?

Q: Like someone else talking...

Aaron: Perhaps you're tuning in to various entities. It would be useful to make a clear statement, “One at a time, please. The human can only pick up one station at a time.” And to make a clear statement of challenge, as we've introduced it, “Nothing may speak out that does not come in accordance with my highest values.” because you say it's not the deepest wisdom. So make a clear statement. “That which is speaking, I invite only that which is deeply rooted in wisdom and love, and which has something to say that is for the highest benefit of myself and all beings. The rest of you, just sit there, drink your tea, and be quiet. You may listen. You may not talk.”

You have to be clear. If you're not clear, there are thousands of entities that will say, “Oh, here's somebody that might listen to us.” and try to jabber away. At what point in this big cocktail party do you get up and say, “This is just (excuse my language) bullshit.” and (lost to laughter).

After Barbara came home from her first trip to the Casa ten years ago, many entities were helping her and were talking to her. But they were sometimes waking her up at 2AM saying, “We want to talk about this or that.” Or “Come in and let us work on you.” Sometimes when she was meeting with a student or teaching a class, she would hear them talking. She asked me, “What should I do?” She also asked Heather, whom you may know, “What should I do?” Heather and I gave her the same answer: tell them, “Not now.”

Some of these entities are very highly evolved and some are simply entities like yourselves between lifetimes—capable, loving, but not yet that highly evolved. They're used to people saying, “Oh! It's the entity!” and jumping to pay attention. But you have to make it clear, “Not now. This is not appropriate. Right now I'm talking on the phone to my mother.” Or “I'm doing some work with a client.” Or “I'm in the middle of a night's sleep and I need to sleep. I value what you have to offer me but only at an appropriate time.” Set a time with them. Then you have to honor that time, if you want the benefit of that entity's guidance. You can't make an appointment and walk out on it. But you're in control or at least shared control.

Of course, if it's a very high, powerful, loving entity, if you suddenly feel Jeshua's presence, you may want to drop everything else and say, “What do you need? How can I be of service?” But even then if it's at 3am, you can say, “Can it wait until morning?”

Q: In taking more responsibility and self-respect, is there any reason on this train of higher consciousness that a healthy relationship would not be part of my experience?

Aaron: Only if there is some unresolved fear. Often that unresolved fear comes from what I sometimes call the “what if someone finds out?” part of you. The place, for example, where there's a quick reaction of anger. The anger is not acted upon. The anger is also pushed away—“No, I'm not going to be angry.” And there's a sweet loving response, but there's a sense of shame. “What if somebody finds out I'm so angry?” The food is put on the table. There's enough for everybody. But you see the strawberries. There aren't that many of them. “Oh! I want some!” Looking around. “Will I get what I need? - Oh, I shouldn't have that thought.” And then you take the bowl of strawberries and you offer it to everybody else. It's a loving thing to do. But there is that sense of shame. I have this immediate reaction of greed. “I won't be a greedy person. What if somebody finds out?” For many people, because that “what if somebody finds out?” is still within you, because you have not made peace with this human aspect of yourself and its sometimes negative emotion, and there's still shame about it, there's a fear of intimacy. If you move into a very deep intimacy, you can't really live with somebody for a very long time without them seeing all these faces of you.

So some people move into that relationship with the “what if someone finds out?” and it creates a lot of friction in the relationship. For other people, they hold off on that relationship because they have not yet resolved their relationship with themselves and their own negativity. For others there is a willingness to let them find out. There's a willingness to see the shadow in yourself.

Now, I think you have that willingness to see that in yourself, but you have not resolved the shame. I think there are others in the room who are in the same place, open to being truly intimate with someone, having them see those pockets of negativity within the self, and yet still holding onto the shame in some way. The shame that you're human and  seemingly imperfect in some ways.

We keep repeating this in this whole course of “Trainings,” that paper that you were given in the very beginning of this series. We're geared toward coming to the point where we truly—not resolve the negative emotions, it's not that negative emotions will cease to arise, but resolve the relationship including the shame with negative emotions. It's just an emotion that has arisen from conditions. It's impermanent. It's not self. I don't have to get caught up in any stories about it. I no longer have to act it out. That's fine, but I still have this little voice that says, “I shouldn't feel that. What if someone finds out I'm feeling it?” Can I love myself and all humans enough to understand, if the conditions are present, this is going to come up? None of you have fully resolved all the negativity. The question is not to resolve it but to relate to it lovingly. Once you really understand that, then intimacy is much easier.

Or, as I said, some of you go into these intimate relationships still caught up in these old stories about yourself and the other and then there's a lot of conflict. But some of you have avowed not to get into that conflict yet again, so you're looking at, how do I resolve this in myself? How do I truly open to the fact that this human is going to experience certain conditions that give rise to certain as yet unresolved emotions, and that's okay? I don't have to be afraid of it. And I don't have to enact it in the world.

I want to point out this is not just about you, Q, it's about many in this group of 40 or so, many of you. You know if it relates to you or not.

Other questions? We have Norma here with us tonight. Are there questions for Norma?

Q: It's probably a very similar question, but I wondered, when we were toning together, or when you were just giving us exercises, when I might work alone, it (might) be very, very different. So could you speak to when I might be working with sound by myself?

Norma: The very first thing that flashes into my head is, so you don't have a job. You're independently wealthy. You have oodles of time, all day long, to just go ahhh.... --So let's be realistic. Sound happens all around us all the time. And you can have a good time playing with sound while washing the dishes. I said I find myself singing with my refrigerator all the time, and I just make up little sounds and toning. In terms of meditation, I may sit and just go (sighing from high to low), ahhh... just doing that sigh down. Breathe out through my feet or up from the floor, depending on where I'm at. I go outside in the morning, even now, because I have to put my feet on the grass. And I just do that and ahhh... and I drop down and breathe up, just do it a few times. Then I may sit quietly and just sort of feel.

Being a musician I'm going to sometimes just sit with a bowl and play a bowl and sing a little. Because I'm a vocalist, I vocalize (up and down scale)—la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, make a little sound, scare the small children off in the neighborhood, and my cats. I just think of sound as something that goes through my day. It's not something super-special, except just to use it to ground. And sometimes if my heart needs something or I feel like I want something, sometimes I'll just sit and sing to myself, or play the piano and sing. See what I mean?

So to integrate sound into a meditation practice, it's like we start where it feels right. Don't think that you suddenly need another 20 minutes to do something special. I think we're too regimented sometimes in saying (solemnly), “And now we shall meditate.” It's interesting. It comes back to the same thing we've been talking about, right? About the extraordinarily sacred space we move into, and then ordinary reality. It's like, let it be a bridge. Let it be in both places and see what happens.

A long tone (sonorous tone) is the quickest way for the brain to shut up and for you to begin to move into that brainwave state that enhances trance. So at the beginning you can do the grounding and then just sound a couple of long tones that feel comfortable and see where it takes you.

Does that give you some ideas?

Aaron: Let me add something to that. This is really from Barbara, but I don't want to bring her back into the body to say it. For about six months this year, she was doing once a day a five minute jigsaw puzzle on her computer, a site that gave a 40 or 50 piece jigsaw puzzle. Moving the pieces around, beautiful pictures. There was a timer on the puzzle. She wasn't trying to do it faster, she was just aware of the seconds clicking by, moving this piece, moving that piece, focused, concentrating. She found, months ago when she first started doing these puzzles, that she would start to sing usually some kind of a sacred song. After two months of her doing it that way, I asked her, “Why are you singing? Bring consciousness to the process.” And she began to realize that there was a tension coming up from the relative human, “I'm going to do this, do that.” And the sacred chant, just sometimes a chant like Sri Ram, Jai Ram. Just coming back to that sacred space. It helped her to develop the capability to stay connected to both, to act from relative reality while connected to the sacred space.

She learned what she needed to. She stopped doing the jigsaw puzzles, but now she's, well she hasn't completely stopped. She does it as entertainment occasionally. She's no longer trying to do it fast. But she's found that this became a tool, that whenever tension arises, she comes back to that sacred tone. It may be a song or a chant or just OM, so that when she feels tension coming up in the body, that reconnects her to the sacred space. Just a useful daily tool.

Q: A comment. I find toning either just right before bed or if I wake up in the night, the sign/sigh like Norma was talking about, or just kind of scanning my body and noticing any areas of tension, just opening up my mouth and make a little sound. It might just be a couple of breaths' worth of sound that come out. But a lot of times if there's that kind of wound up feeling, if I'm thinking of this and that, it really just shifts my state of consciousness and I can usually go back to sleep. (inaudible) A useful, functional practice.

Aaron: Let me add something to that. Barbara has a lot of shoulder pain, arthritis, whatever, and she often wakes up in the middle of the night with severe pain so that she needs to sit up. She goes out to her hot tub and she tones, often just for five minutes. No lights on; under the stars or in the rain, as it may be. Sitting in the hot water, which relieves the pain, and just toning or chanting. The hot tub in itself relieves a lot of the pain, but the toning also makes a difference. It changes the whole frequency of the energy and the whole contraction around the energy. So there is the pain caused by the arthritis, or the tendonitis, or whatever the condition, and there is the tension around the pain. The hot water relieves the pain. The toning relieves the tension around the pain.

We have suggested we end at 8pm tonight and not carry it through to 9pm. It's dark and rainy and I want to get you home safely. I'm happy to hear one or two more questions. Again, address your questions to Norma also because we have her with us here tonight. Norma, you're welcome to join us tomorrow, but I'm presuming you have other things to do.

Q: When I was up in the tree, I felt when I went up the tree, almost embarrassed, in (its?) space.

Norma: Do you think the tree was embarrassed in your space?

Q: Yeah, a little. Real uncomfortable. So I tried to make contact (with it). But then I did the turning around thing, and wow. The expression “he has my back,” I felt so protected. The branches, (inaudible) the whole strength, <father>, kind of grounded, not going anywhere, you know? Then I started singing and I turned around. (inaudible) I was <> tears (inaudible). I started noticing the veins, the bark. (remainder mostly inaudible). He had my back.

Norma: Nice... <I'm> aware that trees, nature, can provide all sorts of things. We interpret in a way that's best for us to hear. That's great, thanks for sharing.

Aaron: I would add here, and this relates to a question that A asked, and I think we'll raise tomorrow, we won't talk about it tonight, but when you approach any entity-- human, tree, animal-- it's useful to ask permission. You come up to a tree, and before you just walk up to its energy field, you state your request. “May I come close to you? May I enter your energy field?” and you feel its welcome. Or occasionally you might feel a no and you respect that. Feeling the welcome, so much gratitude.

Q: It was by where they cut the trees. And I think he was afraid. (remainder inaudible)

Aaron: Tomorrow I would invite everybody to go out and spend some time sending loving energy to these clear-cuts. There's a lot of pain in the earth there that needs to be healed. We'll talk about that tomorrow.

Q: I would be interested to hear your perspective, now or sometime else, about Gandhi, satyagraha, and his hunger strike.

Aaron: I respect what he did. I am not sure what question you have about it.

Q: Just connection to non-harm and saying no with love.

Aaron:  The important thing with satyagraha is to remember that you cannot use soul force as a manipulative tool that may arouse anger or pain in others without accepting responsibility for the fact that you have aroused that anger or pain in others. Gandhi understood this. You ask forgiveness. You put yourself in front of somebody who may shoot you. You block the way because you feel this must be done. “This is in accordance with my highest values. I must say no. But I realize that it's antithetical to your highest values. I'm willing to even have you kill me, and I forgive you ahead of time. If there is any blame for the killing, it is on me because I blocked you, knowing how hard it would be for you. I forgive you. I ask you to forgive me for being such a painful catalyst to you.”

In this way there is not harm and there is not karma for the person doing or the person who might shoot the gun. It shifts the responsibility, because there's an acknowledgment, “I take responsibility here.”

Ask Barbara some about this tomorrow. She talks about a Freedom Ride in which a bus was overturned. People fell to the bottom of the bus. Then the people who forced the bus off the road in their cars climbed up on the top of the bus and were throwing rocks and such. The National Guard came and started shooting at the people on the top of the bus. She laid there on the bottom of the bus asking, “How am I responsible?” She realized, “I cannot do this again until I understand my responsibility and my relationship to the outcome here, because harm was done even though I held the intention to no harm.” And this led her into a very deep understanding of satyagraha. Ask her to talk more about it.

Is there one more question to Norma before we close?

Q: I'm curious about not so much the science about harmonics or overtones, but what you feel either in yourself or when you're working with clients, that the overtones help with (inaudible). I'm just questioning overtones.

Norma: (off mic, hard to hear) You know, I'm going to answer this in a slightly different way, and maybe we can have a private conversation another time. The overtones, which are those high tones that you heard (demonstrating by toning), are just parts of what already exists being magnified and brought forward. So, (toning) happens when I move my tongue, but they're all present in the (toning) sound. Just by moving my tongue I add more emphasis to some aspects of that tone, which includes all these higher notes, and some notes will jump forward.

So the curious thing is, when I work with clients, I seldom tone. What I do is work with energy. I can feel the energy in my hands, between my hand and the client's body. I hear the tones. Right? And then I ask, what does the body want? What does the soul want? What is the next step? And then I hear the tone change. If there's distraction or something, then I'll sing that tone. But usually if I just focus on it, I feel like it happens. And the client will hear the tone inside, arriving from himself. Or (inaudible). Or have a dialogue going on. So I use it more in concerts where I'm in a performance space or a sacred space with people, or like the workshop today. And I use it more to clear and clean just stray stuff, just dust bunnies that energetically accumulate into spaces sometimes. I find it useful that way. I'm aware that doing it myself and with others connects pituitary and pineal, and it can sharpen the ability that we have in the 6th chakra to comprehend, to understand concepts at that mental level. I'm sure there's something out there someplace, but I have yet to run across someone who uses overtones in a left-brain fashion. Most people either are just like, they can make them and they just sort of make them randomly, and they don't really know what they're doing and they just make noises. But it does seem to move dust bunnies.

Q: (inaudible) I use overtones on the body (inaudible)

Norma: Like I said, it's mostly in the room with clients, I hear the equivalent of overtones like what Barbara was talking about, hearing sounds and feeling sounds, earlier, that's more my experience. So I tend to work a lot in silence and hear (inaudible). And add a tone or two, sometimes, when it seems to need a focus. We'll chat more.

Aaron: There are some beautiful recordings of Tibetan monks with overtone chanting. Some of you might enjoy, I don't have something specific to recommend, maybe you do, but you can probably find online some very beautiful overtone chanting just to listen to.

Let us end here, then. We offer out the wishes:

May all beings everywhere benefit from our work today. Whatever has come in to me, I bring it into my heart and I send it out.

We invite into this circle all the guides and loving beings who have filled this space and helped us today. Feeling the energy moving around this circle, and then also opening it out.

May all beings everywhere experience love.

May all beings everywhere know their true self and rest in that radiant divinity of their true nature.

Without exception, may every being, however great or small, be included in this circle of loving kindness.

We thank and release all those spirits who have helped us today, and invite you to be close to us and come back tomorrow, to accompany us home, and to go your own way, as is needed.

And each of us in this human circle, knowing our connection. As we release hands, we go our own way, and yet we are always connected.

I leave you with much love and gratitude for your presence here today, and for your hard work to come to know your highest consciousness and live it in the world.

I'll release the body to Barbara.

(bell, bell, bell)

(session ends)

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