Eden

Question: You've said our lives don't have to be painful if we learn to pay attention when there's no pain, and I understand that intellectually. How do we learn to pay attention without pain? Can we ever live in perfect peace? If, as you say, things are far less cruel on this planet now than thousands of years ago, and if we continue moving in a positive direction, can this planet eventually be the paradise it has the potential to be. Or MUST there be pain for growth? In short, can this world ever be a "garden of Eden"?

Aaron: It would first be useful to ask how you define Eden. By this term do you picture a totally painfree environment where all is provided in abundance, where there is never anger, never illness, never any discomfort of any sort? How can this be? Within the limits of this physical environment, the rain that allows food to grow to abundance also may be disturbing to those who wish for sunshine. Had you in mind a planet where it only rains over growing fields, perhaps only from 11 P.M. to 5 A.M.?

I do understand what you mean by Eden, but I am not certain that you do. The question must be raised, once there is self-awareness, can there ever be total freedom from physical, emotional or mental discomfort?

Defining Eden in a more realistic way, can your earth ever be free of war, of starvation, of disease, of the general suffering of human beings. I answer this with a resounding YES. It is indeed possible. Will you still be able to learn? Again, YES!

You must come back here to the difference we've often talked about between pain and suffering. Pain is just that-pain. It is the physical hurt of the injured or ill body. It is grief at the loss of a loved one. It is the ache in the heart when one sees the effects of pestilence, war and famine over the earth. Yes, pain hurts!

Your suffering is created by your conflicts and struggles with pain and all else that arises in your lives. It grows out of resistance to life. Let us use an obvious example here of something that you cannot avoid as long as you are human. No matter how advanced your medical technology, no matter how far you move beyond war and disease and even accidental death, no matter how long you are able to extend the human life, there must still eventually be an end to that life.

For most of you, the idea of this inevitable death causes suffering. Does your Eden include eternal life? Might you not grow weary of this earth or this body and long for change? Would your Eden include the miracle of being able to move into a fresh new body, to return with your loved ones to a new learning situation. But my dear ones, that is exactly what you have been given.

Does this opportunity to leave the body and continue on your path need to cause pain? Does it need to cause suffering?

When you struggle with what arises in your life, there is suffering. You want to control it and cannot. You feel helpless and angry. Here is a major source of your suffering. Can you imagine growing old peacefully, knowing that the time for an ending of this physical existence approaches, and not needing to struggle with that fact?

Take this to the other areas of your life. Can you imagine being at peace even with the knowledge that there is not perfect agreement between you and another being? Can you accept that there will be differences as long as there is self awareness and free will? Your neighbor wants to plant a row of lilacs between your properties as she has a great love for this shrub. You want to plant evergreens. Need this lead to anger and then to suffering?

We've spoken at length about the process of movement from self-awareness to fear, fear to separation, separation to the need to protect and the arising of emotions such as anger and greed. Can an Eden include such emotions? With the physical body on this earth plane there is an emotional body. As long as you are human there will be emotions, no matter how evolved you become.

I have said this so many times. IT IS NOT THE EMOTION THAT IS THE PROBLEM, NOT THE EMOTION THAT CAUSES SUFFERING, BUT YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO IT! Can you see that there can be an Eden and still be feelings of anger or greed if you can relate with love and openness to those feelings, not reacting to them, not needing to act upon them, but observing them and responding with compassion to the self and to other selves.

What is Eden on earth? It is not a place where there is never anything unpleasant or discomforting but a place where all is recognized to be just as it needs to be.

Let us say that all beings have learned such trust, have let go of the need to struggle. No one is suffering. How do you learn these lessons of love, compassion and faith? The same way you learn them now, but without the added pain of distortion through the need to move to a deeper place of separation. The faster you can notice separation and respond skillfully, the more your energy flow is harmonious with the flow of universal energy. Then you are learning through love and awareness, not through pain.

So let us redefine Eden. There is nothing given that cannot be gratefully accepted as a source of teaching, as a gift. Thus, there is no suffering, but only a joyful embrace of each moment of learning. This is already given; the difference, again, is in your reaction to what you receive. Your resistance to the experiences of anger, fear, and greed create the distortions that lead to increasingly painful learning for all. Without fear that leads to greed would there be any starvation? Without separation that leads to hatred, could there be murder?

This is your Eden, an earth where each being has developed the skill and love to respond as if there is no sharp delineation between self and other. Eden is not perfection but a state of mind where everything is KNOWN to be as it needs to be, where there is trust and love.

In that state of mind there will not be famine because when drought or some other natural condition allows less food in an area, others throughout the world will respond with their plenty. There will not be war. There will be increasingly less disease as your technology advances to combat diseases, all the while respecting that even the virus or bacteria has a place in the scheme of your world.

The next question is "How will you learn?" You do NOT need pain to teach you, only awareness. When you see separation arising that will lead to fear and perhaps to anger and greed, when you are able to be aware of the first arising of that sense of separation, then instead of fearing your neighbor's lilacs, building up a rage at your neighbor so you plant a thick wall of evergreens that will shadow and kill his lilacs and shadow and kill any hope of harmony between you, you will notice the separation and you will COMMUNICATE. You will do so with love and respect, each HEARING the other, each feeling the other's needs and preferences as clearly as your own. Then together you will plant your yards in such a way as to bring both physical pleasure and increasing respect and love into both your hearts.

You ask "What if we can't agree? What if he's so rigid that he won't hear of my evergreens even while I listen openly to his lilacs? Do I always have to give?"

We are speaking of group karma here, and group learning. You can only learn for yourself. If you have truly learned, then while you may feel sadness at the lack of your evergreens, you will not hate nor despise him but will forgive him and accept that he is not yet as ready to open his heart. You will wish him well on his journey, help him to open his heart as you help him plant his lilacs, and plant your evergreens elsewhere in your yard. Were they really that important to be planted right there?

How can you help another being learn to listen, to open, to love, when you meet them with resentment or fear? You have a choice about how to respond to this neighbor. What lessons do you offer in your response. Love can never grow from hatred.

Each being that accepts love and compassion as its responsibility, that takes the care to be aware when separation arises, that responds to every provocation as lovingly as it can, is teaching love. More and more of you do this. Slowly, the behavior patterns that are considered acceptable change. Yes there is still torture in this world, but there are groups like your Amnesty International that work against this, work to bring such inhumane treatment to the attention of the world. One thousand years ago, such treatment was taken for granted and no cry was raised about it. This is but one example. You are all evolving. You are learning slowly, but you are learning.

So when does Eden arrive? It is already here. You just have not noticed it because you have been too intent on "self" to pause and look around. When a sufficient percentage of you learn enough, become responsible and loving enough, learn to master your own minds and emotions, then Eden will be apparent. Like all else on the earth plane, it is a process and not an event. Open your hearts to the possibility of that Eden's emergence as you each learn the lessons of love.