Interlude Two

This is not a new part of the teaching, but is more of a "how-to," offering real life situations and how these teachings may apply. This interlude is drawn from two transcripts, two sequential weeks of talks.

April 23, 1997, Wednesday Night Group

Barbara: We've been working with the Awakened Heart transcripts. The first section was opening to awareness of the Awakened Heart. The second was stabilizing it. And the third are the different tools we can use to really bring this Awakened Heart into our lives and enact it in the world.

The last talk Aaron gave was on effort. He says effort and the energy go together. He wants to talk more about energy. He says many questions have been coming in from people in the last two weeks about energy, and it relates to effort. It also stands on its own. Since energy is not included in Shantideva's work, this will be in the final transcript as another interlude.

Aaron: I am Aaron. Good evening and my love to you all. I wish to talk about energy in a number of its aspects. We will begin with a short guided meditation.

Please bring into your heart and mind the image of a being who represents for you a personification of love and of truth. It may be a living being or a great master of the past. If no such being at all presents itself to you, but the image of a flower or brilliant light presents itself, use that.

It is fine to use your imagination. The imagination bridges the gap. Bridges more specifically that gap of fear or doubt, resistance, which builds barriers. The spirit world is all around. It is only these barriers of fear or confusion which keep you from the direct experience of spirit. So use your imagination if it's helpful.

Allow yourself to come as fully as is possible into the presence of this energy. See this being turn its attention to you in a very loving way. Allow yourself to feel his or her love and blessings. See how this being radiates light. (I'm going to use the pronoun "his" rather than constantly saying "his" or "her" but please be aware it can be of either sex or of no sexual bias at all.) Feel his radiance. You can almost see light coming into it through the crown chakra and then radiating out through the aura into the hands.

After you embrace this being, I would ask you to sit at his feet, or kneel if you prefer. You also have a crown chakra into which universal energy flows. Again, using your imagination if that helps, as best you can allow yourself to experience this being's light gentle touch on the crown chakra and also on the third eye. Feel yourself open. In this being's presence, offer silently your own deepest truth. An example might be the offering of your energy in service to the light, in service to all beings, or a statement of aspiration to ever more fully purify your energy for the service of love and light. These are just two examples. Please offer your own truth. I'll be quiet for a minute.

(Pause)

Now thank this being for his presence and ask of him that he continues to be available to you to teach you. Offer your deep wish to be taught, to be guided, inspired by such a powerful personification of truth and of love.

You may note that what we've just done is an abbreviated variant of the Seven-Step Prayer with a special bias toward allowing yourself to feel positive energy within the self.

Now we're going to take a slightly different step. Before we take it I simply want to say that every being contains some balance of positivity and negativity. Think of an iron filing on a sheet of paper. If you hold a magnet with its positive pole at one end of the paper and one with its negative pole at the other end, the filings on the sheet will all align themselves. When we think of positive and negative polarity in that way, we do not think of it as good or bad. Very simply, two different biases, positive and negative.

Somewhere in the middle of the magnet it is neutral. The brief meditation we just did was an opportunity to connect more deeply with the experience of your positive pole. Remember that these poles are part of the same magnet. The magnet cannot be entirely of one pole. It has to have two ends.

Here the metaphor breaks down because the magnet is not inherently biased towards positivity or negativity, but you as third density human are thus biased. Those of you here in this room are all positively biased. You still have a negative pole. Beings who we think of as negatively polarized, very angry beings filled with fear and greed, still have a positive pole. Not only that, but in all beings, even those who evolve into sixth density as negative polarity, the inherent bias is positive. Eventually that positive bias will shape the whole. Certainly there is very powerful negative higher energy, fifth and sixth density energy. I do not argue that it does not exist. But even that energy has inherent light as core. As example, no matter what changes you make in water, adding salt for example, it still had the elements of hydrogen and oxygen, in particular balance, as core. Eventually that positivity will embrace and draw negativity into itself, transmute it, until all that is left is the smallest tinges of negativity which remain to remind you to have compassion.

Your work is not to cut the magnet in half and get rid of the negative but to allow the positive end to work its way down, transforming negativity, drawing negativity into the beloved heart.

As the second step in this exercise, I would request of you to draw into your mind and heart the memory of something which frightened or angered or discomforted you, ideally something that happened in the past week. You may let it come in and reflect upon how you felt. As we did the earlier exercise, your energy field was so open, powerful, clear. As you recall this anger or fear, I ask you to recall the contraction. Let your body really feel that contraction you felt then. I want you to be aware of the actual sensation of the energy field shutting down. The way that I see it is as if there was a very open circle made up of hundreds of small flat panels, each one approaching the circle at a slightly different angle, like sheets of paper, spaced out, each one 1 degree off from the next, 360 of them around the circle. With contraction they begin to close in, that open circle closes. Like a mouth open and shutting. This closure is especially visible to me on the energy cord that comes down to the crown chakra. It's as if it were being squeezed. I'm going to be quiet for a minute now. Please really bring in this memory and allow yourself to experience contraction. I pause.

Feeling some contraction, even if subtle, I request you to turn again to this beloved teacher or master, this personification of light and love. Without shame at the thought of anger, greed or fear, come before this being again. Sit at his feet. (Let us switch to female here, just for balance.) Take her hands. Offer even this fear and negativity to love, to the personification of love. There is no need for shame, but if shame arises in you at the presence of this negativity, offer that shame also. Accept this great master's help. She does not do it for you, she helps connect you to your own inherent positivity. It is your positivity which embraces the negativity. It's almost like an infinite sponge. No matter how much negativity there is, love is greater and can absorb that negativity. It doesn't have to be wrung out like a sponge, it just evaporates. But there must be intention to let it do so. There must be willingness to enter the process.

This is not getting rid of negativity, it's simply working skillfully with it. You are choosing to allow yourself to come back to your innate perfection, your wholeness, your truth, so that the negativity is disempowered. If it wishes to just sit there beside you, let it sit. As with the water, it will evaporate when it is ready to. The greater the sun, the faster water evaporates.

Once again, feel yourself returning to spaciousness, to light. I said earlier that the small bit of negativity that is left in a very open and positively polarized being is powerless but remains as reminder for compassion. You could think of it as a scar, evidence of the hard work you have done to disempower darkness. I pause.

Let us bring this meditation now into some practical use in your lives. I want to talk about two types of negativity that you encounter. One is energy negativity and one is a more physical activity such as somebody's anger or even their slap or punch. We could call it the negativity and the material expressions of negativity. I am speaking here in part in answer to several very specific questions that have arrived in person, by e-mail and by letter.

What do you do if you feel yourself invaded by negative energy that seems external to you, something that seems to want to grab hold of you? What do you do if somebody transgresses against you in a very real physical way? Builds their dock in your front yard, yells at you, yells at ones that you love. Sometimes in the presence of negativity, we feel ourselves becoming absorbed into that negativity so that we become more and more angry. The orifice that connects you to this eternal source of love seems to shrink and you feel really dominated by the negativity.

One important thing to remember, when you feel yourself contracting with such negative energy, is that you don't have to be afraid of this. Realize it is quite literally a gift. The only way that negative energy can begin to work changes in you is when it is building upon your own untended negativity. If somebody else is angry and a sense of real negative energy surrounds you, it's not only very discomforting but gives rise within you to your own fear and anger, in increasing ratio. This must point out your own untended negativity and the need to attend lovingly to it. Instead of closing up further and putting up barriers, how wonderful to be able to turn to that negativity and actually say "Thank you!" It is your teacher.

If you are painting a wall white, step back to see the results and see several places where dark old paint showed through, you don't hate that darkness, you simply use it as reminder, "Here's a place that I missed. Here's a place that needs to be attended." Whenever you feel yourself contracting with negativity in reaction to some external force, material or non-material, a first step then is to remind yourself, "This also is a teacher." Literally thank it. Offer your loving gratitude.

This great master can help you open your heart, open your energy. This is not because she is all-powerful but because given the invitation, the energy field opens back into its positivity because that is its inherent nature. Negativity cannot control unless you invite it in. As soon as you allow this closure-which I hope you experienced at least subtly in the exercise-to re-open, and remember positivity, and then allow yourself to thank the negativity that has opposed you for pointing out to you your own places of confusion, fear and distortion, as soon as you do that, you offer the strongest answer possible to that negativity. You issue it an invitation also to find its own positive heart. If it chooses to do so, fine. If it does not choose to do so, that is its own choice.

You do not thank it, go through this process as blackmail, knowing that it's uncomfortable with love and light and offering these to make it leave. You must do it with sincerity.

In the process of offering this silent thank you to the negative catalyst such as to your boss standing there stomping his feet and saying, "This report stinks!" you offer the same gratitude to your own hidden negativity. Can you see how that thank you transforms the situation? "Thank you for teaching me. Thank you for reminding me."

If the negative energy feels very powerful to you, and you're very uncomfortable with it, you can literally ask for protection. Here you again restate your deepest truth and say it to this negativity, "I will not be pulled in. I will not get involved in a relationship with you. I offer you love and invite the support of the forces of Light." You may call upon the forces of light and ask for help in many ways. This instrument, when she channels, sets herself within a circle of protection. She envisions the four archangels: Ariel, who is my teacher, in front of her; Michael and Gabriel on either side and Raphael behind her. When I say she envisions, she does not actually see them so much as call upon and feel their powerful energy. At other times she may call upon a circle of elders, very high and loving beings, some of which she can name and others of which are nameless. But they simply feel like a loving support shield to her.

You have to practice with this independently and see what works. Please know that it is not imagination, that such support is available to you. This is why it can be very healing and powerful to meditate and have the experience of anger or fear arise, because it gives you such a wonderful opportunity to work with it in a positive way.

When it arises outside of meditation in a real-life situation where somebody is treating you shabbily or cruelly, it's harder to use it right then because you must deal with the situation. But you will find that if you regard their anger as teacher, there will be opening. There must be no self-righteousness here, there must be real compassion for their anger. But with that compassion, if you can say silently to them, "Thank you. Thank you for reflecting my own anger back to me so I can look into it. Thank you for reminding me that this anger needs to be drawn into the loving heart," when you do that, you will find that you really can change the situation.

Two different questions that came to this instrument this week were about possession by evil or by negativity. I do not suggest that you cannot be possessed by negativity, but I am not comfortable with the word possession, because possession seems to mean that you are acting against your will. Any being that allows itself to be grabbed by negativity has in some way allowed that situation, either because they do wish to explore their own negative polarity or because they wish this opportunity of reflection, the opportunity to note the places where there is still weakness, where there is still that which is untended.

I repeat, nothing can possess you against your will. As soon as you are able to re-open into your own positivity and are able to say thank you to this teacher, draw in positive energy again, it can't hold onto you any more. It's as if you had suddenly become slick, with no surface for it to grab. There's nothing for it to hold. Your anger gives off little spikes, like Velcro, something to stick to. When the anger resolves, your energy field feels very smooth. There's nothing left for negativity to hold onto.

Part of what we're talking about here comes back to this, I quote myself, "contraction around the contraction." Fear, anger, greed, jealousy, confusion, lead to a contraction of the energy field. They're going to arise. When you contract around that initial contraction with stories about how it should or should not be, rather than just being present with "contraction," you close your energy field, close that orifice coming into the crown chakra.

I want to rephrase that. This orifice can never really close. You move into the delusion that it's closed. It's as if somebody said to you as you walked into a room, "The oxygen is very low in there," and you saw beings inside the room through a window gasping for breath. As you walked through the doorway, you might start to gasp also and feel, "I can't breathe." The more frightened you became, the more you shut yourself off from breath. But the whole thing is really an illusion, the oxygen level in the room is just fine. Fear closes the orifice. This energy channel into the crown chakra does not actually shut off. You move into the delusion that it is shutting off because of your fear, because of your darkness.

When you do this, you also bring upon yourself distortions in the health of your physical body, distortions in your sleep pattern, distortions which lead you further into confusion, fear and doubt. In short, you bathe yourself in negativity. I repeat, it is not a problem. Retain the clarity, "I have invited this in for some reason. It is my teacher." Ask for the help you need from your own positive polarity, your own positive nature, and the loving nature that surrounds you. As soon as you soften like that, you, in metaphor, start to believe there is oxygen in the room. "I can breathe." Your fear subsides a bit, you take a few deep breaths. You open further. And then you may begin to ask, "What is it here to teach me?" and to do some of this more difficult inner work of learning about the long-held old opinions and beliefs and fears, so that they may be released.

When we use the term "purify" or "clarify one's energy," this release is what we really mean. The energy field is always clear, pure and open but the contractions of fear make it seem closed. Negativity is not an enemy to be conquered. It is a gift to bring you back into the light, to remind you of your work, to remind you of compassion.

A number of you have quite concrete questions about how what I have just spoken of would work in a very specific situation. If you wish to ask these questions aloud, either as they truly exist or changing them subtly if you do not wish to offer the exact situation, I would be glad to speak to them.

In our last meeting I spoke of right effort. Energy is part of effort. In order to offer the effort which is necessary to do this work, you must come back into connection with this stream of light within you. So working with very specific energy practices can be very helpful. Then, when you are in a difficult situation, you remember how it feels to have this open energy field and you know, "This is available to me." It is a very real support in the face of fear and darkness. That is all.

Barbara: Before we begin our questions, Aaron would like to point out that V's mother died a week ago. And he is inviting us all to just sit for a minute or two and send loving energy to V, to her family, to her mother.

Aaron: I am Aaron. We wish this woman a very joyous journey into the light. Please remember, V, that she has not gone anywhere where she would be inaccessible to you. She has simply moved on to a new phase of an ongoing process of growth. That is all.

Barbara: He wonders if there's anything you want to share about this.

V: I was just telling L a little about the last morning I was with my mother when she died, and how the night before, I had been doing tonglen practice, and had felt that I was working with the black clouds of her fear and negativity. That morning at the hospital she was clearly much closer to death. I sat with her and tried to do that again, but I couldn't find the black clouds. All I could visualize was a faint gray haze. Suddenly I realized that I was not doing it wrong, that's what was there and she had worked through all that and was ready to go. About an hour after that she died very peacefully with all of us around. It was very peaceful and loving.

Barbara: Thank you for sharing that, V. Two people have questions.

Ce: I am wondering about when a person has an addiction like a drug addiction, how is it in terms of negative energy. Can they be possessed in the way Aaron talked about?

Barbara: Are you asking when they are high on drugs can they still work in a conscious process with negativity that Aaron just described?

Ce: No. The fact that they have an addiction, does that show that they are used over and over by negative energy?

Aaron: I am Aaron. I want to make it clear that external negativity cannot "use" you or possess you without your permission. For the addicts, their own inner negativity which has been unconscious and unattended is what invites in the use of the drug, because there's too much fear to really confront the negative emotions or other negatively polarized aspects of the self. Fear leads to use of drug really as an escape. That's what drug use or any addiction is. It is really a very strong form of resistance. Unconscious fear breeds greater fear. Then the body becomes habituated to the drug and it builds up a physical addiction, yes. But the being that moves into addiction, that begins addictive behavior, is doing so because of fear. External negativity is not twisting it into that fear. Negativity is internal and abetting the fear. It's very difficult to work with, though, in a person who is addicted because when they are under the power of that chemical or mind-altering substance, they really cannot have clarity. So, first you've got to separate the person from the drug and tend to the physical addiction. Then they are able to begin to work with their own negativity and use whatever is "possessing" them as teacher. Does that answer your question, Ce? I pause.

Barbara: L?

L: I have been doing metta quite a bit and find real opening. Sometimes I use the very simple meditation of "Breathing in, I am aware of my fear. Breathing out, I smile to my fear." My question is, could smiling to a feeling be a subtle form of trying to get rid of something?

Barbara: Aaron says, yes it can, anything can.

Aaron: I am Aaron. I would say this myself. But when you genuinely smile to it, it involves a certain softening of the barrier around the heart, a certain softening of the belly, which leads you into the ability more deeply to be present with the fear or discomfort. If there is fear of the fear, fear of the discomfort or emotion, and the smiling to it was offered as a way of not separating from it, the smiling does bring you back. There's simply an awareness, "Here is resistance." If the smile and process was offered as escape and you note that escape, that resistance to presence with discomfort, and then you smile to the resistance, again, it softens and brings you back. It's very subtle but it's very possible to catch it if you are able to be honest with yourself. Does this answer your question, L?

L: Why wouldn't one say, "I see my fear, I accept my fear," instead of smiling to my fear?

Aaron: I am Aaron. "Accepting" can be just as much a way of avoiding the direct experience of your fear as smiling to it. You simply have got to know, "Part of me really doesn't want to be touched by this fear so it's using devices like accepting it or smiling to it." Here is the concept of accepting it. When you say "I accept my fear," that's a concept. Any concept can separate you from experience. If you think and say "I smile to it," that's a concept. No different.

But if you literally smile to it, it softens the body. If you accept it in the sense of really allowing yourself to be touched by it, asking for whatever support you need, and then opening yourself and letting this fear really touch you, then it ceases to be a concept. And that begins to heal. Acceptance or smiling: no concept! Because smiling is a physical act it is easier to be non-conceptual. I pause.

L: How about surrender?

Aaron: I am Aaron. Surrendering can still be a concept. The value of these practices such as the Seven-Branch Prayer is that it leads you into a direct experience of offering, which is a kind of surrender. When you're at this place where all the barriers are released, then you are just there with fear. It ceases to be your fear, it's just fear. You know then the negative and positive poles of the self, of all selves, and the heart fills with compassion for beings who are engulfed by their negative pole. Then you begin to feel your own strength and come to that place that absolutely knows and understands, "I have a choice. My old habit is to get into relationship with fear by doing something conceptual with it. To smile to it, to argue with it, fix it …" and they're useful to a degree. But when you come back and you're just there naked, with no concept, with the fear, it is then that you discover the infinite depth of positive polarity, of strength, of love within the self, which no longer needs to use any old habitual patterns to cope with or control fear. I pause.

Barbara: Aaron says this is a process, please remember. I'm paraphrasing Aaron. First we learn to smile to it, to accept it, to make space for it. Then we start to investigate the self who is doing all of this and begin to understand that this has been a coping strategy, albeit a skillful and useful coping strategy. Then we are willing to take it one step further and begin to let go of the one who has to cope and come back to our wholeness and strength. He says this is where it shifts and it's a very dramatic shift, where we really understand this has been an old habit, to tame fear or anger in some way, and we don't have to do it that way any more. We suddenly know "self" as an artificial construct and shift into "no self." It's this first realization of wholeness, he says, which is really a part of what the enlightenment experience is about. He pauses.

L: It really works nicely. I'm amazed. I find myself having sighs of relief as it releases.

Barbara: There's such a difference between somebody who needs to release it and somebody who can just let it be entirely because you're resting in all the spaciousness of the whole self, who knows this is just like a bit of lint stuck to me. It's nothing. Then it releases also, but there's no one releasing!

L: Yes. I'm making some progress with my neighbor, too.

Barbara: Will you tell us a little about that?

L: I haven't talked to him yet but I've been having dreams that are kind of positive. So, that's good.

Barbara: I expect to see a picture by the end of the summer of you lounging in his hot tub! Others?

R: I saw a film the other night on Bravo! TV. It's about India. I knew there was poverty there. But the cruelty and the horror of the sadism really overwhelmed me. And then I started thinking about all the horrors that had been going on in, like, Yugoslavia. I don't know where to put it. I mean, it's beyond negativity. I would like Aaron to comment on it.

Barbara: Aaron says he will talk directly but he would like to ask you, have you ever seen people cooking little bits of meat on a fire, like hot dogs or something, on a low level charcoal grill, and a dog is smelling this and he keeps approaching, and he gets close enough to grab it and gets his nose burnt, and yip! backs off and then he does it again and again and again. There's so much desire, he just keeps getting burned. How many times will it take him before he learns, "I can't get at this"? How long will he then sit there silently before he decides, "I don't even need this"? He says the dog isn't going to have the same kind of human insight about suffering and its roots. The point Aaron is making is, we keep burning ourselves literally and figuratively until we're ready to learn lessons.

Aaron: I am Aaron. I will continue myself. I am not suggesting that everybody in these situations is there because they're stuck in some karmic place. Some of them have quite literally offered to be there as teachers to others. If there is one who does not grab the meat from the grill and burn himself, if there is one who does not sit there staring, panting, salivating, saying, "I want, I want," it's a very powerful force for others. It's inspired. It helps them to see there is another way.

Beings who grow up in a situation of extreme poverty, war or disease are there to learn something. This does not mean we don't tend to the war, poverty or disease. If that dog has not eaten in five days, he's going to simply get burned and steal the food. He'll keep stealing it, he'll simply suffer being burned. You need to be sure to feed the dog if you hope to teach it that it's not necessary to burn itself and steal from the grill. So what we can do is to attend to the situations that create the poverty and war and disease. Your work is to tend to it from a place that trusts it, so that you're not telling that person that they're broken, sending that message. Not telling them they need to be fixed. Simply offering that love and whatever skillful changes in condition are within your means to offer. If you live some distance away and do not have the financial means to help, it may be that simply doing tonglen or metta is all you can do, and living your own life here with as much clarity as you can.

An interesting side to the question R has raised is, why do you live relatively free of famine, disease, war? I find it interesting that in your Western culture, there are kinds of violence which are almost-I would not say accepted, they're abhorred by many-but they are standard, which you don't find in those kinds of cultures. In a society where there is much famine, people might steal for food and that is cruel, for to steal the other's food can really mean to kill the other person. If there is some kind of addiction of drugs, of course, that will invariably lead people to harm others to get what they need. But generally in those cultures there's a certain level of kindness to the other which is somewhat lacking in your culture.

If you drive down a busy street in a place like New York City, cars are honking, and a pedestrian is really at risk for his life if he cuts across. Everybody is for himself. There's an intensity to it. Whereas in many places such as India, in towns where people have very little food, they're still very generous and very kind with what they have. There's a personal violence that's lacking. It's just a different karma, a different lesson that needs to be learned, and a different place to which one has been drawn to learn a lesson.

R, you have asked me questions like this many times before. I would ask you to consider if some of your very deep pain in seeing others who are starving, who are wounded, and so forth, and live in such cruel conditions, relates to some degree of non-acceptance of your own tendencies to greed. I'm not singling you out and saying you're greedy, everybody has tendencies to greed. When we accept those tendencies with kindness in ourselves, then there's much more space for them. But when we attack them as "bad" in ourselves, judge them in some way, then one may see a situation where others are dying because of greed and fear and it's much more painful because we personalize it. There is a sense, "I could do that," a sense of horror with the situation. "I could do that, and I hate the possibility in myself that I could do that." When you say, "I could do that," and really offer compassion to the place that has such fear in you that it's honest enough to say, "I could do that," then it becomes easier to trust the situations that others find themselves in, while at the same time, helping in whatever ways are possible. I pause.

Barbara: I'm paraphrasing Aaron, at his request, because he sees confusion. He says certainly this is very sad, to see starving children, young men and women maimed by bombs and such, it's all very sad. Part of one wants to ask, why should such a world that's so cruel and awful exist? But there it is. He says it's simply karma. God has not created the horror. It's simply, we reap what we sow. These people are not being punished for something they did in a past life, not at all, he says. But they are encountering the seeds they sowed and have an opportunity to learn.

His point is that you are so deeply affected by this and it challenges you so much, it's so painful to you, and so in relation to his earlier talk this evening he would like you to look at the place in yourself that knows if you were in a place of such deprivation, you might act in very unskillful ways, and instead of being able to be compassionate with yourself, much judgment arises. Then your judgment of the situation is a reflection of your self-judgment, at the bits of negativity in you. He says, do you see what he means? He pauses.

R: Well, I can see it up to a point. I mean, when I think about the raping and the ugliness, that doesn't really have anything to do with starvation. The extremes of it, the cruelty that's inflicted.

Aaron: Wherever fear becomes dominant and leads to reactivity which harms another, it's cruel. How many times do people need to bang their heads against a wall before they learn it hurts? You reap what you sow. I cannot deny that it may seem a cruel process to have to go through. You really are forged and purified by the fire. And the fire burns intensely so that you shriek and scream.

And yet, beings must go through the process. You keep incarnating. I'm not saying that you have a choice. Once you're within this karmic field, you've invited the cycle of birth and death. But it is a healing process and a growth process. And please remember how many beings there are who are not engulfed in this kind of cruelty. Those who are, are either old souls who have taken a more negatively polarized path or they are young souls. As you mature and work with a more highly positively polarized path, the need to enact the heavy emotions declines considerably, and you do find yourself in much more peaceful situations.

I sometimes think that what you are trying to say, R, in your frequent bringing up of this kind of pain, is that there is some kind of anger at what you perceive as a whole divine plan which created a situation where learning is so very painful, where people literally seem to suffer the torments of hell here in incarnation. Who dreamed up this scheme anyhow?

But my dear one, God did not dream up this scheme with a sense of desire to punish. Rather, an incarnate path to maturity offered itself and those beings who wished to move through to maturity in the material world were given that option. From then on you have free will. If there is a path, a clearly marked path, through a swamp filled with poisonous snakes and quicksand, and as long as you stay on the path you are safe, if there is some gold over there, and delicious-looking vine fruit over there, and these entice you to wander off the path and then you find yourself in quicksand, who put you there? Did God put you there? How else are you going to learn about your greed and fear and that they have results? That's the partial purpose of the incarnative process.

I've said to you before that there are other non-material paths to learn and they are viable paths. Those of you who have chosen the material plane in large part have chosen it because you are aware that the power of the catalyst that you allow yourself to enter teaches you a compassion far beyond what can be learned anywhere else. It's still not the primary lesson of the earth plane. But by the time you reach the higher densities, your ability for compassion is so heightened that you go far beyond what had been thought possible. It's not that there's a conclusion of compassion and one cannot exceed that. One simply moves deeper and deeper into this ever-pure, ever-loving heart. So in effect, all of these beings that are struggling around you, they're all heroes. They're all beings who have agreed, "I'm going to do this and teach it to the whole universe, not for my own glory but out of love. And I am willing to endure whatever it takes, because I so deeply aspire to learn this wisdom and compassion as my own gift, the expression of my own truth. I will allow myself to be forged by the fire." Thank them and offer whatever help you can. I pause.

Barbara: We have time for one more question. J?

J: In our Project Light work (energy/body-work class taught by Aaron), we are working with chakras and other energy centers. What is it we sense when we are describing these as closed?

Aaron: I am Aaron. I will speak briefly to this, J, and turn to it in depth tomorrow in class. Nothing was ever closed. You have seven basic chakras. If you think of how something reacts when it spins, if it was not a fixed form, as it spins its axes would extend. The harder it's spinning, the more it extends. Can you visualize that? I pause.

J: I understand.

Aaron: I am Aaron. When it's spinning just as it should, then it's extended. This extension (using index fingers of two hands) touches that extension and literally makes a connection. That energy can usually flow through it. But if it's wobbling, if it's unstable, if it's not spinning, if it's lacking energy, if it's shut off from its own natural energy source, then it doesn't extend enough. It's not quite so much a blockage as a break, like Christmas lights-if one bulb burns out, the current can't go through. Do you understand? I pause.

J: Yes. Thank you.

April 30, 1997, Wednesday Night Group

Barbara: Aaron says that questions of many different sorts have come in during the week. He's going to save the new Awakened Heart talk for next week and deal with these questions, to include under "Interlude." He wants to start with a talk and then open the floor to questions.

To begin, Aaron is asking me to read to you several sentences here, from Shantideva's poem. "In solitude the mind and body are not troubled by distraction. Therefore, leave this worldly life and totally abandon mental wandering." It goes on to talk about worldly life and renunciation. He says "Enough," and he will talk.

Aaron: I am Aaron. Good evening, and my love to you all. I want to talk about stress, the alleviation of stress and the use of stress in your life. We will come back to the lines I asked Barbara to read a bit later on. I did not want to interrupt her channeling to read them later.

The question does often arise for you: what to do with the many catalysts in your life-the stress, the confusion, the physical pain? Is there any one of you who has not at some time dreamed of going off to some place of great solitude and dwelling there? You may have considered the idea of a monastic life, letting go of worldly things and all the stress contained in worldly things. Or you may have simply pondered running off to a South Pacific atoll, living under coconut palms beside the sea and plucking fresh fruit at your back door.

Certainly there are places such as big cities where there's much more bustle and energy, and the possibility of stress is greater. There are certain kinds of involvements that do create greater stress. But do you really think that there's any place that could be free of stress? A friend tells a wonderful story of one of the most stressful nights of his life, when he was a monk and lived in a cave and found a large boa constrictor beside him The cave was on the side of the cliff. He had no flashlight or other modern convenience. There was no way to get away from that cave. Here he was a monk and had left a monastery in Asia to find even more solitude in the hills, searching for peace. And what he found was a giant snake!

Is there any place you can go where your mind will not come with you? If you renounce modern living are you going to renounce your mind too? Are you going to have some kind of surgery to cut out a portion of the brain, along with the outer world? Your stress is not out there! Your stress is from within and the relationships you get into with the outer catalysts of your lives. And those catalysts are not going to disappear no matter where you go.

I understand that some places are quieter than others and offer a certain peace, such as being in a beautiful woods or by the sea. A place in nature and away from the turmoil of mechanized life, away from telephones and doorbells and so on, is peaceful. But you cannot hide there, for doorbells and telephones will be replaced by another catalyst. Furthermore, you cannot do the work you came to do in the incarnation if you bury yourself off in some obscure wilderness. You need these catalysts, whether you may wish to entertain that idea or not. You need these catalysts.

You can learn to be very creative with your pain, your stress, your confusion. You can learn to embrace them as teacher and not arm yourself in battle. And you can learn very practical ways of releasing them rather than perpetuating the relationship with them. For herein is the suffering, not in the touch of the object itself but in how you relate to that touch.

I emphasize release. This is not "getting rid of," it's release. You open your hands, and if it wants to go, it will go. If you pick up a very hot object, you have no difficulty releasing it. You don't think to yourself, "Should I let it go?" At that moment, fear may say, "Get rid of it," and you may toss it. Or a quieter voice may simply say, "Let it go."

It is this letting go that you must learn. Your pain, your stress, your confusion, give you countless opportunities to practice this letting go until it becomes second nature. You have lived your lives with one kind of relationship to the catalyst in those lives, which was a confrontational relationship, with a sense, "I must defeat this or that, control this or that." What is required is nothing short of a total change of perspective, whereby instead of being one who was in control of one's environment, one shifts from that place of fear that would control into a place of love, trust, and harmony, which is willing to be co-creator with the environment. I'm not talking here about surrender to the environment. That's a defeatist kind of attitude which denies your infinite power and divinity. I say "co-creator." To do that, there must be a relaxation of tension. Learning how to relax tension in that way comes both from specific exercises and through your formal meditation practice.

Let's begin here with an exercise together. A very simple conscious relaxation exercise. I want you to begin with your eyes. If the eyes are clenched close in any way, relax them. Let them be totally effortlessly closed. No tension in the eyelids, no tension in the forehead. Relaxed … Move up into the forehead, feeling any tightness there. Just let it go. And on up over the top of the head. Bring attention to the crown chakra. Allow it to feel open, as if there had been a muscle holding an orifice closed, and you totally relaxed it. You really can relax at the top of your head … Down the face into the cheeks and in the jaw. Let the mouth hang subtly open, no force to open or close it. Breath flowing in a great "Aaaahhh."

Relax the ears. I'm not being funny. Just as you relaxed the eyes and jaw, you can relax the ears. It's a slightly different muscle than the jaw. With the jaw hanging slightly open, lift the attention up to the ears. You may feel a band of tension that goes around the back or front of the head from the ears. Let it open. From the ears down into the neck, let your head roll sideways … forward … side … back … and the other way, back … side … forward … other side … back … and up to balanced. Neck and shoulders relaxed. Feel the tension not just coming out of the muscles but coming from a much deeper place within you, a place that fears and believes it needs to control. As you work with this exercise, I request you to see if you can get in touch with that within you which knows it is safe. It's just a different aspect of your being. It's the divine voice which knows its divinity and perfection, which has tremendous faith and love. It is the place within where there is not, and never has been, tension.

As the clouds of holding which buried that tensionless place dissipate a bit, allow that clear place to emerge into the shoulders. Take the arms and shake them gently. Let the energy pour out any tensions and then rest them comfortably on your lap. Move down the back. Take a deep breath. Hunch your shoulders forward a bit to feel the stretching between the shoulder blades and then come back. Natural spine. Relaxed. And then into the front and into the belly, chest and belly. Open, relaxed. Belly soft. If your belt is too tight, open it. Let your belly expand. I pause.

"Aaaahhh." Feel that spaciousness when the body can open itself. Down into the hips and the legs, releasing tension. No hurry to make it go. Nothing to get rid of. Just a deeply loving recognition that you have been carrying this tension for hours or perhaps even for days, and you don't need to do it any more. It is as if you put on a heavy backpack at the beginning of a journey and have gotten so used to the weight that you've forgotten that you're bearing it. There's nothing bad about the backpack, but it's heavy and it creates discomfort. Bring attention to it and note, "I can put this down." It's as simple as that. I pause.

"I can put this down. I have a choice." So many of you are addicted to your tension. You feel naked without it. It has become your habitual way of being with the world. If you are not in a mode of oppositionality, you feel like there's no self there. It's as if there has to be something pushing against you, something to push back against, to reassure you that you exist.

As you move through your life, you will find myriad things that do push against you. Physical circumstances, other people's thoughts, energy and opinions. Your own emotions and those of others. When you were very young, in your first evolutionary third density experiences on whatever plane, physical or non-physical, you moved into the illusion of a self and believed that that self needed to be protected. This was not a matter of lack of love, only it was a confined love, love for the small self and for those things that were dear to the small self. But there was an illusion of separation: the self vs. the rest of it. You seemed to be offered lessons in self-preservation which said, "I must kill an animal that's attacking me or it will kill me."

Somewhere along the line you evolved into a deeper understanding that while there seemed to be separate selves, they were not fully separate. Consider your own hand and foot. If you were building a brick wall, let us say a stone wall, and the stone you were working with came unbalanced and began to drop, in that instant, seeing it was about to drop onto the foot, the hands capture it. The hands don't have to ask, "Why should I protect the foot?" The hands and foot are part of one greater being. At some stage in your evolution you began to ask the hard question such as, "Why should I put myself above all else? Can I really be happy if others are suffering, especially if I am adding to that suffering?"

When these questions began to arise, a new type of stress was added, that of self-judgment. But you still hadn't learned how to deal with any of this. The self-judgment was treated in the same confrontational way as another person's aggression. "Kill it! Destroy it! Get rid of it!" As soon as you move into that mode of being, your body tenses and holds on to the tension. It creates very real physical distortion such as headache or backache.

Ce, I would ask you to reread the stanza that Barbara read at the beginning of my talk, it is stanza two I believe, on the page marked, under "Meditation." He is not suggesting the need to escape into some place that is free of stress so much as to understand the relationship with that stress in your own mind. I pause.

Ce: (Reading) "In solitude the mind and body are not troubled by distraction. Therefore leave this worldly life and totally abandon mental wandering."

Aaron: I am Aaron. That is not a perfect translation. "… totally abandon mental wandering …" rather, totally abandon the confrontational stance with experience and the kind of wandering mind which is manifestation of the resistance and fear with which you experience yourself in confrontation. "Leave this worldly life …" I do not mean, read that as literally pick up and go and find a quiet place physically, so much as leave the frame of mind which is worldly life, which to me is very specifically this confrontational stance. What is the opposite of worldly life? Centered life. That which knows it is in connection with everything, so there is nothing with which to be in confrontation.

This is truly the work of your lives, all of you in this room, at this stage in your spiritual practice and growth. It is a slow process of retraining. One could liken it to, if you had been paralyzed all of your life, could really not walk across the room and get yourself a glass of water or reach your arm out or bend your body. It would seem very difficult to get what you wanted. If suddenly you were cured and discovered, "Ah, I can move! I can move anything any way I wish!" the old habit would still hang on for a long time. Crying to others for help. Feeling immobilized, powerless and afraid. Each time that you wanted that glass of water and began to cry out, "Somebody help me!" you would need to remind yourself, "This is not how it is any more. I can do this for myself." How many times would you need to remind yourself before you let go of that old habit of helplessness, limitedness and fear?

Your spiritual practice is like that. You are not becoming whole, you have always been whole, but you have not realized it. Your practices are growing into the awareness of your wholeness, unlimitedness and divinity, and of your infinite power. Every catalyst in your life offers you the opportunity to practice. You practice every time there is contraction, if you observe this, what I call confrontational stance, and simply ask yourself, "Do I need to do it this way?"

"Can I release it?"-not get rid of-"Release this contraction? As I do release it, what do I experience?" You must look deeply. This wholeness has been hidden for so many centuries, so many lifetimes. But it's there.

Every confrontation is a gift. The harder the confrontation, the greater the gift. If you cannot stay fully open, present and aware of your wholeness, that's fine. It's not a problem if you can't. That's just another kind of a catalyst. Does judgment arise because you can't? Feeling closed and separate. That's just another push.

Pain in the physical body. Today Barbara and myself were privileged to spend an afternoon with a very wonderful woman. This woman had suffered a major physical trauma. You don't need to know the details, but through an accident, a certain portion of the main structure of the body was broken. She had many surgeries which had allowed her some degree of motion but has tremendous pain, so that she is totally disabled, one might say, and in constant pain. I would have to state that she is one of the most open-hearted, loving and delightful beings that I have met on any plane. She is new to the conscious practice of drawing this catalyst into herself as a tool for learning, and yet totally aware on a much deeper level. What I said to her stirred her own deep wisdom and memories. Her question to me was not "How do I get rid of this pain?" but, "This pain seems to be a given in my life. It must be here to teach me something. How do I learn?" My primary instruction to her is very connected with what I have just done with you. I pointed out to her a time when her body was opened and relaxed. Then, later, pointed out a time when she created a certain tension through her own self-judgment and how she carried that tension in her body and how it enhanced the pain. I asked her to see how that pain and her level of pain could give her constant feedback as to whether the heart was open, or whether there was self-judgment. And we talked about the learning of unconditional love.

Your bodies offer you such wonderful feedback if you keep checking in with your body, not only in meditation but throughout the day, simply noticing the difference between open and contracted. Do it 100 times a day. Then you will start to see how you move into the contracted state, the kinds of thoughts and physical situations that accompany the contracted state, and to understand you have a choice. The old fear-oriented small self clings to that contracted state because within that contraction comes a sense of power, control, safety. What does it mean to surrender the contraction, to surrender the armor? What happens in the heart when there's even the slightest surrender of that armor?

This, my dear ones, is your entire incarnate process. This is your pathway to return to the enactment of your divinity. It's not that there will not be contraction, it's simply that each contraction is not greeted as another push, another opponent, but as another reminder, "Come home!" Again and again and a thousand times again, "Come home to who you are."

This talk is preliminary to the Awakened Heart talk on meditation next week. This state of awareness of openness and contractedness, and the realization that one has a choice, is really preliminary to that form of meditation which is offered from a place of love rather than that which is offered as simply another "fix-it" technique. That is something I will address in the talk on meditation next week. That is all.

L: I've been reading Sharon Salzburg's book, Lovingkindness, and I'm at the point where she's asking one to meditate on happiness. And I wonder if Aaron might talk about what happiness is. Where do we find it?

Aaron: I am Aaron. To me, L, happiness is synonymous with peace. It's easier to define non-happiness than to define happiness. Happiness is, I would not say an absence of fear but an absence of need to get in a relationship with fear. It's not an absence of pain but an absence of any need to get entangled in any conflict with pain. Happiness does not come to you because dear friends are present or warmth or comfort or good food. One can be happy when one is alone, cold or uncomfortable, because there can be a spaciousness which does not need to wage war with those external events in one's life. At that level there is a deep peace. And that peace, to me, includes happiness.

Happiness and joy are not the same thing. Joy also does not relate to riding on a roller coaster or eating an ice cream sundae or holding the hand of your beloved. There may be joy experienced at those times, but the joy is not because you are having that experience. The joy is because with the wonder of that moment you are fully present. Joy is your natural state, and when you are fully present, you experience intense joy. There you are, feeling such joy, holding the hand of your loved one, and suddenly you glimpse a clock and you realize it's almost time for the plane to leave. She's going thousands of miles away. (Clap) Where's your joy? In that moment the heart closes in fear. "Will I be safe? Will I be okay?" It is not sadness but fear that closes the heart. Then, because the heart is closed, you separate yourself a bit from the experience, you are not present any more. And then there's no more joy.

Can there be either joy or happiness through the moment when the loved one climbs onto the plane to depart if that heart is present and open? I think there can be both. Happiness is the quality of peace and joy is the conscious experience of happiness, a peace that knows that, "No matter where this beloved goes, I cannot lose him or her." There's no fear. There's a spaciousness that accepts the situation, feels peace about it rather than at war with it. So there's an abiding sense of happiness. And as you experience that spaciousness of happiness, that in itself is the joy which emanates from the happiness. Does that answer your question? I pause.

J: Would Aaron relate, then, the state of bliss to joy and happiness?

Aaron: I am Aaron. Here we're dealing with subtle semantic values of words. I cannot give you a dictionary definition, only the way I personally understand this word. Bliss is not really experienced on the relative plane. Joy and happiness are experienced on the relative plane. Bliss is more of an ultimate plane experience. Please remember here that the relative rests in the Ultimate, so any Ultimate experience is also known on the relative plane. Bliss may come when the heart is fully open and present and you are resting deeply in that state of pure awareness mind, seeing the arisings of the relative plane but not caught up in them at all. Or, bliss may arise when you are resting on the ultimate plane and oblivious to the occurrences of the relative plane. That oblivion can be borne of a presence which has transcended the relative or it can be borne of a denial of the relative. So bliss is tricky. At times it's a full presence and at times it can be fruit of an escape. I pause.

Q: How can we tell if it is an escape or if it is not an escape?

Aaron: I am Aaron. How can you tell if it is escape or presence? Bring it back to the relative plane. If you're in meditation, experiencing bliss, simply bring in mental noting and note, "Here is bliss, here is bliss." Does it shatter when you note it or does it maintain itself? If it shatters, then you were in some altered state, separated from relative reality. If it maintains itself as you bring it back to relative reality by the use of mental noting with the conscious mind, then you are finding a place of balance, where there is presence and in which bliss is the fruition of happiness and joy. In the Sanskrit language, there are separate words for these two states of bliss. In your language there is only the word bliss. I pause.

Q: I don't understand why with bliss you may be in an altered state.

Aaron: I am Aaron. One moment … What I offer here is an extreme hypothetical example. Imagine while you're climbing a mountain, you become lost in a blizzard, are sitting in the snow and your feet becoming frostbitten, literally numb and frozen. The pain is excruciating. You move into a meditation of intense concentration following the breath. Through that level of meditative absorption, you enter an altered state of bliss in which you seemingly withdraw from the conditions of the body. It is not that there is non-attachment, it's not that there's not aversion to pain, there is simply withdrawal into an altered state which escapes the pain. There you find bliss. You don't dare to come back to the experience of the body.

Some people with whom I have talked have reported moving into that state when in the dentist's chair. Even though there's not severe pain there's still attention and fear of pain. You quite literally move out of your bodies and some of you have told me you have quite blissful experiences. But it is a bliss gained through non-presence.

On the other hand we have that fully-realized being who feels his toes freezing, experiences the excruciating pain, understands that in this totally blinding blizzard there is really no place he can go and nothing he can do. He has no matches, no more clothes, he's already built a bit of a snow cave around him. There's nothing left. Fully present with the experience of the pain, the helplessness, the fear, he transcends all that and enters into a place of profound peace which realizes, this too is okay. It is Ram Dass' "Ah, so" that we talked about some weeks ago.

At first with that realization, there's happiness, then increasing joy and finally bliss. But it is a bliss that does not exclude any relative reality experience. So in this way, bliss is the fruition of equanimity. The other kind of bliss is simply a hiding place, easily shattered. True bliss cannot be shattered. But in the moment of experiencing, they may feel very similar. You can always test it simply by coming back to relative reality enough to offer that test through the noting process, noting "Bliss, bliss," just that. Does it shatter or does it stay? Note if it's pleasant. If it's pleasant, note it's pleasantness. Note how the bliss is being experienced in the physical body. If it doesn't shatter, it is true bliss.

The teachings define many states such as joy, bliss, and rapture, and talk about the physical phenomena experienced in these states. One may move through happiness, joy, bliss and rapture, and on into a different level of peace than the first peace. The first peace that I mentioned equated with happiness. It is peace experienced by the relative being still dealing with conditioned realm. The second level of peace that one finds as one breaks through the various levels of experience is a peace of the entry into the unconditioned world. Here it becomes subtle, because resting in the unconditioned realm you are not out of contact with the conditioned realm. It is the phenomena this instrument sometimes talks of experiencing as if there were a cornucopia, with the Unconditioned as its deep, still core and the whole conditioned realm exploding out. Within this level of peace of which I speak, this higher level of peace, there is the sense of resting within that core, within the Eternal or Unconditioned space. One is not oblivious to the presence of relative reality. One simply sees all of the relative realm exploding out of the Divine. At that level there is nothing to do, nowhere to go. That is a doorway to perfect peace. When everything seems to be in motion, one also rests in the stillness of that core, in absolute cessation. Everything is exploding out but nothing is going anywhere. It's all right there in the core. So that is a level beyond bliss and rapture. I pause.

Barbara: Aaron asks, is that clear? (Yes.) He says that is conceptual for you now. Simply test it with this test: if you're feeling any experience like joy or bliss or whatever, note it. If you note it and it goes, then it came from not being present rather than from deep presence. He says, but sometimes in the noting of it, it shatters. What shatters is the concept of joy or bliss that you were holding onto and you find yourself sink immediately right into the real experience of it. He says it would be like sitting and looking at a big picture of the ocean, a great big wall-sized picture. You touch it to see, is it real? And as you touch it your hand goes through it, there's the ocean. So, discovering that it's not real, just in that moment sometimes you can find reality on the other side.

Q: I look forward to doing my work and reconnecting with these experiences.

P: When you're in a somewhat hostile environment on a daily basis, how do you try to stay open and release contraction?

Aaron: I am Aaron. I don't mean to be facetious here, but all of you are in a somewhat hostile environment on a continual daily basis. By that I mean that there are, on the relative plane, those things that seem to come at you and push you.

Some of them seem bigger than others. You may find that you're able to wade into the ocean when the waves are two or three feet high, to feel just a tiny tingling of excitement at the size and power of the waves, but not any real fear. You can practice skillfully with such waves. But when the waves loom five feet over your heard, it feels unworkable. Since much of your action, and your karma, is habitual, why reinforce the fear-based habits by surrounding yourself with that which overwhelms? It is best to practice with the three foot waves and build up your ability to work with such catalyst until you're ready for the bigger waves.

I would suggest the practice in your daily life of becoming increasingly aware of tension held in the body using the very neutral term, "contraction." No judgment about contraction. If you ask for a glass of water and I hand one to you, as your hand reaches out to take it, it contracts. As you draw in a breath and are ready to exhale, when the lungs are full, there's a contraction.

This process of opening and contraction, opening and contraction, is as natural as breathing or the flow of the waves upon the shore. So there's no value judgment there when we say "contracting." You simply bring awareness, "Here is contraction."

The question is not whether it exists but what you're going to do with it. Am I going to use this contraction to throw me into this confrontational stance or not? With contraction you may note fear is present. Are you going to use fear to push you into this confrontational stance? What if you take a deep breath and simply are present, present with whatever is there? This is the making of spaciousness.

We use a metaphor here, P, which I believe you have not heard. We talk about being in a box with a tarantula. If you were sitting in a three by three foot cardboard box and I placed a tarantula in there with you, I would venture to guess you would be out in a fraction of a second. If your box was about ten by ten foot, you might stay there for a breath or two until the creature started to move. But if you were in a box the size of perhaps thirty feet on each side, no furniture, very open, and I put a tarantula in the far corner, with that spaciousness you'd be able to stay there with it. If it got too close to you, you could pick up and walk to the far side of the box again. Eventually you might actually let it approach you because you would be able to observe it, to note its characteristics and observe this creature is shy and gentle, not vicious, it does not have intention to harm you.

To do this with the small catalysts in your life, you've got to create a bigger container in which you and the catalyst can be together. Your awareness of tension is one of the things which helps create a bigger container. Your deep commitment to finding increased love and harmony in your life helps create that bigger container. Your verified faith through observing what has happened when you've stayed open and uncontracted, which lessons have taught you that it's maybe safe to do that, that helps you to create a bigger container. Through your mindfulness, your presence, through all of these varied tools of morality, of wisdom, of presence, you create a bigger container that allows you to be with this push, to note your own tendency to react to the push, to make the very skillful decision, "I'm not going to run, I'm just going to stay here with it. Breathe. Offer myself kindness. Acknowledge my fear or discomfort. In those ways I'm going to make a bigger container."

Soon the making of a bigger container becomes an habitual response to that pushing catalyst. Then you can relate to it with much more space and kindness. It really is a very precise process. It begins with either formal meditation practice or what we call mindfulness practice, beginning with a resolve to be present. If it's in sitting meditation, practice presence with a small push such as of a pain in your knee. Discomfort, unpleasant. Feel how your body reacts and wants to fight back. Then for just a minute or two, you'll ask yourself just to be present with the pain and relax, and reassure yourself, "After a few minutes I will stretch my leg." You can experiment and feel how it feels to be present with push. You do the same thing with an emotion that comes up in meditation, seeing that you can make space and be present with anger, jealousy or confusion. Then when it is stable in your meditation practice you begin to bring it out into the catalysts of daily life. I do not mean by that that you cannot work with it in daily life until you stabilize it in meditation, only you're going to find yourself far more skillful at working with it in daily life once it is stabilized in meditation. Does that sufficiently answer your question, P, or may I speak further? I pause.