Continuing, May, 1993

Aaron: I am Aaron. What we are attempting here is to delineate some of the possible shifts from pure awareness into self and back in order to better understand the arising of unwholesome mental formations. When consciousness moves through bare perception to sensation, sensation stays in neutral regardless of whether there is comfort or discomfort. Then the mental formations of separation cannot arise. Please note that while I speak here of unwholesome mental formations, even those mental formations which we would consider wholesome-lovingkindness, patience, compassion-are a source of adhering karma if there is a self experiencing as subject to object. We will return to this idea. Also remember that there are multiple motivations. There is no adhering karma in the experience of patience, but there is adhering karma in being the patient one. What adheres is simply the delusion of self.

Let us look closer at the perception/sensation stage. Touch-contact-hand to hot object. Bare perception: knowing, 'Feeling heat.' Thus far, sensation is neutral. There is no mental formation, no aversion or craving. The mind sense observes: 'discomfort.' That is the next consciousness: discomfort. It is not just the mind. The nerve endings experience pain and the perception is: 'Knowing burning.' If there is bare perception of pain, we remain in neutral. There's no need to hate the pain in order to skillfully withdraw the hand. The dislike is a product of old mind. Discomfort, or even severe pain, is in the present moment.

To understand this process, one must distinguish between the first consciousness and perception, feeling heat, and the second one, feeling pain. One can see the same process if one is accosted by an angry being. The original consciousness is seeing, hearing or feeling-seeing the angry face, hearing the angry voice, feeling the angry energy. Perception, bare perception, takes this multitude of contacts and it knows it is in the presence of anger. If no old mind bias arises, awareness stays in neutral. There is no self to like or dislike. The response is as skillful and empty of self as the drawing away of the hand from heat-compassionate, non-judgmental response that also does not need to become involved with or victim of the other's anger.

If discomfort arises about the anger it need not lead to dislike. The next consciousness and perception are of feeling pain. Just as there is physical pain to the nerves when feeling something very hot, there is real emotional pain, real pain to the energy body. I might suggest an image: energy nerve endings. This is not old mind. You might think of the body as having energy body nerve endings just as it has physical nerve endings. Bare perception experiences pain. It is erroneous to assume that this is just old mind. It is judgmental to the self to say, 'I should not feel pain at his anger.' You would not say, 'I should not feel pain' in the physical nerve endings when you touch the hot stove. This misunderstanding causes much confusion.

When you understand that there is very natural discomfort when touching angry energy, you can more easily stay with bare perception of discomfort, remain neutral about discomfort-no like or dislike, no self-and act skillfully. There is a sense of knowing when old mind enters and we become defended. Then we can make a skillful decision to return to center. We do not do this as a series of conscious steps; we just get out of the way of the naturally open heart. We become aware of arising defendedness, touch it with compassion, and let it go. The heart KNOWS how to respond when mind with all its judgments and fears doesn't get in the way.

I want to emphasize this point. If you hear a painfully loud noise, it creates pain, real pain, and there is discomfort in this moment, this experience. It is crucial that you begin to treat energy and the nerves of the 'energy body,' for lack of any better term, as respectfully as you treat the discomforts to the physical body. Then distortion need not arise.

What about fear? Something approaches which threatens you. It is perceived through the physical senses. There is perception of feeling threatened. There is awareness of this energy as hostile to you. It's the same thing. The energy aspect of you feels that shift from harmonious to disharmonious. We might liken it to listening to the violin. You are in neutral but there is comfort and a level of liking which does not employ self. We might call it comfort and harmony. Then there is a jarring, discordant note. If there is self and old mind, we move into dislike and aversion. The self feels threatened-'They are taking away my lovely music.' It wants to hold on to that harmony. The same discordant note can be noted with bare perception. It creates discomfort because of the way it touches the ears. There is the same desire to move away as with the hot stove, the same discomfort without aversion as with the hot stove.

Barbara is raising the question, what is disharmonious to some is harmonious to others, whereas, what is hot to one is usually hot to most. I simply remind you in answer that there are fire walkers. But we deal here with the typical reactions of the various bodies. A flash of brilliant light is painful. Something very hot is painful. A discordant noise is painful. Angry, hostile, or threatening energy is painful. All are painful in this moment, without old mind.

When you feel threatened, then, the perception is first of pain of that energy, discomfort. If no self is brought in, if you stay in neutral, discomfort becomes the next perception. There may be an involuntary tightening of the gut, a faster heartbeat, other physical symptoms of fear. These truly are involuntary reactions. They become the next consciousness. Just as the hand jerked back from the fire is not judged, the involuntary body responses to fear are not judged, just observed. It may also be noted that these physical responses to danger create comfort in some people. This is why some people seek frightening adventure. There is enjoyment of these involuntary responses, a sense of empowerment, deeper awareness and control.

The important thing for our work is that all of this can be noted without self arising. There need be no move to aversion or craving. There may be skillful moving back from the threat. There is no self, no adhering karma.

Often we don't catch it at that stage though. No matter how scrupulously mindful you are, there will be moments when the catalyst is so strong that bare perception and neutral mind shift into old mind, into the solidified self which accompanies old mind, to like and dislike, leading into aversion or craving. We have yet to discuss the connection of like/dislike to aversion/craving. We will save that for later.

When there is a move into old mind, you may not catch that as it happens. The first indication that you have moved from bare perception to old mind may be the noticing of like or dislike. Barbara is asking if this move and the action of liking or disliking brings adhering karma? Yes, there is a self sending out liking or disliking energy that may touch another with discomfort. It could even be argued that there is some intention to harm, that there is a separate self and one is preferring to insure the comfort and safety of that self.

This is subtle. There is adhering karma, but without verbal or action response, that brief moment of fear, anger, jealousy, greed does not create severe adhering karma. There are degrees. How perfect do you need to be to graduate from this plane? I have said that there will always be emotions. With practice, the heavy emotions, or defilements as Buddhist tradition calls them, arise far less frequently and remain strong for a far shorter period. You see their presence almost immediately. If that seeing instills a sense of compassion rather than judgment for the human that you are, you shift back to bare perception. The reverberations of that emotion may echo through the physical body for some time and are simply noted as discomfort.

For example, you hold a rock over a pond. If something jars your hand severely, just as some external catalyst might jar your emotions, almost involuntarily the hand opens and the rock drops. If there is careful noting of the process of being jarred, immediately after the rock has dropped, the hand softens. The ripples continue to spread long after the hand has softened. The ripples are just ripples. The rock is no longer dropping. The reverberations of emotion in the physical body are hollow echoes after there has been skillful noting and return to bare perception and neutral sensation.

You cannot prevent emotions from arising then. You cannot prevent the occasional shift to old mind. Your immediate mindfulness prevents reactivity to that old mind. It prevents the planting of new seeds of adhering karma. That bit of adhering karma created by the arising of negative energy is dissolved by the compassion that you feel and by your self-forgiveness.

In terms of readiness for fourth density, I have repeatedly said that you are not devoid of emotional body in fourth density, but non-reactive to it. The primary fourth density lesson is compassion. Can you see how perfectly this works? When your practice of compassion to yourself for whatever arises is strong enough, then in fourth density if you encounter another's emotion there is no judgment of that. Yes, at first there may be some judgment. You work with it; you find compassion for your own judgment and the other finds compassion for your judgment. This is what offers you practice. How would compassion deepen if you were emotionless in fourth density? But you must be at that stage of almost non-reactivity which allows the growth of compassion.

That is one unit of thought. Are there questions?

(Question:Where, when, why does the sense of a separate self enter? Aaron will answer this, in part only, in following weeks. He says in part, we don't need to know. Not a useful question.)