February 25, 1993

Aaron: Good morning, and my love to you all. I am Aaron. K shared with us last year a prayer taught to her by her grandmother when she was a young child.

I am the place that God shines through
For God and I are one, not two.
I need not fret nor will nor plan,
She wants me where and as I am.
If I'll just be relaxed and free,
He'll carry out His plan through me.

This idea makes a great deal of sense to each of you. You understand that to be that channel, is your heart's intention. The big question is 'How?" 'If I'll just be relaxed and free." How? When you are in that space of big mind, Buddha or Christ Mind, Rigpa, relaxed, free, no small ego self-a channel for the divine energy of the universe-there is no adhering karma, no becoming, no new seed planted. Ironically as soon as there is someone doing anything, even attempting to become relaxed and free, there is adhering karma. There is a self replanting the seed of self.

Barbara: (Inserted while cleaning up the transcript.) While cleaning up transcripts Aaron got into a discussion with me on the Tibetan words, sem and Rigpa. These are the two levels of mind, discursive, self-other mind (sem) and the mind that rests beyond thought or separation (Rigpa). We don't need these terms just to use fancy words. They do provide a precise language which we otherwise seem to lack. I mention it only because I found it interesting that Tibetan Buddhist teaching does state this in its own terminology. He said the teaching is that we may 'rest in Rigpa." I like that. He said, 'When the mind is stirred and exhausted, allow it to come to rest in that vast spaciousness which is beyond all thought. You exhaust yourselves contending with the relentless turmoil of racing mind, like a sky laden with storm clouds which you try to chase away. Find the clear blue sky beyond and rest there. This is your birthright."

Aaron: (Continued.) We have looked at the ways in which fear blocks the natural pattern of being relaxed and free. What we have been doing here the past two weeks is exploring the ways that you may note fear, and come back to center. Not grasping at 'relaxed and free," but allowing it, allowing your true nature to express itself. Last week, there was input from many of you about what works to move you back to center. I promised this week to offer some of my own suggestions.

Let us take a giant step sideways, and regard ourselves from a perspective beyond the small ego self. You have heard me say that you are angels-angels on the astral plane and in incarnation. The same angels! It doesn't matter what you are wearing or not wearing, form or no form. When you first take birth, you know you are angels. I want to share a story told by M R.

He was attending Quaker meeting in Philadelphia. Some one told a story about their child. This couple had a 3 1/2 year old and were expecting a baby. The young daughter asked them, 'When the baby is born can I have some time alone with it?" They said they didn't know, that they would think about it. It seemed important to her. The infant was born and she asked again. 'Okay," they said. The baby was in its crib, awake. The sister entered the room. The parents allowed her to close the door. The had an intercom and switched it on so they could hear what might transpire. There was silence for some moments. And then they heard their young daughter's voice question the baby. 'Tell me what it's like to be with God. I'm already forgetting."

You are angels; all of you. You come seeing as I see. An infant sees the light energy of each object. It does not see an adult's form or facial features but light and energy. It perceives that adult the same way that it saw it on the astral plane. It is not yet accustomed to these eyes, makes no sense of the shapes. What is that plant on its dresser? It sees it as motion, light. In inanimate objects, it sees much quieter light. The world is new. It has not yet learned to label. It has no expectations. It is only beginning to enter the illusion.

It does not understand depth perception. While the plant may be on the dresser, the plant seems much closer than the dresser, because its energy is so much more alive. Slowly its perception shifts. It begins to use the physical senses, and the non-physical senses are laid aside as it enters more fully into the illusion. There is no diminishing of those senses. They do not atrophy from misuse. You forget about them as illusion solidifies.

Studies have been done with human children. First the child was led to trust an adult, to play together. After that rapport was established, one day a wonderful plant was in the playroom. Adult and child entered the room together, saw the plant. The adult simply said, 'See the plant; do you like it?" 'Yes, yes." 'Describe it to me," said the adult. Over 60% of the children included a description of the aura with the plant. These are beings 3 and 4 years old. So many children have what their parents call imaginary friends. Can you really suppose that child is not fully sharing its adventure with its spirit guides? Certainly, it may perceive that friend as a another child, even a teddy bear, or fairy. We do not have form. The child can see its guide in whatever form it chooses.

Then you enter into the illusion. You let go of that experience of God. You put aside the auras and the friends because the adult says, 'This isn't real." 'All right," says the child, 'I'll play your game." To the child it is a game. Let go of the reality, enter into the illusion. And so the forgetting becomes complete. Outside of the illusion, there is no fear. In this moment, there is no fear. And there is no ignorance in any of its forms. There is no sense of a separate self. There is nothing that is not seen as manifestation of God, of Pure Mind. As you enter the illusion and cease being present in the now, there is fear.

Since you are born into this forgetting, it is not a contradiction to say that fear is part of the plan. It's this old story you've heard me tell. Gurdjieff, and the yeast for the bread. (Gurdjieff, a teacher, led a spiritual community. A man whom no one liked lived there. He was lazy, rude, dirty. One day he tired of the criticism and left. Gurdjieff went after him and asked him to return. NO! He offered to pay him to return. The man agreed. The community members were aghast. How can you pay him to come back when we hate him? Gurdjieff said 'He is the yeast for the bread. Without him, how would you practice compassion, letting go, non-judgment?")

What if you took incarnation, and there was no illusion? What if there was no pain on the earth, no seeming obstacles? What if you knew your unlimitedness and power, and could freely manifest the love, joy and peace you desire, always? What would be the catalyst for learning? There are planes like this. You have heard me speak of them. There is learning at that level, but very slow. No, there is no rush. But your work with the catalysts of the earth plane does deepen your ability to love. As I've said before, it is easy to be loving in heaven; can you be loving when the situation is more difficult? Your earth catalysts are the fire that tempers the steel.

Some beings choose not to enter the illusion. They hold fast to the spiritual experience and push away human experience. You are here in human form to experience the physical and emotional body. Why waste a good incarnation clinging to the spiritual and creating duality between spiritual and human? Why not practice what you came to practice? Be gentle with yourselves here. See the need to pull away with no judgment but do then ask yourselves to return to the fullness of human experience.

So there is fear and we ask, 'How can I embrace my fear?" The reason it is so hard to be 'relaxed and free" is that most of you struggle with fear, and thereby get into a dialogue with it, rather than embracing it. Because this dialogue has been your habit, it seems easier to push away fear and loudly affirm, 'I will be relaxed and free" than to make the decision to be conscious of fear and, each time it arises, to make the effort to embrace it. But this embracing, call it equanimity if you like, is what you are here to learn. The arising of fear offers the opportunity to practice regarding fear without becoming enmeshed in it. Through that practice you finally come to distinguish reality from illusion and to live comfortably in both. My dear ones, it really is as simple as that.

Perfection is not expected. Each time you practice awareness that allows noting the first arising of fear and offers a reminder of compassion toward the being experiencing fear, the process becomes a bit easier. You are embracing and transcending fear each time you practice those steps. It is a way of remembering, 'I am an Angel."

This is what I want you to watch, the incessant dialogue with fear. The dialogue reflects the bargain with fear. Can you see the strong determination to get rid of it, the anger at it and the self recriminations because it arises?

Fear is the ultimate illusion. The angel does not know the meaning of fear. Keep coming back to that. 'I am an angel. I embrace this illusion, and allow myself to learn as I move through it." Allow yourself to rest in your angelness, in your radiant perfection.

And yet, here is a subtle part. While fear is illusion, it still must be treated with respect. You are that actor on a stage and you are also the audience watching the play. Angel in earthsuit-body, mind and spirit! If the actor just mouths the words with no emotional involvement, clearly disassociated with the whole thing, what is gained by the audience? In any fine play, well acted, you as the audience can find deep chords of response in yourselves, and profound learning. When the actor clearly has no respect for the play, there is no learning for the audience.

There must be simultaneous awareness, 'This is a play. I can't turn my back on the audience or cover the mouth with hand. I play to the audience," and also full involvement with that part, belief in that part, feeling that pain and love, or else the performance is meaningless.

You are angels in earth suits. You must play both parts, the angel and the human-actor and audience. And you can. That is the wonder, that you are given everything you need to play both parts.

When fear becomes solid, and you find you cannot be relaxed and free, look hard at the fear. When you are present in your life, there is no fear in this moment, this now. Can you rest in that space of NOW, of Pure Mind? There you know that even death is just another step. This moment to this moment to this moment, with a transition of consciousness. Death is a walk from one room to another. What pulls you from NOW?

You learn early not to be present. You learn fear early. Fear deepens the illusion of separation. When there is a perceived separate self, there is that which can be threatened. In the habitual way of the illusion-dweller, fear promotes the solidification of a self seeking safety. One of the places you learn to seek that safety is by moving out of the now. The child plays peek a boo; it hides and thinks it is invisible. Sometimes the thrill of play is so intense for the baby that it needs to become invisible to quiet its feelings. You play peek-a-boo with NOW. You move into the past, into memory, you move into the future to fantasy and dreams. It helps you to feel in control, to feel safe. This practice is a basic way of dialoging with fear. When you can notice feeling unsafe, and the secondary aversion to that feeling of insecurity, and come back to center, fear dissolves. The angel quality manifests. You know who you are and thus feel empowered and unlimited.

(Further channeling from Aaron on 'the dialogue with fear" will be available in Angels in Earthsuits, to be published in early 1997.)

Homework. Watch this in yourselves. No judgment. Just notice each time it happens, 'I am getting into a dialogue with fear. The angel does not need to do that." You might try for several weeks to merely remind yourself 'I am an angel," just to see what effect that reminder has. As a final suggestion today, there is a brief visualization, something you can use in the moment when fear arises. Try it with me.

Visualize the physical body. In place of the heart, see a rosebud …

Feel yourself open, breathing in light, joy, peace, love …

Watch the rose unfold …

Each lovely petal opens to the delicate, sensitive center …

Undefended …

(Pause; some time of silence.)

As the last petals open, see the brilliant light, the sun, radiating out of the center …

'I am an angel. This light is my true being …

Allow yourself a gift, to rest in that light, in that true self.

Come back to it over and over and over. If the sun goes behind a cloud and the petals close, simply note 'defended," and start the process again. No dialogue with fear. Come back to your true self. Remember you are an angel. That is all.

Questions and discussion:

M: I thought the angel density was far above even Aaron. Is Aaron speaking metaphorically?

Aaron: NO, NOT METAPHORICALLY AT ALL! I am not speaking in metaphor when I call you angels in earthsuits. This is precisely the point. If you left your angels 'up there," you could never hope to move beyond adhering karma. You could never manifest your divinity. It is the real fact that you are this angel, not just that you have a bit of angelness. You are the angel. You are Buddha. You are already perfect. That reality makes incarnation a viable path to maturity.

You are here to deepen faith, and to learn love, here to find equanimity with everything in your experience. Your angelness, your penetration of the illusion and of fear, is the tool by which you may find that love and equanimity. The one caught in the illusion cannot do it. If you stepped into a giant mud puddle, said 'I've got to get out," and flailed around, you would mire yourself deeper. In essence, your awareness of your angelness is a huge hose that carries clear, pure water. It washes away the mud. Then you see the mud, and there's no fear. 'It's just mud. I am an angel." You keep moving from the thought which mires you to Pure Mind which knows its perfection and rests there.

C: Aaron answered a similar question from her this week. He said that the higher self is the angel, overlaying the mental body, and so on down to the physical self. But it's all one, not to be broken into parts. Body, mind, spirit.

Discussion: (Image of transparent overlays.)

Question: (About 'higher" angels.)

Aaron: Ariel is an archangel. (Ariel is Aaron's teacher, who is very occasionally trance-channeled by Barbara.) Each of you are angels, little angels. You are not small in your potential but in your present actualization of that potential. Your perception of your power is that it is not as large as Ariel's, but you mistakenly feel it is less because you are lesser. NO!

There is no difference in your own Buddha nature, your own Pure Mind, and that of Ariel. There is an equal sized 'connector" from the source to you, as from the source to Ariel, but far more energy flows through to Ariel because there is no contraction or blockage. Thus, Ariel manifests its energy more purely. That the 'connectors" are the same is why I say you are unlimited. But Ariel knows its true perfection and you are as yet unawakened to it.

You both reflect that perfect light which is also your own true nature, but Ariel reflects it more clearly because the mirror is clearer. You have only to allow your clarity and unlimitedness to manifest. This voyage of purification and expansion is your work through the journey of all your densities' experience. By the end of third density, the work is just well under way.

At some future time we will begin actual work with the light body and with energy, learning new ways to open the blockage and contraction and to allow the fullness of light to move through.

One more thought. While I express the above, remember it is all metaphor of relative reality. In ultimate reality terms, there is nothing being done. It is all illusion. You are already perfectly clear and unlimited. You are already Buddha. Your work is really not to clarify and expand but to recognize that there is nothing to clarify, nowhere to expand. This is the ultimate cleaning of the mirror!

Visualize two hoses of equal diameter. One is caked with debris, the other is clear. They each flow from the same source, each flowing into a separate pond, and on out of that pond through a stream, they feed into the sea. The clear hose pond will be fuller, the stream more forceful. But the water quality is identical, the potential for moving water identical in each hose. The congested hose needs to be cleared. That is why you are here. You do not clear the hose by attacking it, but by bringing awareness to the obstructions and gently allowing the waters from the source to cleanse away the blockage. That is all.

Question: Is there a difference in how much energy you can manifest if you are incarnate or discarnate? Are we third density beings clearer on the astral plane than while in incarnation?

Aaron: Will answer some other time. Time to end.

(Barbara was away March 4, 1993, so there was no class.)