Two young humans (our youngest grandchildren) exploring relative reality!

Floating Nonduality: continued
Feel free to skip anything that feels too esoteric and just move ahead to my reflections.

From the book:  from  Barbara:  Is non-being dual with being?  Is the experience of non-being outside the experience of the Unborn?

from Karen: There does seem to be some sense of the positive being more “real” than the negative: light vs. darkness, presence vs. absence, etc. (e.g. “Giving” and Receiving” can be seen as dualistic notions as in yin/yang but are also both of positive polarity.) Are we stuck in the human concept of positivity that is rooted in duality? Is the positivity you speak of when referring to God something entirely different, encompassing and transcending the human or relative conception of positivity/negativity? Earlier discussions and the RA material about negativity being a distortion of positivity would seem to reflect this idea.

How does Aaron’s earlier teaching about negativity “coming back” to positivity in sixth density as its only option fit in with this discussion?

The Course in Miracles defines “evil” or “sin” as the mistaken belief that separation is real and, therefore, illusion. (RA: “evil” as a distortion of love.) So, eventually, all beings “return” to an experience of total positivity (Defined as  “neutrality which expresses its utmost radiance and clarity”)

(sixth density) because that’s all there is on the ultimate level. (Yes, I realize we must work with our experiences of negativity as real on the relative plane, not denying them.)

You’re probably thinking I’m getting too intellectual here, but I am drawing on my experience also as I write. When I have an experience of deep love, which seems all-consuming and ultimate, anything “negative” around me is transformed into what the Course labels “calls for love” because it is seen with “different” eyes (pure awareness?). There is a sense of only love as real and negativity or “evil” as confusion/illusion/rootless. When I am caught in identification with the ego, negativity is my pervading experience but is not experienced as all there is; it is rather a sense of something missing, a lack of some sort. So, experientially, positivity and negativity have different qualities.

Note from Barbara: While cleaning up the transcripts, Aaron spoke to this question:

Aaron:  It was biased neither toward service to self nor service to other because it knew there was no self or other. It was willing to explore both biases as basis for growth.  You are correct that, as the wrinkled sheet of paper contains the ever-perfect sheet, so positive polarity is always present, even within the negative bias. Thus, there is only positive, but there are varied expressions of positive. This positively polarized energy’s first expression was as neutral.  Negative polarity is another expression of positive polarity. We will need to more clearly define positive polarity.

Mundane/supramundane at my lake- which is which?

 Barbara writing today, August 8 : All week I seem to have been surrounded by bits of negativity; inflamed world politics; people around me; both those with whom I’ve been meeting in private meetings, and people in my daily life…  people caught up in self-blame and blame of others, and in stories of “right” and “wrong.” Outside my window, the sky is blue and the flowers are growing. What catches me in dualities?

Blue heron in my pond garden

I’ve had some caregiver concerns this week ; one is away all week on vacation and another sick. I’m spending much more time than usual taking care of Hal. I love him; I want him to be living at home, and happy. Yet, I feel anger because I can’t get to the lake as planned (and so necessary to keep my body strong), can’t even get to my desk (though I’m here now, at midnight with Hal in bed, with a push-button alert to call me if he needs me), can’t take a nap, or sit on the deck by the above flowers. Grasping arises; anger arises; frustration arises. And I’m tired! Aaron asks me only, “where is compassion? Can I see my separation from myself?”

Tonight Hal and I watched the movie on Netflix,  “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”, a story about Mr. Rogers (played by Tom Hanks).” It starts with the song:

What do you do with the mad that you feel. When you feel so mad you could bite?
When the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong… And nothing you do seems very right?

What do you do? Do you punch a bag?  Do you pound some clay or some dough?
Do you round up friends for a game of tag?  Or see how fast you go?

It’s great to be able to stop.  When you’ve planned a thing that’s wrong,
And be able to do something else instead   And think this song:

I can stop when I want to.  Can stop when I wish
I can stop, stop, stop any time.   And what a good feeling to feel like this
And know that the feeling is really mine.
Know that there’s something deep inside.    That helps us become what we can.
For a girl can be someday a woman.  And a boy can be someday a man.

Aaron often repeats this theme, that as humans, we have physical, emotional, mental, energetic bodies and each can pick up painful energies. We stub our toe, it hurts, it’s unpleasant, there is dislike, maybe then aversion, and pouring that aversive energy out into the world. Same with pleasant, liking and on to grasping. Then we turn against ourselves with the thought, ”I shouldn’t be angry (or greedy, sad, or even tired) This is the core of dependent origination, each object arising out of the prior conditions, and with growing aversion or grasping, hardening into karma.  But with free will we have a choice, and that pain can become a catalyst for compassion.

I loved watching the movie tonight and will share something I’ve rarely spoken about before. I lost my hearing in1972 when our first son was born. It was obviously a very painful situation for both Hal and me. I was suddenly deaf (and without middle-ear balance) and for Hal, his wife was deaf. He couldn’t easily talk to me. We both felt anger and took it out on each other in subtle ways, and on ourselves.

Our son Mike loved the Mr. Rogers show. One day he came to me very excited; Mr. Rogers had a deaf guest, and they were using fingerspelling on tv just like our family did. Mike wrote him a short letter that his mom was deaf and mentioned that we also went to Nantucket every summer (for many years we rented the same small cabin out on the moors for 2 weeks every summer). Mr. Rogers wrote back and. Invited us to visit when we were there. We spent a beautiful day with him at his home ”Crooked House” in Madaket, just a few miles down the beach from where we stayed  on Hummock Pond. After some lunch, Mike (age 6) and Davy (age 3; Peter wasn’t born yet) went into the large back room with Chef Brockett, where the Land of Make Believe was set up and they could run the trolley and meet the puppet characters.  Sometimes in summer the show was filmed from there.  Hal, Fred Rogers and I sat for over 2 hours and talked over glasses of cold lemonade. What was the deafness like for us both, he genuinely wanted to know. How were we dealing with the grief and anger of our loss? No one had asked us these questions before. And no one had recognized the loss was also Hal’s. Our efforts were to be stoic and bury emotions. That was getting us by but not really working well.

With Mr. Rogers kind but very honest questions that day, we both began to open up to ourselves and each other about our pain and anger. He was very matter-of-fact; of course, there would be anger. What were we doing with that anger? How could we make space for it and not hurt ourselves, each other, or our children. His honesty and kindness helped us to move in that direction. It was a powerful, loving, honest, amazing conversation that Hal and I will never forget.

It was almost 10 years later that I finally met Aaron, who took the whole topic of heavy emotion as a ground for compassion much deeper. This was the start.  “What do you do with the mad that you feel? “ Thank you, Fred Rogers.