February 25, 2020 Tuesday Evening, Dharma Path Class
Challenge and Fear as an Opportunity to Practice Love and Co-Create the World We Wish to See; Aaron and Love Lead a Guided Meditation Into the Cave; Wholesome and Unwholesome Use of Power
Year 2; Session 2; Class 4
Barbara: Looking through the transcript from 2 weeks ago. Love spoke, a very powerful energy, very beautiful energy. Talking to Aaron earlier this afternoon and also to Love, the question came up, how do we use that connection with Love to help us going into places of darkness? I enjoy to just connect and listen to this high energy. It’s not even the deep thoughts, it’s the energy that’s so beautiful. How does that connection help us go into a place that’s challenging?
We can’t know what the future holds—who will be president; what will happen with the environment of the world; what will happen with things like this coronavirus—the different concerns that we may have. And personal concerns—our families, loved ones, friends, ourselves. We don’t know the future. How do we relate with whatever is happening with love? This is what Aaron and I were talking about today.
That little bit said, I’m simply going to give you Aaron. (pausing for technical difficulties)
While we’re waiting, many of you said you’d like to participate in some way next year. Many different ideas about how that would happen. One of you said, an important thing would be to start on time. We do the best we can. I know it’s frustrating. We’re trying to deal with these technical difficulties.
Enough of you, I think about 20 of you, responded yes, you would like some kind of class next year. What I intend to do is just to say yes, there will be a class on Tuesday nights. It will be open to people who were in Dharma Path and to other senior and experienced students, keeping it to a reasonable size. Later on, maybe in June when we have the Dharma Path retreat, we’ll talk about what are our highest priorities for next year. What areas would we like to cover? How would we like to hold it together?
Many of you said you would like to have the Tuesday night talks like tonight continue. A few others said you would just like to have the small groups continue. I can’t do it all anymore—it’s too much for me. I’m committed to doing it through June. So, if we have a class it has to be one class meeting, not three nights. Perhaps those of you who want more can meet self-facilitated with your small groups. That will be up to you. I’m always happy to meet with people individually or just one or two, personal meetings on practice. If you have other ideas as to how we can best do this, I’d welcome them. But on days like today when I was with Hal from 8:30 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon, I just cannot commit to more teaching beyond this one ongoing class. I would love to do this ongoing class. I love where we’re going, and I’m learning along with you. We’ll figure it out. But there will be a class, and we’ll discuss it and find ways of coming together and finding what meets all our needs. A number of you have emailed me, and I ask your forgiveness that I have not had time to email back individual responses. I will as soon as I am able.
Okay, that said, let’s just bring Aaron in…
Aaron: My blessings and love to you all. I am Aaron. Many of you are scared in your lives today, and I understand why. It’s not so much the president or the environment or illness or whatever but that as all these things run through, so many of you feel powerless and lacking control. I want to ask you a very simple question: when did you ever truly have control? Anybody? Can anybody say to me, “Oh, I’ve had control.”?
I’m looking at this screen where I can see your laughing faces… I see a few thumbs down!
So perhaps the real question is why you maintain this delusion of “I should have control.” And yet you do have ultimate control, not over what arises or passes away but over how you will relate to it. In other words, whether or not you will choose to honor your purpose by bringing more love in the world regardless of how things turn out.
There’s something I can promise you right now. Everybody living on Earth today will be dead in 150 years. Okay? So, can you relax and just enjoy living? Enjoy and work with… (pause for instructions on Banner). The dog has a sore on his leg and he keeps washing it. The dog’s sore will heal. The dog will age and die. Another dog will come. The president will or will not be defeated. Another president will come. You’ll find faults with the new president. There will be healing for the environment and then it will go downhill again, and then it will heal again. People you love will be healthy and have wonderful lives, and then they will go into a slump.
This is human experience. This whole human experience really is really your dark cave. Your dark cave of this generation is the illnesses, the illnesses that some of your ancestors never had to face because they never lived past their 50’s and 60’s. Aging brings new challenges. And yet, it happens because people are aging. All the wonderful technology you have brings new challenges—socially, to the environment; in different ways. The answer is never to go back to the way things were 1,000 years ago but to open one’s heart and learn: how do I live with this present situation in my personal life and in the world with as much love as is possible?
An issue for many of you is because so many things in your lives feel out of control and fear comes up, you don’t want to deal with it. You want an instant fix, and there is no instant fix. All of this is brought together to help deepen your ability for love. Let me rephrase that—this is not WHY it’s happening; it’s happening because it’s arising from conditions. The result is you have the opportunity to practice love, or not.
Our class is focused on this, that you are all these angels in earthsuits with a deep commitment to help bring more light into this world and this whole universe. And as one thing gets easy there’s going to be a new challenge. How do you greet that new challenge?
Barbara was reflecting earlier today. You know, Barbara does not have an abundance of money, but instead of simply letting the money that she does have sit in a checking account, a friend who is a financial advisor said, “You might want to invest some if so you can get some income.” So she invested last year $5,000, that she took out of her checking account. And it built up to $6,000. She said, “Oh, that’s nice. I like that I earned $1,000 with my money.” So he came back to meet with her again this year, and he said, “Do you want to put some more money in this?”
She thought yes, I have put aside the money I need for Hal through the next 6 months. And it would be wise to see if I can get even a little gain on that money, in very—how did he phrase it?—stable kinds of stocks and investments. There’s never a guarantee. She said yes. Then she spent the day worrying. Who knows what’s going to happen with the election? And they say this virus may be coming to this country, and what will that do to the economy? “Have I thrown out my money?!” Who knows?
Now, she’s reminded herself it’s only a few thousand dollars. That’s still a lot to her. But the scene—I’m not talking about the money and what she chooses to do but my conversation with her. I said, “If there is a severe virus that actually makes a lot of people sick, even kills people, if it messes with the stock market, if the presidential election brings unstable results and they unbalance the stock market”— Can you trust the future? I want you to note Barbara and Hal have lived into their 70’s and 80’s and never before invested money in this way. But she said, “Yes. It seems like a wise thing to do; I’ll try it.” So she did.
Then fear came up. If the president is re-elected, there will be some very real challenges with that. If somebody else is elected there will still be challenges. If the virus spreads to become worldwide, there will be challenges. If many people die, there will be severe challenges. If we do not take care of the environment in the next 10 years, there are going to be severe challenges. What will happen?
So much of such situation is asking you two things: how can I relate to my own personal fears with more presence and love, and how can I help to co-create the world I choose to see rather than the world I am afraid I may see? You don’t have control about what’s going to happen in a simple sense, but you do actually have a huge amount of control over what will happen in the biggest picture. If you relate to everything with fear, envisioning the worst, you help to co-create the worst. If you can relax, hold deeply in your heart your intention for an Earth where people are happy, healthy, at peace with themselves and the environment around them, then you begin to co-create that.
I think this is the big lesson for these times. For those of you who are more spiritually mature, to remember you do have the ability to co-create the world that you imagine with your loving hearts. And you do have the ability to co-create the world you’re terrified of with your fear-centered hearts. Which way are you going to go?
I’m going to talk more about this tomorrow night in the Open Aaron night. So, I wanted to go this far and then digress a bit into what is focal to Dharma Path. This situation, as I’ve been presenting it, is the dark cave for many of you. Is there anybody here who is not scared about the environment? Is there anybody here who is not worried about the election?
So, is there anybody here who has not, upon hearing about all the people sick in China, had a moment even of panic of “What if it comes here?”
You are co-creators of your Earth. Whatever situation you enter, whatever the dark cave may look like, you can relate to it with a, “Hmm, this may be a tough one. Thank you for giving me this challenge. I know I’m up to it.” Or, (screams) “What are we going to do?” How are you going to relate to it?
Your work with Dharma Path, especially this work of entering the sacred darkness, or, to phrase it differently, entering the darkness to find that which is truly sacred within the darkness, this has the ability to change the world, and beyond the world, to change the universe. How can I help you to have confidence in your own abilities to co-create for the highest good? To not become lost in the stories of fear, and thusly co-creating further fear and distortion?
You all know what to do. Take a look at yourselves, this past week. Was there anything that came up for you as this issue with the stock was for Barbara? Barbara came so close, 3 or 4 times, to calling him and saying, “You’ve got to sell it. I want to put the money back in my bank account.” I asked her, I said, “You could lose it all, and then again, maybe not. Would you trust and begin to envision not just your own personal money expanding but illness being healed, the environment healing, a truly clear, strong, loving president elected, so that everything begins to flourish in the world? Would you be willing try that experiment and invite as many other people as you know to try it with you?” She didn’t say, “Yes, I’ll do it” with strong conviction but was able to say, “Okay, Aaron, I’ll try.”
We’re inviting all of you. Think about what you want the world to look like a year from now—your own personal world and the larger world. Instead of approaching that with, “I don’t know—it all looks disastrous,” take one area. Barbara chose to look at this coronavirus, to feel the health in her own cells, the radiance of the cells of her body. Then, with Hal today, without talking about it, she was just holding his hand, looking at him and saying, “You look so strong and beautiful today. You are radiant.” And he was. Envisioning health in him. Envisioning glowing health in all the people that she saw. Sending that same energy out to the trees, to the natural world. Radiant health, cells bursting with joyful and beautiful energy. “I choose to co-create this.”
So she thought about that, and then, on her computer, a bit of news came up saying this or that about this virus and its likelihood to spread to this country. Yes, maybe it will spread. Maybe they will also find a very quick cure for it. Who knows? Who knows what will happen? But your negative contracted energy prohibits high life energy, joyful energy, from moving through. And everything degenerates. Love keeps it all open.
This is not a love that says, “I don’t believe anything bad can happen.” Of course, it can. It’s a love that says whatever happens, we will find ways to live with it and to shift it into something for the highest good. This is where you have progressed in a thousand years and more. You understand the possibility to take the garbage, as it were, and make compost. You know you can do that. I think what catches you the most is this fear, “I am not in control.” You want so much to be safe and have your loved ones and your world safe. And on the relative, day to day level, you’re not in control. When fear is related to with fear, the chakras close and you feel less connected to the Divine, and thus, small and weak.
This said, we’re going to do a guided meditation. I would like you to begin by reflecting, each of you, on an area of biggest vulnerability, the place where you feel most uncertain. Things come to mind like, “What will my finances be like? What will my health be like? What will my family’s well-being be like? What will the political arena be like?” Touch into the places where you feel especially vulnerable.
Now watch the way you don’t want to go into that area of vulnerability, or perhaps want to rush into it to fix it once and for all!. And I understand; I’m not blaming you for this. Here is the dark cave: vulnerability. Even the thought, “I cannot make it happen,” which on one level is true, and is honest, on another level is an escape because you can, not make it happen but invite that which you seek. Are you so afraid that you’re afraid to try? And in despair you say, “I can’t make it happen.” Just sitting in that dark cave—not lighting your candle, not talking to anybody. Pulling yourself into a dark, dark place and saying, “That’s it. I give up.” Is it easier to give up than to find your true courage, the true power of your love?
Some of you may think I’m speaking a bit harshly here, and think, “Aaron usually speaks more kindly to us than that.” But there is nothing less at stake than this entire transition of Earth into a high vibrational planet of love.
You have to understand the importance, for each of you, of courage, and of knowing and owning your own power and love. Are you afraid of that power? Perhaps. If so, that’s okay. I do not scold you for being afraid. What are you going to do with that fear? You are powerful beyond measure. It’s time to own it because you are mature enough to own it and not use power for the negation of that which is good, not use power to do harm. Once you fully acknowledge your power you can do miracles, wonders.
So again, please open your hearts into a place of vulnerability. It can be as universal or personal as you wish…
Take my hands and let us walk into this cave together, this cave of fear, of grief, of confusion. Come with me through the open doorway and further into the cave, where we make a sharp curve, and the doorway is hidden. And another curve, and the light from the doorway is hidden, now deep darkness.
I have prepared cushions on the floor for you here, and on each cushion you’ll find a blanket to wrap yourself in. Each cushion is just outside hand reach of the next cushion. Call around to each other: “J, B, E, L, T—are you here?” “Yes.” Feel each other’s presence. Sit on your cushion and wrap up in your blanket, and just allow yourselves to be present with your fear…
Breathing in and aware of fear; breathing out and holding space for that fear…
In this moment, where is love? Where is your radiance and power?
(long pause for meditation)
Now I’m going to step back from the body and Love is going to come in and share energy and thoughts with you, sit here in this cave with you, and you can see if Love’s energy is helpful to you.
Love: I am Love. I greet you in love, in light, in joy. I am Love.
Feel the sweetness of my breath in this cave, the softness. Hear me laughing, embracing each of you as I walk around the circle. If I am love; you are also love. Don’t try to run away from it, please. Why would you choose to be less than love? What do you get out of that?
Love—say it with me: Love. Love. I am love. Say it with some conviction, please. I am love. Shout it back and forth across the circle for a bit, until the whole cavern echoes with it. I am love! I am love! I am love!
Know that you have chosen life experience as a servant to bring love and light to the places of darkness and fear, starting with yourself. You are love, and you are so beautiful.
I am sitting here in the middle of the circle. We know which way you came in, where the entrance was. Somewhere through these dark corridors there is another opening into a place of light. And behind you in the world, darkness and fear. I give you a mission, here: to map this cave. To find the vastness of light and love, and then bring it back, finding your way back to where we sit, and around those two curves, returning it into the dark world, carrying that light with you. Here is the light. I bring it; here it is.
Each of you, one or several at a time, in your meditation I want you to come up to me, and I’m going to hand you a very special thread. It is attached to my heart. I want you to hold onto it. It is unbreakable, so no matter how far you move out into this network of darkness you cannot lose the connection to me. You cannot get lost. If you feel yourself to be lost, please tug on the cord and I will begin gently to pull you back in, into my heart. When you have settled yourself and released the fear, you can sit down again or walk outward again.
Walking out, finding light and love. Carrying it forth into the universe. Whatever darkness you find in the cave, can you stop and say, “Thank you, teacher.”? Remember, if it becomes too hard, just tug on the cord. And you don’t have to wind your way back through miles of caverns; it’s instant. As soon as you tug on the cord, you’re back in my heart.
You may go with a partner, or you may go alone. When you find that realm of light and love and radiance, give a shout—“Eureka! Here it is!” And at the sound of your voice, others will begin to gravitate toward your voice and energy. Rest there, in the light, and then give a tug on the cord and come back to me. And when you are gathered back here in this circle, we will take this love and light that you have found back out into the present world of darkness to help illuminate it, and with love.
Now I’m going to be quiet for perhaps 15 or 20 minutes, until I feel enough of you have had an opportunity to practice with this. I am Love, and I hold you in my embrace, always. You cannot lose me. I ask you to trust. So please go off, as you are ready, and explore the cavern, and see what it brings you. Entering darkness with love; transforming darkness with the sacred light of the heart. I pause.
(they do this; recording paused)
Wherever you have gone, come back. Come back and sit by me…
Feel your heart filled with love. Feel your connection to your dear friends in this circle. We have no need of a fire in this cavern—everybody’s heart is glowing, lighting up the space. Each of you, in whatever measure has been possible for you, has found the love and light within your heart. That love and light will transform the Earth and the entire universe. Please treasure yourselves, as I treasure you. You are love.
(Barbara announces a break followed by sharing of experiences (not transcribed, except John Orr, by request))
John: The question relates to something that Aaron spoke about earlier this evening, and I’ve heard him say this before, regarding power. Essentially what I heard Aaron saying is that each of us is powerful, and that we don’t have to be fearful of that power or abusing that power. In recent examples, for example, with Harvey Weinstein, who was recently convicted of sexual abuse in various forms, and also John of God, and the fact that he has also been tried, and it looks as though he will be spending a lot of time in prison—just focusing on the example of John of God, there is man that is very, very loving, or else he would not be able to have done the work that he did. But there were also other forces within himself that did harm to others. And he had a lot of power, especially in that particular situation at the Casa.
So I’m trying to reconcile this. I understand what Aaron says on some level, that power is not something which is necessarily going to do harm to others. And yet, there are lots of examples where it has done harm to others. And so, when I think of going deeper into the darkness, there is some fear of abusing that power. I don’t of course feel that fear when, for example, when I’m feeling that connection with Brother Love or Love or with the Mother, but in other situations in which I’m more enveloped in fear or darkness, I could see where there could be the abuse of that power. So, this is what I’m trying to understand within myself.
For example, there is a fighter, a boxer, named Tyson Fury, who, last Saturday night, won a big fight. I didn’t see the fight and I wasn’t interested in looking at it, but I heard an interview with him. And in this interview he was saying, sometimes we have to go through the darkness in order to find the light. He was talking about his life, his experience. And that just really hit me that essentially, he is on the same path that I’m on, using his own vehicle of his life and fighting, to find the light. And yet, physically he’s pummeling somebody else. This is what I’m having a challenging time to understand, is, Aaron is saying trust that we’re powerful, and trust that power, and at the same time I see how that power in some ways is very destructive. Can you or Aaron speak to that?
Barbara: Aaron will incorporate. Thank you for a very important question, John.
Aaron: I am Aaron. Thank you, John. On the one hand, you are already fully awake, fully radiant, nothing but love. At the same time, you are constantly evolving. The relative and the ultimate. If that ultimate human stayed within the proverbial Garden of Eden, it would never know power except through the Divine that permeated the Garden. But there’s no sense of separation with that Divine, so there’s no idea of personal power.
Coming out of the Garden, with all the dualistic illusions of separation: good and bad, love and fear; we move into the beautiful dharma teachings of right energy and right effort, for example. Wholesome effort based in non-harm to any being. All the sila teachings.
Then, lifetime after lifetime, moment after moment with mindfulness, holding the deep commitment to do no harm, to do only good, you watch the arising of a contraction that leads you into the experience of separation. And with separation, the idea of what may be good for me, although it could be bad for others, or it could be bad for me, hurtful for me, but good for others. You begin to investigate the sense of duality and, with your vipassana practice, you break through the duality. In those experiences of body and ego dissolution, that ground of pure being becomes so strong and clear that, while you may occasionally find it falls aside for a moment or several years, you know it as an ultimate reality. You may lose touch with it but you come back to it because of the deep intention to do no harm; to live one’s life in non-harm, not out of fear—“Oh, I’ll be punished if I harm others,” but from that deep place of being love.
My experience is that you are usually not given the capacity to enact your power until you have come to the place of commitment not to misuse the power. Well, what then of people like Harvey Weinstein or Joao or Hitler or whoever, who have misused power? There are differences, here. With Hitler, there was only self-centeredness. Able to care, of course, for a loved one, as long as the caring for the loved one did not detract from himself. But let no one, even a loved one, deter from those intentions for his own highest good, as he saw it.
Then, on the other hand, you have somebody like Joao, who has deep intentions to service and yet was still lost in the distortion of negativity, and the fear that he could not overcome that negativity, and did not have training in the methodical practices to transcend negativity, which are so important for all of you, for your practice. This is why we keep practicing, to keep watching any negativity arising, come back and find the place in the heart where the negativity is completely alien to oneself; to the strong, ever-strengthening intention not to enact negativity. Then you take on more and more power.
Now, it is not permissible for me to speak of Joao’s karma, but consider that in some ways perhaps he was taking external distortion into himself and he simply could not handle it. He did not know how to connect deeply with love because he did not, through his lifetime, develop the kinds of practices that you are developing, specifically with vipassana and with sila, with working with intention, and so forth. So, in a sense, I see him a bit of a tragic figure in that he took onto himself so much without reaching out for and taking the support to hold the power that he had. This does not make him an evil person, but it certainly makes him a person who was capable of doing real harm, if indeed he did so.
So we have to distinguish between the person who deeply wishes to do no harm but doesn’t know how not to do harm, and the person who wishes nothing more than to do harm, delights in fear and terrorizing others, in hatred.
For all of you, really, there is the deep intention to do no harm, and the occasions of slipping into it. Just ask to go slowly in claiming your power. Hold tight to your tenet of “Do no harm.” Watch mindfully any places where you could slip into harm, ask spirit for help, and then trust the passageway.
When I say that you are immensely powerful, I do not mean that right now in this moment you can claim all of that power, because you are not yet awake enough to claim it all. Hold the power that you can hold, because you are co-creating. Do you want to co-create a future with President Trump—yes or no? Do you want to create a future in which thousands, even millions, die from a virus? Yes or no?
If you back into a place of fear and anger and feeling of weakness, believing, “I can’t do anything,” if you can’t do anything then you can’t stop these things from happening. If you are willing to say, “Yes, I have the power to co-create wholeness and radiance and love. I choose this. I choose to invite spirit to help me see where I might be tempted to abuse my power, and to back up, to be mindful with this,” then I think you’re spiritually safe.
I’m going to talk more about this tomorrow night, so I invite any who are interested—this will be the main focus of my talk. I think it’s very important that we talk about what’s happening in the world today, and the ways you each have the opportunity to co-create that which is wholesome or that which is unwholesome. Which way is it going to be? Can you trust yourself and the degree of awakenedness that you have, to choose the wholesome and be mindful when there’s a sudden tilt in that choice because of fear and you begin to create subtle patterns toward the unwholesome, and just say no and come back? This is what you are all capable of.
It’s 9 o’clock so this is a good place to end. I hope you will join me tomorrow for further conversation on this. I think it’s an important point. My blessings and love to you all.
Let me add here, in these next 2 weeks, please come back into this cave meditation. Bring yourself into your own dark cave. Feel the presence of love. Know that as long as there is not an ego or pride that says, “Oh, I don’t need help,” but you’re willing to come back and say, “I’m feeling shaky here; I do need help. I invite loving support so as to hold to my intention to do no harm, to do good for all beings. I invite help.” Help is there, and you can do it. And between you and so many millions on the Earth, you can co-create a much more wholesome Earth free of so much negative distortion. Know that this is what you want—that is the starting place.
My love to you all.