May 17, 2003 Saturday Morning, Angels in Earthsuits Workshop, Tokyo, Japan
Angels in Earthsuits: Intro to Aaron’s Basic Teachings;Compassion/karuna Guided Meditation;Intro to Aaron’s Basic Teachings: Densities;Intro to Vipassana Meditation;Q&A on Relationships;Working with Body and Emotional Pain
Barbara: About two years ago, in Seattle, we were at an evening gathering with Aaron. M said, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could do this in Tokyo?” M2 had said that before. We looked at each other and said, “Why not!?” And here we are. It took a lot of planning, a lot of working. Special thanks to M, M2 and A..
I’m Barbara… We’ll go around in a circle in a bit and let you each introduce yourselves, starting with Aaron.
Aaron: Good morning. My blessings and love to you all. I am Aaron. It is a great joy to be here with you, with old friends and friends that we have not previously met in this lifetime. It is a joy to feel the sincerity of your seeking, and your deep intention to live your lives with greater love and wisdom.
I do not do a lot of planning before a workshop. Rather, I like to hear from each of you, to know where you are in your journey and what questions are most important to you. Let me present the basic premise of this workshop, “Angels in Earthsuits”. Each of you is an angel, that divine aspect of your being, ever-perfect, radiant. Each of you is this divine beautiful spirit. Each of you is also here within the earthsuit, the physical, mental, and emotional container in which this spirit body finds itself.
The earthsuit creates many challenges for you because there is mind and body pain, confusion, doubt, and the arising of heavy emotions. This is especially true for those of you who are seekers on a spiritual path. These challenges are confusing because you aspire to live your lives with clarity and kindness, and yet so often, negative emotion emerges. You aspire to be loving to yourselves as well as others, and yet there will be body pain and mental distortion, which conditions give rise to a sometimes negative- or tension-filled response.
Our basic exploration then is two-fold. First, what are the nature of the angel and the nature of its earthsuit container? On the ultimate level, you are that angel. But of course on the relative level, you are simply a human being, a mind, body, and so forth. Another way to phrase the question then is, how do you live in balance in the relationship between ultimate and relative reality? How do you bring these various aspects of your being into balance so that you do not choose either above the other, but honor both?
The second aspect of our work together this weekend will be to look in depth at those specific areas of relative reality that are most difficult, most challenging for you, with the question, “Instead of viewing this experience as something threatening me, to which I must take opposition, how can I view even this body pain, this emotional pain, this sadness, this difficult relationship, this difficult work situation – how can I view this as a teacher, relate to it as a teacher, with my heart open, so that I can learn?
For what comes to you is a teacher, always. It is up to you whether you can accept it as that. You cannot just say, “I will accept it.” That’s just more force. The heart cannot open through force. How do we invite the opening of the heart so that we can be fully present with what arises in our relative experience and use it to teach us deeper compassion and wisdom, to find the growth which we seek?
The days will be a mixture of my speaking to you, your sharing with me, and specific exercises. I don’t know yet what exercises will be appropriate; we’ll see as we go along. We use experiential exercises so that what we speak about is not just intellectual but that you can know it in this moment. And we will teach you some meditation. As we go around I want to hear from you what your spiritual practice is. For example, do you meditate, and if so what kind of meditation. What are you passionate about? Share that with me, and also right now in your lives, what is presenting the most difficulty, the most pain?
Those who know Barbara and me from Ann Arbor are used to sharing in depth, have come to trust that our circle is a safe space. It is important that you honor confidentiality even though some of you may never see one another again, may be half a world apart. But what is said here is to be kept in this circle, to be held in a container of honor and respect so that each of you feels safe to share from your heart.
There are no other rules here. We have a schedule planned that I think will allow for adequate breaks.
A very brief word about myself. I give you the name Aaron, which was my name in a lifetime where I was a teacher. It is of course not my name, just one of many names that beings that I were lived with through the centuries. I think it’s easier than calling me “Hey you!”
Once long ago a friend had some difficulty working with me because she felt she could not work with a male teacher. I told her very sweetly, “I can change my energy. I can change my voice. (voice changes) How would Arianna do?” You don’t need to think of me as a male, I’m neither male nor female. I have been both in many lifetimes. When people come to me with questions about sexuality, they find it very funny that I truly understand both the male and the female, but I have clear memories of those lifetimes.
I’m going to retain my Aaron persona here, but if it helps you to think of me as female or neither, that is fine. I have lived in every color of skin in so many different cultures, through so many millennia. I have been rich and a pauper. I have loved and hated. I have grieved and rejoiced. So I understand these human experiences.
I have experienced most major human religions and many more minor ones. My final incarnation in the 1500s in Thailand, I was a Buddhist meditation master of the Theravada tradition, a part of that tradition that preceded the current northern forest tradition. In that lifetime I found freedom from this cycle of birth and death, and helped others to find such freedom. I do not teach you as that Theravada Buddhist master. He no longer is, only I have his memories and his understanding.
But the tradition within which he practiced was a viable path to freedom, as he literally discovered. I would not throw that away; I value it deeply. So no, I am not a Buddhist, nor am I a Christian, Jew or Moslem. I have tasted all of these. But I do use the tools of the Buddhist perhaps more than any other specific tools, not to make you into Buddhist but to make you free. My prayer for this weekend is that each of you may find a bit of advancement on that path of freedom, may come to understand the places where you’re stuck, and how more skillfully to invite freedom, for with freedom come joy and peace.
It is good to be with you this weekend. Now, may I hear from you and get to know you a bit, and also to give you the opportunity to meet one another? I pause.
Barbara: Aaron explained what he’d like you to talk about. We’ve got 15 of you. So try to limit it to about two to three minutes. I know you can’t sum up your journey in that time, but give us just a sense of what kind of spiritual practice you’ve done, what brought you here today. And, Aaron says, what you’re passionate about, what you’re seeking.
People share around the circle.
Barbara: There are many different forms of meditation. These forms tend to fall into two different areas. One is a fixed-focus concentration, where the attention is brought to one object. One absorbs into that object. The mind quiets down. It can lead to a very blissful experience. It’s the kind of experience most of you have had somewhere along the line, playing a musical instrument, gardening, or painting, where you become so absorbed into that that the mind suddenly is quiet. One can go deeper and deeper into that space. This is called concentration meditation.
Any kind of meditation takes concentration, but with what I just described, we hold on to one object to the exclusion of anything else. The kind of meditation that Aaron and I teach uses concentration in a different way, learning to be present with whatever is predominant in our experience in this moment. So, while we start with a primary object, if something else becomes predominant, you let go of that object and move attention to the predominant object.
Once, working with a concentration practice, I was sitting and watching a candle flame, very absorbed into the flame. Unknown to me at that point, my 8-yr-old son’s ball had gotten caught up on the roof. He had pulled out a ladder, and climbed up on the one-story roof to get the ball down. Climbing down, the ladder had fallen over. I was sitting and focusing on the candle and he was literally right in front of me out the window, hanging from the gutter, kicking his feet, trying to get my attention. I didn’t see him, I was so focused on the candle! Suddenly, I looked up, and ran out the door to lift him down.
When we concentrate, things can come up that are very powerful and we push them away. There’s a subtle preference, “I’ll stay with this.” It does have the effect of calming the mind. It does have the effect of taking us into a very peaceful and blissful experience. There’s nothing wrong with this form of meditation if the desired result is tranquility and ease. Development of concentration is essential. But when you come out of concentration practice, everything that was difficult in your life is still there; you haven’t explored your relationship with body pain, emotions, and the world. You haven’t changed your relationship or gained any wisdom about the nature of what comes into your experience.
The meditation that we teach is sometimes called insight meditation. Its technical name is vipassana. Passana in the Pali language in which these teachings originated means “seeing”. Vipassana is a deeper, clearer seeing. We don’t teach this to turn people into Buddhists. We teach it to help people develop a deeper, clearer seeing.
We begin to ask, what arises in my experience? How do I relate to what arises? What are the habitual patterns I have with what arises? If it’s unpleasant, do I shut myself off and withdraw from my body? If it’s pleasant, do I hold on? What really creates the suffering I experience, the unpleasantness?
You may have heard a teaching or statement about suffering made in Buddhism. Sometimes it’s misunderstood to say, “Everything is suffering”. The word that’s used in the Buddhist teachings is dukkha. The statement is, “Dukkha exists.” The Buddha did not say everything is suffering in the way we sometimes interpret it. But everything is dukkha. The word kha in Pali means the hub of a wheel… Du means off-center. So the wheel is onto the hub in an off-center way. When the wheel rolls, the cart lurches. If we want the cart to run smoothly, there’s an unpleasantness when the cart lurches. We don’t want that. The experience of the lurching cart when we don’t want it to lurch is dukkha.
We go to amusement parks and we want everything to lurch and whip us back and forth. We expect it to lurch. We’d suffer if it didn’t lurch. We’d say, “This is a gyp!” But in our lives we want it all to go smoothly, and it never does. This is the experience referred to as dukkha. This is how things are. Whatever comes along that’s wonderful and exquisite, like the rice crackers I just ate, such a lovely taste, each tiny cracker was different. As I swallowed each, this thought came up, “Oh, I want more of that!” But that one was finished. Each time we come to that experience saying, “Oh, I want more,” we see we can’t hold onto things. Everything comes and it goes. That grasping after it is dukkha. Sometimes we get one with a bitter taste. “I don’t like this!” We can’t keep it away. You’ve bitten into it, it’s in your mouth. It’s right there, this bitter taste. “I don’t want it.” Dukkha.
What we find when we are willing to be present with everything as it comes into our experience in meditation, is that things will arise and pass away, and then other things will arise and pass away, and they just are as they are. When we can be with them as they are, they may be pleasant or unpleasant, but there’s no dukkha, no suffering. Some of you have experienced this with body pain. If you have something very painful in your body, the pain is one thing and your relationship with the pain is another. If you can be spacious with the pain and hold it with an open heart, then it’s unpleasant. It doesn’t make it pleasant that you can hold it with an open heart, it’s still unpleasant. But we find we can be with what’s unpleasant. We have a certainty, it will pass eventually. This is how it is. There’s pain but there’s not suffering.
The same is true with emotional things – somebody very angry at you, loss of a loved one, or fear – these experiences can be very painful. But we can learn how to make space around them. Watch the experience arise, be present with it, watch it pass away, sooner or later. Watch yourselves wanting pain to pass, watching that tension, “I don’t like this, I want it to go. ” You can watch without getting caught up in being a somebody, a self. We let go of me, my preference, no longer believing it’s got to be another way just because I don’t like it. It will be this way. Can you see where it shifts into suffering? It starts as pain and then shifts into suffering. So for me the value of this form of meditation is that it asks us to just sit and watch what appears. All kinds of things will appear.
When I travel and teach I often bring some books with me, books of poems and such. Coming to Japan I made the decision not to carry all of that material. There’s a wonderful poem by a Sufi poet, Rumi, and I cannot quote it. It’s called “The Guest House.” I’ll paste a correct version into the transcript. (corrected version is below)
The Guest House, by Rumi
translated by Coleman Barks, from The Essential Rumi,
(San Francisco, Harper San Francisco) 1995, p. 109
This human being is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
This is what we’re learning to do in this form of meditation. We start very simply, using the breath. Aware of breathing in, just the light touch of the breath on the nostrils, aware of breathing out. Try it. Not the thought, “I am breathing in,” but the experience of the inhalation. Don’t say, “Breathing in, breathing out,” just feel the touch of the inhale on the nostrils, on the upper lip. And then the touch of the exhale. There’s no doubt which one is an inhale and which one is the exhale. You can tell the difference. The inhale is cool, the exhale is warmer and softer.
Simply know when you’re breathing out and when you’re breathing in. Know if it’s a long breath or a short breath. Feel the texture of the breath. Let it be peaceful. But if it’s not peaceful, if it’s sharp and erratic, just watch that. Breathing in, breathing out.
Sometimes a pleasant feeling will come with the breath, if it’s calm, peaceful. Sometimes if the breath is very strong, harsh, it may feel unpleasant. Know if it’s pleasant, know if it’s unpleasant. Breathing in, breathing out. Sometimes it will be neutral.
(pause)
As you’re breathing, something may pull you away from the breath. Right now, my voice. Let go lightly of the breath and be present with the hearing. Hearing, hearing… When the voice stops, come back to the breath. If the hearing is an unpleasant sound (taps sticks), know that. (Bell.) (Bell.) Hearing. If it’s pleasant, know that it’s pleasant. As the sound dies away, come back to the breath. (Bell.)
(pause)
Maybe after a few seconds with the breath, you become aware of an itch on your leg. Burning, itching. It’s unpleasant. Don’t scratch the itch, just be present with the sensation. As it changes or dissolves, come back to the breath.
(pause)
Sometimes the itch may intensify as you watch it, and then something new comes, which is the strong desire to scratch the itch. Can you see that the sensation of the itch and the desire to scratch it are 2 different things?
(pause)
If the strong impulse to scratch becomes predominant, be with it. It’s a grasping, wanting energy. Just like the sound of my voice or the bell or the itch itself, it arose out of conditions and it will change, it will pass. Just because there’s an impulse to scratch the itch doesn’t mean we need to scratch it; instead we watch impulse, wanting. The exact label you use doesn’t matter. Just be aware of that grasping energy, the contraction in the body. The tension. Wanting to scratch. Can we hold ‘wanting to scratch’ in a spacious container, and just watch it?
Sometimes the strong wanting energy will fade away and the itch is still there. Sometimes wanting will fade away and we realize the itch is also gone. As that wanting energy changes, just come back to the breath. If the itch is still there and pulls your attention again, note it again and be with it.
(pause)
So we’re looking at 3 different things, and the way these things arise in our experience and then pass away: physical objects, such as body sensations, sounds, seeing, even with our eyes closed colors, patterns will come; smell, taste. Second and third are mental objects and emotions. I’m not going to talk in depth now about working with thoughts and emotions. We’ll talk about that later. I just want to give you a little at a time. But it’s basically the same process. If it’s a memory, planning, or whatever comes up, just be with it, note it. To note that the mind was planning doesn’t mean we keep planning. That which is aware of planning is not planning. We come back into that centered space of awareness, aware that planning had been happening and now it’s no longer happening. You just come back to the breath.
If the mind leaps into planning again, note it again, come back to the breath. At a certain point, just like the difference between the itch and wanting to scratch the itch, you see the difference between the mind leaping into planning and wanting to get caught up in that planning. You start to feel the impulse energy itself. Wanting to plan. Wanting to play with a memory. Wanting to fantasize. Different places mind can go. Each time we just note.
Whatever the object is, be with it. There is no object that is better than any other object. You’re not trying to stay with the breath. If there’s a strong physical sensation, be with it. If, as they cook food, pleasant smell comes up, just be with it. If mind moves up into fantasy, “What kind of food is it?” the smell is no longer predominant. That planning question is predominant, thinking, wanting to know. Note that energy thrust. Come back to the breath. The breath is just the place we come to rest when the mind and body are not anywhere else. It’s kind of like sitting in a big comfortable chair in your living room. You’re just sitting. The telephone rings. You get up, you answer it. Respond to the question, say goodbye, hang up. Then you go back and sit in your chair again. You realize how thirsty you are. Get up and get a drink of water. Go back and sit in the chair. The dog is barking. Go outside, quiet the dog, go back and sit in your chair.
So the breath is like that, it’s the place we come back to. But we don’t choose the breath over any other experience. Just be present with things just as they are.
We’re going to sit now with this for about 10 minutes, and then Aaron is going to talk. We’ll do more meditation later.. If, “Am I doing it right or doing it wrong?” comes up, just note the experience of questioning or doubting mind and come back to the breath. Remember, we’re developing more insight into our relationship, our habit energy, or how we relate to objects. This is important because when there’s pain, emotional pain, physical pain, when something provokes anger in us, we all have habit energy that we find predominant. We get carried off on it. Through this practice we start to learn we have a choice. That instead of getting carried away by our fear, our anger, our needs, we can just make space for it and watch it. It can be very peaceful. Even when it’s very unpleasant it can be peaceful. Peace doesn’t come through trying to force things into a pattern that’s to our liking, but learning a way to be present with things as they are, and still develop the wisdom to attend to those things that are distorted, in skillful ways so we can bring about change. It’s not about resignation that says, “I have to be with it as it is.” One doesn’t sit by an open window with the rain pouring in and say, “Rain. Rain. Wet. Wet.” One closes the window.
I’ll be quiet now for about 10 minutes and then Aaron will begin to talk.
Silence
Aaron: I am Aaron. You may continue to sit with your eyes closed or open, as you prefer. Feel free to stretch…
I am telepathic. I will never invade your privacy, but sometimes thoughts are offered out. I will never go beyond that, into the private thoughts.
As you sat, just now, many of you experienced small aches and pains in your body.. Many of you were sending out the thought, “My body should not be painful.” Why not? You do have a body with nerve endings. Sometimes they carry pain. All of you experienced the mind that jumped from here to there and there to here The nature of the mind is to give rise to thoughts. There’s a vast difference between watching the mind give rise to thoughts and climbing astride one of those thoughts as if it were a horse galloping off into the sunset. Some of you thought, “I should be able to do this better.” That “better” is not the cessation of thought and feeling, but presence with things just as they are.
There will be physical sensation, thought, and emotion. These are a given part of human experience. They will not obey some inner preference and all be pleasant sensations and thoughts. To come into incarnation is to experience this. So I first want to address the fallacy, the myth, that if you only get it figured out, you can make life pleasant and keep it pleasant.
How could you do that? No matter how delicious a meal, there will come a point where you’re full. You’ve had 2 servings, 3, 4; it’s delicious. Your host says, “Will you have more?” “No.” “Why not? I thought you liked it?” “No, I’m full.” So first you wanted it and now you don’t want it. If forced to eat another bowlful, it would be unpleasant.
This earth is your schoolroom and you are here to learn. You are not here to control your experience, although certainly I wish you well-being, happiness, pleasant experiences. But you’re not here to control experience, you are here to learn compassion and unconditional love. Part of what stirs that learning in you is difficult experience.
There’s a story told about a spiritual teacher, Gurdjieff. He had a spiritual center in France in the last century. There was a man at the center who was very rude to everybody, a very abrasive personality, and he did not do his share of the work. On top of that, he had bad hygiene, he smelled bad. One day he said to Gurdjieff, “I’m leaving.” His bags were packed and off he went. The other residents cheered, “He’s gone! He’s gone!” But Gurdjieff went after him. When the man said, “No, I won’t come back. People are mean to me.”, Gurdjieff offered to pay him to come back. So he came. His greed was bigger than anything else in him. The others were aghast. “How could you invite him back? We’re paying you, you’re paying him! Why?” Gurdjieff said, “He is the yeast for the bread. He is the teacher of compassion.”
You don’t want that difficult person in your lives, and yet you do know they are often the foremost teacher of compassion for you. Much as I wish you comfort, you are not here to be comfortable, you are here to learn. And it does work out that the more you learn, the deeper your understanding, the more comfortable you become even with discomfort, and the more able you become to attend to discomfort skillfully and bring forth change in a wholesome way, through kindness rather than through hatred and anger.
You are here to learn how to practice love, even when there is strong fear. Fear is not a problem although it’s difficult and unpleasant. Fear, like anything else, will arise. One can be loving with fear. No matter what comes, one can deeply understand one’s habitual tendency, a very human tendency, to contract and separate oneself. One can begin to learn that there is a choice. That no matter how unpleasant, one can stay open and connected. Only from that openhearted place can you affect real change in yourselves and others.
This shift can never come from a place of “I should” but only from a place of “I will. I can.” What I mean by that is that it can never come from a driven place of judgment that says, “Not this but that. I should not feel this. I should only feel that.” Take “should” and put it in the trashcan. Literally, when you go home, write “I should” on a piece of paper and put it in the ashtray and light a fire to it. Or put it in your garbage. Make the decision for one week to be very watchful and each time “I should” comes out, to just note, “Ah, here is a judgment.” For that is all “I should” is, the judging mind at work, saying how things ought to be, rather than being present with things as they are.
I repeat Barbara’s words, this is not a statement of resignation. When you are present with things as they are, then and only then is there the possibility of change. Otherwise you’re simply contracting yourself and pushing, separating yourselves. A number of you mentioned loneliness as a primary catalyst in your life. Of course there are many reasons for loneliness, but one primary cause is this separation. Sometimes it comes from a place that does not want to allow intimacy with others for fear of being hurt. Sometimes it comes from a place that does not want to allow intimacy with others for fear of hurting others.
Each of you is a separate being, different body, different memories. Let’s look deeper.
Take these wooden seats you’re sitting on. On one level we can say it’s a seat. I wouldn’t call it a chair, it has no legs but It’s a seat made of wood. Wood comes from trees. The tree grows because there’s nutritious soil, sun, and rain. The rain comes from a cloud. We could say you’re sitting on a cloud. It’s all there together. In this, what we call conditioned realm, that is, the realm of things that arise with conditions and pass away, the relative realm, there is nothing that is separate from anything else. You sit on a cloud, and on the earth in which the tree grew.
The water that is released from your body as urine goes down the drain, and eventually works its way out to the sea. It evaporates with the sun, becomes a cloud, rains on the forest. You’re sitting on your own body when you sit on this seat.
The importance to this reflection, and especially if it develops into a deeper insight, is this. When something happens that’s difficult – when somebody says something that’s painful to you, somebody is angry with you – when this happens and you feel yourself separating you can begin to remember you are interconnected.
Clap your hands and look at the right hand and the left hand. Greeting, clapping. You experience right and left, yet they’re two hands of the same body. You can begin to ask yourself, what is the interconnection between us, rather than, what is the separation and difference? Then instead of practicing your differences, you can practice your connection, and from that place of connection you can hear one another.
Sometimes what you are most separate from is yourself. Feelings come up, helplessness, vulnerability, rage, greed, fear, or distrust of yourself. You experience the thought, “this feeling is not allowed” and believe the thought. Then you work to subdue it. Here is separation. There can be no change as long as there is that which is not allowed. What invites you back into your own heart and body? Emotions are just emotions. Don’t make them more powerful than they are. I know they can be strong and difficult. But you do not have to be afraid of them. They arose out of conditions, they are results. They will pass.
The most important thing I can say to you this weekend is this. That which is aware, of fear for example, is not afraid, that which is aware of anger is not anger. That which is aware of desire is not caught in the desire. This is the what I call angel side of experience, a knowing that comes from this space of deep centered awareness. You are able to be aware of arising thoughts, emotions and sensations, without being caught up in them, without developing a personal identity around them.
If you are afraid of your anger, each time anger arises you must stifle it. Of course you can’t act it out, that’s not what I’m suggesting. But there’s a vast space between repression or denial and acting it out. This is a space of presence and awareness that learns how to bring kind attention to what arises rather than constantly being on guard and afraid of what might arise. These things will arise naturally. If you step on a thumbtack, it will puncture the skin of your foot. There will be blood and pain. There’s no one here who would say, “I should not bleed.” You understand this is the nature of the body. Very few if any of you would say, “There should not be pain.” You understand there are nerves, and if the tack punctures, there will be pain. You might say, “I don’t want the pain. I don’t like the pain.” That’s very different from “there should not be.” “Should not” is a judgment. It’s simply the habitual tendency of mind saying first, perhaps consciously, perhaps unconsciously, “I don’t like this.” And then, “should not happen” – control, fear.
When you have, figuratively, an emotional tack, a “puncture” from somebody who is angry and addresses you in an angry way, says rude things, there may not be blood on a real level but there certainly is pain. Sometimes we think of somebody’s anger as literally drawing blood. Aversion rises in you. Desire to lash out at this, desire to defend. And then you say, “I shouldn’t be angry.” But why not? The arising of anger is just arising of anger. Just like the itch is an itch. The impulse, wanting to lash out or to defend, is just an impulse, no different than the impulse to scratch the itch.
Can you see why we practice with these simple things: the itch, the preference for more warmth or coolness? They’re easy things to practice with, and as you build up your ability, you become increasingly able to note that the arising of a strong emotion is just that, and the arising of an impulse connected to the emotion is just that. None of it is bad; none of it is a problem.
If you turn the faucet on, water flows. If you turn the faucet off, it stops. It’s not good or bad. If the drain plug is in, the sink will overflow. That’s a parallel to the strong impulse to strike out, or perhaps to retreat and withdraw completely. The overflow is a result. When the sink overflows, you pull the plug out. You don’t just run around with buckets catching the water, you attend to the conditions and trust that when you attend to the conditions, the results will resolve themselves. And then of course you may need to dry up with a towel a bit, but the condition has passed, the result has passed.
When strong emotion arises in you, it’s a result. Usually there’s some kind of fear, “I will not be safe. My needs won’t be met.” A habit energy may be to defend yourself or to withdraw. These are all results. None of it is bad or good. If you do lash out or withdraw, it can bring unwholesome results, create an unpleasant situation, and then that’s your next learning point, seeing that what you do bears a direct result, and that you always have a choice. You begin to see how much habit energy has pushed you in one direction. Then from the deep place of commitment to live your lives with more love and clarity, you can note the force of habit, how strong it is, make space for it, and not enact it. And then you come back to what I called, “that which is aware”, that spaciousness which has watched, hearing the unpleasant words or voice for example, watching the arising of anger, watching the strong impulse to defend or to run away. That spacious awareness becomes a container that can hold whatever has arisen and watch it dissolve.
Then all the old judgments fall away. The judgments like, “I should be able to prevent this emotion from coming up. I’m just no good. I’m unworthy. I’m incapable.” These are just stories that you’ve built up. You begin to see how the whole chain of thought is just the flow of conditions. Let go of the separation from yourself; let yourself back into your heart. Find mercy for yourself and whatever difficulty you may be experiencing, and find mercy for the others who are involved in the situation. It’s from this point that you begin to live from the angel aspect of yourself.
It’s important to note that when I speak of resting in awareness and watching these emotions come up, I do not mean disassociating from the emotion. What I speak of is totally different. To disassociate is to separate. What I am urging you to do is embrace it, holding it in a spacious container, allowing yourself to be fully present. Fear, based on old conditioning, so often leads you not to be fully present in your life. What is the direct experience of anger with no stories of blame? No stories of how to fix? What is that raw, direct experience of anger? What is the experience of grief or sadness? What is the experience of joy? What is the experience of desire, of pride, jealousy, fear?
We can begin to note these simply saying, “Here is a tension, a contraction in the body and the mind.” And not get caught up in the stories to which habit has led us.
There’s a very beautiful and simple practice that I find helpful, called the practice of clear comprehension. The first 2 parts of it are clear comprehension of purpose and of suitability. If somebody raging at you, and you are feeling judged, feeling that this is unfair, feeling blamed for something for which you are not at fault, anger comes up. There is the desire to defend yourself or strike back, to act out that anger. You can ask yourself, what is my highest purpose here? Is it to be right, for example? Or is it to create a harmonious communication where we can both feel heard and understood?
Then the second part of clear comprehension, clear comprehension of suitability. Is what I’m about to do consistent with what I say my purpose is? To come to this purpose is hard work. For a younger soul, the purpose may be to defend oneself. “What is my purpose? To defend myself! Is punching him in the nose suitable? Yes”. But then one sees the results. Through a thousand such brawls one sees the results and they are not wholesome; they do not lead to happiness. Eventually one shifts and begins to understand, “To defend myself cannot be my highest purpose. Because as long as I separate in that way, there cannot be peace. To defend both of us, yes”. Does punching him the nose defend both people? No. “Restraining myself. Hearing him. Hearing his anger. Not owning what he blames me for, but being willing to listen to his pain.” Here there is the growth of compassion and understanding, and the ability deeply to love oneself and the other.
You must be honest with yourself here. If you say, “To defend myself at all costs,” and punch him in the nose, do it mindfully and find out if the results are good. You’re probably not going to punch someone in the nose, but if you yell back and assault them verbally, are the results good? Is it taking it closer to what you want? You cannot restrain yourself from yelling back with, “I should not yell back.” It must come from an authentic, loving place that knows, “I will not yell or hit because I know that in the long run, this is not consistent with either of our needs. My intention is to bring forth harmony.” You hold that intention in front of you.
This is why Gurdjieff invited the man back. This is the community that lived so peacefully together, there was no friction. So he felt they needed yeast for the bread, or catalyst for compassion.
Now, I don’t think any of you need to invite very difficult people into your lives, consciously, saying, “I need it in order to practice compassion.” I think your lives have already provided you all the catalyst you need. But I want you to stop thinking of those issues in your life as problems and begin to think of them as opportunities. Right here is your opportunity to practice and to learn, to open your heart to yourself and whatever is out there pushing at you. Right here is your opportunity to grow, to find that place of awareness, that place of center. You can find the angel and rest there, more and more stably, and watch the human impulses without so much identification with them.
I quote the Dalai Lama, “My enemy, my teacher.” For some of you the enemy is somebody out there. For some of you it may be your own body, places of strong pain. Or it may be your mind with stories of betrayal and hurt. The old abuses and terrible things that you’ve experienced. None of it is a problem. It is all a gift, a part of this incarnation experience. The earth is your classroom.
I will stop here and hear a few questions before lunch.
Q: During meditation, the mind had three directions. I felt the breath, I felt the body, and then sometimes a story came. I was confused how to stay in the present rather than going with the story.
Barbara: Stay with the breath unless something becomes so predominant that it pulls you away. If it pulls you away, be with it. Sometimes it moves very quickly. You’re with the breath and then there’s a sharp pain in the body. Mind moves to it and then says, “Ah, it’s just that.” At that moment, it’s not compelling any more. Then you come back to the breath. If the sharp pain comes back again, and then the story comes up, “What is this? Why is this pain happening?”, it’s not the pain that’s predominant any more; it’s the fear about the pain. There’s an unasked question, “What if it keeps going?” So one can just note, “fear, fear.”
As it resolves itself, or if mind starts to go somewhere else, come back to the breath. In other words, if mind goes off to, “Maybe I twisted my ankle and that’s why it hurts. What am I going to do? I have to do all that walking tomorrow?” Just note, “story, story,” or “wandering…” Here mind is spinning off, worrying or planning. As soon as you note that kind of thought, you’re not thinking it any more. There’s a difference between physical sensation and thought. If we note an itch doesn’t go away, when we note planning, we’re not planning any more. There may be a wanting to plan, a pulling energy. “Wanting.” If you experience grasping energy, note it as “wanting to…”, or one of my favorite notes is just “tension”.
You don’t have to know exactly what it is. One of the ways we try to control our experience is to go after it and pinpoint it. This is fear. If I know it’s fear and I can label it, maybe I can control it. Instead, know the fear and note, “tension, tension,.” One can be present with the tension.
If the tension gets too big and stories start to come, know that again., Be with the impulse to go to a story, not the content of the story. Watch the aversion that is signaled by the arising story. “Tension, tension.” The tension itself is unpleasant and we want it to pass. Here is tension around the experience of tension, and more stories may come, maybe about our helplessness, or as judgment, “I should get rid of the tension.” Tension is just tension. Come back to the breath.
Sometimes tension or fear become very powerful, then you start to feel out of control. Then the mind starts spinning out into, “What am I going to do?” That’s more tension, but often we can really see this is fear. Whatever comes, be with the direct experience and try to stay away from the story. But if you do et into the story, see it as it happens and step back out, like stepping into a mud puddle. We don’t have to wade in deeper.!
There’s a very simple practice that’s very helpful sometimes. “Breathing in, I am aware of tension. Breathing out, I smile to tension. Breathing in, I am aware of fear. Breathing out, I smile to fear.” Literally, smiling, can help to break the cycle. And you can do that for a number of breaths until you can it begin to resolves. Come back to the breath. If it comes up again, go back to it.
We have time for one more question. We’ll have more time this afternoon. Is there another question now?
Q: I hear that nothing is separate, and everything is interconnected. But I wonder, in relationships or related to all of our relationships, who am I responsible for? Am I responsible for others? Or am I only responsible for myself?
Aaron: I am Aaron. You are responsible for what you offer to others. You can offer wholesome food or spoiled food. If you offer spoiled food, with the assurance that it’s good, and they eat it and get sick, you are responsible for offering the spoiled food. They are responsible for choosing to eat it.
What this comes down to, is if something comes up that spurs anger in you, and you give out an angry response, and the other person punches you or slaps you, you are responsible for offering the angry response, but you are not responsible for making them slap you. They have free will. They can do what they are able to do with that angry response. They are completely responsible for what they do in return.
So, you are responsible for what you offer out into the world. But you are not responsible for what other people do with it. Nevertheless, while you are not responsible for their choice, you will bear the results of what you offer out. If you always offer out bitter, angry response, the other person will either offer his or her own anger back so that it keeps pouring back and forth, hurting. Or the other person will offer a kind response, but perhaps after awhile will make the statement to himself, “I don’t choose to be with all this anger and bitterness any more,” and will leave. And then you experience the pain of being abandoned.. Do you see how it works? I pause.
Q: I understand what he said. I guess I get confused between the idea of selfishness and selflessness.
Barbara: Aaron says let us pick that up after lunch…
I would like to invite you as you eat, to be very present with your food. Spend the first few minutes of your meal without talking. Really chew the food well. Taste it. If it’s pleasant, know it’s pleasant. If it has an unpleasant taste, know that.
Watch the impulse, how soon do you reach out for the next mouthful with the thought, “I want more.” And you’re still chewing. You haven’t even swallowed it yet. Where does that impulse to reach out come from? Watch how that impulse comes and goes. Sometimes as you chew, the strong taste dies away. Your mouth is full of food that tastes bland. You haven’t even swallowed it but, “I want more” comes. Watch the different impulses. Know why you are choosing this rather than that, how you reach for different tastes. When you’re chewing, know you’re chewing. When you’re swallowing, know you’re swallowing. See how much more delight there is. So often we eat and swallow and we don’t even know what we eat. When it tastes good, be with it. One bite of something that’s delicious can be much more satisfying than a big bowl full of something that you hardly taste. Try it.
So, as you sit down with your food, spend just the first few minutes in silence…
(lunch break)