December 10, 2005 Saturday Afternoon, Part 5
Aaron’s talk to Friends of the Casa – Westport, CT
Q&A on karma, anusaya, asava; Casa night visitation; Responding to world conditions; Compassion/karuna meditation; Trainings talk from 2004
Q: I just want to confirm that all of us here that have opened ourselves up at the Casa. We opened up to the reality of negative vibration and worked to stop it until it ceased. We’re still focusing on protecting ourselves at this time. When I protect, I contract.
Aaron: All of you are learning how to open your hearts to the negativity. Each to a different degree learning this, each in your own place, just where you need to be. All of you have made the commitment to live your lives in love. All of you have not fully understood what that means, so some of you still create a duality to some degree, and there is still contracting around that which appears to be negative.
But I think all of you have understood the futility of such contraction, that it does not limit the negative, but rather enhances it. And some of you are puzzling over how to proceed from there. Some of you have hopefully learned how to proceed by watching the contraction in reaction to the negative energy and just saying, “No, this is not what I need to do now and bring forth love.” You all are within this process of learning. If there is a contraction, offer that contraction the same love.
Q: Can you define or describe the nature of karma, and can we resolve it in this lifetime?
Aaron: If I did not believe that you could resolve it in this lifetime I would not be here as a teacher. I deeply believe in the ability of each of you for full liberation in this lifetime, full liberation from your karma. Karma itself is energy. Karma relates largely to contraction. In the spacious expanded space of pure awareness there is no karma. When you move into the sense of a separate solid self, you become reactive. Then when things push at you, you push back. With each return push, you perpetuate the karma.
Think of karma as if you had a completely smooth sheet of sand or soil, just slightly sloped. Water drops drip off a cliff above, drip, drip, drip, one at a time, and slowly. Because of the slope of that sheet of soil, the drop of water runs off. It creates an infinitesimally small track, picking up a little bit of dust as it rolls. The next drop follows the first. Instead of going this way or that way, it follows in that tiny crack. The pathway keeps deepening and deepening until you create the Grand Canyon.
Karma is the energy force that perpetuates that habit energy arisen from a place of contraction. In the non-contracted state, there is no karma. This is why you must hold both the relative and the ultimate. You cannot hide out in the ultimate. To do so is escape from karma, not resolution of karma. While there is not karma in that ultimate stage, you must come back into the relative body and mind to live in the world.
You begin to look at the habit energies that have developed and find more skillful ways to deal with those habit energies. That is the first step.
The second step is to realize that by being skillful with the habit energies, you are still creating a habit energy, although a more wholesome one.
Then you begin to look at the question, whose habit energy is this? What is this whole notion of a separate self?
From the place of no-self you can still function in the world, you can function very well. But the predominant habit energy that holds most of you into karma is the delusion of separate self.
But you cannot start with that issue. You start with whatever the predominant habit energies are, such as self-judgment, or the idea of unworthiness, or judgment of others, or feeling like you constantly need to be the caretaker fixing everything. You look at one habit energy and begin to see that it brings suffering. Begin to see that which can resolve, can really step out of the self-centered reference point for a moment and find a balance for the habit. When it’s more balanced, then you are ready to look at that question, whose karma is this, anyhow?” You begin to see the “nobody” that is there behind the somebody.
Karma is the planting of a seed. Simply put if you want sweet apples, you will never get them by planting lemon seeds. If you want apples, you have to plant apples. And yet, the habit energy can be so strong that you keep planting the same old seed, such as planting the seed of self-judgment when anger arises. This simply deepens the habit energy. There must be awareness of the process in which you are caught.
The Buddhist terminology is helpful here. Pali offers two words where the English language gives us only one. Anusaya in the Pali language is habit energy. Asava is the outflow of that habit energy.
The habit energy, for example, is when someone pushes you, to push back. You note the anusaya, habit energy, and then each time you push back, judgment arises. This latter is the asava, the outflow of the habit energy. There might be constant state of self-recrimination or shame, or perhaps with the same habit energy of anger there might be the outflow of arising self-righteousness and blame of others. So, it is helpful to break down habit energy in that way to see that there are different predominate habit energies that come as conditions and results, and there is a flow to it.
Don’t try to lump it all together. Regard each as distinct. The outflow arose from the conditions of the habit energy and other conditions. When the habit energy is there, and other kinds of habit energies come together, a certain outflow will come. When you begin to see it in this way it becomes clearer this mind state is simply arisen from conditions and you don’t need to build a self-identity around it. This practice erodes the whole idea of the separate self.
Q: Is it possible to receive too much energy into your home and into your body and feel like you can’t control it?
Aaron: Yes, it is possible. If you are working with a skilled energy worker, they will be able to detect this sort of overflow and work with balancing it.
Some people have a habit to take in without releasing. How much water can you drink without eliminating it? How many inhales can you take without an exhale? So, it’s useful if there is a sense of excess to look at that within the self that is resistant to releasing. Perhaps there is a fear that if you release there will be nothing new to come to replenish it.
Q: When I was in Abadiãnia, between 2am and 4am I had many experiences with spirit energy. I am not clear why I had those experiences.
Aaron: Were those experiences visits from the entities, just looking in on you? Perhaps they were looking in on you at other times through the night, but at that time you were more open, more able to experience their presence. So it’s not that those were the only times they were present, but the times that you were able to perceive their presence. Often, especially after surgery, they’ll look in regularly through the night.
It may also have been another entity—one of your guides for example, and in that 2am to 4am period you were especially open and able to feel their energy.
Q: My experience felt very powerful and strong and sometimes scary.
Aaron: The experience of these entities sometimes felt scary?
Q: Yes
Aaron: My sister, I cannot tell you exactly what was happening for you, only conjecture.
When you visit the Casa there is often an intention to take another step in your growth. Picture here someone who is just learning to swim, is not yet a strong swimmer, staying in the shallow end of the pool. Finally, this person can swim across the pool and the teacher suggests to move to the deep end. You will swim up and down right next to the wall of the deep end. There is a certain point when it is time to let go of the rail and swim across, and that’s frightening. Each step beyond the self-perceived prior limits takes you into new, uncharted territory and it’s scary.
With the first decision to go to the Casa, you are stepping into that uncharted territory. You are constantly being asked to take one step further than you thought you could. You were never pushed into that step, you were invited, and yet your own spirit, your own aspiration says, yes, this is what I am here for. It is a constant letting go of old beliefs, of old attachments, belief in one’s own limitation, attachment to one’s own limitation.
You might ask, why would I be attached to limitation? It feels safe. Are you ready to leave the shallows and bring yourself into the river current? One has to develop confidence gradually. There is no shame in that. One must be very loving to the self and aware that this is hard work.
There is another possibility, which is that the energy you felt is something negative and thus felt frightening. Whatever of the negative may approach you, external or your own inner negative traits, offer it love. There at the casa you are very safe, with much mature positive energy to support your work.
Q: In the break now, Aaron told me that I should ask what I am supposed to do in relation to my illness. Who should I ask? I think Aaron meant spirit, someone spiritual, or an entity.
Aaron: Ask your guides, your higher self, whatever teachers may come to you. What I said was that there is a past life experience in which there was some need to limit the movement of one side of the body. This was quite a distant past life. The being that you were then committed violence with this side of the body and then experienced enormous shame and regret. I don’t want to say limitation was a direct result, but because of the idea that he had to cut off the use of that side of that body because of the violence of which it was capable, he co-created a situation which he fell off a ravine, damaged himself in such a way that the side of the body literally became paralyzed.
My sister, is it okay for me to continue, as this is private information. Are you comfortable if I continue? (Yes)
Part of your intention in this life is to forgive that being and bring that whole side of the body back into the heart. For whatever reasons, whether it is the Parkinson’s or some kind of blockage, whatever reasons, there is the gradual cutting off of the use of that side of the body.
What seems most urgent to me is to invite that whole side of the body back into the loving heart. To offer forgiveness in whatever ways this arm, this leg, this side of the body has done harm to beings in a past life. Ask the forgiveness of those who were harmed through the past aspects of this body, and offer forgiveness for those who have harmed you or karmic ancestors of this present self.
You might phrase it, “In whatever ways I have harmed, I ask forgiveness; in whatever ways acts have injured me, I offer forgiveness.” Then turn to the arms and legs and forgive them and ask their forgiveness in much the same way. Do this as a formal meditation practice, especially asking forgiving of others and then forgiving yourself.
I think the heart of it is the need to forgive those negative aspects of the self, of the past and of the present. This is true for all of you. Can you forgive that which is capable of feeling hate? Can you open to that in yourself?
“I hold myself in love. I forgive myself that such thoughts or actions have arisen. They have arisen out of conditions, old habit energy. My intention is never to use this kind of thought to harm others, and yet hate still arises, so I hold the habit energy in my heart, hold the intention to healing and I forgive this human and all humans in whom this kind of energy arises and is acted upon.”
It is about forgiveness and compassion. I can’t promise it’s going to change the physical condition—I think it’s likely to—but I can’t promise that. But you have nothing to lose, because there is a deeper healing that will come. Whatever physical healing is possible then will be more easily expressed because the karma is released. While I am speaking to just one person here, I think this is a helpful example for all of you.
Q: Aaron, what you told me is very important for me and I’m very grateful for this information.
Aaron: In Presence, Kindness and Freedom, or perhaps on the website, we have a formal forgiveness meditation and it would be helpful for you to read it. It’s in one of my books.
Remember, any of you who work with forgiveness meditation, that it must never be forced. We do not approach it from a place or “I should forgive,” but approach it instead from a place of compassion.
As compassion deepens, we find that there is nothing else left to forgive, and then the words and thoughts of forgiveness come easily. Forgiveness is a process like turning on a dimmer switch. It’s not an event; it’s a growing process, opening into the forgiveness of the loving heart.
There is nobody here who has not at some time in this life acted in a way that you regret. This is a very valuable practice for all of you, because when you forgive yourself and find compassion for the human who acted out his/her fear, you find the compassion for others who have acted thusly to you.
To forgive does not mean to condone. You have acted in an unskillful way, or another has. When you forgive another, you don’t say, “What you did is okay,” but “I understand that this came from your own fear, suffering, and distortion. It’s not okay on one level; you caused pain to me or to others. But compassion is strong, and I forgive you. I open my heart to you, I let you back into my heart.”
So don’t confuse this with condoning the unskillful behavior. It is about compassion. When compassion is full there is nothing left to forgive.
Q: There is terrorism today in the world and hate towards Americans. We are fighting a war in Iraq. US soldiers are suffering. How do we best heal this for ourselves, for the terrorists, and those around the rest of the world?
Aaron: You are human. You are here on earth for a reason, and you must be involved in the affairs on the human plane. All of your highest responsibility is to learn how to bring the deepest love you can, the deepest compassion that you can, to those affairs. And when you do, the heart knows what to say, it knows how to speak out.
What is playing out in the world is an outward expression of what is playing out within your own selves: the ‘war’ between hatred and loving kindness. Thus, the first place to start is within yourself. Ask yourself if you are creating a separation, holding yourselves separate from the world situation and feeling you are not responsible or do not want that responsibility. You can never say, “It’s their war” or ‘”It’s their fault.” None of you are exempt from responsibility, no matter whom you voted for. Is there any war remaining in you? If so, can you begin to heal it, to heal the division from within your own self?
Next, it is very helpful to regard your attitude toward those who seem to be at blame for the war. Is it an antagonistic, angry attitude? Can you change that anger into compassion, remembering compassion knows how to say no?
Invite the change by presence with those who must make these decisions. Feel their pain and uncertainty, their wish for peace. It is only through that strong compassion that you are going to bring forth a government that can make wiser and more loving decisions in the world. Fear can never bring forth a loving government. Anger cannot. Complacency also cannot. Turning the back cannot.
Where do you find compassion in the midst of pain and violence? I am telling Barbara’s stories today. More usually, I tell my own stories, but Barbara’s seem relevant today.
In the 1960’s she was involved in many non-violent actions for social change, especially in the South—Freedom Rides, sit-ins, and so forth. After one demonstration. she found herself one of a number of women thrown into jail—not a new experience for her. She felt that bigotry had thrown her in jail and was angry. There was a lot of righteous anger.
The cell was perhaps the size of this room, with a dozen or more women inside. As she tells the story, she was pacing up and down the cell, muttering angry words, wanting someone to blame. A middle-aged black woman, a lovely woman with graying hair wearing a black flowered dress and a hat that she still wore with the hat pin in it, this woman walked up to Barbara, took her by the hand and said, “You look so angry.”
Barbara said, “Yes I am angry; aren’t you angry, too?” The woman said to her, “Of course I’m angry, sweetheart, but I also love them, and they are so afraid.”
This is a very powerful statement from a woman who has lived her life under that bigotry. “Of course I am angry, but I also love them, and they are so afraid.” This is the voice of compassion. It doesn’t judge the anger, it transcends the anger, perhaps even transmutes the anger, using the anger energy that carries into the compassionate heart and allows you to bring forth the change in the world.
You need that anger; you need that energy. You need not live the concepts carried by the anger, all the blame and hatred, but rather transmute the anger into energy that can connect you with your innate compassion and your knowing of how to bring forth change in the world from that place of wisdom.
Q: Millions of children are dying of AIDS in Africa. What can we do?
Aaron: Once again, look to the way you are contributing to the situation. Look deeply at yourself at any greed, any separation that says “their problem.” How many of you are ready to go down there and work for six months in some kind of public health situation, even an unskilled one? How many of you are willing to give a sizable portion of your income to agencies that are dedicated to resolving AIDS and other health crisis? I am not saying you should do this. I am asking you to consider that it is not their problem; it is a problem to which all contribute. None are helpless to contribute to the resolution.
I said earlier there are no problems, only situations that need your loving attention. Greed—not their greed, our greed; fear—not their fear, our fear. These are what call for your loving attention.
In the world toward which you all aspire and which is possible, in this world of higher non-dual consciousness, a world where there is not a negative reaction to fear, in this world if there is going to be peace and good health you have to trust your abilities to bring that forth, to co-create it.
This perhaps is the carrot at the end of the stick: knowing that you can co-create that, but to do so you must do the hard work with yourself, which we’ve been speaking of all day. To open with love to that which is perceived as negative in yourself and in the world. To watch all the habit energies. Not to take a stick and beat down negativity, but instead learn how to love even the negative.
Fear is not the problem; fear is just fear. How do you related to fear? When you learn to relate to fear with a loving heart, fear will no longer have power over you, it will just be like a hiccup that comes and goes. Eventually it will cease to come very often. But while it still comes, no problem. “Ah, here is fear. Breathing in, I am aware of fear; breathing out, I smile to fear.” Watch it bubble to the surface and fall away—pop! Don’t make problems.
You are love. Be love.
I would like to close with a guided meditation on compassion. (This meditation was not taped and transcribed. The following is a very similar meditation taken from a previous workshop.)
Compassion (Karuna)
To be read to yourself or shared aloud with a friend. Please pause at each space between lines.
Traditionally loving-kindness meditation begins with the self. I find that in your culture it is very difficult for many people to offer loving wishes to themselves, and so we begin with one to whom it is easier to offer such thoughts and then come around to the self later. In the traditional practice, one also offers loving wishes to a neutral person before the difficult one. Here I have left out this step to make the practice shorter. Please include it if you wish.
Compassion is not forgiveness, which is a further step, but only the opening of your heart to the pain of all beings and wishing them well.
There is no wrong or right way to do this practice. If resistance arises, simply note it and reenter the meditation in whatever way you are able. You are not requested to dive all the way in but only to enter as deeply as is comfortable.
As you work with this practice, please modify it and make it your own.
* * * * *
Find a comfortable position, body relaxed, back erect, eyes closed softly.
Bring to the heart and mind the image of one for whom there is loving respect. This person may be a dear friend, parent, teacher, or any being with whom the primary relationship is one in which you have been nurtured.
We often take such a person for granted, see what is offered to us but fail to see deeply into that being’s situation. Look deeply at that being, deeper than you ever have before, and see that he or she has suffered. He has felt pain of the body or the heart. She has known grief, loss, and fear. He has felt loneliness and disconnection. She has been lost and confused. Along with the joy, see the ways this dear one has suffered.
Speaking silently from the heart, note this one’s pain, offering first the person’s name.
You have suffered. You have felt alone or afraid. You have known pain in your body and your mind. You have known grief and loss. You have felt alienation, and the constriction of the closed heart. Your life has not always brought you what you might have wished. You have not been able to hold on to what you loved or to be free of what brought pain. You have suffered.
What loving thoughts can you offer to this dear one? Let the thoughts come with the breath, arising and moving out.
May you be free of suffering.
May you find the healing that you seek.
May you love and be loved.
May your heart open and flower.
May you know your true nature.
May you be happy.
May you find peace.
Please continue silently, repeating these or alternate phrases for several minutes. Go slowly. Allow your heart to connect with this dear one, to open to his or her pain and offer these wishes, prompted by the loving heart. I will be quiet.
(Longer pause)
Now, let this loved one move aside and in his or her place invite in your own self. It is sometimes hard to open our hearts to ourselves. What blocks this love? Just for the sake of experiment, please try to follow the practice and see how it feels, even if it is difficult—but always without force.
Look deeply at the self and observe that, just as with the loved one, you have suffered. Speaking to yourself, say:
I have suffered. I have felt pain of the body and the mind. I have known grief, loss, and fear. I have felt loneliness and disconnection, felt lost and confused. I have not been able to hold on to what I loved, nor to keep myself safe from that which threatened me. I have suffered.
See the ways you have suffered. Without engaging in self-pity, simply observe the wounds you have borne.
Speaking silently from the heart, this time to your own self, say your name.
What do you wish for yourself?
May I be free of suffering.
May I find the healing that I seek.
May I love and be loved.
May my heart open and flower.
May I know my deepest connection with All that Is.
May I be happy.
May I find peace.
Please continue silently, repeating these or alternate phrases for several minutes. Go slowly. Allow your heart to connect with your deepest self, to open to your pain and longing, and to offer wishes prompted by the loving heart. I will be quiet.
(Longer pause)
Now let the self move aside, and in its place invite in one with whom there has been hard feeling.1 It is best not to choose the heaviest relationship at first, but allow yourself to practice with a less difficult relationship and then move slowly to those relationships that bring up heavier emotions.
It is so painful to maintain separation. A wise teacher2 said, “Never put anyone out of your heart.” What blocks opening?
Letting go, we invite the open heart.
If it is difficult, use no force. Note resistance.
For the sake of experiment, you might follow the practice just to see how it feels. Please express your own pain too, as you speak to this one. Can you feel the space where your pain and that person’s pain are one?
Say this one’s name. Speak from your heart.
You have hurt me, through your words, your acts, even your thoughts.
Through what came from you I have experienced pain.
When I look deeply, I see that you have suffered. You have felt alone and afraid. You have known pain in your body and your mind. You have felt loss and grief, have felt alienated, felt your heart closed. Your life has not always brought you what you might have wished.
May you be free of suffering.
May you find the healing that you seek.
May your heart open and flower.
May you love and be loved.
May you come to know your true nature.
May you be happy.
May you find peace.
Please continue silently, repeating these or alternate phrases for several minutes. Go slowly. Allow your heart to connect with this person, to open to his or her pain, and to offer wishes prompted by the loving heart. I will be quiet.
(Longer pause)
Throughout the world, beings suffer. Not only humans but plants, insects, animals, even the earth herself.
May all beings everywhere be free of suffering.
May all beings be happy.
(Bell)
May all love and be loved.
May all find the healing that they seek.
(Bell)
May all beings everywhere find perfect peace.
(Bell)
Appendix A – Trainings
From Aaron in Abadiania: 24 January 2004: Speaking to a very small group.
I want to begin with a clear delineation of the basic trainings and initiations taught through many traditions.
You will see the beginning trainings to be no different than what you have been learning from me for years. You have thought of these as “Buddhist” practice, learning to be present with the arisings of body, emotions, and thought. The Buddha, in his infinite compassion for beings, did not emphasize the later trainings. They were available for those who were ready for them, and many were. But the higher trainings are not necessary for release from the cycle of birth and death, from samsara.
The core of what he taught was all that was necessary for freedom, that is, to end this karmic cycle of birth and death. Those who have thusly learned may choose to come back as bodhisattva, and many do, and are then able to learn and master the higher trainings. This does not mean that you must be a bodhisattva or even a fully enlightened being to move into these higher trainings, but it is more helpful to master the foundation first, so that is where we have started.
These trainings are in every tradition. They are given different names. The Buddhist tradition would call it training but we do not speak of initiations. What is an initiation? It is the opportunity to practice the skills in which you have been training and see if you have mastered them, offered as a test. If you fail, it simply indicates the need for further practice. Thus, the initiation is a guideline for your readiness to move on to more advanced skills. Your modern day fraternities and sororities sometimes have initiations with a very misunderstood use of that word. Here they are merely endurance contests. This has little to do with the true meaning of the phrase initiation.
I will now delineate these trainings, giving some basic information about each. Trainings one and two may come in either order and usually are learned together. They are the trainings to observe the arisings within the physical and emotional bodies. One notes that sensations and emotion arise out of conditions and when the conditions cease, these sensations and emotions will cease. The end result of the training at this level is a lessened self-identification with what has arisen, and an ability for more spaciousness with difficult body and emotion experience. Training three does the same work with thought. The phrase, “Don’t believe everything you think,” distills the essence of training three.
As you can see, these first three trainings are the essence of basic dharma practice, but Jesus taught the same thing in a different way. He did not give us the precise steps with which to transform difficult body sensation, emotion and thought, only reminded us that when one slaps us on the face we could return love not hatred. In large part, he did not spell it out because it already had been expressed by the Buddha, by all the practices within the various mystery schools such as those of the Druids and Essenes, and in many traditions. Jesus was speaking to all the people but I think he felt it was sufficient to remind them to “turn the other cheek,” and that those who already knew how to release the anger could do so with this reminder. Those who did not yet know how would seek training.
These first three were the trainings given to the youngest of children in the Essene tradition. They were taught never to despise even the most negative arisings in the self, but to recognize them as the result of conditions, to make space for them and to allow their release. Actually even little children moved quickly into the sixth, seventh and eighth trainings which I will describe shortly.
The initiations for these first three trainings were freely given in life, through the stubbed toe, the rude remark that brought anger and the restless mind with its judgments, fears and complaints.
The fourth training was the first opening into the experience of selflessness, no-self. It was the first seeing of the small self as a created mind object and the first knowing of the greater Self. There was as yet no stability resting in that place of greater Self, only the first glimpse of it. This glimpse changes everything. If one has a deep commitment to non-harm one can no longer act out of one’s ego and fear and still be honest with one’s values. Included in this training, are the deepenings of … I am hesitant to use the term Sila here because others may not know this term but there is no other precise English equivalent term. For those unfamiliar with the word sila, it is a Pali language word. It connotes moral awareness, not a “Thou shalt not…” morality but a morality deeply based on knowing the non-separation of self and other.
The fifth training is the opening into non-dual awareness. It is the fruit of the first four trainings. In the fifth training, one more deeply recognizes relative reality and ultimate reality. Here is the first view that these realities are not dualistic, each to each, but that relative reality is an expression of ultimate reality. This means that when you are present with relative reality, the ground of the ultimate is still there. When you are resting on top of the ocean’s surface, rising and falling with the waves, the stillness of the depths is still there. When you sink to the depths, the waves continue to rise and fall far above you. Mastery at the fifth level of training involves a more conceptual understanding. One who has mastered this remembers it but is rarely able to hold both places simultaneously. In Buddhist terms, this person is often at the stream-entry level.
The sixth, seventh and eighth trainings mirror the first, second and third but at a deeper level. Here one is asked to bring in what one understands about the conditioned arisings of physicality, emotion and mind, and to merge those insights with the experience of no-self, and with the, at this point, conceptual nondual understandings. One understands that difficult emotions will arise, for example, and one has learned how to not react to those emotions either by acting them out or by suppression, but just to make space for them. But they still arise. We understand they are conditioned, that this is the outplay of karma, of habit, but they still arise. When the training is deep enough not to react with negativity to their arising, but to bring kindness, then it is time to deepen the fifth training and begin to use it as a tool for the transmutation of the heavier body and mind experiences.
The four empowerments and seven branch prayer are useful here. In summary of those practices, you turn to the master for support, and with gratitude that these models of clarity and love exist for you. You see the negative emotion that has arisen, for example. Without a contraction, without a negative feeling about the arising, you experience compassionate regret that it continues to arise. You know it as result of conditions. You understand that for the result to cease to arise, the conditions must change. You understand that you are stuck in this place. Then arises the two levels of resolution; you resolve to clarify this habit energy on the relative level, and on the ultimate level you understand the already existent resolution of the habit. You can see here why training five must precede six, seven and eight.
Within this ultimate level of resolution, you clearly see the balance or antidote to the heavy energy that has arisen. For example, if there is jealousy, you do not try to feel joyful for the one who has received, so much as find that already existent joy and the willingness to nurture it. When there is restlessness in mind and body, you both resolve to allow the release of restlessness and you see clearly the entire resolution of restlessness, which is peace, tranquility and stillness. And you find those already existent in the Self. There is the willingness not to perpetuate the contracted energy of the restlessness but to turn one’s focus to that which is more spacious.
If you see a being act in a brutal way toward another, and a strong judgment arises in the mind, right there with the judgment you note the possibility of compassion. You do not hold to the stories of judgment, you note that holding as old habit. Working with either the four empowerments or seven branch prayer, you both resolve to allow the arising of compassion and you see the already existent compassion and that you have the choice to hold on to the judgment or to shift into compassion. You see the nondual nature of judgment and compassion, that judgment is simply a distortion of compassion, a fear based expression of the inherently compassionate mind. You do not have to get rid of judgment for compassion to be known; judgment will go when it is ready. The question is whether you will focus your attention on the judgment and become caught in its stories, or in the negativity of judging judgment, or whether you will know it as a distorted expression and joyfully release it. In either case, you may move to stop the abuser. The judgment mind will attack with negativity. The compassionate mind will stop the abuse with loving energy. It will know how to say no with kindness, without fear or contraction.
The ninth training is a deepening level of understanding of no self. Here one becomes more stable in opening to that deep interconnection of all that is. When something pulls you out of that spaciousness and integration, you know that you are out. You understand that it is a temporary result of conditions. You do not take it as truth. You work with that experience of separation in the same way that you have worked with difficult body, emotion and mind experience in the sixth, seventh and eighth trainings. Thus separation and the arising of the small ego self are seen through Awareness. The greater Self is readily accessible. You understand that you go one direction or the other by habit and choice.
The tenth training is the deeper resolution of duality. One experiences oneself as a pole, feet grounded in the relative, and we could say here the base and lower chakras grounded in the relative, head and upper chakras grounded in the ultimate. The heart is that which holds it all together. At this level, you truly become an instrument of light. I do not want to suggest that those in the lower trainings and with heartfelt intention to transcend negativity are not instruments of light, but they are instruments of light in training. The tenth level is the first of more mature service to the light. It is the first level where the automatic response to negativity is to offer it love, to draw it into the light, to draw the negativity up inward into the light and bring the light downward into the negativity. This is possible because you are touching both. You cannot touch both so long as there is residual aversion to negativity, nor so long as there is duality.
At this point, the vibrational frequency in all of the bodies is in process strongly of transforming. The person at this level is increasingly able to experience negativity as low vibration frequency and to understand experientially the power of light as tool. At this level, there still may be karma to resolve so there may not be full liberation but there is the understanding that the liberation is in sight. At the full maturity of the tenth training and initiation, often, in Buddhist terms, is the once-returner.
The eleventh to fifteenth of trainings and initiations repeat the cycle. In trainings eleven through thirteen the adept is using his/her mastery of light in a continual way to transform negative energy as it arises in body, emotions and mind. The fourteenth training often leads one to a more profound enlightenment experience and the ability to easily hold both the personality self and the ground of being. The fifteenth training and initiation is of the deepening learning to stably hold this light not only into the inner experiences but into the outer world. Here of course we are at the level of non-returner, although many such beings choose to return in service. Karma is resolved to the degree that karma does not force return. There is still some karma, it comes to fruition quickly and is resolved with light.
Now we move to the higher training. I think you can see where this is going. Once this mastery is in place, anything may be done with light. The being who has done this work while deeply grounded in positive polarity, with deepest intention of the good of all beings, will use these deeper practices for healing. By healing I mean the healing of distortion on the physical, emotion and mental levels, in itself and everywhere in the world, wherever that healing is requested. The entities here are great masters. The tools they use are those of light. All of the practices alluded to in the book are real; cellular regeneration, light conception and so forth. Back in the times of Lemuria and Atlantis, these were common practices but the beings were higher density, not third density beings. The work now has been to teach third density human to bring forth these practices that were known and lost because of the heavy density human experience. It is not necessary that they be lost. More clearly put, it is not necessary that just because you have a heavier density body you cannot still work with light. In this process, the earth and all upon it raises in vibrational frequency. All who are ready to sustain that higher vibration will shift into fourth density, including the earth itself. And I think soon after, in cosmic time, into fifth density. Yet this density will all be comprised of the basic elements; earth, air, fire, water and ether, and will not have only a crystalline base.
Some of you are higher density adepts, bodhisattvas really, returned to help carry forth this transformation. Some of you are third density beings ready for transformation and who have brought this forth through your courage in repeated growths through endless incarnations in this third density plane. You are all seeking one thing together; the movement of matter into light, without loss of any of the beautiful qualities of matter. This shift has the power to literally transform the universe. That is why darkness so fears it.
Darkness wishes to keep matter at a low vibration, for darkness itself is a low vibration. It is based on fear, hatred, greed and self-centeredness. Light understands self-centeredness as Self-centeredness, which means holding All-that-Is is at the center. It understands that it is this All-that-Is; “I Am That!” Negative polarity puts the personality self at center. One is constantly at odds with the other, thus there is constant contraction.
The entities here are not only assisting with physical healing. That is one gift of their work. But the core of their work is the bringing forth of the light into this earth plane. We who do this work simply call ourselves brothers and sisters of light. You are also brothers and sisters of light, still in training, as we are still in training, all beings going into greater and greater light.