April 4, 2010 Sunday Morning, Spirit Rock Dedicated Practitioners Program (DPP), Berkeley
Anapanasati; Crucifixion and Resurrection: Blessing our Nails; Contacting Guides
Keywords: crucifixion/resurrection, Jesus/Jeshua, healing, pain, dependent origination, heavy emotion
Aaron: My blessings and love to all of you. I am Aaron. Thank you for this opportunity to share some thoughts with you.
I cannot let it go past that today is Easter Sunday. While I’m speaking to a dharma group, the whole experience of the crucifixion and resurrection in its symbolic form is very much outside traditional Christianity.
Letting go of the Church’s ideas about the crucifixion and resurrection, each of you experiences what we might call a crucifixion initiation, the cross that you bear, symbolically. For some of you it’s the memories of childhood pain or abuse, or it’s physical disability, body pain, emotional pain, mental confusion, areas of self-doubt, or feelings of unworthiness.
In another sense of a crucifixion, we must die to the old self before we can enter into the new self. We must in a sense die to the everyday mind and personality self and self-identification with it, and the self-identification with any of the skandhas. It’s not that the skandhas die; it’s that there’s no longer self-identification with them so we die to that small ego self, and this leads you into the resurrection.
And what is this resurrection? It’s literally the moving into a higher consciousness based on the non-self-identification with the skandhas. It’s the higher consciousness, let’s call it non-dual consciousness, opening into that pure awareness or non-dual mind. It honors the self, takes care of the body, takes care of the emotions, does not have any disdain for the physical experience but knows itself to be radiant, beautiful spirit. It knows that it is not separate from anything, and that when it acts in ways that do harm in the world, it is simply harming itself; even to throw the trash on the ground is harming the self.
You are all here in the incarnation, especially those in this group who are dedicated spiritual practitioners, to look at the crucifixion and embrace and nurture the move towards resurrection.
I want to honor the one who came known as Jeshua who modeled this path. He was not trying to teach people to be Christians. He was not a Christian. He was literally teaching the possibility of moving from everyday consciousness to higher consciousness and living in that higher consciousness.
Spirits of course speak to one another, so if I say “He said to me,” do not be surprised by that. Talking with him once about the experience of being nailed to the cross, the nails penetrating flesh, he was asked, “How did you not get caught in that terrible agony?” He said, “I brought attention to the nails as an instrument of blessing. If I had hated the nails it would have pulled my whole consciousness down so that the resurrection would not be possible. In order to maintain that higher consciousness, I had to accept these nails entering the body as an instrument of light, literally as a blessing, to which I had agreed.”
At some level hehadagreed to the crucifixion, of course. He did not just stumble into that path; he was not a helpless victim who was crucified. So he said, “I blessed these nails, and because of that blessing consciousness, they brought light and energy into the body and helped raise the body into an ever higher vibration. It’s that higher vibration that allowed for the resurrection.”
This is no different than any of you. How do you bless your own experiences of nails, whatever they may be, instead of hating them? How can that blessing completely shift your experience so that instead of sinking into an increasingly contracted and negative consciousness you move into a higher consciousness?
If as you sit and mind goes to some degree to what I just said, and if there is some thought about it of, let’s say, the arising of memory of deep pain and the question, “How do I bless this pain?” reach out and ask Him, He who experienced this crucifixion and resurrection that you remember in your lives today. He’s available to you. Ask him, “How do I bless this pain? I don’t know how to do it.” And see if He comes to you and guides you.
I would like to add here that I love you all. Let us sit for 45 minutes…
bell
Barbara: I think most of you were here when I was here last time with James almost 2 years ago, am I right?(yes)
My path has been interesting since then. I’ve been returning to Brazil every year. There continue to be physical changes but the biggest change has been inward.
Somewhere along the line, I think about the time that I last saw you, it occurred to me that I was trying to do something in a linear fashion, which is to go from deafness to hearing, and I was not paying attention to that which could already hear.
I had a very powerful experience, I think the summer after I saw you here. I had a bad fall and broke my big toe. The doctor said 6 to 8 weeks for it to heal. It hurt. I couldn’t walk. So I was lying on my bed with my foot elevated and spirit said to me, “Right there with the broken toe is the ever-healed toe, that which was never broken.”
“What do you mean? It’s broken and in 6 to 8 weeks it will heal.”
“Why should it take 6 to 8 weeks if it’s already healed? There are simply molecules that are disrupted and have moved apart. Simply invite them to come back together. That “togetherness” is already present.”
Spirit suggested that I chant using the sacred word OM and whatever tone the toe seemed to want to hear. For 3 days I spent hours everyday chanting OM to the toe. I woke up on the fourth morning and there was no pain left. I stood up. It had gone through a vast range of purples, blues and greens but now in this morning it looked faded blue, it was no longer brilliant and streaked. The swelling had gone down.
Spirit said, “Take the tape off, it’s healed.” The doctor’s x-ray not only showed it healed but it showed no break to begin with. There was not any sign that it had been broken. This really got my attention in terms of my deafness. If the deafness is real, I have to relate to it as though it’s real. But as long as I keep trying to fix it, I am recreating it.
I see this in people, for example in people who have been survivors of sexual abuse. First they do need to go through the knowing that they were a victim, that they did not cause the abuse. Then they have to get out of that victim mode and they start to see themselves as survivors. But then they can spend the rest of their lives being a survivor, which is just someone else to be. It’s not freedom. And one has to then recreate certain kinds of, perhaps not sexual abuse but mildly abusive issues so that one can keep reminding oneself, “I am a survivor.” In what ways was I recreating the whole image of someone who is deaf, keeping it going? What if I just stop being deaf?
I can’t remember exactly where I was when I last saw you. I had heard thunder, I know that, and had shared that with you. And I think the next trip maybe after I saw you, I was sitting in the big meditation room there and at the close of the session they began to sing the song Amazing Grace, and I heard it. It was so powerful to hear the music. I did not hear the words, I heard the music, just pure tones, sound.
There was a man sitting almost beside me, a well-known opera singer, baritone, with beautiful baritone voice, and it was his voice I was hearing. Later he invited me to sing it with him, and he said to me, “You’re singing it on tune.” Now, I’ve never heard this song– probably I had heard it somewhere but it never registered, almost 40 years ago. At the time I lost my hearing I had never paid attention to this song. So if I heard it in the background I didn’t recognize it.
He said, “You’re hearing it.” I’m increasingly hearing tones, and hearing sounds like cars driving by. I don’t hear words. The Casa Entities have told me words are the last thing I will hear because the brain has to interpret the sound. First I have to hear the pure sound. But this has shifted my practice.
Q:It’s been my experience that you occasionally do hear words.
Barbara: Maybe. There’s no reason why I would not be increasingly hearing words. The brain has to learn to interpret the sounds I am hearing and make sense of them. I think I hear certain tones better than others. I hear certain words better than others. What I hear when people speak is like a static-y “eh eh eh” kind of a sound. It doesn’t make any sense as a word.
But what this has done for my practice is to take me much deeper into a place of knowing the simultaneity of relative and ultimate. On the relative plane, yes, one might say I’m still deaf. On the ultimate level, I need to fully acknowledge my wholeness, that I’m not deaf, and live from that place of wholeness. And this is what we all need to do in our lives, whatever our situation. We can’t deny the relative experience. We can’t get stuck in it, so we can’t just go off in the ultimate realm and live there as a permanent vacation from the strain of relative. But we can’t get stuck in the relative, either. How do we bring it together?
I’ve just finished a book about this calledCosmic Healing. It will come out next March. I delivered the manuscript to the publisher on Friday… The publisher is here in Berkeley.
It’s basically a dharma book. It’s a book about my own spiritual path – losing my hearing, meeting Aaron, and so forth – but it’s really a dharma book about the simultaneity of relative and ultimate and how we live both together.
So that’s what I’ve been passionate about the past 2 years since I last saw you.
Today Aaron would like to offer you a choice. He says he can give a formal dharma talk but that seems like a waste of your time, not that he has nothing to say but that he can give as much of a dharma talk in small segments, speaking to each of you, if each of you want to share your practice, your life, whatever questions you have, and let him just spend this time– he says with 12 or so of you there’s time to really go around and touch everybody’s practice and experience in depth, if you’d like to do that.
Group: Yes!
Barbara: He says that there will be so many overlaps that he feels that you will gain from hearing from each other’s experience. He reminds us that we did this the last time, we ran out of time and were still going at 6:30 at night. He says, why don’t we just start now.
I’d like to invite anybody who needs to leave early to make sure you talk in this next hour of the morning. And then in the afternoon after lunch we’ll have time to talk with more people. And Aaron says he’s sure he will digress into mini-dharma talks as we go along. He says his idea is to get to each person once but not to be afraid to ask questions and people can talk 2 or 3 times as different issues to come up. But to direct attention to one person at a time, and then develop whatever dialogues between us that come up.
Anybody is welcome to start. In starting, simply share either. . . Aaron will incorporate into the body and speak directly but he’s saying directly, please share what’s happening in your practice and in your life and any specific question about this in a concise way.
Q:My dharma practice right now is taking care of my grandbabies— they’re 5 ½ months old– and learning so much from their development. And how it’s teaching me that somebody so new to this world is quickly acquiring self and likes and dislikes. I think the last few months have taught me more about self than many years of practice. At first I thought taking care of babies is time away from my practice. Now I realize it IS the practice.
And the other thing I like is doing some Buddhist chaplaincy, not in a formal sense but being available to whatever I see, sadness or need. And that seems to give me a lot of fulfillment.
Barbara: Do you have any questions you want to bring to Aaron?
Q:I just want to ask the direction that I need to take for my practice.
Barbara: Let’s let Aaron come in.(Aaron incorporates)
Aaron: I am Aaron. My love to you all. It sounds like you already have a clear direction for your practice. Why are you asking me?
Q:Just sharing.
Aaron: You have shared, but there’s nothing for you to ask me. The direction for your practice is to look at the doubts that you’re experiencing– am I doing it right? Is there something different I should be doing? As long as you keep listening to your heart you’re doing fine. Then the mind comes in and thinks, “But babysitting isn’t dharma.” Of course it is.
When this little one begins to crawl– is it a boy or girl?
Q:Two girls.
Aaron: And they are how old?
Q:5 ½, 6 months.
Aaron: Twin girls about 6 months old. Twin girls! That’s a wonderful challenge. When they begin to crawl, get down on the floor with them and see the world from their perspective. See how much you can come back to beginner’s mind, seeing the world with bare perception, don’t know what it is. See how quickly mind jumps into, “Oh, that’s such and such,” and just consigns it to being that. Watch their curiosity about things. When they start to put things in their mouth, put them in your mouth too; see how it feels. What’s the direct experience of this thing? (demonstrates) How does it feel in my mouth? How does it smell? What’s its texture? How do I relate to it? Don’t just label it as “this” or “that” but really know it from the direct experience.
Watch the way they relate to it. As you said, you’re learning so much about how they react to new things, how they learn what’s safe and what isn’t safe. This is the creation of the conditioned mind. And now you at the opposite end are, let us say, dissolving the conditioned mind. So while they’re learning to create a conditioned mind and move into a sense of self, to be a human, you’re taking it to the next step and transcending the human. It’s a wonderful opportunity. Enjoy. You are blessed to have such teachers.
Do look at doubt. What we spoke of before, and this.
Q:I’ve been sitting with the question of how I can bless the pain and the idea of being a survivor of my childhood abandonment issues. I seem to be experiencing issues of separation from my husband, and my son is older and about to move on, and issues about friendship, and my body. So I’m on the one hand feeling frightened and uncertain and on the other hand I feel strong and centered.
Aaron: You said feeling separation anxiety with your husband and son. Are you separated from your husband?
Q:Not physically but it feels like emotionally we’re separating. And I don’t know if I should physically separate, or does it matter?
Aaron: Have the two of you tried to heal this, to reconnect and recreate intimacy? Emotional intimacy?
Q:Not really.
Aaron: Why not?
Q:He seems to be seeking heart connections with others.
Aaron: Perhaps he is looking for that connection because he doesn’t know how to find it with you.
Q:Yes.
Aaron: And perhaps if the two of you begin to investigate that and remind each other that– I assume you once had a heart connection (Q: Yes) and that you very much want to recreate that, and begin to explore together, what keeps us from that heart connection? You may find that this is exactly the path to healing that you need. Perhaps the issues that keep you from that connection with him are also the personal karmic issues that need to be healed. Perhaps he in some ways is and can be your teacher and you, his.
You say he’s looking for a heart connection with other people; that says to me that he’s as lonely as you are.
Q:Yes, I understand that. But, I’m having trouble letting go of my “trips”– old stories.
Aaron: Now we have a place to direct practice! But this is not what you have to dobeforeyou initiate a connection with him, it’s work you need to dowhileyou initiate the connection. Because you’ll see that which pulls back from connection and how it’s based in the stories. But if you don’t initiate the connection, you don’t trigger the stories so much and then you don’t have to deal with them. And dealing with them is painful. (Q: Yea!)
So if you’re willing to trigger the connection, to invite the connection and trigger the painful stories, then you can look into what keeps these stories going; get to know these stories and see them as they are. And I think they’re not just about your husband, they’re old stories that you’ve carried for a long time. Stories about not being safe in the world, not being worthwhile, not being loved.
Q:Yes. So how do I bless the pain?
Aaron: Let’s start with something else.
You’re in the DPP program so you have a stable and ongoing practice, yes?
Q:Absolutely.
Aaron: When you’re sitting and there’s some body pain, how do you relate to it? Describe your practice to me, there.
Q:It’s painful but it does not cause me to suffer.
Aaron: So you note pain as throbbing or heat or burning. You note that it has an unpleasant feeling, but there’s not any strong self-identity with it; you just watch it and it dissolves?
Q:It can dissolve in a moment.
Aaron: And if it doesn’t dissolve, and if it becomes more intense, and the feeling grows from unpleasant to aversion, then what?
Q:It brings up a lot of old stories.
Aaron: Are you aware of the stories as they arise?
Q:As much as I’m able to. There’s a lot of denial.
Aaron: To bless the pain at this point is another way of perpetuating the denial. First you’ve got to be present with the pain, not to find ways to escape the pain by “blessing it” “Blessing” can also be a story! Does that make sense to you? I’m not saying to enhance the pain but to meet it right there and be with it, and watch the whole progression of pain, physical, emotional, unpleasant, aversion, stories, pulling back, withdrawing. You will see that this is just a habituated pattern.
It’s just really the chain of dependent arising. Contact with the thought or emotion. Mind touching the thought. Unpleasant, unpleasant feeling. Aversion, and the body contracts, and immediately – but it’s happening so fast it is hard to see – stories start coming. The practice is there but not strong enough at this point to see the story immediately as it arises and say, “story.” So there’s some getting caught in it, which is normal; it’s painful but not bad. But at some point there’s got to be the willingness to be present with the pain, not to try to fix the pain. What I said about blessing the pain is a way of working with the painafteryou’ve learned how to hold it, fully present with it. But if you try to bless the pain before you’re fully present with it, you’re still trying to fix it in some way.
So I’m asking you to do it step by step, and the first step is to be present with the pain. How you are present with the pain is to bring more spaciousness in. You said that the physical pain breaks up, it dissolves very quickly as you pay attention to it. What do you use as a primary object? Is the breath your primary object?
Q:Yes.
Aaron: So as the pain sensation dissolves, do you then bring attention back to the breath?
Q:I have trouble with the breath.
Aaron: Then what do you use as a primary object?
Q:I just kind of expand, I don’t know how else to describe it.
Aaron: Do you hear nada at all? The sound of silence, do you hear that sound at all?
Q:No.
Aaron: Do you watch the breath at the abdomen or the nostrils?
Q:The abdomen.
Aaron: You say you have trouble with the breath, can you explain that more?
Q:Well I’m used to holding my breath. It was recommended the last time I spoke with Aaron to develop a greater gratitude practice.
Aaron: Two different things here…I want to go somewhere more fundamental first. I understand why you have trouble with the breath as a primary object. I’d like you to try the experience of touch. The breath is really just a touching, it’s the touch of the breath at the nostrils, touching, touching. Or movement. Right now, sitting. Can you feel the buttocks touching the sofa?
Q:I actually think I do use touch.
Aaron: So I’d like to suggest you shift the primary object to touch. That’s number one. Number two. When there’s an object such as mild body pain or sensation, bring attention to it; in the first moment, there’s no strong aversion or story about it, there’s just burning, itching or throbbing or whatever it might be, unpleasant feeling, and then sensation dissolves or changes.
When it dissolves I would like you to rest in the space into which it dissolved until something else starts to come up, and then re-center yourself; don’t wander around but observe that there’s a moment of space before there’s any other impulse or thought or sensation. Simply become aware of the space.
Let’s listen to the bell. My voice, “hearing, hearing.” When I become quiet, bring attention to the touching sensation, buttocks on the cushion. When I sound the bell, attention moves from the touch; note, hearing, hearing. Stay with it until the hearing ends, sound ends. When object and consciousness are gone, rest in that space, even for a fraction of a second; feel the space. If something pulls you away from that space, immediately come back to touching.
Group practices with this, with sitting/ touching/ bell
Q:So practice with the being physically present. And the space is another physical place?
Aaron: The space is an object at this point. It’s simply that which remains when the sound is gone. Consciousness touches it as an object. But I want you to establish the sense of space in the physical sensations that you’re able to work with easily before you try to bring it in to the more challenging emotional objects. So let’s try this again.
Touching, close the eyes, focus…
(bell)
And when there’s a little thought like “what’s next?” just note “thinking” and come back to the touching. Or if there’s a hearing of a sound of somebody moving in their chair, “hearing”, come back to the touching, the buttocks touching the cushion.
(bell)
(bell)
The point here being that you become willing to not rush back to the primary object, to rest in the space into which an object dissolves. You learn how to do this. Then when there’s a heavy emotion and you experience the emotion, unpleasant feeling, aversion to it, and then the stories come, we see the story as another object and are not so caught in it.
Only then, when one can stably note “story” as another object and know it as pleasant/ unpleasant or neutral, can one ask, “What is this story protecting me from? If I was not experiencing this story now, what might I be feeling?”
Q:Alone.
Aaron: Loneliness, fear. We begin to see each object. So there’s a thought or emotion that begins the process. The thought, “My son is leaving.” Tension, tension. Breathing in I am aware of the tension, breathing out I smile to the tension. There’s a feeling, unpleasant, associated with the tension. If like the physical experience it begins to dissolve, rest in that space and then come back to the primary object.
If it doesn’t dissolve, remember, you’re not trying to make it dissolve. Rather, I would ask you to be with the contraction that’s there. Feel the contraction in the body. You’re skillful at working with physical experience. Don’t get lost in the emotion but know the physicality of fear.
Bring your hand to the place where fear is held in the body, wherever that may be. Bring kindness to the fear. You don’t have to go all the way into it at once, you’re not trying to conquer anything, you’re simply allowing it to break it open a bit and find space in it so the wisdom can open up, “This also is arisen from conditions, is impermanent and not self. Whatever has the nature to arise has the nature to cease. Various conditions have given rise to this object.” Ask, “How can I be with this object in a more wholesome way?”
As soon as stories come, as soon as you catch it, even if it’s 10 minutes into it, instead of saying, “Oh, there I go again,” just note, “story”. If judgment comes, “I should have caught it sooner,” note that. If there’s a strong impulse energy wanting to perpetuate the story, ask the question, “What is this story protecting me from? If I were not experiencing this story, what might I be experiencing?”
You might find yourself a lovely object, a small stone or shell, something that you can hold when you sit, something within which you truly see the divine; something that holds that radiance and light of the Ever-perfect. When you’re feeling a strong story and a lot of pain, pick it up and bring it into your heart, just hold it against your heart as a way of reminding yourself to bring love and kindness into your heart.
My sense is that you’re spinning around in a circle because when the story comes, it comes with a judgment. “I’m an experienced practitioner. I should be beyond this. Why am I stuck?” Old stories, so it’s just another story. Wanting to get away, no place to escape, how do I fix it? These are all stories.
You can’t stop the story from coming; it’s the result of conditions. We attend to the conditions and not the result. By that I mean you do consciously step back from the story but you’re not trying to stop stories in general from arising, you’re simply letting go of the self-identification with them; this one and this one. If I gave you a burning hot potato, would you hold onto it or would you drop it? I assume you would drop it.
Q:I hope so.
Aaron: I hope so too! So here’s a hot potato and another one and another one– just drop it!
But it’s another story that keeps you holding on as the one who’s trying to be the good one. There’s a misconception that says, “I should stay with what’s present,” but it’s not the story you stay with; , it’s what’s conditioning the story, which is fear, aloneness, as you said, old pain.
Only when you get to the point where you’re ready to be present with that pain, and you can’t do that until there’s more spaciousness, only at that point can you begin the practice of finding the blessing in the pain. Then you begin to ask, what does this pain come to teach me? How can I transform this pain?
Loneliness is a way of teaching you to open your heart and find your own radiance and beauty. If you knew who you were, how could you be lonely? You are God. You are beautiful. You are whole. You are not separate from anything. How can you be lonely? Lonely for human intimacy, yes, I understand that, but the one that knows its wholeness knows its interconnection with everything. It may feel alone but not lonely. Loneliness comes from a place of fearing oneself to be flawed and unwhole. Feeling alone, one seeks intimacy because of the joy of connection. There’s a huge difference.
Does that give you something to go on?
Q:Yes.
Q:First I want to say for myself and for my wife, who got sick this morning and couldn’t come, that she in particular wanted to say thank you to you and Aaron, because last time Aaron suggested to her that Jesus might be her guide. And then she emailed with Barbara who helped her stay with that to connect. And now she is feeling connected to Jesus as her guide. She is feeling extremely grateful to you and to Barbara.
Aaron: Please give her our love. I regret that she is ill and unable to be with us today.
Q:So, for myself, before I came to meditation practice I was a minister in the Presbyterian church. I found the ministry meaningful except the way the church teaches about Jesus never made sense to me. So much so that I found I couldn’t continue as a minister because I couldn’t uphold things like, that I thought Jesus was the only way, etc.
And then Thursday night we bought the book,47 Stories of Jesus. And in reading the introduction, your teaching about Jesus spoke what was in my heart and I felt a sense of healing. And that’s just happened.
My wife and I have been attending church with our daughter-in-law and granddaughter, which has been meaningful as being part of our granddaughter’s extended family at church.
Aaron: What kind of church is it?
Q:It’s a Methodist church, a very diverse, open… it’s a church that proclaims itself a reconciling church, meaning open to people of all races and ethnic background and sexual orientation. So it’s an easy church to be part of, or comfortable, or meaningful.
So I feel like part of my journey has been to connect my Christian understandings, which I now have a name for, with my meditation practice. An issue that’s part of all that is a strong sense of unworthiness I have and self-judgment. I’ve been working, I find myself sometimes so angry with myself over simple things like spilling something that I swear and talk to myself like I would never talk to anyone else. And when I do something more unskillful like disregard my wife or make a mistake at work that impacts a colleague, I can really get down on myself. This despite love and support from family, my wife, my work colleagues, the folks in this group, all of whom suggest to me that I am worthy.
I’ve tried to say lovingkindness for myself on an extended period. I’ve tried talking with my inner critic and challenging my self-judgment. I’ve tried a number of practices and I think I’m feeling more spacious toward myself, and then something happens and there I am, caught back up in my judgment in a way that alarms and floors me.
Aaron: I hear you. First, about the Christianity. I’m glad the book is meaningful to you. I’d like to suggest you read a book that we’ve been using with the 2-year Venture Fourth program calledPutting on the Mind of Christby Jim Marion. There may be Christian areas that you want to drop off from the book, but not too many. It’s more about the deeper aspect of Jesus’ presence and journey and what it means to put on that Christ consciousness, to move into that Buddha nature or Christ consciousness. How we are all moving into that higher consciousness, and how Jesus’ journey modeled that. I think you’ll find it a supportive book for your path.
In terms of the emotions, are you familiar with the Milarepa story?(Q:Yes)Okay. What I want you to do is very simple, then. What I hear from you is that you are doing battle with these emotions, and that’s just more contraction and negativity. I’d like you to do two specific things in your practice.
One, I’d like you to practice a bit with something very simple. Sitting– do you use the breath as a primary object?(Q: Yes)— sitting with the object. Have a heavy book available. At a certain point, with conscious intention, pick up the book, pick it up and hold it out like that, arm straight so there is strain, feeling the arm becoming heavy. First just a little bit of throbbing or ache in the shoulder, unpleasant. Then watch how unpleasant moves to aversion. Try to watch and see the story come up, “I’m not doing this well enough,” or see judging, and note “judging.” And then put the book down. As everything settles, the feeling of judgment, the agitation, the ache in the shoulder settle and dissolve, come back to the breath. Then do it again. In a 45 minute sitting, do it 5 or 10 times. Just keeping doing it, coming back to a centered place, and then doing it again.
What I’m suggesting here is to give you a very simple chain of objects to watch. Just watching: physical sensation, consciousness of the sensation, feeling, here of unpleasantness, aversion, and how you react to aversion, how quickly aversion serves as a trigger for a story of unworthiness.
The story never had any reality in the first place. You’re striving to be worthy but there is no worthy or unworthy. Striving to be worthy is just the flip side of trying not to be unworthy. It just gives the whole idea, “I am unworthy but if I work hard enough I’ll become worthy,” more power.
Yes, there are skillful choices, skillful acts, skillful words. There are unskillful acts and words. They do not denote worthiness or unworthiness. So I’d like you to practice in this very simple way until the chain of dependent arising becomes vividly clear, and seeing how the story arises.
Now there is a second part of this. For the first part, when the story arises, then put the book down. That probably will release the story, at least eventually, and bring you back just into the breath again. For the second part of it, watch the power of the story and just say, “Ah, you again. You, have tea.” What is this story? I don’t want you to do this first. Spend a month just working with the process of arising and dissolution, seeing how it’s all conditioned. You know it already, but do it until it’s completely beyond concept.
Then when you feel ready, instead of backing away from those conditions that are creating the stories, stay with the conditions. It’s still a manipulated condition. Stay with the condition. Offer the story tea. Tell it, “Just sit there. I see you have arisen from conditions. You’ll be there until the conditions resolve. The conditions are a result of the old habit energies of the mind, of negativity, fear, contraction, control. Right now I’m just going to sit holding space for this story until it goes. It will go.” Is that clear?
So I want you to deepen the wisdom mind that’s absolutely certain that the stories have no reality in themselves but are simply the result of conditions. You see a reality, “I spoke sharply to my granddaughter.” That was unskillful. What does it mean to say that I’m unworthy? “That was unskillful” was a fact. People do unskillful things. We can forgive ourselves and try to do better. “Therefore I am unworthy” is a story.
Okay?
You spoke of Jesus and his increased meaning in your life, and his earlier meaning when you were a minister. Turn to him for help. He is a master of forgiveness. Ask him to help you to find this kindness for yourself. Just speak to him with your heart and say, “These stories come up and I don’t know what to do with them. They’re so painful. Help me to release them.”
I don’t think you’re necessarily going to see him walk into the room and sit down beside you and give you seventeen items of advice. But it may come in your dreams or in your meditation. He’s available to you. Invite his presence in. He’s no less available than I am.
Let’s have one more before lunch.
Q:I have a painful situation in my life, which is that I have a brother who is lost to me. He’s cut off all contact. And I so much want to heal this. He doesn’t respond, even when our mother died.
Aaron: How long ago was the mother’s death?
Q:The end of November.
Aaron: Do you have other siblings?(Q: Yes)Is he in touch with those siblings?(Q: No)How many are there, total?(Q: 3)You, your brother, and one more.(Q: One more brother)So he is not in touch with the other one either. How long has he been estranged from you?(Q: 2 ½ years)Was there a specific situation that triggered the estrangement?
Q:My mother’s dementia. It’s so hard to explain… It had to do with money. She tried to split us; she did split us, with money.
Aaron: So did she leave different amounts to different children? was that the problem?
Q:She was in assisted living and she believed that I and my other brother put her there to steal her money so she offered my other brother a lot of money to get her out. But it didn’t work.
Aaron: When you say it did not work, are you saying he did not take the money or he did not take her out?
Q:Yes, he took money, he got her out, but it only lasted 3 days.
Aaron: And then she was back in.
Q:Yes, he couldn’t take it; couldn’t take her.
Aaron: And he kept the money. And then did you and your second brother challenge him on that?(yes)So his estrangement is based on his shame. Do you have an address for him?(Q: No)Do you know if he lives here in the city?
Q:He lives somewhere in…
Aaron: … Is there any way of finding him? (Q:inaudible) Is he married? Does he have a family?
Q:He’s divorced and has 3 children.
Aaron: Your nieces and nephews, are you in touch with them?
Q:Only one.
Aaron: … And does that one know where the father is?
Q:She has a phone number, which I tried.
Aaron: There are 2 things I’d like to say. One is that you cannot change his decision. Your work is to learn to live with things as they are without so much suffering. On a practical level it sounds to me like his estrangement is based on his feelings of shame, that he knows that he acted wrongly and took money that didn’t belong to him, and created harm for loved ones. How could he come to the mother’s funeral when he had done that?
So if there is some way to write him a short note, some way to get him a note, that says, “Money is not the issue. Whatever is past is past. I love you; you are my brother. I want my brother back.” Just that. “Please come back to us, we love you. There is nothing to forgive. Let it go.” And then it’s up to him. If you can get that kind of a message to him somehow, then it’s up to him.
For you, once you’ve done that there’s nothing left that you can do. Watch the mind that’s trying to fix things, looking for a way out, how much suffering there is and saying, “I’ve got to fix this, I want my brother” – letting things be as they are. Everything is constantly changing. Everything is expressing out of conditions. You can change the conditions a bit by offering the sense, not even of forgiveness but of compassion, of love. And reminding him, “You are loved.” You can change the conditions out of which his estrangement has come by healing your own heart and not grasping so much at trying to fix things but finding more peace and spaciousness. Maybe he will come; maybe he will not come.
These kinds of estrangements in families are so sad because the love and connection between you goes so deep. But each being is in charge of his own choices and his own karma, and you cannot make him act in a way that you wish he would have, you can only take care of yourself.
His estrangement will still be sad, but sadness and suffering, sadness and grasping and grief, are very different. We talk about this when somebody has died. Sadness is natural. One will miss the loved one who has died. Sadness comes out of a place of love because there was such joy in the presence of that person. There’s sadness that that is no longer a part of your life.
Grief, especially ongoing grief, comes from a place of fear. It comes from the sense of self that needs to fix and control. It’s a very contracted experience, whereas sadness can be a very open experience. So your work now is to transform grief into sadness. The sadness is not permanent. Sadness breaks up. There will be joy in the memories of good times with your brother as well as sadness at his estrangement.
But as you change your energy around your brother, you also are changing the conditions to some degree. Energetically you’re sending something different out into the world, that at some level I believe he will feel. You’re not doing it to make him come back, you’re simply doing it to heal your own grief and for your own growth. Okay?
We’re at 10 to 1PM. I don’t know whether you want to go on to one more person or pause here… Is there anybody who will not be here after lunch? …
Q:Thank you for bringing Easter to us today and Jesus. In my family I have a brother who is 10 years younger than me who is a fundamentalist Christian. We were raised Catholic in a very chaotic family situation. I am the oldest of 4. One sibling died of drug addiction, a brother. My sister is mentally ill with schizophrenia. My relationship with my sister has been healed through dharma practice. I no longer believe the story as much that I grew up with, that I needed to take charge and help and fix with her. I took care of my brother when he was a baby, when I was 10, 11, and 12. My mother was really in a lot of pain and couldn’t meet our needs well.
Currently my brother seems very angry. He still believes the story that I am very controlling and… anyway. I really want to heal my relationship with him and become closer without pressuring, and I’ve been distant from him while trying to figure out how to do that. And my distance is as a result of…my brother has not wanted much contact, and I try to respect that. But there is an opening initiated by him and I would like to be as skillful and as loving as possible with my interactions.
And his Christianity, there’s kind of a dichotomy, unfortunately, with my Catholic understanding and my dharma life. And I know that’s an illusion. And I know my brother’s clinging to fundamentalist belief is as a result of his pain, but it’s serving him well. And I am able to respect that.
I don’t think, I don’t know what else to say at this point. Do you have enough information?
Aaron: You said he has recently created an opening. In what way?
Q:He asked me to please write down everything I remember of our childhood because he doesn’t remember much about our parents and how it was.
Aaron: Does he live locally?
Q:He lives in Los Angeles.
Aaron: So you don’t see him regularly.
Q:No I don’t.
Aaron: Does he have children?
Q:He does not. He has recently married and has some teenage and grown step-daughters.
Aaron: Do you have children?
Q:That’s complex. I have a daughter, yes.
Aaron: Does your daughter know him as her uncle?
Q:No. This is another story! My daughter was raised by someone else. I have known her for 18 years. I gave her up for adoption. We are becoming closer, in many ways more of a sisterly relationship, and she doesn’t know my family very well.
Aaron: You understand, you said you understand, that your brother’s choice of his fundamentalist belief is his way of managing his pain and trying to live a more sane and stable life. For many fundamentalist Christians there’s a strong belief that if you don’t agree with them, you’re going to Hell. And that if they associate with you, you will pull them into Hell with you.
There’s not really any way to defuse that belief. So if it’s there, there’s nothing you can do but ask that person, “Please pray for me. I cannot believe what you believe but I respect your right to believe, and please pray for me.”
Q:I’ve done that.
Aaron: You’re the same position wherein you want to reestablish a relationship, and you cannot do that single-handedly. As you said, he’s created an opening. Within that opening it feels important that you be as respectful of him and his choices as possible, that you find places of common ground, especially any joyful places of common ground, some of the good childhood memories.
If he’s asked you for childhood memories, try to pick up some of the things that were beautiful, which can be found in any childhood. Pick up the joy that you had in taking care of him. Pick up that which was wonderful about your mother. It is there at some level, at least; she gave birth to you. She loved you. Maybe she was incapable of expressing that love, but she loved you. Perhaps she baked good oatmeal cookies, or perhaps she had a very sweet way of smiling sometimes. Try to pick up on those things so that you can share joy with him along with the pain.
And then be as honest about the pain as you can without blaming anyone for the pain. This is where your practice comes in, the need to look at that which still wants to blame, which wants to go into the “if only” stories. If only I had done that, if only somebody else had done or said this, if only it had been different. Out of the pain one wants to blame, one wants to fix.
So it’s so important to open your heart to that pain, and as we talked about earlier this morning, to just be present with the pain and watch the flow of objects, the thought or memory, mind touching a thought as a memory, remembering. Unpleasant. There may be a strong, almost compelling impulse to go into that thought and replay the pain again and again, and in that way see the mind that’s still trying to fix. It’s another kind of story. When you’re replaying the same memory a dozen times it’s because the mind is still trying to find some way to change things, some way to control.
When you note, “Ah, here is a story, have tea. I’m not going to go into that story again,” be aware of the impulse to go back into the story, to try to twist it so it comes out right. Have you worked at all with impulse energy?
Q:Maybe in some way.
Aaron: Any impulse, the impulse to follow the thought or the story. The impulse to scratch an itch. I want to do an exercise with all of you but we’ll wait until after lunch to do it.
What you’re experiencing here is the impulse that comes with, “How can I fix?” Wanting to change it. If there’s somebody to blame, then maybe we can change things, maybe things can shift. But there’s nobody to blame, it’s just the outflow of conditions. People doing unskillful things because of their own conditioning; people moving into different forms of illness or lifestyle based on their conditioning.
How can you hold all of that in love? And you cannot do that until you can be present with the pain and the anger. I doubt if you have fully addressed the anger that you were deprived of what you wanted as a child, which was the deeply loving and connected family. Who do you blame? Your mother? Your father? Their parents? Their parents’ parents? There’s nobody to blame. But the anger doesn’t know where to go.
Can you be present and acknowledge that anger without building a self-identity around it? That which is aware of anger is not angry. You can’t use that truth to deny the anger but you can use that fact to create more space around the anger, which allows you to just be present and feel it in the body, the body shaking with that anger. Just watching it, let it soften and open up over a period of weeks and months.
Q:Thank you.
Aaron: You’re welcome. I will release the body to Barbara and we will continue this after your lunch.
(lunch break)