October 28, 2014 Tuesday Evening, Geneva Retreat
Closing Talk at Geneva Retreat on Aging, Being Light
Aaron: Good evening. My blessings and love to you all. A day and a half is really a very short time to cover a vast topic like aging. I could have talked for a week or two. You may have noticed we did not talk so much about aging itself but rather how we relate to the diminishment of body and mind; how we relate to this whole process of moving from the prime of the physical being into a diminishment.
I pointed out that while aging is one catalyst with which you can relate either with fear or with love and kindness, it is only one catalyst. Illness can happen at any time, and it’s a similar catalyst. Personal loss, loss of loved ones, loss of physical resources, of income and so forth, seeming loss of power or of esteem in the world, these are all catalysts to which you may respond with fear and grasping and contraction or with the open heart.
So aging was the focus for these two days, but you can substitute anything in your lives. Those who have a family member who is experiencing illness, an aging parent, someone who is very ill in your primary family; those of you who might have lost your job, your income; the one who stubbed the toe or got a black eye or a virus: how do you relate to these?
In the chapter of Cosmic Healing on consciousness, Barbara and I have a chart on the states and stages of consciousness that we wrote out together. Your whole earth is moving into a gradually higher consciousness, a transition of consciousness, and you are all part of that transition. You can move into something new with fear, grasping and contraction, or with spaciousness that lets the inner light shine forth. It’s your choice.
Some of you perhaps get the daily quotes sent by Deep Spring. Now, I cannot quote myself from memory, so give me a minute….(tape paused)
A goal of service is not only to become distortion-free but to give off light with as much energy as possible. Freedom from distortion creates the clarity. The energy level creates the brilliance. Remember that this original spark, before self-awareness, is always free of distortion. Let it shine!”
I have just read today’s daily quote. It was the Tuesday daily quote. For those not familiar with these daily quotes, simply go to the Deep Spring website and subscribe to them. They are extracted from my talks and are meant to inspire. They will be emailed to you daily.
Why are we afraid to let that light shine? There’s a beautiful quote, again I cannot quote it exactly, but that your deepest fear is not your wrongness but your light, your power, that you are afraid of your power. Why?
You so deeply aspire to be loving. You see that radiant light. I said this to some few of you the other day. You see that radiant light and you see yourself as a shadow in front of that light because you have not yet purified all the negative tendencies. There is still anger, still grasping, still fear. As old souls, you have such a deep intention not to do harm. If you really are as powerful as I say you are, and anger comes up, there is the fear you will destroy through that anger, so you diminish yourselves. But in diminishing yourselves, instead of simply holding back the anger you also hold back the light.
So the work is to learn to trust yourself not to enact the negative thoughts, not to enact the fear, but to do that in a process that remains open, spacious. Not contracting and diminishing but trusting your power, trusting your light, and the ability of that light literally to transform the world. The power of your love has nothing at all to do with the power of your negative thoughts. They arise out of conditions. They will pass. Don’t give them power by using them as a reason to diminish yourselves, or negativity is winning.
When you trust your wholeness and your love, when you trust your capacity for kindness, for wisdom, for compassion, you can enact these in the world, even in very frightening and challenging situations. Even when there is strong emotion boiling up in you because you have learned to note, ah, fear, ah, anger, ah, judgment. Breathing in I am aware of the judging mind. Breathing out I make space for the judging mind. Breathing in I am aware of rage. Breathing out I hold space for the rage.
And when you practice in this way without contraction around what has arisen, or at least if a contraction comes, without contraction around the contraction, you allow the light and love to come through. And in this way you support the movement into a higher non-dual consciousness.
This truly is your work in the world. The vipassana meditation is, I would not call it a vital tool. Vital to me means there’s no other choice than vipassana. I would call it a primary and powerful tool. I do not know of any other tool that is as powerful. That doesn’t mean there is none. But this is what we can give you. So my suggestion is that you work with the vipassana practice until you come to the point that when something strong comes up in you, instead of fearing your reaction to it and closing down, you are increasingly able to simply note it spaciously and let it pass. And it will pass. Whatever has the nature to arise has the nature to cease.
Now let me qualify that a bit. Whatever has the nature in the conditioned realm, this realm of objects that arise from conditions and pass away when the conditions cease, those objects have the nature to arise and the nature to cease. But we speak also of the Unconditioned, that which is. Unconditioned is the Buddhist term for it. Pure nature, Christ consciousness, Love, they’re all really synonymous words, just drawn from different traditions.
There are two parts then to your work. Being increasingly aware of the habitual tendencies that close you off into separation and fear and lead you to diminish yourselves, and incidentally lead to further aging of the body, because all the contraction is not good for the body. To aging yourselves because all that contraction is not good for the mind. When you are open, you are more healthy. You glow.
So one half is doing the practice to allow you to note the places of closure, breathe with them and come back, and the other half is to remember who your truly are when you’re not a somebody trying to fix these contracted habits. This is where we’ll be going tomorrow and the rest of the week. We’re not abandoning the first part, increasing awareness of the habitual patterns with the conditioned self. But we’re also going to move deeply into experiencing the Unconditioned. It may not be the ultimate experience of the Unconditioned in terms of what you might experience in a month-long silent retreat, but experiencing that expression of the Unconditioned that is you. Really knowing this and trusting it.
Part of our work here will be with the Mother, who simply awakens that remembrance of the divine self in each heart. Other brothers and sisters of light will also participate, each helping in their own way. Some of them have very high energy. The energy here thus far has been moderate. But there are times in the coming days when the energy in this room will be very high. We ask you to take responsibility for yourself. If your energy feels ungrounded, to ask for help and to ground yourself.
We do not have any water, here, do we? Just pure spring water. Is there anybody here who does not have water? Okay, we’ll try to make some arrangements (to purchase some in town) for those who do not have it, so that people can keep sipping from it to keep grounded and energized. One of the Brothers of Light will bless this water and raise the vibration of it. People can use it to ground. I don’t want to use just tap water. It won’t hold the highest vibrations.(More about the purchase, not transcribed.)
For most of you, because the energy will increase gradually, you will not be thrown by it. At times you may feel you simply want to go to your room and rest, and that’s fine. Loving spirit will be supporting this, myself giving talks and so forth, the Mother and also these other Brothers and Sisters of Light.
I’m going to invite one of these Brothers in to talk right now. Some of them give us names for themselves; others decline the names and simply offer their energy. So one is going to incorporate here for a few minutes.
(Entity incorporates)
Entity: What a joy to be with you! I am looking forward to your energy and love and sharing mine with you these days. Perhaps you can feel the difference between mine and Aaron’s energy and vibration. Mine is not really higher than Aaron’s, but Aaron has learned how to keep his low so as not to knock you over, and I have not practiced that so much, so I come through with a lot more energy.
I am simply a Brother of Love. That’s all you need to know. And I will be with you through this week as a group and independently. Simply ask for me. We’re part of a loving support team, and our interest is to help you know who you are. To trust who you are.
There is so much light pouring out from all of you. I wish you could see yourselves the way I see you. I have no doubt at all about my own divinity. I want to invite you to stand beside me and also release doubt, so that you know yourselves as light with absolute certainty, and begin to know everyone and everything in the world as light, albeit some of it is very diminished. Even the most terrible and hate-filled people, tyrants and murderers have that spark within them, and it is called forth by your compassion. Compassion also says no to abuse. I’m not used to these mechanical devices. Do we need this device? (laughter) It impairs my energy field. I have to work around it, it’s awkward. Not just the mechanics but the energy itself.
So I am with you. We are learning together, because even with what you consider my infinite love and compassion, I am still growing, as you are. If there were an end to the amount of compassion possible, everything would be cut off. But there is no limit. And you are here to walk this path with us, opening into the deepest compassion and love of your being. I rejoice in these days we will have together. That’s all.
(Aaron reincorporates)
Aaron: So I am Aaron, and that is our friend, a Brother of Light. I’m going to release the body to Barbara and leave the floor open for your questions and answers, and then a final sitting. Thank you.
(tape paused)
Barbara: … I’m talking about an incident where I said, “Oh, it’s just Aaron,” to myself, and he came in with such power, saying, “Is that all you think I am?” And I saw this huge energy. I saw that what I was seeing as Aaron was just the tiny tip of an iceberg. I was bowled over by his immensity and power, and his love. I know he doesn’t show us that most of the time. It’s too big for us. He just shows us his wisdom and his compassion, and that’s enough.
For me, as long as I’ve known him, he’s fed me like you feed a baby, giving it a little bit, seeing what it can digest. Giving it a little bit more, then a little bit more. And gradually the digestive system grows and it can integrate more nourishment into its being. When I look back at the transcripts from 25 years ago, he was teaching us the same thing but in simpler terms. As we grow, he gets a little bit more complex with it.
Anyhow, a big thank you to all these loving Brothers and Sisters of Light who are here with us for this week and will be supporting our work in various ways. Let’s take a minute to stretch and then come back with questions and answers.
(break)
Aaron: The question is, “You’ve spoken about aging but not about death.”
Death is easy. Dying is not easy. Dying is a process and it can take a long time. You start dying from the day you are born. But death is easy. From my many experiences of death, it’s like being in too tight an item of clothing, hemmed in, and suddenly it all breaks loose and there’s space. There’s ease. A bit like being underwater with a scuba tank and so forth, and suddenly you don’t need the tank anymore. There’s abundant light, air and space.
Now, different beings have different experiences immediately following death, usually dependent on your spiritual practice. But the moment of death, that transition, is not hard.
You have a lot of resistance to the idea of dying, but the idea is not the actuality. The reason we focused on aging and not on death is that the work with aging is something you can do now in every part of your life, because it’s the same work whether you are working with aging or with old habitual patterns of anger or fear or holding. It’s basically living consciously and holding the intention to love.
Aging involves so much ongoing diminishment. The old image, from diapers to diapers; we move through that pattern. From the toddler who needs help to walk to the 90 year old who needs help to walk. Who will take care of us? Will we be safe? What will happen to us?
So conscious aging obviously involves some planning. You can’t just say, “Oh, I will be safe,” and spend all your money on frivolous things. You do have to be wise in the way you live your life and plan ahead. But then to trust, whatever happens is what will happen. You have no control over it. Even with the best of planning you don’t have control.
I think of John’s teacher Ajahn Chah, who had a stroke, how many years before his death, John? (John: 10 or 12 years.) So he lived that long in a body that needed complete care. He was a great, beloved master. He had many disciples. There were so many people who were happy to come forth and take care of him. He obviously didn’t have social security or Medicare. His Medicare was simply he was an ordained Buddhist monk, and he trusted the system, the dharma, would take care of him.
Many people, I’ve heard indirectly, not so much directly, a little directly too, that so many people who took care of him said they learned even more from him in taking care of him when he was incapable of speech and movement than they did when he was a teacher. And he was a profound teacher, so you can imagine what he was like in these last years.
This is part of your potential. I know personally a number of people who through cancer or some other ailment died a very conscious loving death, with their hearts open to themselves and to others. I’m thinking of one woman who was in hospice. I’ve been told by people who visited her, as Barbara did on occasion, and by the staff at hospice, that whenever they had no other place they needed to be, they wanted to be in her room, because her room was so filled with life and love. Everyone simply gathered there.
You have the opportunity to die like this, but if you’re going to die like this you have to live like this. Therefore we focus on the aging, which is now, not on the death. That’s all.
Q: In your last lifetime, you extended the aging process. I assume it was a loving choice. Can you speak any more to that? And to gain more insight into this process. Why not teach Barbara’s body when you are incorporated? (In the repetition of the question while signing, it ends up sounding like, why not teach Barbara when you’re in the body?)
Aaron: I go over what I’ve said to her afterwards, but when I’m incorporated her consciousness is simply not present. She is holding her consciousness in a very special place where I have access to her mind to get the vocabulary but not to her intellectual consciousness. I can be in many places at once. She has not yet learned how to do that. So if I interrupt to try to explain what I’m doing, she’s not as able to be present to simply keep her consciousness out of the body, but available to my need. Does that make sense to you?
Q: Well, I was assuming that working with cell rejuvenation, you would be teaching the cells of the body. Could you do that work when you are in the body?
Aaron: Could I do that work on this body, when I am in the body? Yes, certainly I could, but it’s Barbara’s responsibility to learn this. I’ve told her many times I will not do for her what she is capable of doing for herself. That is compassionate, not cruel. Her deepest intention is not for the body to be pain-free and healed but for the deepest growth and learning.
I teach her more in her sleep. I come often in her dreams and work with her, and of course in her meditation. But when I work with her in meditation, and we talk about cell rejuvenation and so forth, she is consciously present but in a meditative state, a deep meditative state, and able to follow what I’m asking her to do. I am not then doing it for her but asking her to take responsibility to remember– not learn, but remember how to do this, for she has also known how to do this before.
Now, you were talking about my last lifetime. You did not mean my immediate last lifetime as a Buddhist monk, but the lifetime long ago in which I was Aaron. (Q: Yes.) She is talking about a lifetime in which I lived to be over 500 years. It was the lifetime before the lifetime in which I came as Nathaniel, a colleague, we might call it, of Jeshua. When I say colleague, I don’t want to put myself on equal footing with him. He was a master. But a friend of Jeshua.
So Aaron, as he was then, 2,500 years ago. He lived to over 500 years, then consciously released the body. The process that he used was one that was familiar in those times. In the Bible you read of people who lived to those great ages. It was familiar to people who lived in Lemurian times and took some of these trainings. It’s part of the same training that was used in Jeshua’s birth and death, and resurrection, the rejuvenation of the body, the raising of the body. I don’t want to go against any of your religious beliefs where you have learned this as a miracle. And of course it is a miracle, but also it’s a discipline that can be learned.
Many of you gave up the memories of how to do this a long time ago, and actually allowed the cutting back of your DNA, because you were so powerful and yet you were not emotionally ready to hold that power. As you grew into a deep intention to do no harm, you were afraid of your power, as I spoke about earlier tonight. You willingly cut back on certain things you were capable of because you recognized that until you resolved the heavy emotions, the self-identity with them, you were not mature enough to hold that power without doing destruction, the possibility of which horrified you.
But now you are growing back into a readiness to claim that power. Some of you have heard me talk about this before, the restoration of the DNA strands, the completion of the DNA. It’s a shaky time for you because you’re moving into more and more power, and you’re not sure you’ve really resolved the relationship with the heavy emotions. It’s part of the whole process of trusting who you are, the divine essence of your being. Because unless you are willing to reclaim that power, sadly negatively polarity is going to win, fear is going to win, because negative polarity has no constraints about using its power to destroy. Love is stronger, but only if you trust your ability to love and the power of love. So you’re all learning how to do that. And negativity cannot begin to match the power of love.
That’s a roundabout answer. We have time for one more question.
Q: Were you the Nathaniel that gave the lamb to Jesus when he was born?
Aaron: Yes. The Bible records don’t say much about our relationship. My Christmas stories, the book back there, 47 Stories, talks more about it. I was blessed to know him as a friend.
Shall we stop?
(There is an inaudible comment about someone leaving in the morning.)
We are so glad to have had you here, and all of you who are leaving. How many are leaving? Five of you. Thank you for coming to be with us these first 2 days. I hope we shall have the opportunity to see you again. Go with my love. I will always be with you. Just ask for me.
I’m going to return the body to Barbara. Of course we have 5 more days here so there will be a lot more time for questions. Just drawing some closure around this portion of the workshop.