June 15, 2015 Monday Afternoon, Emrich Retreat
In the Beginning
(This talk reviewed by B Bartz)
Aaron: My blessings and love to you. I am Aaron. Once again I thank you for being here with me. Our sessions here in the afternoon under the catalpa tree, or indoors, as weather dictates, are, let’s call it added nourishment for the retreat. They’re not essential to your basic vipassana practice, but they are essential to you as spirits, as humans evolving into knowing yourself as spirit, and into the deep grounding into non-duality.
I want to start with a talk here, and then we’ll do some kinds of practice. Talk, questions, and if time, some practice. <Letting> us out tomorrow under the tree for more practice.
In the beginning, there was no beginning. There simply was energy, light, love. There was no one looking to that source to receive, and there was nothing in that source offering out. There was simply All-That-Is, without differentiation.
In this realm, there was no positive or negative polarity. Do you understand what I mean by those words? Positive polarity is that which offers itself in service to all beings and with love. Its basic energy is uncontracted, spacious, open, inclusive. Negative polarity offers itself more in service to the self. So it has sunk into the sense of separation of self and other. But in the beginning there was no concept of self and other, only the Ground, the Source, the Essence, That-Which-Is. And every expression of that source had not yet moved into an individuation that held itself separate, but simply understood that it was part of that source, part of that pure being.
Then you moved into—I love how the book Flight of the Garuda phrases this. (chatter about losing recording; Aaron wanted this talk recorded; John and group requests Aaron start over)
All right. We have not been recording, so by common request I’m going to start over. I don’t know why the recording stopped.
So what I said, in the beginning, (there was) only that which is. There was no positive or negative polarity. There was not light or darkness. There was not love or fear. There was simply this All Ground. Material that could shape itself— (pause)
So nothing was intended to be negative and in service to self, or to be positive and loving and in service to all beings. There was not yet intention because there was no sense of a separate self. And without a separate self, there cannot be intention.
I use the metaphor of a decision to exit the Garden of Eden. Why? Because awareness totally tied into this All Ground began to note that there needed to be intention in order to bring forth that which is positive and step aside from that which is more negative. When I say there was no positive or negative polarity, there was still contraction and expansion, darkness and light, but they came in <to life> without any specific reason. They were part of the All Ground.
But that which was aware saw the potential to express light, to express love more fully. It saw that it needed to come into more individuated consciousness so there was something that could hold intention and responsibility.
Each of you at some level chose, then, to move into some form of individuated consciousness. You were not kicked out of the Garden of Eden; you were volunteers. You said, “Okay, I’m going to step forth and move into an individuated consciousness that has free will choice and can choose love or hate, love or fear.”
Q: Is God part of the All Ground, or where does God come into this?
Aaron: God is a part of the All Ground, but God is also the expression of the All Ground that we call primordial purity. However, God cannot separate itself from negativity. Again, let me find something very beautiful I can read, here… This is a book called Open Secrets by Rabbi Rami Shapiro. Once again Barbara has it well marked in her computer.
“You ask me of God, to define the nameless, to place in your palm the ultimate secret. Do not imagine that this is hidden somewhere far from you. The ultimate secret is the most open one. Here it is: God is all. I’m tempted to stop with this, to close this letter, sign my name and leave you with this simple truth. Yet I fear you will not understand. Know from the first that all that follows is an elaboration on the simple fact that God is all.
“What does it mean to be all? God is reality. God is the source and substance of all things, and it is nothing. There is no thing or feeling or thought that is not God, even the idea that there is no God. This is what it is to be all. God must embrace even God’s own negation.
“Listen again carefully. God is the source and substance of everything. There is nothing outside of God. Thus we read, ‘I am God and there is none else.’ –Isaiah, 45:5. Read not ‘none else’ but ‘nothing else.’ Not that there is no other God but God but there is nothing but God.”
It goes on. I would love to share the whole book with you, but you can buy it for yourselves. It’s available on Amazon. And I fully recommend it. You might also enjoy my book Human. It’s also a book on non-duality.
So, coming back. This awareness, this intelligence, this love, this which we call God or primordial purity or All That Is, divine essence, Christ consciousness, Buddha nature, there are subtle differences in these terms, but this wanted to express itself on this third density planet. It sought to express the essence of love that it was, but it could not express the essence of love without also allowing the essence of fear and hatred. But do not think of this as love and fear, equal forces. Think of this as the All Ground, the primordial purity expressing from the All Ground, and fear and love both contained in them. For without fear there cannot be love.
So we begin to open to both within ourselves. To find that divine essence in ourselves of both love and fear, and how much stronger love is, when we pay attention to love and do not heed the voices of fear and be ruled by them.
And here’s where your vipassana practice comes in, of course. Because sitting and practicing, you have endless opportunities to experience something that’s uncomfortable, painful. To watch how you relate to it. And each time you choose to relate with spaciousness, with kindness, with the open heart, and not to create a duality with what has arisen, you support the whole flow of non-dual expression of love in the universe. You become a strong force for love and for light. Each time you contract, feeling some difficult catalyst and moving back, forcing it away, you start to shift the balance more into negative polarity. And as soon as you do, you begin to experience the difficult repercussions of negative polarity.
How many times do you have to do that before you say, well that’s enough? I’m going to pay more attention and keep my heart open and learn how to respond with love, with light, with spaciousness. It’s not that there will be no fear, it’s that fear ceases to become the ruler. Fear simply has arisen out of conditions. It’s a conditioned object, impermanent, not self. And each time you relate to fear in that way with the open heart, it loses its power.
So I want you today to understand the concepts of All Ground and primordial purity. The All Ground that contains everything, possibility of negative and positive, of light and darkness, of contraction and spaciousness, of separation and non-separation. And the primordial purity which is the innate radiance, the light, and—I can’t find the terms powerful enough for it, which is God, which is Love. That core of light and love that illuminates everything.
I come back to the three kayas. You don’t have to always be on the dharmakaya side. Even if you’re on the nirmanakaya side, as long as you have that bridge concept in mind, the sambhogakaya, the wealth body, you’re always on the dharmakaya side even when you’re stuck in nirmanakaya. Can you see that?
Q: You spoke of the core of the primordial purity, the divine essence. When we take refuge in our Buddha nature, how do we find that? Is it the quiet when we meditate and get quiet? Is that the core? How do we experience our Buddha nature, our core of divine essence?
Aaron: Experience it when you’re looking at a flower or the little ant crawling on the ground. Experience it looking at the rain, this blessed rain watering the earth, creating life on earth. Experience it in your feelings of gratitude when you look at the rain, joy. The joy looking at the flower. The joy looking at a friend’s smile. Experience it here in the breath. Breathing in gratitude for this breath. You’re especially conscious of that. Gratitude for the breath. What it feels like to be able to draw an easy breath. To be alive. To have the opportunity to practice, to awaken.
Q: And when we get that feeling, we’re touching the primordial purity? We’re touching that core?
Aaron: You’re touching it. You’re not fully immersed in it, you’re touching it. But as you practice, the more you practice, the more you stable you become in it. For some of you who have not practiced much, if you’re in a hurry to go somewhere and you turn the corner to go onto the main street and you see it’s bumper to bumper traffic, backed up three lights back, excuse my language, but does, “Oh shit!” come up? For some of you, yes. And those of you who have practiced a lot, there still may be that little bit of anger.
And then, “May all beings’ needs be met here. May this traffic jam not be caused by an accident that has harmed anyone. May all this traffic flow through in a smooth way, for the highest good of all beings.” And you immediately open back up.
Q: Is the All Ground the same as the Unconditioned?
Aaron: I would say it’s close enough to say yes, it’s the same, but no it is not the same. So, I don’t want to use this group’s time to go into the deeper details of this that take a meditation depth that some of you have and some do not have. But you and I can talk further about it.
Taking this further, then, simply, there was this undifferentiated reality expressing light and darkness, spaciousness and contraction. And because you were not separate from All-that-is, you held along with All-That-Is the intention to bring forth further light into the world. You were not yet grounded in negative or positive polarity. But for most of you there was the experience of the light and spaciousness as joy. So while there was not grounding in positive polarity, there was the desire to explore that way. And for some there’s the desire to explore negative polarity. And to take that as far as it can go.
Interestingly, only positive polarity can move into 8th density. Only positive polarity can move into full realization or awakening, because for that full realization or awakening there needs to be a dissolution of self. And negative polarity will not allow the self or ego to dissolve. So it can only go as far as higher 6th density and it hits a wall. Eventually it has to backtrack and start over.
I believe that Q’uo and I talk about this at length in The Aaron/Q’uo Dialogues. Those who have interest might find it suitable reading.
Q: Is that where Buddha is?
Aaron: Buddha is fully awakened and beyond, let’s say in 8th density. There is no sense of a separate self. There is still dissolution of all that was conceived of as self.
Q: You mentioned in that same paper the ever-perfect body. Is that like the plan of everything, blueprint?
Aaron: We’re skipping into a next step here. Let’s save that question for tomorrow. This is taking it off into the akashic field teachings and how we use these teachings, practice with them. So, let’s make sure that the information here is stable.
What I want you to understand, first of all, is in the beginning there was no positive or negative polarity. This awareness light, he speaks in Flight of the Garuda as the youthful <>‘s body. Call it what you will. Many terms you could give it. But this awareness—God, Goddess, All-That-Is, sought to know all the expressions that were possible of its self. Knowing itself as part of the All Ground. So what was willing to explore both positive and negative polarity. And it understood in its wisdom that in order to commit to positive polarity, and live a life deeply grounded in positive polarity, there had to be a conscious choice, which involved knowing negative polarity. You had to recognize fear, anger, greed, and so forth in the self. Service to self, contraction. And then to make that commitment not to enact that in the self and in the world. Unless you know that in the self, how can you make that commitment? Then you cannot expand positive polarity. You cannot reach out with light unless you understand darkness. Does that make sense to you?
So as I said, all of you were volunteers, really billions of expressions of that All-that-is, coming forth into the earth to begin to know both positive and negative polarity ultimately with the intention to choose one polarity or the other. For those here, to know positive polarity. But in some parts of the world, there is some very strong negative polarity. But what has not been fully understood by those of negative polarity is that they hit that wall. They can only go so far.
Now, they can do a tremendous amount of damage as third density negatively polarized beings before they evolve to the point they understand they must backtrack and start over on a positive track. And so we have terrorism and war and hatred. And the only thing that can speak to that is the power of love.
So here we come to the third part of this. Your whole universe is moving into a higher vibration. There is a process of awakening throughout the whole universe going on, and the whole universe is either going to become positively or negatively polarized. We see this happening on your earth, the transition of earth from 3rd density into a, let’s call it 4th, 5th density earth. The process is happening right now. It’s something you can bring consciousness to, but you don’t have to be conscious of it. It’s sufficient to just work with what’s around you. But it may be useful for many people to understand that you’re part of this whole movement of transition of earth into a different vibration, either a slower and more negative vibration or a higher and more positive vibration, and that each choice you make supports that decision and movement.
You are, I’ve said this to some of you before. You are teachers of compassion in the universe because you are one of the few planets where there is a very—I don’t want to say planets, but few spheres of being, spheres of consciousness, where there are very direct repercussions to your choices. If you make a choice that’s grounded in selfishness, self-centeredness and ego, you experience the repercussions of that. When you make a choice that’s grounded in loving kindness, generosity, you experience the repercussions of that. On many planes there are not the immediate effects felt, so it’s much harder to learn.
So here on earth, when somebody says something rude to you and anger comes up, if you move deeper into the anger, you create more separation, more solid anger, service to self, oppositionality. But as soon as you see this person is suffering, has spoken these rude words because of his suffering, compassion doesn’t go ahead and say, “Keep throwing that anger at me.” Compassion says no, but it says no from this heart of love.
So you are one of the few places in the universe where this is deeply taught. There’s some misconception thrown around that you are in a remedial learning situation. This is not true. You are all very courageous and loving souls, even those who are still caught in darkness, very courageous and loving souls, deeply determined to shift not only your own personal karma or the karma of your villages or your planet or the universe, but of everything, to shift everything into light. And you have begun to understand the power that you have to do that.
This is what we’ll talk more about tomorrow when we talk about using the akashic field practices to evoke these shifts. So I welcome questions at this point.
Q: The teaching is more complex than I’ve experienced before, other places. The teaching is that, in the beginning, <for better or worse> God was lonely and created humans with…
Aaron: How could God be lonely when God is everything?
Q: –Before, right at the beginning, before the conception of the All Ground, before humans, before everything, he created human with free will, and that’s when the positive and negative polarity were created. Is that all wrong?
Aaron: It’s not all wrong, it’s simply a simplification. Because each religion has its own myths and ways of phrasing it. I’m trying to cut through the myth. I could cut through various religious orientation and simply say it as I have experienced it. Of course, I was not here at the beginning.
Q: Where were you?
Aaron: My beloved teacher Ariel and also the other guardian angels of Earth—Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, and the one you refer to as the Fallen Angel—they all gave of their energy to Earth to help support the creation of Earth into what was going to be a positively polarized planet. Much of the talks from Ariel are on the Deep Spring archives. I would have to spend a week trying to tell you all about this. But look up “Earth History” on the Deep Spring archives.
The first bringing of negativity into the Earth, the first bringing of fear, was a point when pre-human, other energy on Earth, Lemurian, Atlanteans, and so forth, when they began to bring forth of their own free will. And there was fear from the one you refer to as the Fallen Angel, Lucifer, that, “We can’t trust their free will. They might do harm with it so we have to create rules.” And the others said, “They are born in light. Trust them to stumble a bit in the darkness and come through in the light.” And here was the distinction into positive and negative polarity, the grounding of love and fear, where they pulled apart.
I’ve given several long talks on this, so you can find them. So I’m not trying to cover all of the history. I’m just trying to talk about how this choice, free will choice and intention, relates to your vipassana practice. Because in every moment, as you practice, you have a choice of how you are going to relate to what is arising into your experience.
You can relate with contraction and fear, separation, or you can relate with love and an open heart. The more deeply you hold to that intention to positive polarity, the more it will flow within you. Other questions?
Q: I feel a tension in my heart, an intention, actually a desire, to deeply realize how that choice for love is one of non-duality. How it doesn’t separate fear and negativity. I think with realization it will be clearer than conceptual “choose love versus fear,” which brings a sense of separation. But how does it…?
Aaron: When we experience contraction of fear, emotion of fear, and note it, “Here is fear. Breathing in I am aware of the fear. Breathing out, I hold space for the fear. I open the heart to the fear. I do not need to be reactive to the fear. I hold it in love,” that completely dissolves it. It has no power once it’s held in love. But of course fear will continue to arise.
I think of the metaphor of the turtle in his shell. A big dog comes running up to him, barking, so he withdraws himself into his shell, pulling in his head and his limbs. There he is. How long is he going to stay there? Eventually he’s going to need to eat, to drink water, want to move around. What draws him out of his shell? And then the dog barks again. Maybe if it happens 5 times in a row, he’ll never come out. He’ll die there in his shell. On the other hand, it would be foolhardy for him to keep walking and just ignore the dog because the dog might kill him.
So we look at the distinction between armoring that is based in fear and appropriate shielding. You go out into the rain there. Because it’s raining, are you going to brick yourself into some hole in the wall, and with more concrete, close it up? The rain can’t get at you. You can’t go anywhere. Or will you raise an umbrella and close it when the rain stops?
Awareness that there is negative polarity, and awareness that fear might arise in relation to negative activity in the world, does not mean that you deny that there’s negativity, or that you get caught up in the stories of the negativity, but that you respond appropriately. And again, this is where your practice begins.
All right. The most important points I want to make here. Some of you have the idea that there’s either negative or positive, and that you have to avoid the negative at all costs. You’re going to be positive! And then you attack any negative thoughts or feelings in the self, any fear, any anger. And that’s just more negativity.
When you begin to trust that you also are an expression of this All Ground and the primordial purity, and that primordial purity is right here within you, and that you have the ability to express that in every way, you start to trust yourselves. It becomes increasingly easy– let’s say it becomes less difficult– when fear arises not to get caught in the stories of the fear, but to make the free will choice. And this free will choice is so much the essence of why all of you are here on the earth. You came to this planet of free will choice, and where there are immediate karmic repercussions to those choices.
You came not to get out of karma, as some of you would believe, but to understand karma and make it work for you. Karma is not a negative thing. Unwholesome karma is unpleasant. You have a choice not to keep reenacting negative karma. Wholesome karma is very beautiful, but it’s still karma, and you’re still caught on that wheel.
So taking this the final step. Having come from that grounding in All-that-is and non-differentiation with All-that-is, you come into this differentiated consciousness that says, “I am a self.” only to work through the path as long as it takes, until you finally release that whole concept of separate self.
However, when the concept of separate self is released, there are two ways that happens. One is as we see with the Buddha, the arahant, who has completely released itself back into the Ground. Bringing additional light, radiance, love, into that Ground. Can the ever-perfect improve itself? What happens if you have something that’s perfect and you add something more beautiful to it? It just keeps growing. There’s no limitation to that which we call God, Goddess, All-that-is. Or you could awaken with cessation of self-identification to the ego and the separate self, and yet with a commitment to use this energy that you are to bring healing on this plane, no longer identified as me, separate, and yet with compassion when that me does spring up. If there was not a full awakening, it will spring up.
Neither of these courses is better than the other. The idealized result of our dharma practice, of vipassana, is to bring us into that awakening so that you can either be part of the primordial purity in the way I have described, or can express it out into the world and bring healing into the world. You have free will. You choose.
This is why this dharma path calls so deeply to me. There are many spiritual paths, but this is the only one I know that is so deeply geared toward manifesting the fullest expression of that radiance everywhere, touching every pocket of darkness with light. Is this your commitment? If so, then follow your hearts. You can do it.
I said tomorrow we’ll talk more about the akashic field practices. All Ground and akashic field are also not quite synonymous. But what we will look at tomorrow– and some of you have done this with me before, and I’m not going to start from scratch. I hope some of you have read the transcripts. I don’t want every year that we start from scratch and we only get so far. So I want to take it a lot further this year.
Knowing yourself to be that light, resting in the deepest truth of what you are, how do we use that knowing to manifest that which is more of service to all beings, free of harm to any being, radiant and beautiful, into the earth? How do we do that?
In our own individual lives, how do we manifest that which is wholesome and release that which is unwholesome? By using these practices. I said I don’t want to start on Square 1, but I’m not going to get to Square 1,000. I can only get so far in two or three days. If it’s pretty tomorrow, we’ll sit out under the tree and do some meditation. Not just me talking about the practices but practicing them. If it’s raining, come in here.
So, questions?
Q: Is your teaching beyond traditional Buddhism?
Aaron: It’s beyond traditional Theravada Buddhism, but much of it is incorporated in some of the Tibetan togyal practices. The book Circle of the Sun that Barbara and I worked with in 2011, and I believe sent out the journal to the Venture Fourth group, so you probably received that, this is an expansion of those teachings. But I’m releasing all the Tibetan visualizations and such and putting it in simple form, making it much more accessible.
Q: In the All Ground, you mentioned that primordial purity is part of the All Ground.
Aaron: We can say primordial purity is part of the All Ground. The All Ground is also part of primordial purity. They have a connected relationship. But yes, in the simplest form, we would say there is the All Ground, and the primordial purity is within that All Ground.
Q: Then that also takes in negative purity? In other words, if there is a God part, is there an evil part?
Aaron: There is no ultimate evil. There is no such thing as ultimate evil. There is the primordial purity, and there are the distortions that may come into the primordial purity based on fear, contraction, and separation. But it is not an ultimate evil. The only ultimate is light—God, as you would call it.
But that doesn’t mean that there is not that which is extremely negative and does great harm, only it has no ultimate reality. And here again, I would refer you to The Aaron/Q’uo Dialogues, in which I believe made it into the book—we had so many deep discussions of this, and I’m not sure what got into the book.
If it’s not in the book, there are transcripts available. Some of the other transcripts of my discussions with Q’uo are not part of the book. We had long discussions on this and on the whole idea that the only ultimate reality is light and love. God, Goddess, as you would call it. But there are distortions of that ultimate reality and they take on very strong power. They’re not ultimate realities, but they’re strong mundane realities.
This is where the Bible doesn’t have it clear. Light and darkness. If you assume simply daylight and darkness, yes. But if you take it as metaphor, light and darkness, and God created light and darkness, this is a little bit obscure because there is essentially only light. And then the distortions that close off the light and give us the experience of darkness. And that darkness can be very heavy, very dark.
As long as we relate to that as an ultimate reality, we give it power. This is something we’ll go into more tomorrow. When we stop relating to negativity as an ultimate reality and see how it is arisen from conditions, then we cease empowering it. And this changes everything.
Are there others who have not had a chance to ask questions?
Q: What is a third density planet?
Aaron: I’m not going to take the time to explain this. Please look in the introduction to my book, Presence, Kindness, and Freedom, which is in the lounge by the meditation hall. Read the introduction and it will explain it.
Q: Just a comment. Aaron just mentioned the book, and page 176-180 is a very nice section on God and Buddhism, if you’re interested.
Aaron: Thank you. And what I’m referring to, I believe, is my Introduction, in Presence, Kindness, and Freedom.
Q: Yesterday I spoke to Barbara and John regarding a pain that I have in my body, and I wonder if Aaron could give me any further insight as to what course to take with that. Barbara thought it might be one of my past lives.
Aaron: Do I have your permission to look in the akashic records? (Yes.) It regards tension. I’m going to vastly simplify the telling of the past life, even use metaphor rather than exact details. But imagine yourself in a situation where you are a strong man. This is not a true detail. I’m trying to give you a hypothetical example. You are a strong man. There is a big hall with several hundred people. Suddenly there was a bit of an earth tremor and a pillar holding the roof began to collapse, so you stood under it holding it up so that people could escape. Huge pressure. The deep determination to save everyone. And also the belief that they would come back with some kind of rocks to support it so you could get out. But everybody just fled, leaving you holding up the roof. Which finally crumbled down on you. The anguish, the anger. And also, the deep loving determination to hold this roof up so everybody could be safe.
Now translate that into a determination in your life to keep people safe, and feel how the contraction would be. So each time something comes up in your life where you feel there’s something you must do to keep people safe, there’s that contraction, and pain starts.
I would work with a very simple forgiveness meditation. “However I have harmed others, I ask their forgiveness. However others have harmed me, I offer forgiveness.” Just repeating that and letting your heart go wherever it will go. Not trying to push it in a certain direction. If certain images come up, honor them. If nothing comes up, just keep repeating that. But not mechanically. Try to repeat it from your heart.
I think we’re done here, then. We will do this again tomorrow… We’ll do some meditation together, hopefully out under that beautiful flowering tree. I thank you. Even if you already read some of those transcripts, read it again. Refresh what I just said to you, but I took it deeper than those transcripts.
Q: These concepts are new to me. I read what you sent in email recently, and I found them very hard to understand. But now you’re talking about them again, they’re beginning to sink in more easily, and I’m beginning to understand them. So you talked about not wanting to…
Aaron: Remember, Q, we in this life now have just met. Some of these people have been studying with me for 20 years. I think they will be familiar concepts to you. And as you practice with them—not conceptually, but practice with them, you’ll understand them and how they apply in your life.
Q: I’ve been thinking, didn’t the Buddha give his retreats in the rain? Monsoon season?
Aaron: Yes, but they had a small shelter. So if you want to build a small shelter under the catalpa tree, we can go out there and sit. All it needs is a platform and a roof, open sides so we can see the raindrops falling and the catalpa blossoms falling.
(session ends)