June 16, 2015 Tuesday Afternoon, Emrich Retreat
Akashic Field
(This talk reviewed by B Bartz)
Aaron: My blessings and love to you all. I am Aaron. I want you to picture yourselves standing on the rim of a huge bowl. As you sit where I’m sitting and look across past that building and up the hill to the trees– a bowl that size round, deep. So deep you cannot see the bottom. In it are all of your dreams and all of your nightmares. Everything washed together in there.
You have a fishing rod and you know that some of these dream fish like one kind of bait, and some of them like another kind. The fish that are your fondest dreams and wishes feel like small lively colored bait, bait that moves around easily. If you invite them with that, they’ll come and grab it. The dark nightmares, they’re like big heavy chunks of garbage.
So you stand there and you think it’s time to catch some fish. What bait are you going to put on your hook? You think it’s an easy question. Of course I’ll put on the beautiful little bright-colored bait. Will you? You believe that that’s what you are inviting. But often there’s resistance, some thought, “I don’t deserve it. I’m not good enough,” or other similar kinds of thought that get in the way of inviting that to which you truly aspire.
So it’s not so easy. You find yourself unconsciously reaching for the big heavy lump of garbage, casting it out and saying, “Whoops! What did I do?” as the big nightmare fish bites. You may not even be aware how you invited it, but suddenly here it is in front of you.
The akashic field, have you all read the basic two sheets about the akashic field? I don’t want to waste our time on that. If you haven’t read it, some of what I’m saying will be a little bit confusing, but I’m not going to repeat it.
Picture the akasha as this giant container. It contains everything. The elements of earth, air, fire, and water are within the akasha, so, the entire material world expressing out of the akashic field. Thought is within it, physicality is within it, literally everything. We talked yesterday about the All Ground and primordial purity. The akashic field is not the same as the All Ground. The All Ground sits below the akashic field. It holds everything. Then we have the akashic field. All of the elements, all of the possibilities, the mental and physical body, everything within the akashic field. The primordial purity sits within this mix, but it’s not directly participating in the mix, only it emanates out into everything that will receive it. It is the ground for all goodness, all love, all beauty.
So we can open into the akashic field, and this meditation is taught with different articulation in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. There’s a very helpful book called Circle of the Sun which goes into a fairly dense Tibetan articulation with many visualizations and Tibetan terminology. Barbara and I spent two different summers reading through it, with her typing sections of it and my commenting on it, just a little at a time, letting her practice with it.
She is not a trained Tibetan teacher, nor am I. I’ve been in Tibetan Buddhist lifetimes but not as a high teacher, so my learning of this comes after my last lifetime. So it’s important that you don’t start to think, “Oh, I’m learning Tibetan Buddhism.” No, you’re just learning a practice of working with this ground, this akashic field and everything that emanates from it.
That said, anybody who would like a copy of the approximately 90-page journal that Barbara and I put together from that first summer, just let Barbara know and she will send it out after she gets her computer back of course. Right now, no access to any of that.
What’s important here is that you understand what I mean by akashic field. You’ve heard the term akashic records. These are the records of each human’s lifetime, each sentient being’s lifetime, compiled together as a, let’s say a file, an energetic file. The akasha is simply energy and it has different aspects, different presentations.
So the akashic field is this vast field of akasha. We can enter into the field and choose in a very wholesome or unwholesome way what we wish to draw forth. When we’re not conscious and we’re simply reactive, there’s less choice. That reactivity, that subconscious grasping or aversion, draws forth that which is less than wholesome. When we are more conscious of what we aspire to draw forth for the highest good of all beings, with love, then we’re able to draw it forth.
Please don’t misunderstand me. We cannot find the body moving into a flu, cold, coughing, fever, and say, “No, I don’t choose this,” and simply push it away and instantly recover. Maybe some beings can, but it’s a misuse of this energy. Rather, we ask, why did I choose this? In what way is this a teaching for me? In what way am I distorting something so that reactively I may have put the garbage bait on the fishing rod and caught this flu? We don’t say, “Oh, it’s my fault. I did this to myself.” Only, “I aspire from here on to work more deeply in consciousness, to draw to me and to release onto the world that which is for the highest good, wholesome, and with harm to none.” So we keep aspiring in that way. And we begin to be able to experience this field before we cast the negative bait. To be able to stop and say, “No, not that.” It’s not too much different than what we talked about in the meditation hall earlier today.
When we are reactive, somebody pushes us and we push back, that’s kind of casting out the garbage bait. Instead of considering deeply what’s happening within us, we simply react. And then we draw the results back to us. And then we say, “Why am I catching this nightmare? I didn’t choose this.” We cast another piece of garbage. If you’ve reeled in garbage, you’ve possibly done so subconsciously. But you have a chance to choose more wholesome results.
If somebody pushes you and the push is uncomfortable, and you push back and they push back and topple you over and you break your leg, who are you going to blame? Well, ideally let’s not blame anyone. Let’s just say, “Oh, here is the result of all of these conditions.” But mind jumps into blame. His fault! He pushed me! Maybe because I pushed him. Well, he pushed me first! Well, why did he push me first? He drove over nails in the parking lot and ended up with four flat tires. He was very angry. And when you approached him with a slightly angry look on your face, he pushed you. That doesn’t mean it’s okay that he pushed you, but can there be compassion? All of this is offered as teaching for compassion.
So you have to understand how to work within the akashic field from a loving place that’s not trying to fix anything, to prove anything, but simply with the aspiration to make wholesome choices for the highest good of all beings and harm to none, with love. Truly in service to all beings.
The next step after understanding this is to begin to enter into the experience of this field and become stable at it. For that I’m going to lead you in a guided meditation.
(tape paused during guided meditation)
We’ve just done the akashic field meditation that has been transcribed before, something similar, not identical. Grounding in the depths of the ocean and helping those on the ships. I did not record it. We continue here.
One hallmark of the akashic field is that when you enter it in this way, you can ground deeply in the stillness and love of it. The ego cannot choose. It casts out and it doesn’t know what kind of bait it’s throwing. The heart always knows what it is casting. The heart is not slave to the ego. It’s not slave to fear. It’s able to respond spontaneously and with kindness, to ground itself in this depth. And of course the ocean is just a metaphor for your own heart. That depth, that stillness is always there, and the ocean is a metaphor for the pure awareness of the resting eyes open, resting in pure awareness meditation we did. The stillness is always within you and always accessible. But in order to open to that stillness, there needs to be, first, enough stability in practice not to get swept away by the emotions, by fear, by confusion, by pain, by anger. There needs to be the intention for service to all beings for the highest good, not separate the self out and saying, “I’ll take care of me.” Not excluding the self, either. The self is part of this highest good for all beings. You can’t be of service to others at a cost of harming the self. But the self doesn’t come first. The everything of which you are a part comes first.
And third, to begin to understand the experience of non-contraction and the experience of contraction, so that when you’re contracted and agitated, awareness is able to note contracting, contracting. That which is aware of contraction is not contracted. Coming back into that uncontracted spaciousness. Breathing, open, free of contraction, even while the contraction is still rippling through. You’re not trying to get rid of contraction, of tension, of fear or pain. You’re seeing deeply into it, knowing this has arisen out of conditions, it’s impermanent and not self. Let’s go deeper. Let’s find and rest in that ground.
(Aaron says “Thank you.”) The “thank you” is because the catalpa tree is dropping sweet-smelling blossoms on me.
So this is the basic of, let’s say, one part of akashic field meditation. I have not spoken about how we manifest, other than acting in support of others from the akashic field. I’d like to see that you understand this, and maybe Thursday we can go on to that next step. So I’d like to hear questions, here. What did you experience? If not asking questions, just share your experience. Were you able to feel yourself sinking into that still depth and then raising up the hands and attending?
Q: I experienced something different from the suggested. It was something I experienced in meditation. And that was, a tremendous energy buzzing, it almost felt like attacking me. But actually, using the vipassana instruction, I could note indeed it wasn’t attacking and that it was mostly pleasant. But it kept me from engaging in the visualization.
Aaron: Okay, so you were able to take that buzzing and feeling of attack into vipassana and gradually it subsided to some degree. You worked with it skillfully. I don’t want to give you any more details here, other than it would be helpful at that point also, when feeling attacked, to make a very clear statement, “I am being of Light. I come in the highest service to all beings and with love. Nothing that is negative in service to self may use me. This is my heartfelt commitment, offered with love.” And repeat it as often as needed until that energy subsides. Making a clear commitment, “I come in service to the Christ,” or to whatever resonates for you, to the Buddha, to all the great awakened ones. “I come in harmony and love for all beings.” Because it sounds to me like at some level, and for whatever reasons, seeing your open energy field, something negative is trying to say, “Oh, here’s one with strong energy, and maybe we can use it,” shifting it off into a distorted track. Compassion simply says no, the same way you’d say no if you were walking down the street and somebody comes up to you and says, “Give me money for drugs.” No. It’s pretty clear. But it’s hard because the energy can be very strong.
So the more you align yourself with light, the more support you will feel. And you can also reach out your hands to me, to whatever great masters you feel would support you. You’ve been at the Casa. Ask for Dom Inacio’s support. Whatever great masters, reaching out your hands and saying, “Be with me. Help me to rest in this commitment to the light.” And then change the image. They’re no longer people on a ship drowning. There’s you feeling attacked. You re-ground yourself. From that deep ground, only then come up, and if you begin to feel that buzzing and strong energy, ask for the support. “Take my hand, Dom Inacio,” Jeshua, whatever calls out to you, whatever you call out to, in an inner way. That support will always be with you, and keep restating your commitment to service to the light.
The higher we go in service to the light, I don’t say this to scare you, but it’s important that you understand that the higher we go in service to the light, the more seductive we are to negativity, because negativity sees, “Here is a powerful servant of the light. Let’s see if I can grab it and use it in some way.” If we’re kind of wishy-washy and not strongly in service to the light, and meandering back and forth, negativity doesn’t want to try to use us because we’re not a very powerful tool. But as you become a more powerful tool, negativity will want to use you, and just as saying no to anything negative on any plane, that no is said with compassion and deeply grounding yourself in your own highest commitment to love. Okay?
Q: (hard to hear) Can you clarify for me, that was the akashic field you (we?) were in? I found it very…
Aaron: For most of you, it was. Not for all of you. Some of you were more hovering on the edges, not fully willing or able to commit yourselves at this point. But most of you at least tasted that field, yes.
Q: I found it very easy to do. And all what I’ve heard about the akashic field to me sounds very complicated and complex.
Aaron: This is just cutting through the complexities and giving you a simple exercise so that you get an experience of the field, and how when you ground yourself in the field and work from there, how it feels. Then we’ll add a few complexities on Thursday, how we really manifest from that field.
Don’t make things more complex than they need to be. The intellectual explanations and data about the akashic field are complex, but resting in the akashic field is simple, like resting in pure awareness. And manifesting in the akashic field from the akashic field is simply the deepest movements of the heart manifesting outward.
I want to give you an example here. One of you sitting here in this circle reminds me of this example. A friend here who visioned the office that she wanted, but she could not find it anywhere. It simply was not manifesting. She looked at this rental and that rental. She could not find it. So I suggested to her to just sit back, open in meditation, rest in awareness, and then from that state of awareness, envision exactly what she wanted—woods out her window, a quiet street, spacious, not huge but comfortable, good energy, good light, at a price she could afford.
So after months– am I correct, months?—of trying, she did this. And she called and said, “I found it!” And it’s been some years now, and I gather she’s quite happy there. Will you share a little bit about that experience and how you manifested that? We didn’t really talk about it as manifesting out of the akashic field, but you understand now that that’s what you were doing.
Q: It’s been 15 years. And the office is absolutely beautiful. I’m a psychologist, so I love it, and everybody who comes to me loves it.
So back then, I first of all had to be clear that me being in an environment that felt good to me would be the greatest service to everybody. So the environment that knew would help me to do my best work was one in which I was surrounded by woods and had a view of woods out my window. So I would run in the woods and envision looking out my imaginary window at the trees of the woods that I was running by, and ended up manifesting an office that overlooks those woods. It was an artist’s studio, it wasn’t even an office.
I remember Aaron saying to connect with the emotion of it so that when I was imagining being in this environment, I was connecting with the feeling of being openhearted and inviting anybody who resonated with that energy, and feeling how good that felt to be of service in that way. And literally every day I go to work, that’s how I feel.
So I actually have a question about intention. Sometimes there’s a discrepancy between the human intention to be comfortable and the soul’s intention to learn. I’m wondering, how from a human place can there be alignment? Because what I want is to learn in a way that feels comfortable to me. And sometimes the discomfort is because of stories, so that has to be looked at. But sometimes it’s a collective feeling as humans. There are some things that feel really bad to us, like, you know, tragedies or trauma or untimely death or financial hardship. So I would like to learn in not those ways.
Aaron: Thank you. I understand the question. So the first point here is the distortion that sees the human intention and the soul’s intention as divergent. And as soon as you experience that, there needs to be a pause. The human is an expression of the soul. The soul, we could say, is that still depth and the human is what’s up at the surface. When you’re experiencing that distortion, the first thing to do is to drop the feet, drop the energy down, and reconnect to the soul.
I use the word soul because that’s your word. I often don’t use the word soul because it’s misunderstood in your culture as a more Christian idea of soul. But what I mean as soul is simply the highest self, the innate core of your being. You don’t have a good word for it in English. Let’s just call it the aware essence of love that is the seed core of your being.
When you sink down and connect with that, at first you’re sinking down and connecting from everyday consciousness. But gradually you start to connect into it from the place of awareness.
One small particle of this awareness, though, is the conscious human being. The broad loving awareness that is deeply avowed to the highest good of all beings includes the self. It never puts the self aside or says, “This self should suffer in order to serve others.” There’s no need for that kind of suffering. Nobody needs to suffer. Because when we work harmoniously and from this deep place, it all opens up.
So you sink down to that level before you’re fully in that seed core and without everybody consciousness you make the statement, “I choose not to be overwhelmed. I choose not to experience too much pain or confusion. I want to learn this in a stable way.” And then you sink further down into that core. And after you’ve rested sufficiently and stabilized in that core, you begin to come up asking the question, how do I best serve this human in her resolution of old karma, in her service to others, in all the areas to which this human aspires? We don’t let ego answer the question. We raise the question and take it into meditation, without trying to figure it out. The answer is not up here, the answer is in the heart.
I had a friend once who repeatedly said to me, “I don’t know what work I will do in the world. I need to know what my work is.” He had tried several different trades, things that were enjoyable, but he said, “No, that’s not really it.” He kept getting messages on his computer in various ways about studying music, about academies of music. He had always wanted to be a musician but thought, “I don’t have the talent. I don’t have the background. This is not a way I can really make a living or serve the world. I can just play some music for my own enjoyment.”
But one day in a deep meditation he saw himself singing, and all the world singing around him. And there was so much joy in it. And he realized he’d been getting messages for two or three years, “Try this!” So he applied to and tried out for some kind of a music school, a good music school. And although he didn’t have much training, they accepted him on the basis of his skill. He ended up being a wonderful choral musician. He had no trouble finding work with his singing. He found a job for himself leading a fairly large and well-respected choir. And he also did his own solo work, after a number of years of school and training. And he was filled with joy. “This is my life work!” But in life, so many invitations kept coming, and he just said, “Oh, I can’t do that.” Well, it will keep inviting you until you pay attention.
So we ask, what is it I need to learn? How can I best do what I came to do? And for you, I think you are right now doing what you came to do. It’s more a question of how to make it flow more smoothly, how to smooth out the bumps in the road. Take it into meditation, take it to spirit. Ask for help. “Why am I manifesting these bumps? Why am I tossing out garbage bait? What am I attracting to myself?”
A popular teaching in metaphysics is called Law of Attraction. Some of you may have met that teaching. This that I’m explaining to you now is really the ground out of which that teaching grew. That teaching is somewhat superficial. It doesn’t go into all the nuances. Yes, of course, you can attract to you that which you desire. Yes, of course, you sometimes attract to you that which you don’t desire. But we have to have the depth of meditation to understand how we’re contracting and grasping or pushing something away to truly open to what we desire, and to see something that’s not wholesome and to release it. And also to realize that just because we release it doesn’t mean it will instantly go.
If, for example, Barbara is deaf, she can’t say, “I release it, so I expect now in 30 seconds I’ll hear.” It may not actually be physically possible. If you’ve lost an arm, you can’t say, “I plan to regrow the arm. I release being armless.” You do live in a physical universe and have to follow some of the rules of that universe. But there is so much more you are capable of because you are literally these angels in earthsuits that I keep telling you you are, and you forget you are angels. And you get stuck in the heavy density human.
A base of this teaching, which all of you in this circle have attained to a good degree, these teachings in the Tibetan tradition were restricted for many centuries, really. Only until the last 20 years have they been allowed out in the word because they’re so powerful. And somebody that comes strongly in service to self can misuse these teachings. They’re about working with energy, working with intention. So it’s so important to hold the intention to service to all beings. To do the practices that shake you loose from so much self-identification from fear, from selfishness and greed. The practices of finding true joy in giving to others, of being of service to all beings in the world. And also the practices to include the self in this circle of love. Never cutting out the self, never putting the self in front of others.
So this is part of, we talked about sila, panna, samadhi. Sila, the moral awareness. Deepening in this intention of service to all beings and with love. Deepening in meditation. Deepening in the wisdom of how and why you manifest that which is unwholesome. Beginning to see, “Oh, this happened because of my fear, because of the grasping, because of the confusion. I don’t have to be stuck in that space anymore. I choose to release that.” The image comes to me of being knee-deep in deep muck. The harder you try to pull one leg out, the deeper the other leg goes. But if you just reach up and take the tree branch above you, and then gently lift one foot, shaking it out of the mud, and then the other foot, you can step out of the muck. You thought you had to push hard. Just lift yourself. That’s all it takes.
So we have time for one more question.
Q: (mostly inaudible) …of scuba diving. If you’re going to dive, and it is peaceful but when you came back to the surface, the winds had come up. And the scuba platform was pitching and rolling 5-8 feet. So I went from this peaceful calm to having to sort of spear the platform as it went by. I think that’s a good metaphor for (inaudible), peaceful and calm at one level, the stuff that’s uncomfortable (inaudible).
Aaron: And the simultaneity. And the importance of not having a strong preference, “I have to be here. I have to be there.” Because you know that you’re in both places at the same time. And this takes us back to the meditation practice. It’s so helpful to practice with strong body sensation or emotion, and to remember, “Fear! Fear! That which is aware of fear is not afraid.” Itching, itching. Right there with the itch, can you find that which is not itching? Instead of scratching the itch, just find the calm skin.
Something like itching is wonderful to practice with. It’s not truly painful. Yes, it can drive you a bit crazy after a while, poison ivy and such, but we’re talking about just a small insect bite. Itching, itching. Wanting to scratch. Here is a wonderful place to sink down into those depths. Find a place that’s not itching. Open the heart with compassion to the human who’s experiencing an intense itch. Come up and just (exhale). Literally pick up that human and put her on the Coast Guard cutter. Feel the place where there’s no itch. And you may be very surprised that the itch almost immediately is gone, even if the insect bite remains.
So, very powerful to practice in that way. Feeling sadness. Meditating, tears coming down. Feeling so sad. And then a deep experience, that which is aware of sadness is not sad. Letting yourself sink down into a place of ease and spaciousness. Literally remembering joy. Thinking consciously of something about which you feel joyful, even in this moment while there’s still sadness. You’re not trying to push away the sadness. You’re noting yes, there’s sadness, and there is joy. I can move into the balance. Sadness because this or that has happened. Joy for this or that. You’re not negating the sadness. You’re not dwelling in the sadness or enhancing the stories of the sadness. This allows you to better know the simultaneity. And eventually, even to experience joy for the thing about which you’re experiencing sadness. “My friend has died, but I feel joy for having known my friend, for having had this friend in my life.”
So this is real sadness and also joy. And then we can go into the akashic field and open fully into the joyful memories because we’re no longer creating stories of loss and fear.
All right, it’s 4 o’clock…