Guided Meditation Through the Mountain Cave: The Journey From Darkness Into Light

November 28, 2017 Tuesday Evening, Path of Clear Light Class

Guided Meditation Through the Mountain Cave: The Journey From Darkness Into Light

Aaron: My blessings and love to you. I am Aaron. Quoting the famous words of the Buddha, “You are what you think. With your thoughts you make the world.” Are we creating a world of light, of peace, of joy, or are we creating a world mired down in our negative thoughts?

Sometimes when I ask this, people say to me, “But I don’t have a choice.” But of course you have a choice. Your vipassana practice has given you a very direct way to observe the arising of negative thought without getting mired in its content. If you do become mired in its content, you have thusly chosen.

With the Mother, we have Remembering Wholeness, to help people to remember their innate light, their innate open heart, their innate potential for giving and receiving of love. So much of what I have been teaching for 30 years has been about this, that you have a choice. When we started 30 years ago, most people had no meditation practice. I spent an entire year meeting once a week and offering a book, The Path of Natural Light. But you get my meaning, and the book is available online, Parts 1 and 2, first semester and second semester. People were learning to observe when they turned the light out or when they noticed the light. It’s not a matter of turning it on, it’s a matter of your back gets turned to the window and you don’t see the light. You forget it exists. For those who have not yet met that book, it’s available as a free download on the Deep Spring website, and I recommend it.

In these decades since that book was offered, the world has been spinning. New beings of very strong positive polarity come into the Earth with the intention to help shepherd the Earth into a higher vibration, into the light. You who came years before that, years before these youngsters, what are you doing still stuck in the darkness? Is it time to get out?

We had a workshop scheduled for Saturday, and unfortunately the decision was made today to cancel it because of low enrollment. There were actually a lot of people who wanted to attend online from a distance, but Tana did not feel she had the skill to film what was happening, not just in here facing the camera but people doing artwork out there, and so forth, and Dorothy Ann and I talking in different rooms. So only 4 registered locally, and so we cancelled it. I’m disappointed that we cancelled it—I’m disappointed that we needed to cancel it, that there was low enrollment. I understand it’s the holiday season and you have a lot of pulls on your time.

One of the things I hoped to work with with people at the workshop, people were asked to bring in various kinds of art materials— pictures, especially, from magazines that reminded them of home. Home. Light, loving, flowers, rainbows, a beautiful face, a beautiful natural scene. What does this light look like? And then we were going to do collages and drawings based on the idea of finding my way home. Well I think we’ll still do it. I have the space reserved in March to do a workshop based on the book. And I thought about it today that we could combine the two, since the path of clear light leads you home. It seems like a good way to draw it together. So we’ll do it.

But for now I’m going to lead you on a guided meditation. And I’m also going to invite you at home in these next 2 weeks to find those pictures that speak to you of home. Maybe just the face of an infant or smiling child or radiant elder. A waterfall or a flower. Two people looking lovingly at each other. What is home to you? What does it look like? Clip these things out of magazines, or draw them. Pull them into a collage that says “home” to you. And it can be very small, 9×12. Something you can even stand on your altar so you can look at it and remember: this is home. Just jarring the memory: this is home. Maybe it’s here that remembers; the heart needs to remember.

“We are what we think. With our thoughts we make the world.” Not quite quoting, but expanding on this, if we think a negative thought, a dark thought, you see how you close on down into increasing darkness. The more you dwell on the dark thoughts, the harder it is to come out.

In vipassana we note sinking, negativity, contraction, fear, anger. As soon as you note it, you’re not so caught in it. Here’s negativity. Right here with negativity is that which is loving. Right here with negativity is that which is light, knows the power of love. And then, that important matter of choice. Am I going to keep descending into this darkness, into this hell realm, or have I had enough of that? This is not denial. The hell realm of course exists only in your own mind, but it does exist, and you create it. Where do you choose to focus your attention?

Many years ago, I would guess over 30 years ago, maybe 40 years ago, Barbara attended a beautiful workshop at Friends Meeting House with a woman named Elise Boulding. The theme of the workshop: a whole day spent envisioning the future we want to create. Elise’s emphasis was on the idea that we must see it, really feel it, in order to create it. We can’t say, “Well, it’s a lovely dream, and maybe someday we’ll have peace in the world. What would it look like? What would it feel like? And then groups gathered together around tables, each group with big sheets of paper and drawing material. Each group spending several hours and the afternoon together creating an image of the future they wanted to create, talking together about it. What works, what doesn’t work. What would bring this aspect of our vision to light? How would it work? And then later in the afternoon, all the groups held up their drawings and reported back.

The main thing I remember of that day was not the details but the power of vision, if you can not just vision it as a “maybe someday” but “this is how it will be,” people smiling at each other, helping each other, taking care of each other, releasing fear, and how it would look and feel to release fear. The energy in the room shifted, because in the morning people were closed in, trying to imagine something that they couldn’t really get their hearts around. But as the day progressed, people because excited about the idea, building on each other’s visions. Really seeing, not as “maybe someday” but, “This is our future. This is our future.”

This is essentially what I’m asking you to do now, together and when we are able to have the workshop, doing it as a group. I’m not trying to copy Elisa’s idea. She is not a copyable person, but a very vibrant person. Do you know if she is still alive, B? She is. She and her husband both quite wonderful people.

So I’m not trying to copy her idea but to translate it into 30 years later. What does it look like now to know that we have the possibility, the potential, the love, the wisdom to co-create an ascended world of higher vibration and consciousness? What would that world look like? But ascended vibration and consciousness gets a little vague, a little fuzzy; what would it look like?

In Path of Clear Light, I am inviting each of you to take a path into the clear light of your tomorrow—not your next year, your tomorrow. Where there is fear, anger, confusion, where are clarity, where are love? What does it feel like in this moment? You can’t come home unless you know what home is like, unless you have a real vision of home. So you need to spend some time meditating, drawing, dancing it, playing with music. Getting to know it, this home of love, of high enough consciousness that fear and negativity can no longer be maintained. I’m not saying they’ll cease, but they’ll pass through and blow out. I think of like the scent of a skunk. You open the windows, turn on the fan, and whoosh, i’s gone in a few minutes. So it stinks, temporarily. But then the fresh air is always there, always blowing through.

Let’s try a guided meditation together. I’m going to ask you to close your eyes…

You have been living in a country in which invaders filled with hate and fear have come, killing, raping, doing harm. A group of you, let’s say each of you here and your families, have made the decision to flee. All of you have lived in times that were filled with love before these invaders came. But now there have been 20 years of them. It’s hard to remember what it was like to live without fear.

You have been planning for a long time. Your small country is circled by mountains, high mountains, but two of you together have explored a cave system that begins high up in your mountains and within about a 10-day walk. Shorter, if you can go directly. It carries you through interlinking caves and out to a beautiful country on the other side, a place of peace and plenty. In the past year, a number of you have walked part way through, making marks on the walls, caching food. There’s and underground stream, several, so you don’t need to hoard water, but you have cached food and some firewood. There will be about 40 of you, from children to elderly, making this trip. If you succeed, the plan is to come back and tell some of your friends, and help guide them through to safety.

All of you here in this circle today, you have been among the explorers and have come out to the other side, to fertile meadows, a beautiful river valley, sunshine. Many fish and animals for your hunting and eating needs.

So now you are ready. You must be very discrete. It won’t do for 8 families to suddenly disappear in a moment, so the plan is for one family at a time to go into the cavern, walk a certain distance in, and then, 2 or 3 days later, another family.

Now it is your turn, you and your most-loved ones— your parents, your children, your spouse, your partner. You know that you will be in the darkness for perhaps two weeks, because other families still need to come in.

You start walking. Take a last look as you enter the cave, look behind you at the sunshine, at the blue skies. At what once was a very lovely home before these invaders came with their pillage and destruction. Say farewell to it and hold in your mind what you have seen at the other end of your walk. But those who accompany you, they have not seen the other end. You’ve described it. They trust you, but they have not seen with their own eyes.

So you have waited, and now it’s been 2 weeks. You are all into the cave and ready to start your 10-day walk. You who have been here before, you are leading the way. You come to the first cache of food and firewood. You build a fire. You roast vegetables and some of the fresh food you have brought with you. You are warmed by the fire and the comradeship. With morning, you extinguish the fire and walk on again.

A second day. A third. A fourth. And then you come to a place where there has been some kind of rockslide blocking the way forward. You try to dig through it, but it seems impenetrable. Shall you return, back to the fear, the rape and murder, the killing of children? Shall you return? No.

Some of you who have walked this way before thought you remembered some side tunnels that might go around. And you know you had cached a lot of food— grains, beans, and other things, dried fruits stored in tins. There would be food for you here. So you explore. Days turning into weeks.

What you had not stored in abundance was candles and torches. Now, gradually, the firewood is running out. Fires must be saved to cook the rice and beans that keep you alive. There is abundant water. There is really abundant food, but without light you cannot find your way.

As weeks pass into months you become dwellers of darkness. A long river that runs through the cave system provides ample water, and even occasionally piles of wood. But you have tried to follow it upstream and found the way blocked. Openings for water and small wood to come through, but not possible for people. Or one opening with a powerful waterfall, lots of driftwood at the base, but no way to climb up and through it.

Months turn into a year. You are not starving. You have water. You each had packs with essentials. You have robes to wrap around you in which to sleep. You even amongst you have several books that are read aloud in those brief times when a fire is lit to heat the food. How long does it take a child to forget what it feels like to live in the light, in the warmth and the light of the sun? Your 3 year old says, “What is sun? I don’t remember. What is warmth?”

It’s doubtful now with all your meandering whether you could even find your way out. Through 10 years of caching food, there is an abundance of food in many directions. But a route out? Not so clear. Eventually you must begin to raise your children as if this is their home, this place of darkness. Visual darkness, but the heart is not in darkness. You can raise them with love.

A second and a third and a fourth year go by. Try to imagine this, not to say, “Oh, that’s impossible, Aaron; we’d have run out of food.” This is my story, so just do it my way.

Imagine one day you come to a new area with caches of food. You are, the 40 of you, with one small stick burning as a torch, but that stick picks up the mark made on the ceiling. Somehow you have come around the landslide obstruction. Somewhere within a week ahead is the opening.

Are you eager to get there, or is there some fear? Now after several years you have gotten used to living in darkness. How will it feel to live in light again? Am I ready for that? You have learned to survive in darkness through a lot of armoring of the self. Letting go of the longing for the warmth of the sun, the clear blue sky, or the fresh rain and the smell of flowers. Where have you buried those longings? So it’s a bit scary. Much as you yearn to go ahead, what will it be like? Can the eyes adjust to light, after so long in darkness?

I ask you to visualize that meadow beyond the last cave opening. Song birds and flower smells… the fresh breeze… to be dry and warm… to swim in a fresh river… to eat fresh meats and grains… to dance and sing in the light. Can you see how this reflection makes it possible for you to step beyond fear, and to move forward?

And now you come to a cache that one of your recognizes as the final cache. Not only food there but some extra dry clothes and other things, all stored. Candles, so each of the 40 now has a candle. And you begin to walk out, down what is remembered as the final hallway…

And then, in the distance you see a tiny glimmer of natural light, the distant cave opening. How do you feel? Is there just joy, or some mix of joy and fear? We are coming home into the light of day, into the fertile fields of the earth and the blue skies and soft rain. Can you feel both the eagerness and also a bit of pulling back?

Maybe a thought arises: what if I get out there and I cannot live as freely and lovingly as I dreamed I could? Am I ready to break into the light? Am I ready to live free of the hatred and fear that sent me on this journey? Am I ready to create, to co-create with my friends a new world of love and of peace?

I would ask you not to get bogged down in doubts, but just to hold your intention to live in love, in peace, in light, and for the highest good of all beings. Know it is possible. You would not have started this journey unless you knew you could do it.

So in your meditation, envision you all taking hands and walking out of the great cave mouth and into the light. You have come home.

The meadow before you is filled with wildflowers, butterflies, bees fertilizing the flowers. Deer and other wildlife are grazing. The river is a magnificent shade of blue, and across the sky, a rainbow. You have arrived.

Of course I am offering a metaphor here, not of a journey of 10 years but of a journey of endless lifetimes. Of the time you chose to evolve as mature beings, stepping out of the Eden in which you were protected children, to mature into your own fullest power as co-creators of love and of light. It has been an arduous journey. Now you are ready. Step out together into the sunshine and dance in the flower-strewn meadow. Rejoice!

Fruit trees are laden with many varieties of fruit. The stream is filled with fish. Celebrate your emancipation from the slavery of belief, of limitation into the truth of the fullness of what you are, truly divine and radiant beings, capable of co-creating an Earth of love, of caring, each for each, of happiness.

You may open your eyes at this point. I’m going to talk a bit more.

What I have just described is one metaphor for your journey of so many lifetimes. Opening from darkness into light. It is not a myth. If you did not have the potential to live with love, to live in light, there would be no myth planted about the journey. I cannot promise you immediately that as Earth changes into a higher density planet, everything will be perfect. That would be delusion. But I see where humans are now as at a turning point. One long day’s walk from the mouth of the cave, but becoming clearer that the way is open before you, and that what you yearn for is indeed possible. But to co-create it, you must move past the belief in limitations, past the constant return into believing in your inadequacy, shame, and darkness, and trusting your light. What blocks that— even the word trust is not right— knowing of your light? What blocks your knowing of it? What best supports it?

The practices in Path of Clear Light are really, I said that I expected there to be 2 more books. These are the introductory clear light practices. They are the vision that you held 2 or 3 days back in the cave when you sat together by your small fire and remembered: we have come past the obstruction, and if we keep walking we will emerge into the meadow. We can do it. Now we are no longer lost. We can do it.

But there’s still going to be some heavy walking. There’s still going to be some despair when you turn and find a second obstructed area. Not impassable but, instead of of walking right through, you’ve got to spend a day or two digging. This is not going to be easy, but again, quoting the Buddha, if it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it. I know all of you here trust me, and that if I say this, “If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it,” if I say it it’s because I know it is possible. This Earth was not created to die in fire and destruction, fear and hatred. The human race did not come into being, and all sentient beings, to be expressions of hatred but to be expressions of love. It will not be easy. It is possible. And you and so many of you around the world are gaining the tools, the learning, all that you need to know, to make this future possible.

One of the things that will help most is to spend some time truly visioning the world you hope to live in. How would it feel? How would it feel, for example, to walk out of that cave expecting no one to be there and to find a great group of people, who, instead of shooting arrows at you, welcomed you with loving arms and a big feast prepared for you? Had built some shelters for you and said, “We hoped you would come 10 years ago. We’ve been waiting for you. We’re so happy to see you.” “Aren’t you afraid we’ll take too much?” “No, there’s infinite abundance. Everything you need, everything we need, it’s all here. We love you.” This is the world you can co-create when you cease to be caught in the stories of fear, scarcity, and enmity.

So, enough words from me. Let’s turn on the lights, give you a chance to stretch, and then have some discussion. What I’d like to hear from you is sharing of your personal visions, perhaps. Going around and sharing what to you this world might look like. And then, from your own personal experiences, what blocks the manifestation. I’m not talking here about groups filled with terrorism and hate in other parts of the world or even in our own country, here, but in your own heart, what blocks it. This is all you have control over. But each time you clarify the light in your own heart and allow it to burn brighter, it does change things everywhere in the world. You ARE that powerful. Love is that powerful.

Some people listening to this may think, “Aaron, you are naive.” I don’t think so, but if you want to believe I’m naive, believe I’m naive. Where will that get you? Rather, know the possibility and feel, experience the possibility in each day. Experience it right now as the Christmas season is coming. Try an experiment with quarters or dollar bills, or whatever you wish, or with flowers. Go into town and simply, not to every person that passes, but here and there, give a flower, give a dollar, give a quarter, give a smile. Ask somebody who looks particularly disheartened, “May I buy you a cup of coffee? May I take you into this gift shop and buy you a small gift? It would give me joy.” “Why are you doing this?” “Because you look sad, and I feel joyful, and I would like to help you to feel joyful and feel the possibilities that I feel. Come, what would you like— the bookshop, the gift store, the restaurant— where should we go?” Some people are going to run from you— “He’s crazy!” Others will perk up and smile and trust.

Did any of you know Shaky Jake? This was not my own or Barbara’s own direct experience, but I know people who, when they saw Jake, would smile, give him a hug, and say, “Jake, let’s go get a meal. Jake, what would you like?” And Jake was so happy. Sometimes he’d say, “No, I don’t need that right now.” Often he’d go with them. Jake was not truly down-and-out, but think of all the down-and-out people downtown as Shaky Jakes, capable of wonderful music. Feed them with your heart. Try it as an experiment and see what happens. If I am truly a source of light, and I offer that light out to others, what happens? Certainly some will reject it, but not all. What happens?

Your heart, your radiant heart is your true home. Offer it out so others may also find their true homes, and see what happens.