October 8, 2018 Monday Morning, Oakwood Retreat
An Invitation to Practice
(10 minute intro to retreat)
Aaron: Welcome to Oakwood Retreat 2018. A wonderful opportunity to spend a week in silence and to feel where that silence can take you. Deepening in wisdom, opening the heart. Remembering who you are. Some of you in past years have said, “I’m here to wake up.” You must already be awake or you would not have chosen to come! At some level you know you’re already awake. How to bring that awakenedness into this retreat.
Many of you are in the Dharma Path program. We’ve been talking there about the “All Ground” and the primordial purity. Let’s start with recognizing the All Ground. The All Ground is everything out of which conditions are arising and passing away— objects, thoughts, everything arising and passing away. Some of it wholesome, some of it less wholesome.
I would like you to consider this week as an opportunity to get to know this ground and, when the conditions are present for something that’s unwholesome, that causes pain to yourself and others, to step back from those conditions, literally set them down. When the conditions are present for something that is wholesome and beautiful, to say thank you and bring them to you.
Quoting the sutra “Support the wholesome. Cultivate the wholesome. If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it. If such cultivation led to suffering, I would not ask you to cultivate. But because it is wholesome, cultivate that which is beautiful. Abandon the unwholesome. If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it.”
To abandon doesn’t mean to say “I hate you! Get out of here!” It means to look at it and say “Hmm not good.” You’ve opened the refrigerator. You forgot to clean out your refrigerator before the retreat. You go home and take out the first bowl, and it stinks. It was something delicious, a week ago. Are you going to throw it on the floor and curse at it? Or are you going to sa, “Thank you. I’m sorry I forgot and abandoned you in the refrigerator, but it’s time for the trash now. I will release you.”There’s no dislike in it. It tasted delicious yesterday, or yesterday it tasted delicious. But next Monday it’s not going to taste delicious anymore. You let it go.
The worrying thoughts, the agitation, the anger, the old limiting beliefs, let them go. Abandon the unwholesome. Remember that wholesome and unwholesome thoughts and body sensations and emotions, all of it are arising from this All Ground, this everything. I will talk more about this tonight, not in detail now. Just that I see this retreat as a wonderful opportunity to observe the habitual patterns you have— that which is unwholesome and keeps arising and arising— and to look at it and just say, “No, thank you. I let go of you.”
You may have a physical condition, a belief, “Oh, it can’t heal”. Of course it can heal. It’s already healed. Can you see the way your belief, “Oh it can’t heal, but I’ll keep trying to fix it,” is giving it more negative energy? It’s caught up in the assumption it can’t heal instead of yes, I acknowledge— I’m pointing to the knee as an example— this knee is weak. It does need to heal, to strengthen, but I really see the ever-perfect in it right there. And I encourage and invite and cherish this ever-perfect knee. There is nothing to fix, but there is that to be released because it’s no longer wholesome.
For some of you it may be more an emotion, a belief like unworthiness. “I will get rid of this unworthiness this week. I’m gonna go home from this week without any unworthiness. I will get rid of it! I’m going to take an axe to it!” Is that going to heal it? Of course not. “I will cherish this human being in whom the conditions have not yet been purified so that thoughts and feelings of unworthiness arise. Each time they arise, I will treat it like the dish in the refrigerator that was so delicious a week earlier.” When I say that the thought or feeling of unworthiness was delicious— yes, in some way it protected you from something. That’s why you took it off. It no longer serves. It’s no longer what is needed. Thank you, but it’s time for you to drop into this recycling bin. Pass it out. I choose not to carry this anymore. It’s an uncontracted “No, thank you,” not a contracted, “Get out of here!” Just relaxed, “No, thank you.”
So the thought of the aching body part— the bad knee, or the cancer, or the headaches, the thought of the challenging emotion— “No, thank you.” Right there with this particular physical distortion, emotional distortion, attitude, is the ever-perfect. That which is essentially beautiful and whole. This is what I choose. I choose love.
Is there anybody here who has never met me? You have met me through my books. I did not introduce myself to you. Basically this is to be an introduction, and instead I’ve turned it into a, I don’t know what to call it— an invitation to practice. So, I am Aaron and I am happy to be with you all this week. I love you all and I am looking forward to watching you open, to watching your hearts open, to watching the beautiful energy that flows through you, to sharing that energy.
I thank you and I will end here.
My blessings and love. And in tonight’s dharma talk I’ll go deeper. Thank you.
What we’re doing here is that when I leave the body, it leaves the body empty. Because we’re holding hands, there is energy coming into her body. If her consciousness returns to the body just here, like this, it’s coming into an empty ship, It’s uncomfortable. So this energy supports her reentry into the body.
(Barbara reincorporates; conversation on water bottles not transcribed)