March 18, 2020 Wednesday Evening, Awakened Heart Class
Living from the Awakened Heart
Barbara: Good evening to everybody. I find this technology wonderful, that we can come together out of our separate spaces and really be a community, even with what’s going on here. It’s very wonderful that we have this technology. I’m grateful for it.
Aaron has asked me to read a poem to you to start with—to read it now, and you will hold it in your hearts, and he’ll refer for it when he’s ready for it.
This is part of the poem that many of you know, called “The Guest” by Kabir.
The Guest
“The guest is inside you, and also inside me;
you know the sprout is hidden inside the seed.
We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.
Let your arrogance go, and look around inside.
The blue sky opens out farther and farther,
the daily sense of failure goes away,
the damage I have done to myself fades,
a million suns come forward with light,
when I sit firmly in that world.
I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken,
inside “love” there is more joy than we know of,
rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds,
there are whole rivers of light.
The universe is shot through in all parts by a single sort of love.
How hard it is to feel that joy in all our four bodies!
Those who hope to be reasonable about it fail.
The arrogance of reason has separated us from that love.
With the word “reason” you already feel miles away.”
I have long loved that poem. It just speaks to my heart.
We’re all pretty consumed these days with ideas of dying and loss, fear, separation. Aaron pointed out last night that our isolation is not really the physical isolation of us each snug in our own homes, it’s the armoring that we put over our hearts. It’s the place where we get trapped behind our fear and don’t connect to each other.
We have a wonderful sangha here. With the Awakened Heart group, I have invited the Dharma Path class to join us tonight, at least for the first part, for Aaron’s talk, and we’ll see how many are on at that point—leaving the whole group to discuss or just the Awakened Heart class at that point. We’ll see.
It’s wonderful to be able to come together like this and share our joys and sorrows, our fears, how we’re practicing, what’s happening.
For me, wonder of wonders, we brought Hal home from his nursing home yesterday. It’s wonderful and terrifying to have him home because we don’t have the medical backup. We have the basics skills we need—we can feed him, we can put him to bed and get him up in the morning, but we’re 6 months away from being prepared for him being home. No accessible bathroom, for example. But obviously very unsafe to leave him there; an impossible situation. So he’s home. (as of 5/1 when reviewing this, his old nursing home has 50 cases of Covid)
The doors of the nursing home are locked down; we were not allowed in. He spent 6 days there, lying in bed. I’m sure they took care of him—they kept him clean, they fed him, they gave him his medicines. And other than that, he was simply lying in bed. For 6 days, okay; but for a month or two, well, he would lose ground very quickly. So, completely aside from the virus, there was no way we could leave him there.
For me, there’s a lot of fear coming up because this was supposed to happen in the fall when we had all the supports in place. There are some different federal programs that would have given us money for some hours of care-taking and the mechanical equipment, like a hospital bed, and we would have had a bathroom for him with a shower. I kept asking myself, am I doing the right thing? One has to listen to one’s heart.
I think that we chose this not on fear of what could happen to him but on love. This is what needs to happen now. It’s clear; this is it. Just bring him home and we’ll take it from there.
My money will run out in about 3 months at the rate I’m paying his caregivers—they are charging me very little/ hour but the care is 24/7. But still, at the rate of about $10,000 a month, this is going to be a lot of money. There’s no way I can just leave him there. We can’t do that to people we love; we can’t turn our backs on them. How do we live from this place of love? How do we remember the importance of love and stay grounded in love even when there is fear present, not get caught up in the stories of fear?
Aaron and I have been talking a lot about these questions, obviously. At this point I’m going to get quiet and let Aaron talk to you. I had invited Hal, and Caitlyn and Phil, who are his personal care attendants, to come in and listen. Phil is actually in the Awakened Heart class. But Hal is comfortably settled in his recliner chair and said no. So maybe next class he’ll join us.
Aaron is going to come in…
Aaron: My blessings and love to you all. I am Aaron. Imagine yourselves new at high diving. You’ve climbed up on the diving board. You walk to the end of the board and look down into the pool. You’ve done it a few times so you know, “I can do this.” Deep breath; you feel prepared. You walk back from the end of the board, turn around at the inward end, take another deep breath, and then one step, two steps, three steps, and you spring onto that end of the board. And just then, looking down, you see a cluster of people, right there below you. You’re shaking, wobbling on the end of the board. There’s no stopping it. Can you feel that sense of no control? Can you feel it?
What happens for you? All the thoughts racing through your mind. “I’ll land on them. I could kill them. I could get killed. They’re in my way. They weren’t there 20 seconds ago. What will I do?!” Well, you’ve already sprung; your feet have left the end of the board. You’re in the air; what can you do? You’re launched.
When you took birth, you launched. You sprung off the end of the diving board. You’re in the air, not knowing where you would land, only knowing that you were committed. It could be very safe, or it could be hazardous; probably some of each.
From the perspective of that awareness making the commitment to take birth, going with its own karma and its intentions to be of service, its intentions to learn, allowing itself to move into a new body—from there it looked clear: there will be challenges and there will be wonderful things. I don’t know exactly what I will need, but I’m ready to dive. And then you woke up in a body and said, “How did I get here? Now wait a minute—can I go back?” And of course, you can’t go back. The only way out is through, as they say.
You came here with a purpose, with intentions. You came here not because it was going to be safe but because it was vital for yourself and all other beings. And in that moment of launching yourself into a new body you gave up control in a very serious way. No longer knowing the future, what obstacles or challenges you might meet. But you felt assured by your guidance and by the voice of your own deepest truth: I choose this.
Dear ones, you have chosen this. Someone said last night, for years they have been practicing—practicing meditation, doing dharma practice—and kept wondering, practicing for what? Then there would be something a little challenging in their life and they’d think, “Ah, maybe it was this.” And after it was past, thinking, “Maybe it wasn’t this—I got through this okay.”
Well, here you are. Somebody said last night, “It’s showtime.” The performance has begun. How can you do this dance—this opera; whatever it may be—with love? And yet, you are given so many gifts, going forward, not the least of which is this social isolation. All of you, being meditation practitioners, have thought from time to time, “I wish my life was not so busy. I wish I could just stay home and have more time to practice.”
Now, I recognize some of you may be parents of young children. Some of you may not have the opportunity to stay home. You may have work that calls you out, about which you have no choice. But for many of you, you are simply home. People are saying to me, “Aaron, I’m so lonely here. I feel so trapped!” Here is your retreat! Here is your opportunity to practice!
But to practice in a new way—not gritting your teeth to get through it but coming into this phase of life with love, with so much love. At times, working with any of the Brahma Vihara practices, and also with tonglen. Inviting loving wishes for yourselves and all beings, because this situation puts you in a unique place whereby you are not simply—what is the phrase they used—”staying in place” is not the correct word— you are not staying in place for yourselves, for your own health, but each of you that takes care of yourselves is not spreading the virus to others.
You can only do this if you truly hold self and other as one. Taking care of yourself, taking care of others by taking care of yourself. Taking care of your children, of your parents, of your friends, but not by going to visit them. How do we do this? Social isolation. I think the term “isolation” is hard for some of you. It might be better to say “self-retreat”. But you don’t have to do it in silence; you can talk to each other.
In the Awakened Heart chapter for tonight I started by speaking about—let me read a paragraph from that chapter.
“At the beginning of the series of talks, I noted that for many years I have been talking about this process of making space around emotions and that emotions will arise if conditions are present for them to arise. If you don’t want those emotions to arise, you must begin to look deeply at the conditions out of which they arise, primarily the condition of fear and of the illusion of separation. Separation from other beings. Separation from the Divine.”
What scares you about isolation, I think, is that through connection with others you begin to see the divine in others and feel the connection to the Divine. But many of you do not yet see the divine in the same way in yourselves.
When you look to others for that view of the divine, well, that’s fine. That’s fine to do that. But you have to be aware that the divine is also within. I see this as a priceless opportunity to find that divinity within, to bring it into deeper awareness. Because who could feel alone when you know literally you are love, you are divine? You are the awakened consciousness, the Buddha, the Christ.
The other part of this fear beyond feeling separate from the divine—abandoned, let us say, is the feeling of helplessness, that so many of you are experiencing. You are so wired to want to identify problems and fix those problems. But now you may look at situations that need your loving attention but we can’t call them problems and there is nothing there to fix. When you give your fullest loving attention, there will be a sense of peace, perhaps. Deep awareness how everything in the conditioned realm truly is arising out of conditions and passing away. You are helpless—you have always been helpless, in terms of being an ego self. And yet the part of you that is completely connected to the Divine has never been helpless. So this is the place where you can begin to transcend those feelings of personal helplessness and move into that innate connection with God, Goddess, Divinity, with all things, and truly know I am That. I am that love. And that love is never helpless. That love is so deeply connected to everything.
In the chapter for tonight, I’m reading a bit again. Love is a big word. What do I mean by love? All of you have met Love here, incorporated in Barbara’s body in the last month. What is it? What did you experience in meeting that love? For many of you the important thing was just the energy, the presence of that high energy. I’m going to read this paragraph…
“It is easier to say what love is not than what it is. Love is not attached. There is not a specific object that you love and grasp and cling to, nor a self to grasp. Love is not contracted; it’s open, spacious. It sees things as they really are. It sees the whole universe as display of the Divine, and that everything, from the smallest insect to the greatest redwood, from a small ant to the human, that everything is an expression of God. Love is non-discriminative. It doesn’t choose one object over another but cherishes life in all its myriad form. Love may find an object, but that object becomes symbolic of all beings, otherwise it leads you into fear, into clinging.”
This is important; I want to read that sentence again. “Love may find an object, center on an object, but that object becomes symbolic of all beings, otherwise it leads you into fear, into clinging.”
“If you love something so that you need to grasp, that is the distortion of love that we call fear. Yes, it’s still love, but it is not the divine love of which I now speak.”
Nevertheless, we feel fear. We feel anger. —You feel anger. I don’t feel fear or anger. But I have, certainly, when I was human. I certainly don’t criticize you in any way for those emotions.
Your practice has led you to know for certainty everything in the conditioned realm is arising out of conditions, is impermanent, and not of the nature of a separate self. When fear arises, it arises because the conditions are present. And that leads to the whole notion, “I could lose something.” But my dear ones, if you’re connected to everything and everything is part of everything, how can you ever lose anything? This is the notion from the relative plane. From the ultimate level, you know that connection.
I want to find this poem, give me a moment… This is the poem “Kindness” that Barbara emailed out to you, by (Naomi Shihab Nye). And I want to read this to you, because it’s very powerful.
Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever…
(Aaron: I’m skipping a bit…)
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.
–Naomi Shihab Nye, from The Words Under the Words
***
This virus comes as a teacher. That doesn’t mean we want it to come; we all want to learn in painless ways. We don’t want to think about loss. We don’t want to have our routines interrupted. We don’t want to have things come to us that bring fear.
You have the gift that so many do not have, the gift of your practice. You know how to hold fear as an object that has arisen from conditions—not to control it, not to fix it, but to look at it. Here’s an interesting object, I’ll share it with you… To hold it as an object and say, what is it? What is it? What is this fear? What is it?
When you look closely at your fear, what is it? Fear of inconvenience—okay, that’s a mild one. Fear of loss—a harder one. Loved ones could die. Your routines of so many years could be completely devastated. You could die. Well, you’ve always known you were going to die. You know it more today than you knew a month ago: someday you will die. Your routines, they come and go. And your loved ones, of course they will die too, someday.
At the insistence of one of her sons who was visiting last week, helping to do the work of getting things ready to bring Hal home, Barbara went with him to look at several cemeteries and choose cemetery plots for them. Not being morbid; it was simply something she and Hal had never gotten around to doing. He said, “Mom, if either of you died, we would have no idea what you wanted. We need to take care of this.”
So, what better time to go and look, and to realize, “Okay, I am 77 years old. I could live another 20 years.” Her mother lived to 97. “Or I could die tomorrow, not of the virus but of a heart attack, or hit by a truck. What survives? And while looking at my preferences for where I would want this body placed, awareness it’s just the body.” She was able to keep asking herself, what continues? Not the body; what continues? Love. That was the final thing she came up with. She could have said awareness, but that awareness for her is deeply grounded in love, and I hope it is for you, too. Loving awareness continues.
You have died so many times. You have died of old age. You have died of illness, of plagues. You have died in wars. You have fallen off cliffs and been buried by avalanches. And yet, you are still here. The body dies. This beautiful essence of you cannot die.
“The guest is inside you and also inside me. You know the sprout is hidden within the seed.” You are that essence come to Earth to do some hard work this time around, and you are here at a pivotal time, a time of shifting of human consciousness.
Coronavirus—what is a corona? It has two meanings, as far as I can find when I look it up in the dictionary. One is the light around the sun. You are that sun, that essence, with a big corona around you. Could we begin to think of coronavirus as the virus that has come to teach you about your corona, about your radiance?
The other meaning of corona is “crown”. For a long time you have lived in a more male energy oriented world. Everybody has both male and female energy, but the male energy of power and control has been dominant for many, many centuries. So, we could also see coronavirus as a virus to that crown, a virus that has come intended to help break down that more masculine orientation of power and control, and bring you back into your heart, bring the whole world back into its heart.
Coming back to the poem, “Kindness”—holding it in the palm of your hand and knowing it will go. There’s nothing you can hold onto forever except the essence of your being, and you do not hold onto that, you simply are that. This is your truth; this is what you are.
I find it interesting that this has been labelled ‘coronavirus’. I know it’s because of the appearance of the virus, but it still could have been called ‘floret’ virus or something else.
What can this virus bring you? What gifts does it bring? Perhaps if you reflect deeply on those gifts there would not be so much fear. Fear is a conditioned object arising when the conditions are present, impermanent, and not self. That which is aware of fear is not afraid. Coming back to this awakened essence of yourself and still watching the human be afraid. It’s okay if the human is afraid. Cherish the human. It’s natural that the human will know fear. It’s natural to know fear. You don’t have to get caught in the stories of fear. And this is where your dharma practice comes in.
When Barbara was meditating this morning, she became deeply centered in her body and could feel how her body was reacting as if it was being attacked. The body—physical, emotional—all the bodies. She could feel the shaking of that attack through her whole body, everything contracting.
She worked with, practiced with it for 5 or 10 minutes. Each time she centered a little bit, took a breath, and then suddenly the shakiness of fear was back. She did some chanting; that helped to quiet her. She meditated with some imagery in her mind of a river flowing. That quieted the contracted energy. She realized, “I do not have control over what will come to me but over how I relate to it.” Again, that which is aware of fear is not afraid. Coming deeper into the awareness—but the whole body was moving through so many contractions—small contractions, not terror. And she’s not afraid of death. But, contracting. Really the human organism, the mammal, reacting as a mammal does—the cells contracting when threatened. She began to speak lovingly to the mammal. “Hello, mammal. You know that eventually you will go, and everything you know and love will go.”
I’m trying to think of a line of a poem… the words elude me… You can live your life being caught up in the stories of fear, or you can know them as stories and choose not to be thusly caught. You can speak to the mammal that you are with love. Comfort the mammal. Go and get a cup of hot tea and a fresh cookie, if that helps. Or call a friend and maybe just chant together for a few minutes. Whatever helps to open your heart, to bring you home to the one who is awake. Our class here, Awakened Heart—to come back into the awakened heart. This is the only way to address the conditioning that’s there, really on a cellular level when the body is contracting with fear. When the cells themselves are contracting with fear.
In the Dharma Path class we’ve been talking so much about living from the bridge. Not off in the relative world and lost there, and not trying to hide out in the ultimate plane. But being on the bridge where you can attend to the relative world and still be grounded in the ultimate, grounded in love.
Barbara finally realized that she was trying to stop the body and the cells of the body from being a body, from that energy that was coming up. Because there is an anxiety and threat. She got herself back onto the bridge, was able to spend maybe half an hour with pure awareness meditation, resting in a place of spaciousness and ease and joy. Then she realized she needed to get up. She has Hal home, now, and while there is a caretaker for him, she also needs to attend to him. So, she went into the room where he’s sleeping, the living room. Her heart was filled with love for him. And then, right away in that moment—”But we could all die tomorrow!” Fear!
It’s not really about death. It’s really the anxiety, “I have no control.” Remember, Hal has just been home for one day after 2 years of living in a nursing home. So, he was feeling disoriented. He was very, “Aaaah!” — fearful. And for a moment, well, more than a moment, for a minute or two she caught his fear. And then she stopped, and she just sat down next to him. He was in bed. She took his hand. She laid her head on his chest, and he wrapped his arm around her, putting his hand over her head. And she thought to herself, how many lifetimes have we been together like this, with love? How many more lifetimes will we be together?
Everything in the conditioned realm is conditioned. She suddenly realized she did not need to try to fix the body and the subtle contractions in the energy field of the body, but to hold them with love.
Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
…
“You must know sorrow… you must know kindness as the deepest thing inside and know sorrow as the other deepest thing… Then is it is only kindness that makes sense anymore…”
Kindness to yourselves to allow yourselves to experience the energetic pulsations of fear without getting caught in the stories of fear. Fear is just fear. It’s arisen from conditions, and you must acknowledge: in this moment there is fear. Fear mostly because you feel you have so little control over what may happen next. There is anger; there is sadness. They have arisen from conditions, they are impermanent. Your practice is not to get caught in their stories.
Then you can rest in the spaciousness of the loving heart and still allow the human to be a human. Not to expect yourself to be superhuman. I think it’s that expectation more than anything else that gets you lost in the stories of fear, because you’re not able to just hold yourself and embrace yourself, and your fear and your sorrow.
Living from the awakened heart. Let’s take this a step further. I said earlier, “You’ve been practicing; now it’s showtime.” This world, this whole universe, really, moving strongly into its transition to higher consciousness. This world as a place where that will happen. This is what you’ve been practicing for—not just in this but in so many lifetimes. To learn to rest in this place of love, of the awakened heart, of God, Goddess, Divinity, and to know, “I am that.” And to begin to trust it, that whatever comes to you, you have the capability to carry it and to do it with love.
I’m remembering the story here of a friend who was a dancer. She was playing opening night as the lead ballerina. Had been rehearsing for months, perfecting every movement of the dance. And then, just before the performance was to begin—she was all dressed, ready to go on stage—she tripped on something and felt a sharp pain in her foot. She was able to move her energy into her foot and to feel, and she could feel that she had not broken a bone but had perhaps pulled a muscle, something of that sort. She told me she was determined to perform. There was of course an understudy who could perform in her place, but she knew if she didn’t get out there then, she’d never get to dance this role that she so deeply felt in her heart.
She went out on the stage and she danced. She brought energy into her foot both before the performance for a few minutes, and then as she went out to dance; having to dance on her toes and leap and spin around. She said it was excruciatingly painful, at first. She encapsulated the foot with love and with light, just surrounded the injury with love and light, and she danced.
She would come offstage, then need to go right back on. Dance and danced. In an intermission, she stayed on her feet. She just keep offering love and light to the foot. Right after the injury, the foot immediately had swollen. She said, “Aaron, the remarkable thing was, when the performance was finished—over an hour later—and I finally went offstage to sit down, thinking that I had just become numb to the pain, and I looked down at it, all the swelling was gone and the foot seemed normal.”
That’s powerful. You are capable of the same thing. You are all suffering from, I don’t want to say injured feet, but injured somethings. Scared, angry, vulnerable, feeling powerless. If you surround those feelings with love and give them permission to be there rather than trying to chase them away, that removes the conditions on which they thrive and they will go. As long as you are trying to fix them, you are basically enhancing the conditions on which these feelings of fear and anger and powerlessness thrive. Stop. You CAN stop.
That beautiful line I love so much from the sutra: “If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it.” I’m going to say that to you again. “If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it.” But it is not me who asks; it is the love in your hearts that asks.
There will be anger. There will be fear. There will be feelings of vulnerability. There will be confusion. Let them be and go through them to what you are beyond them. In your essence, you are not afraid or vulnerable because you know your true power. This invites the awakened consciousness to flourish. This is the part of you that can move ahead into this transition, not just of yourselves and of sentient life but of the whole Earth, into this radiance, this corona, that you are. It will take practice and love, but you can do it.
I’m going to pause here. There’s more I’d like to say, but let’s start a new file and shift from dharma talk into more practicalities and questions.
(break)
Aaron: Let’s look at another idea, here. I’m only going to speak a few more minutes, then open the floor to things you would like to share.
Most of you have heard me remark that contraction is a hallmark of negative polarity, spaciousness an indication of positive polarity. Of course, you all move back and forth—contracted, spacious, contracted, spacious. It’s more the experience of the sun going behind the clouds. The sun is always there but sometimes you can’t see it. Spaciousness is always there but sometimes you don’t experience it, you only experience the contraction. It’s not like you have a conscious choice. When there’s fear or anger, feelings of powerlessness, this mammal that you are will contract. That which is aware of contraction is not contracted. Each time you come back into spaciousness, remember spaciousness, it helps to release contraction, it helps to bring you home.
Now, here is the important next step for you, for which you have been practicing. There is a virus that is sickening many people, killing some people. Such a virus thrives in the contracted energy. When there’s open energy, when the chakras are open and open energy going through your body, a high vibration in the body, it turns your body into Teflon, as we say. The virus tries to grab hold of something, but it can’t, as opposed to it’s grabbing. So when it’s spacious, there’s a smooth surface where the virus can’t really grab.
As you protect yourselves, you protect all beings. While your doctors are looking for a preventative or a cure, the best cure and preventative I know is a high vibrational energy. This is not just true of this Covid-19 but of all bacteria and virus: they cannot thrive in a high vibration.
This is an opportunity for all beings throughout the world to begin to look at how much power they do have to say no with compassion to that which is out to harm them. —That’s not really what I want to say; it doesn’t have an intention to harm; it only has an intention to support itself. But for all things that have the power to harm you, if you give into them, when you stop and say, “No, you may not do that,” it changes everything.
One moment please…the spring weather yesterday brought out the allergies, perhaps for some of you, too. Not Covid virus, just allergies…
This is a wonderful opportunity practicing with a virus, to practice with what you need to live with love in the world. I gave the example, I guess just last night. You are sleeping early in the morning. (I’m using a different example.) You are sleeping early in the morning and your neighbor, whose backyard adjoins yours, is out there at 5:30am with his lawnmower. You can go out there yelling at him, and because you’ve yelled at him he may ignore you, or he may get out there the next morning at 5:30am just because he’s angry at you, if his consciousness is at that level.
But what if you go out there with a cup of coffee or tea and a doughnut and you say, “(Whatever his name is), you know, it’s very early, and your lawnmower is loud. Could I induce you just to sit down and spend a half hour relaxing with a cup of coffee and a doughnut and not start mowing until maybe after 6 or 7? It would be such a kind thing to do.”
He says, “No, I can’t do that.”
“Why?”
“I have to be at work at 8am. I have to get my lawn mowed.”
“Well, how about if I come over later and mow your lawn for you?”
“No, I don’t want you to mow my lawn.”
“Well, look—we’re having a conflict of needs, here. It’s not reasonable to be mowing your lawn at 5:30am. I’ve offered you some kind ways to change the situation and you’re not accepting of those, so I just have to say no, you may not do this.” It’s not anger that’s saying it; you’re saying it from a place of kindness to both of you, because he loses through harming you. How do we say no with compassion?
Practice on this virus. “For the highest good of all sentient beings…” Remember the virus is also a sentient being. You can talk to a sentient being and appeal to its intelligence. A virus does have intelligence. It’s a very simply form of intelligence. But if you sit and meditate and communicate to it, “You are killing your hosts. If you kill all life on Earth you will not have any more hosts. It will destroy you. So it’s time to back off for your own good as well as ours.”
Now, you’re not trying to blackmail it. You have to truly hold its value as a sentient being in your heart, along with everyone else’s value. Saying no with compassion, meditating with it and telling it, “You may not do this.” Letting it know it’s destroying its hosts. And it may say, “Oh, really? I didn’t realize that.” Talk to it.
Do everything that you can to bring yourself into a loving and high vibration. And that includes bumping elbows with your friends. It includes meditation, singing, taking a walk in a pretty park, keeping your social distance—whatever makes you happy. Listening to music, watching a movie, painting a picture. There is not one of you whom I have not heard at some time in the past few years say, “Life is going at too fast a pace.” Stop and say thank you, if not to the virus, to the situation that is asking the whole world to slow down.
There’s going to be a lot of hardship for people who find themselves without work, without money. And yet, let’s quote Wordsworth here: “The world is too much with us late and soon; getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” Perhaps it’s time for the whole world to come back and look at the vast materialism on which it is functioning.
You are already finding, if you are staying at home, that you did not have to go to the store to buy this or that. Watching the grasping, watching the fear. Coming home. In this moment, what delights me? Where is joy in this moment? And you’re going to find that joy in the simplest things—a squirrel playing in the backyard. The movement of the breeze on the tree branches. The smile on a friend’s face.
So perhaps your whole world is being invited to shift its footing. And perhaps there can be abundance for everyone, new ways of holding possessions, sharing possessions. I’m very moved to find—some of you probably have the same websites in your own locales. For Barbara, it’s called Next Door, Mitchell, the local neighborhood Next Door program on the internet. People saying, “I need a roll of toilet paper” or, “I can’t get out; can somebody go to the store for me? I”m out of aspirin,” or whatever it may be, and strangers helping each other. In a world where people are helping each other, there are no longer any strangers. Self and other dissolve, and this is part of the entrance into higher consciousness.
You don’t have to thank Covid-19. You can say, “I don’t like you and I don’t want you around. Nevertheless, I do realize that you are also a sentient being, and you are simply acting out your own patterning. I bear you no ill will. But I will not be a victim to you, but instead, I raise my energy in love, which is a way of putting a shield around myself. You may not attack me. You may not attack my loved ones. And I choose to live, right now, in this moment, with love and with joy.” You can do it. And it will change everything.
So that’s enough from me tonight. Now I’d like to hear from you, people sharing. What I’d like to hear from you is, how are you feeling? What has been hard, and what has been wonderful? How are you practicing with fear, with grief, with feelings of helplessness? What works to support you? Share it with the others, because each of you has so much wisdom and so much to share. I’m going to record this part but it will not be transcribed. Everything from here on…
(Reviewed only to here)
(sharing not transcribed, only brief comments by Aaron and Barbara)
Aaron: I think the main thing you might have done is to allow the experience of fear instead of trying to get rid of it. Because you are trying to get rid of the fear, conquer the fear, you got into a war with the fear. But if you’re able to reflect, “Fear has arisen in this mind and body. Right here with fear, fully aware of the fear, where is that which is not afraid?”
What do I mean by “that which is not afraid”? Feeling that which is openhearted. Just going and looking out your window. Barbara spent some time in her garden yesterday where the first crocus was blooming. Right there, in that moment, no fear, just joy. Now, it didn’t last a long time, but in that moment, openheartedness. And then, meditating later in the evening, she was able, when she felt the body contracted, to come back to, “Remember the crocus.” Thank the crocus. “Thank you for your courage to burst into life in this world, you who are so short-lived. You live days or hours, whereas I may live 70 or 80 or 90 years. And yet you have the courage to come up. Thank you.” Can you feel the heart opening with that?
So when the heart opens in that way, you begin to get to know that which is not afraid, not agitated, not feeling helpless, right there with the fear. And then you can just let the fear be, and say, “Sit here, have tea, but we’re not going to get into your stories.” It’s not about stopping fear; it’s about the determination not to get caught in the stories.
I’m going to release the body to Barbara at this point…
(responding to the concept that Covid-19 is here to slow everything down for the human race)
Barbara: …It makes sense to me, and Aaron’s been talking to me a lot about this. He says it’s not why it came in, it’s the gift that it can give us while it’s here. It came in simply because the conditions were right for it to arise. It didn’t come saying, “Okay, now it’s my time on stage and I’m going to teach people to slow down.” It came in because it’s a virus that feeds off of things and somehow biologically it was ready to be triggered. But how can we use this in a positive way?
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Barbara: In response to what Q said (not transcribed), Aaron is saying, this is where you help yourself—meditating first, raising your vibration to as high a consciousness level, high vibration, as possible, and telling the virus, “You may not come with me to this house.” He says there are no guarantees but raising our vibration like that is akin to washing our hands. We can wash the energy field in the same way by raising our vibration, just through meditation, through loving kindness. Chanting, he says, will raise the vibration. Carry a crystal with you! he says. He says all of these things will help. There are no guarantees, ever.
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Barbara: That’s all. It’s 9 o’clock… Wishing you good health and love and joy and peace. Aaron says please know he and your own guides and many loving entities are all with you and holding you in their hearts. And you’re all in my heart; I love you all. Together we can do this.
So, good night, everybody! I love you!