The Four Worldly Dharmas; The Four Noble Truths; Love Speaks On, Is Love Impermanent?

May 20, 2020 Wednesday Evening, Awakened Heart Class

The Four Worldly Dharmas; The Four Noble Truths; Love Speaks On, Is Love Impermanent?

Barbara: Talking with Aaron today, we made the decision that I will start the talk for maybe 20 to 25 minutes, and then Aaron and perhaps Love will come in, and then will have some time for discussion, questions and answers.

I had a day today that felt like I was being broken apart and tossed up in the air and dropped on the ground! It was a hard day. Let me give you a bit of background.

For a year after Hal’s stroke I spent time grieving, obviously. Then I started to get it together. We started the renovation on the house, which would make it accessible for him to come home and visit. This went through fall, 2019 The house was just barely cleared and I started getting things in place, cleaned and had a week or two living in it. I loved living in it. It was beautiful. Then, a dear friend had had to move out of her sublet apartment; the owners wanted it. She had no place to live so she stayed with several friends including me. But she was here for a bit of time. So again, my house was not “mine”. There was somebody else living here and moving with her own tides and her own material goods and so forth.

She found her own apartment, moved out, and I had about 3 weeks of just getting quiet. I was not aware of how attached I was to this solitude. Just getting quiet, being in my own place, keeping it meticulously clean and beautiful. I love Hal dearly, but he is a collector. So, though the decades, there were piles of newspapers and other stuff everywhere. There were also three sons in this not-so-large ranch house, with all the chaos of a busy family.

Finally, I had a home to myself after 50 years of living around a family. I was being really careful about how I was taking care of it, using polish on the beautiful countertops and washing the brand-new floors every couple of days so they shined. Nothing was out of place. Flowers on the coffee table; lovely throw pillows on the sofa….It really gave me a sense of peace. I enjoyed the beauty of it.

Then, it came time for Hal to be able to come home and visit. At first, we did that just with him sitting in his wheelchair. But it became clear it would be good for him to have recliner chair. I bought him a recliner lift chair, where you push a button and it stands you up. It’s big. I had to move the sofa out of the living room so there was space for Hal’s chair. He was home for 4 hours a day, three times a week, and the rest of the time it was my living room, with a smaller chair for me. I was struggling to keep it as beautiful and clean, but mud got tracked in and everything was displaced. But I love Hal and it was good to have him home; no resentment there. I just cleaned up after he went back to the nursing home each day.

And then, Covid-19 hit, and Hal came home. This is more about me than about Hal. He is not trying to take over the house; he’s simply a disabled man in a wheelchair with two caretakers. But between Hal and his caretakers, it’s taken over the house. The living room is fully dedicated to Hal. The new kitchen and dining room, I can cook in there sometimes, if I wait my turn. I can find a place to sit at a table, but more often I bring my food out here to my office, because there is usually much chaos at the table. Or Hal is sleeping.

I can see the resentment and frustration and fear. “My needs are not being met.” And then this week came the need—we’re going to have to find, eventually, by the end of summer, new caretakers. The couple here had promised me two months, and now they’re going to stay until the end of August, which is 6 months. Very generous and loving! They’ll still continue as his caretakers, but not living here. They have their own home.

It’s been decided we need to create an apartment in the basement, which means all my storage down there has to be cleared out—clothes, books, the things I have in the cedar closet. The basement will be a caretaker apartment.

Suddenly everything is being pulled out. Yesterday, somebody took everything out of the medicine cabinet, shelves that I’ve had labeled with tape and knew exactly where things have been for 50 years. They threw away a lot of it, saying, “It’s expired.” Well, how expired can foot powder be? Yes, it said 2018, but still, it’s foot powder. A lot of it did have to go. I acknowledge: a lot of it did need to go. It was more about me. “This is how I’ve had it, and this is how I want it. And I want to feel in control, and I want to feel safe. And as long as I know where my Band-Aids are, I’m in control.” As long as I know where my towel is; as long as I know where my sweater is. But everything is (sound effect). Again, after a whole year of renovation and finally getting it organized. Grasping—I want it this way! Here is suffering.

I was in tears. I was just feeling overwhelmed. I felt like I wanted to run away. And basically, what I want is Hal to be home and safe, and to be able to be here with him, us loving each other. Everything else really doesn’t matter very much. If I think about it, I could live with a couple of shirts and a pair of jeans and a sweater and a bathing suit—I don’t need that much. It could all go. It’s more about grasping, how I want it—. And seeing how that clinging was giving me a place of comfort and safety, which was not a real place of comfort and safety, because when I lost it, I was no longer comfortable! Nothing in this conditioned realm is permanent. Everything is always shifting. If my comfort and safety depend on holding onto details of this conditioned realm I’ll never be comfortable or happy.

So finally, about 4pm this afternoon I walked back to the orchard, where I have a bench in the back of the yard and sat and meditated for a while. Aaron reminded me of a teaching called the Four Worldly Dharmas. I want to share this with you, and then Aaron is going to come in and talk.

These Worldly Dharmas are what seem like opposites.

Gain and loss, taking delight in what we gain and being disappointed or upset or angry when we lose something.

Praise and blame, taking delight when people tell us they love us; feeling upset and angry when people don’t like what we’re doing. And today I was getting a lot of flak. “Barbara, let this go; you don’t need it.” “Barbara, I’m rearranging it in a logical order. Move out of the bathroom.” (sound effect) Suffering.

Fame and disrepute. This is a little different than praise and blame. When we have a bad reputation, when people say bad things about us. Or, feeling delighted when people say, “Oh, you’re a wonderful teacher. You’re a wonderful person. You’re so kind. We love you.” It’s a kind of praise, but it’s more about people saying, “This is how we see you as.” A good person or a bad person; nice person or not nice person.

The last one is pleasure and pain. Feeling delighted when we experience sense pleasures, beautiful sights, sounds, tastes. Feeling upset when we feel unpleasant sensations—smelling the skunk.

These Worldly Dharmas are profound teachers because they’re always with us. The most important thing is they are always changing. Where there’s gain, there’s going to be loss. Holding onto the house, perfect, immaculate, flowers just so and vase on the table, or a beautiful plant, the counters polished and the floors gleaming. If it weren’t Hal, it would be my dog running with muddy paws. It’s never going to stay the same. My beautiful granite countertop—somebody put something heavy down on it and one edge has a fingernail-sized chip. It’s broken. It’s not broken far in; it can’t be repaired, but it can be sealed. It will always have a small chunk out. It’s a wonderful memory of impermanence.

It’s like Ajahn Chah’s teacup. You’ve probably heard this story. Somebody gave him a beautiful English bone china teacup, and they put it up on a shelf. And he said, “No, no—put it here. Serve my tea in it.”

“But it could break!”

He looked at them and said, “But it’s already broken. I know if it’s not broken today, it will be broken tomorrow or next month or in 5 years. How could I enjoy it if it has to sit up on there, on a shelf? If I know it’s already broken then I can use it, and when it breaks, it breaks.”

We can’t hold onto anything. When we try to hold on, we suffer. This is part of what Aaron is going to talk about, the Four Noble Truths. Everything is impermanent. We can’t hold onto anything, and when we try to hold on, we suffer. This does not mean we can’t enjoy things.

I foresee a time when we’re in process of all this moving stuff, Hal will then have two bedrooms. His bed will go out of the living room and into one bedroom. So he has one room that has all his stuff, his clothes, exercise and medical equipment and so forth, his gym, and another room where he’ll sleep. He’ll have those two closets. I’ll have my bedroom with my 4-foot closet. Well, okay. Out will go some clothes. As long as nobody else is saying, “You have to get rid of this!”—Let me decide! Control. What is control? Is anybody ever really in control? Truly none of us is ever in control, it’s a myth. Just letting go. But eventually Hal will be back in that bedroom. The sofa will go back in the living room; not the sofa and love seat, but something. There will be a place for me to sit in the living room again. And I probably never again will have control of my beautiful new kitchen and dining room, and my corner where I could do some painting. It’s all set up and used for 3 weeks only. Ohhh, I was looking forward to that! Okay! It’s okay. Coming to it in my own time seems to be what I needed to do. Just having compassion for myself, that I needed time to see what the suffering was about and to let go.

What Aaron said to me was very helpful. He said, what is your highest priority? And I said, very quickly: Hal’s welfare. And my welfare; but really, both of us together. Having him home to love and to be loved. To have him be well and happy, because his happiness, after all these years, is truly my happiness. And I know my happiness is his happiness. Nothing else really matters. He said, then why are you making such a fuss! And I said, Old habit! So, he guided me to look at these Worldly Dharmas.

The next step in this is looking at the Four Noble Truths. Aaron is asking me to say a little bit more here, first.

I feel better. I sat back in my orchard. I meditated. I made the decision on Saturday, which is supposed to be a beautiful day, to go out to my cabin and just sit on the deck in the woods and spend an afternoon out there (while reviewing; I never got there. Life got in the way. But I did plant some of my garden). Somebody will be with Hal; they don’t need me here. Just to go out and enjoy the woods. This is another place of turmoil, though. Because today somebody came to look at my cabin who may very well rent it for most of the summer, or buy it, which means I won’t have it available. I’ve told them I’ll want it for one week.

Letting go. The past two summers I’ve not been there much because of Hal. But it was nice to know I had it. Grasping—something I can hold onto, even if I can’t use it. Something to make me feel good. But a cabin isn’t something to store in a pocket, pull out a glance at, and put back.

I am looking out my window now at the beautiful flowering crabapple tree. Pink blossoms, so pretty. And a spruce tree is partly in front of it, so there’s a contrast between the spruce with its new light green spring branch tips, and the darker green, and the flowering crab, pink behind it. It’s so beautiful. When I was looking at that earlier today, Aaron said, “Can you hold onto it?” No. “Are you appreciating it fully, right now in this moment?” Yes. “Is there any sadness?” Yes; I know I can’t hold onto it; the colors won’t be here in a week. And that’s okay.

How to live in this moment with joy of what we have. Yeah, I’m feeling better. I’m still feeling tender. I could probably start crying pretty easily. But I won’t; I’m feeling better. And basically I’m happy. I just had to go through this stuff. I may be a dharma teacher but I’m still human! Chaos and emotions!

Okay. I’m not going to try to sing this song to you, I’m just going to try to say the words with a little bit of rhythm. But if any of you know it and feel able to sing it, that would be great, because I can’t sing you the tune. “Let me sing you the Four Noble Truths”—does anybody know that? Just the words…

I will sing you the four noble truths.
I will sing you the four noble truths.
You’re a frightened child you say?
Well, you’re Buddha anyway.
That’s the core of the four noble truths.

Everybody suffers just like you.
Everybody suffers just like you.
They suffer just like you;
that’s what sentient beings do.
Everybody suffers just like you.

You suffer ‘cuz you grasp and you crave.
You suffer ‘cuz you grasp and you crave.
You grasp and you crave;
to desire you’re a slave.
You suffer ‘cuz you grasp and you crave.

There’s a way out of suffering for good.
There’s a way out of suffering for good.
Our of suffering for good,
realize your Buddhahood.
There’s a way out of suffering for good.

The way is the eightfold path of peace.
The way is the eightfold path of peace.
With the eightfold path of peace
may all beings be at ease.
The way is the eightfold path of peace.

Don’t believe it ‘cuz you read it off a shelf.
Don’t believe it ‘cuz you read it off a shelf.
You can’t get it off a shelf;
you must test it for yourself.
Don’t believe it ‘cuz you read it off a shelf.

I will sing you the four noble truths.
I will sing you the four noble truths.
You’re a frightened child you say?
Well, you’re Buddha anyway.
That’s the core of the four noble truths.

We’ve been going over the song, “Let me sing you the Four Noble Truths” by Nathaniel Beadle. I recommend that we find a link, people listen to it, and sing to it. It’s a catchy song.

Our class, Awakened Heart, is just about this. Coming to know these Four Noble Truths. The truth of suffering. The path out of suffering. The truth of compassion as part of the path out of suffering. The truth of wisdom as the path out of suffering. Finding our way through the Eightfold Path and knowing our awakened nature, our awakened heart. This is the way out of suffering.

This is what pulled me out, today. I think 20 or 30 years ago I would have spent a week in a deep funk, really making life miserable for the people who were trying to help me, and making life miserable for myself. It’s okay that that funk comes up, but we don’t have to keep it going. We have a choice. If we want to suffer, we can suffer; that’s a choice. If we don’t want to suffer, we don’t have to suffer; that’s also a choice.

That said, I’m going to step back and give you Aaron…

Part of the recording has been lost.

Aaron: … After his enlightenment, the Buddha reflected on what could be shared with others, to try to find some concise format in which to express it. The formula that came up for him is this Four Noble Truths. He based it on the way a physician visiting a sick person would state what he had learned. What is the problem? What is the cause of the problem? What is the possible outcome, and how do we move toward that outcome? This was a prescribed formula for his day, in which a physician worked.

So, the first: what is the problem? There is suffering, dukkha. The word ka in Pali means the hub of a wheel. Du means “off-center”. Thus, dukkha is the wheel that is off-center. Conversely, the suffix su means “center”. Sukkha is happiness, is the wheel that is centered.

There will always be sukkha and dukkha as long as we wander in this conditioned realm, caught in conditioned beliefs, especially caught in the belief of a separate self. When I say, “caught in the belief of a separate self,” of course there are 30 faces here on the screen, you are all separate selves. But you are also part of the whole. When you rest in the awakened heart you are not separate. When you live from your ego, you experience your separation.

So, the first Noble Truth, that of the unsatisfactoriness of conditioned experience when we grasp at its being perfect and stable, because it’s never going to be stable. Part of the enormity of the world’s suffering right now is not Covid-19 but the expectations and grasping for it to be different. Can you feel that? So many of you for months have said, “I wish I had a quieter pace of life. I wish I could stay home a bit. I wish I didn’t always have to be out doing things.” Well, here you are. True, it came with sickness and a lot of suffering for many people with illness and death. Still, the world is always going to be changing, and there’s no way to hold onto it, as one way or another.

In India today, I believe in India or Pakistan, I’m not sure which, there was a major typhoon which caused enormous flooding, great destruction. Some people died. People who were safely sheltered at home from the virus now are moved into close contact in shelters. There’s no way to stay safe as long as you’re here in a human body. The human body itself is finite. You cannot hold onto it. Furthermore, you do not have to hold onto it. I know from the human perspective you want to, but my dear ones, you have died many times.

Many of you, with the idea of death or of change, are like the child climbing up the ladder to the high diving board. “I want to do that!” You get out on the diving board, look down, and say, “No, I can’t jump.” You climb down. Other children climb up and jump. You see it’s safe. You climb up again. “No, I can’t do that!” Well, it’s not the jumping that’s the problem, it’s the fear of jumping. It is safe to jump.

I’m addressing my words here to one who may be listening, I don’t know, one who is approaching that jump. He knows who he is. If he is not listening, that’s fine. Someone who is with him can tell him about it. But I’m also addressing to many of you. You are very attached to staying healthy. And I understand that. It’s very wise to live within the parameters of the day, the social distancing and washing your hands and taking care. Can you do it from a place of love, not a place of fear? Can you do it out of care for others, to keep others from experiencing sickness and possible death?

But for many of you there’s a place of hardness and fear. What if I touch a surface, contract the virus? Fear, fear. As we’ve said for two months now, the high vibration of love is what protects you. As soon as you find yourself suffering you are probably in a place of fear. Grasping for it to be other than it is. Holding onto things the way they were, not wanting life to change. This is the suffering that Barbara described she experienced today, this week.

Things are always going to be changing. Then what is the changeless, the eternal? What endures? Only love, loving kindness, patience, generosity—these beautiful traits, they endure. Everything else arises out of conditions and passes away.

I want to explain that a little bit further because I’ve had some questions about it. I know this briefly takes us out of the loop of the discussion of the Four Noble Truths. But people have said to me, “Aaron, why do you say love endures? Isn’t it also conditioned?” A number of you have heard me say this before. Some of you may be confused a bit. Love is asking me to drop this discussion off now and he will speak of it when he comes in. He says, “Aaron, please continue with the Four Noble Truths and leave some for me to talk about!” (smiling) Yes, my beloved!

The first Noble Truth: suffering exists. The second, the causes of suffering, or dukkha. The main cause is grasping, grasping for things to stay they are, not to change, which is impossible, because in this world of conditions, as conditions change the results of those conditions will change.

Can any of you remember being young children and being so excited about each birthday, wanting to get older? “I want to be 9!” “I want to be 12!” “I want to be 18!” Anybody here who can’t wait to be 92? Anybody here who can’t wait to be 80 or 70? Maybe it would be a delightful celebration for your birthday; maybe not. But being that age, wanting the body to age, to get older, none of you really want that. But you can’t stop it; the body will age. You can control a bit the speed at which it ages with meditation and taking care of yourself, your diet and exercise, living with love. This will help the body age slower. But nevertheless, if the body is going to pick up a virus, it will pick it up. You can be careful but not be certain. And if it’s going to fall off a cliff and break its neck, it will do that. You have the choice about living with love and joy or living with fear.

So, the First Noble Truth, dukkha. The Second Noble Truth, the causes of dukkha, grasping and craving. The Third Noble Truth is simply the declaration: There is an end to suffering. And I come to you here as a being who was human in so many lifetimes and suffered intensely in some of those lifetimes. And then I woke up. There was still sadness at times, there was still body pain at times, but there was no longer suffering. Instead, there was ease and joy.

And you can do the same. There is an end to suffering. This is why you’re in these classes. It may not be the first reason that comes to mind. You’re in the classes because you are suffering, but perhaps not with an idea, “I want an end to all suffering,” just, I want a little less suffering, a little more happiness. I want to be a little bit kinder in my life. I want to be able to live a bit more wisely. Wonderful. But don’t forget the possibility as you live more and more from the awakened heart you approach that point where truly there is an end to suffering.

And then, the path out of suffering. As the song calls it, the Eightfold Path of Peace. The Buddha delineated eight specific steps in three areas. Moral awareness. Becoming more aware of how we live our lives in relationship to others. Sila is the Pali word. Sila doesn’t mean being—how can I phrase it?—creating a sharp good and bad contrast. Rather, it means moving into the place where you know your interconnection with everything, and understand that to do harm to anything is to harm the self, and to harm the self is to harm everything.

Sila, this moral awareness, deepens through meditation. As you meditate you start to open to the profound interconnections with everything. With that deepening insight, wisdom comes. Panna, with accents over the n’s, so it’s a soft n. Panna, wisdom, the wisdom that knows everything is arising from conditions and passing away and is not based in a separate self.

These are ancient truths. The Buddha did not create these truths; the Buddha realized these truths in meditation and made them accessible. Others in other spiritual traditions have also made them accessible in different words. However, they are phrased, the outcome is the same. We are one, one with everything.

What is the experience of being one with everything, of not being separate? It comes in tiny bits of insight. There may be some profound understanding at some point, but usually when you come out of such a meditation, it becomes “that meditation when I saw that.” But where’s that insight now? Are you living that insight now? That’s the important thing. How do you best live that insight of non-separation?

So, coming back into the place of suffering in daily life, as Barbara did today, and being willing to be honest enough with the experience not to just say, “It’s not fair. Why are they doing this to me?”, but, what’s going on here? What is this experience of suffering right now? What are the roots of it? In what ways am I participating in those roots through old delusion, through old fear? Do I choose to remain caught in that suffering and blame others, blame circumstances? Or am I ready to be a mature adult and take responsibility for my experience? Am I ready to let go, to let go of the way I think things should be, be in the present moment, with love, and then consecrate my energy to helping things be for the highest good of all, which may or may not be harmonious to the way the ego thinks it should?

If I think it should never rain, what about the farmers who need rain for their crops? If they think it should rain every day, what about me, who wants to go for a picnic? This is so much a part of your human experience, this kind of dilemma. Come into the awakened heart that is capable of deeply hearing others, not because “I think I want to hear,” or “Oh, I’m a good person; I will hear,” but because there’s a tenderness that can find compassion for oneself and for others and can truly listen to the joys and sorrows of the world and touch them with compassion.

There’s a way out of suffering for good

There’s a way out of suffering for good

Out of suffering for good

Realize your Buddhahood…

…Or phrased in any way you like: realize that YOU are awake. You have always been awake. You’ve been dreaming that you were asleep, but you never were really asleep, it was all a dream. Now it’s time to move out of the dream and be present in this life as it is, awake. It may be a frightening thought. What does it mean to truly be awake in you life? Are you ready for that? In what ways does being asleep serve as protection? “I don’t have to be quite so honest with myself.”

Barbara talked about the Worldly Dharmas, praise and blame. We want to be able to praise ourselves. Well, one doesn’t have to blame oneself; one has to be honest with oneself. “They” are not creating my suffering, I’m creating it out of my attachment. If I can’t be honest with myself about my attachment, I can never step out of that attachment. And then I will continue to suffer no matter what anybody or anything else does. Am I ready to be compassionate to myself about the depth of my pain? Because I cannot truly be compassionate about others’ pain if I cannot be compassionate with myself.

Please explore these Worldly Dharmas and the Four Noble Truths. For those in Awakened Heart, know that we remain available to you to help support you through the summer. Email Barbara if you need help. There is a Dharma Path class next Tuesday with a talk, and Awakened Heart is welcome to tune in to it. There will be other times when we come together over the summer. We’re here to help offer support, especially for the Awakened Heart class for some of whom this is a newer practice. Know that we are here, and we are happy to offer support. So, we’re not abandoning you. The class ends; your practice and support does not end. Next fall, join the extention of Dharma Path if you wish.

Finally, I would remind you: you are already awake. Part of the suffering is the denial of that awakeness. If you’re already awake, then you are responsible. If you deny it, then it’s somebody else’s fault that you suffer. Is that easier?

My friends, are you ready to be awake? I think you are.

I wish you a beautiful summer. I hope the virus is past enough that you can get out to the park, and to have dinner or whatever with a friend. Swim in the lake, take a walk, maybe even dance. If not, can you be in this social isolation without so much suffering? Everything is impermanent, even Covid-19.

Enough said. I’m going to pause this and let Love come in and share his part of this, and then we’ll have some time for discussion.

Love: I greet you in love. Thank you for the joy to be with you tonight.

So, the question that was raised is, is love impermanent? Love is taught in different words. The kind of love that you have for strawberries or chocolate, that’s impermanent. We might not call it love so much as deep enjoyment of, “Oh, I like that.”

Let’s go back a step. I have said this to most, if not all of you, before. I am Love. I Am. You are love. We are love. Love is.

Out of a space in which there was nothing, just blankness, something arose. Call it God, Goddess, Divine Principle or Essence, Love, Infinite Creator. One could argue that Love is an expression of the Infinite Creator, but some people are not comfortable with the idea of Infinite Creator or God/Goddess. However Love came to be, it is, and there was never a time when it was not. Love is.

If it were not so, there would be no meaning to anything. The Buddha phrases it beautifully. Aaron, can you tell me the name of the sutra? He says it doesn’t matter. He’s asking me, though: can you quote it? Perhaps. Trust, my friend! The Buddha was speaking to a group of monks. “Oh monks, there is an Unborn, Undying, Unchanging, Uncreated. If it were not so, there would be no reason for our lives, no meaning to our lives.”

This Unborn, Undying, Unchanging, Uncreated, whatever its essence is you may not know. You cannot have a direct experience of it so easily, only the ways it expresses and the primary expression is love. And a second primary expression is light.

This takes us into a place where we enter the world of duality, love and absence of love. Light and absence of light, called darkness. Love and light, they exist. Love can diminish into what seems like absence of love because it becomes so compressed into a hard knot. Light can seem to diminish as it becomes armored and enclosed into a darkness. But darkness and fear and hatred have no… Aaron, I’m looking for a word… they are conditioned. They exist only because of the conditions. The unconditioned expression is love, is light.

Given love as the primary expression of this Divinity, however you name it, given love as the primary expression, Love; I am love! You, you are love! We chose to express further out, giving voice to or expression to joy, generosity, kindness, patience, and so many other beautiful expressions of love.

Aaron calls these direct expressions of the Unconditioned. That is, joy simply is. Left alone, joy will be there. Joy fades away when certain conditions come that block joy. Generosity of spirit disappears as certain conditions come, mostly of fear and self-identification with the ego, that block this generosity. The same with loving kindness and patience.

These are all direct expressions of the Unconditioned in that they need nothing else but the Unconditioned itself to reveal themselves. Are they the same as the Unconditioned? Yes and no. Come into your hearts in your meditation, my dear ones, and remember being Love. Right here with me, now, be Love. Find that place in your heart where you can truly say, “I am Love.” Sing it out. “I AM LOVE. I AM LOVE.” Beautiful. Yes, you are Love.

Now think a thought based in fear, as Barbara was experiencing today. “Nobody cares about me! My needs are not being met! I’m not getting what I want!” Where does Love go? You can’t lose Love; it’s simply blocked for the moment.

Look at whatever thought came up that seemed to block Love, and ask Aaron’s beautiful question, “Is that so?” Is it so, that nobody cares about you? Is it so, that your needs are not met? Is it so, that this world is so terrible? Is it so? No. Can you feel the possibility of Love, the power of Love, of being Love, of real awakening? Because Love is not based on conditions; it simply is. This is your birthright as a sentient being.

I asked Aaron and Barbara for permission to speak about this tonight at the closing of this Awakened Heart class, because it is the one thing that we hope you will take away with you, if nothing else. To remember even when it’s hard to remember: you are Love. And because you are love, you always have a choice to live from the power of that loving, awakened heart, that heart that is grounded in being love, or not.

You may get lost, sometimes lost for days or weeks or months or years, but eventually you will draw out of it and remember again: “I was forgetting—I am Love.” Then there will be enormous compassion for the human who got lost.

When you rest in Love, when you rest in the true light that you are, the joy and compassion that you are, all of these being expressions of Love—when you rest in these you have the ability to break through the world of illusion, to let go of self-identification with the ego self, and to truly BE the Love that you are, in the world. This is your birthright. This is what you have come to remember in this lifetime. All of you have come consciously at some level to help birth a deeper awakened consciousness into the world, to help raise the vibration of this Earth and bring it forth into a new, higher consciousness. Together we are Love, and we will not settle for anything less. We greet fear with compassion. We greet hatred with compassion, prejudice, greed, confusion. But out of the power of Love we say no to these things. “No, you may not further manifest these on this Earth. This Earth is now going to become a realm of Love. Wake up or step aside.” Said compassionately. You are not pushing fear aside. There will always be a space for those who are not yet ready to live with Love, where they are cherished until they are ready, much as you cherished the small child who is greedy and grabs for the extra cookie and pushes his friend away. You don’t hate the child; you simply recognize the child is not yet mature enough to love and share in that way. To break the cookie in half.

But those who are grounded in Love need to be firm that they are not going to allow this Earth to be run by those who are grounded in fear and separation. This is not something you then try to prove by going out and dropping bombs; of course not. How you live with Love, how you bring it forth in the world, will be unique to each of you. Each of you will have your own openings to this. The path will become clear when you see what is difficult for you.

For Barbara today, Aaron and I spent, yes, a fair amount of time talking to her. She was ready to hear what we said. She had to touch herself and her pain with compassion, which she was not doing. She was saying, “I should know better. I should be able to do this,” instead of, “Oh, this hurts. Oh, I am in pain and afraid. I will cherish myself. I will take care of myself. And then I will touch the awakened part of myself and bring it forth so I am no longer creating suffering for myself and others through the old illusions of the ego’s voice, the separated voice. I will remember who I am.”

Each of you will have your own best path through this, depending on what is most challenging for you right now. And next week, it may be something a bit different. For some of you it may be about connection with others, or health, or fear of abundance or lack of abundance, or wanting things the way you want them. However the voice comes to you, honor that voice with compassion. Hear it as you would hear your own child, holding it tenderly, and then helping it to move past that pain.

Everything that arises in the conditioned realm is impermanent. Only the Unconditioned gives us the path to freedom. Each being on every different spiritual path has their own way of coming to know that Unconditioned. The path that Aaron and Barbara have been teaching here is one path, and a very viable one. It will bring you home.

But nobody can do it for you, which means that starting tomorrow morning I hope you will all wake up and do your meditation or related spiritual practice. Simply reflect, if nothing else, “In this moment can I truly say I am Love?” And if not, why not? What blocks your saying that? What blocks your fully knowing that? You are Love.

My dear ones, please come to know this so that we may dance together in that field beyond all suffering and limitation. It is such a joyful place, and I deeply wish to welcome you there, to sing and dance with me.

We are Love. And from that love we are wisdom and compassion, kindness, generosity, patience, humility, endurance, perseverance, and so much more, all grounded in Love.

I love you. I love you dearly, and I am with you and always helping you and present with you. You need only ask for me, and I am here. I am Love. We are Love. You are Love. And I love you.

I’m going to release the body to Barbara…

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