January 23, 2021 Saturday Afternoon, Healing Retreat, Part 1
A Short Intro to Kayas; Healing from the Bridge
Barbara: I was finishing channeling, coming back to my body and saying, “Ah, I have an hour and a half to relax, maybe have a bowl of soup, chill out.” And then this email came in, (an invitation to Hal to get a time slot for his first vaccine) and very urgent to get going on it. Just finished. He has a reserved time. How do we shift from the mundane to the supramundane? I saw how much wanting there was, “my time”, and also joy for Hal that he could get his first vaccine.
The statement for this time on the planning calendar says “Aaron: the bridge between ultimate and relative. Where on that bridge does healing happen? Guided meditation.” I’m going to talk some about this and then bring Aaron in to give the guided meditation.
We have a mundane world all around us. That jungle image behind J, scene of a rain forest—that’s mundane world. There is also an ultimate realm, a place where we ground ourselves and can rest in meditation.
The teaching we keep repeating is, everything in the mundane world arises from conditions and passes away when the conditions pass. Sunny, beautiful out there—that beautiful day is the product of conditions. Somebody reading these notes, somebody said it’s snowing where they are. Conditions: all expressions of conditions.
There’s a term often used in these teachings, All-Ground. The All-Ground, the base. Everything arises from that All-Ground.
Everything is arising out of these conditions and passing away, arising and passing away. On the one end, we have this divine realm. The word kaya means “body”. We may experience the divine, heavenly body, Dharmakaya. At the other end, nirmana means form— nirmanakaya, the form body. This on one side, this on the other.
So here we are, coming out of a blissful meditation or a blissful vacation, a blissful whatever. Ahhh… And suddenly it’s raining, it’s pouring. The wind is blowing. Thunder and lightning are cracking and snapping trees. Where is that blissful experience?
We’re in a situation, just happy with somebody, talking with that person, sharing a delicious meal, both of us really at ease with each other, and suddenly one or the other person says something that is uncomfortable for the second person. They tighten up. One gives a sharp retort back. We were in such a blissful place, and suddenly, crash!
These two realms, Dharmakaya and nirmanakaya. Nirmanakaya, the form body, is not just about the physical form but the mental body, the everyday mind with emotions; all manifesting forms.
I want you to picture these high cliffs on either side of a deep chasm. Dharmakaya, the divine realm, ultimate realm; nirmanakaya, the mundane realm. We find a bridge, with deep posts going into each side anchoring the bridge.
So here I am in the blissful high energy experience, filled with love, and suddenly somebody comes over and says something really nasty to me. I’m at that end of the bridge, and suddenly, without even thinking about it, I’m back at the other end of the bridge, saying, “What are you talking about?” Feeling anger, feeling fear. What happened to that divine experience? Where is the open heart? Where did it go?
In a different example, I’m on the edge of the bridge and somebody on the other end is screaming for help. But I’m lost in this divine space and I can’t hear them screaming.
This story goes back probably 25 years. I was learning concentration practice, which I had never done, by focusing on a candle. I was sitting at my dining table and across the table from me was a whole series of big windows, part of a screened porch. I was just watching the candle, breathing in and out, completely absorbed into the candle.
Meanwhile, one of my sons, at that point about 6 or 7 years old, his ball had gone up on the roof. I don’t know how he carried it, but he got the ladder out, leaned it against the roof. It’s a flat, one-story screened porch. Got up on the roof, got his ball, threw it down. Started to climb down, and the ladder fell over. He was hanging. This is only one story high, so he was hanging from something that was only 8 or 9 feet high. So he was only 4 or 5 feet off the ground, hanging. He could see me, and he was screaming, “Mom! Help!” He was kicking his feet. (smiling) I was focusing on the candle, completely absorbed into the candle.
Suddenly, some degree of mundane consciousness returned, and I saw these feet. Of course, I didn’t hear him screaming, but I saw these feet. My little boy! Running out and grabbing him, I lifted him down.
We have to be present in the nirmanakaya if we’re going to be of service in the nirmanakaya. But if panic goes out there and says, “Ah! What are you doing there, hanging from the roof?!” and I’m not at all centered, I’m not able to lovingly reach for him and lift him down. Am I going to stand there and scold him, or am I going to lift him down first? He’s scared. Am I going to be able to hold him once I get him down, and hold onto him lovingly? We need to be on the bridge and understand where we need to be on the bridge.
About half of you on retreat are in Dharma Path class and we’ve worked a lot with this bridge, so I know this is familiar to you. So please just take this as an extra chance to practice while we talk about it with the others.
The bridge is also a kaya, a body: sambhogakaya, wealth body. Why “wealth”? It’s wealth because it’s the mundane realm touching the supramundane realm. The everyday world, with all its arising, fear and pain and suffering, touching, connected to the divine. Not two separate places. Again, non-duality—connected.
About 10 years ago, I badly stubbed my big toe, broke it. The hospital x-rays showed a clean break across that part of the toe. They offered no cast or anything, just taped it to the next toe, said stay off of it for a month as much as you can, and gave me crutches.
I was at my cabin for the summer. I wanted to be able to walk down the steep hill to the lake. I wanted to be able to swim and kayak. And I was in pain, I was hurt and angry. I spent a couple of hours after I got back from the hospital with ice on my toe, foot elevated, lying in bed, ignoring the beautiful view of woods out my window. Just angry, “I don’t want this;”
The afternoon passed. I was suffering, very unhappy! Aaron finally said to me, “Do you want to continue to suffer for the next 6 weeks, or do you want to invite the toe to heal?” I said, “Well, of course I want the toe to heal.” He said, “The way you’re acting you’re not going to help the toe to heal. All you’re seeing is the broken toe, not the healed toe. And if you don’t give it an image of its wholeness, how can it heal? What you’re holding in front of it is a perpetual picture of “broken, broken, broken”.
He asked me to do two things. To come back to the ever-perfect image of my toe. I could see on the x-ray the crack, that part of the toe. Come back to the ever-perfect toe and really see the image. See the crack gone. See the bones reconnected. On the other hand, he said do keep ice on, do keep it elevated. There’s an injury there in the mundane realm that needs support to heal. But holding onto the picture of the broken toe doesn’t help it.
I lay there in bed. Finally, Aaron said, “Sing to it.” Sing to it? “Just sing, tone. Whatever tone you feel the toe wants to hear.” Well, I don’t sing well—you all know that! (tones OOOMMM… in several tones) I was just responding to what the toe was asking for. After singing for over an hour, I fell asleep. I woke up. I sung more to it, just toning to it. Keeping ice on it, keeping it elevated, but singing to it.
And as I sang to it, really envisioning the whole toe that was there, right there with the crack. If there’s a crack, there’s also the place where it comes together, where it was whole. Where do I want to focus my attention? I can’t deny the break and just get up and run around on it. I also can’t get caught in the break.
Being there on the bridge. Starting at the nirmanakaya end of the bridge—toe, pain, anger. Moving toward the Dharmakaya end of the bridge until I could reach back, way back into the nirmanakaya experience of the broken toe from this place of love and high energy and truly visualizing it not broken.
This was the second night, now. The first day, just a lot of pain. Then the next morning to get it x-rayed, and then many hours back at my cabin. I went to sleep. I realized the first night I had not slept; it really hurt. The second night I slept soundly. I forgot that I had a broken toe. I woke up and started to get out of bed. When I put weight on it, I realized, looking at the tape— “Oh, my toe!”
“It’s okay,” Aaron said, “Shhh. See it healed, see it healed.” So I got up, limped my way around the cabin a little bit, not limping badly. Aaron said be very careful of it for another 48 hours. It needs time to fully come together.
It worked. By the end of another 48 hours, I took the tape off, the toe was healed. This is not an exaggeration. And I know a few of you have had this kind of experience. Right there with what is broken is the ever-perfect.
We can do this with the world. On January 6th, watching this mayhem at the Capitol, I felt a lot of fear, a lot of anger—what are they doing? Feeling helpless and deeply disturbed by the violence and anger and hatred that I was seeing. It was the same thing as with my toe. Aaron said, “Right there with all that anger and hatred is love. Just go into that scene, holding it with love, and visualizing this all, in the end, being for the highest good. People learning certain vital things, a certain peacefulness and release of all that hatred. Just visualize it happening.”
It’s not that I’m imagining it. It’s that it IS happening, and instead of seeing the violence and fear and hatred, only that, seeing that; not denying that but seeing it. Really holding these people that were in so much pain with love. When I say with love, not saying, “What you’re doing is fine.” No, you may not do that, but I hear your pain and I hold you in my heart. Seeing this whole thing open up.
We have this power. This is part of what Aaron keeps talking about in Dharma Path: the power we have to invite healing for ourselves and for our world or to invite further fear and brokenness. Which do we choose? And assuming we choose healing (speaking of it here as a linear progression), coming into the ever-healed and really seeing it, trusting it, knowing it. And then opening ourselves to it and inviting. Looking in ourselves at what’s still broken and why?
Like with my toe, That night Aaron asked me, “Is there any reason you don’t want to be able to walk?” At first, that didn’t make sense to me. But then I recognized—it’s hard to express this in words—not walking, per se, but carrying a burden. The way I was living my life as if I had a 100 lb. pack on my back. And I was just pushing and efforting, to a huge degree. Having a broken toe gave me a good excuse, “Right now I can just lie in bed. I can’t do anything, sorry.” Well, that’s not really what I wanted, but it gave me an opportunity to look. Aaron often asks the question, what does this pain protect you from? What does this fear protect you from? What does this broken bone protect you from?
We have to ask that very carefully, not to blame ourselves that this has happened; to look at it with the really loving heart. But also, to know, this is arising from conditions, and my whole mental set about this is part of the conditions. Being the one who has to do everything. Being the one who believes she can’t do anything right. Being the one who is angry and shouldn’t be angry, who is sad and shouldn’t be sad—all of these stories. We heal from the stories and then the body is allowed to heal. It all has to come together.
So, let’s come back to the bridge again. Aaron is going to talk more about what I’ve been speaking of on another day. Dharmakaya, nirmanakaya, sambhogakaya bridge. How do we hold ourselves in the most loving place on that bridge and do whatever work we’re there to do?
Okay, take a minute to stretch in place, and then Aaron is going to lead us in a guided meditation. Then we’ll have some discussion about it.