What is This Experience of Separation, of “Other Than”?; Reading Aura Glaser on Milarepa and the Demon’s Mouth

June 8, 2021 Tuesday Afternoon, Dharma Path Intensive, Part 2

(Parts 1&3, group sharing)

Barbara: Through the years, I would occasionally come to Aaron and say, “Oh, I think I finally understand it. This is what you’re trying to teach me.” And he would just gently nod, “Yes…” No big deal, “Yes…” And then, 6 months later, “Aaron, I see it a little differently. THIS is what you’re trying to teach me.” “Yes…” And on it went!

I see it as climbing a mountain. There’s what seems to be a summit. “Ahhh, the last 20 feet! I’m going to be up on that summit.” But as you reach that summit, you notice it’s just a plateau and then it goes up again, and you can see the next plateau from down here. So, we keep reaching plateaus, and then Aaron pulls another rabbit out of his hat, something else, and on we go again.

It doesn’t surprise me anymore, and I’ve stopped asking him, “Where are we going? What’s the topic?” Just, “What do you want next?” I’m just here to listen and be a telephone for Aaron so that he can share it with everyone.

I think this large group conversation is very valuable. The small groups have really come together, and… assuming that next year most of you are registered at least in part for all of the program, we’ll keep the small groups together…

Aaron says he will speak now, maybe for just 45 minutes, and then we’ll open back into the large group for thoughts about what he’s shared or to continue sharing from your experience here…

Aaron: My blessings and love to you. I am Aaron. I don’t want to talk in a stilted way, but following some guidance this morning about how not to drop sounds, I do want to speak more clearly…

What is sacred darkness? I have taken you through a number of guided meditations. I don’t think we can come up with one answer that says sacred darkness is this or that. If everything is sacred, why do I call it sacred darkness—why not just ‘darkness’? The difference is not in the darkness itself, but how you perceive the darkness. As soon as you perceive it as “other than,” you lose touch with its sacredness.

Several years ago, before Hal’s stroke, one spring Barbara and Hal were cleaning out their storage shed, which is quite a large building. There were piles of different kinds of things—boxes, old outdoor furniture stored, etc. There was a cardboard carton that felt heavy. They were trying to drag everything that was not in the precise place it should be out into the yard to see what was there. What’s in this carton?

There were some old moving blankets, but the carton had gotten wet a bit and so the blankets were a bit mildewed looking. Barbara dragged it out into the yard, curious as to what would be inside.

As she pulled some blankets out, she saw what looked like a tail, a long, skinny tail. Not a little tail—big tail, sticking out, and she shrieked. What is it? She took a few deep breaths. She began to pull out more blankets, and there was a large opossum lying in the bottom of the box, its legs looking rigid, its tail sticking up. “Ohhh, it died in here. The poor possum. I wonder if it got stuck in here somehow. What happened to it?”

She gently opened the box, turned it on its side, to be able to pull out the blankets with the possum. Holding it in the light, praying for it, that it might have a good rebirth—when suddenly it moved!

Remember, this is a possum. It had been having a wonderful winter’s siesta wrapped up in these blankets, and suddenly, late March—too early for it to want to come out—there it was, being dragged out.

When it moved Barbara gave another shriek, of course, and then settled back and tipped it more on its side and just watched it, as it slowly stood up and wandered of into the trees.

Darkness, the place where Barbara moved into an “other than”. Just its tail; she didn’t recognize it as possum, only there was something possibly dead there. And then, looking immobile—still “other than”. Then, “What am I going to do about it? What will I do with this animal? In what way may I be responsible for its demise?” Still “other than”. And then it looked up, it looked right at her! Still “other than.” Again, the second shriek, “It’s alive!” Well, of course it’s alive, it’s a sentient being. She asked me, “What shall I do, Aaron?” I said, “Just hold it in your heart and wish it well, and tilt the box in such a way that it can easily climb out.”

How many “other than” objects do you have stashed in boxes, whether literal or figurative, throughout your home and your life? Pause for a minute and think about something that is “other than”…

And yet we know that nothing is “other than”. So, what makes it “other than”, when we know nothing is such? It’s all in your heart, all in your mind. What is this experience of separation? Where does it come from, and why? And how can we see that experience of separation also as not “other than”, just part of the human experience?

I would not say how can you forgive yourself for that, because that makes the idea that you should not have the feeling of separation. But of course, being human, sometimes there will be a feeling of separation.

Can you come to the point where you just note “separating, separating,” and hold your heart and breathe with this whole idea of anything separate?

This is the point you need to come to, to be ready to step further on the dharma path. Not to cease to experience the idea of separation, but to just say, “Oh, here is separating. Ahh, this human, moving through this experience again and yet again. I cherish this human, who has been willing to come into so many lifetimes to truly explore this idea and experience of separation, to have the courage to come to this experience from the experience of no separation. From the Eden in which there was no notion of separation.”

Imagine for yourself how much courage it took to say, “Yes, I volunteer. I will step out of this realm in which there is no illusion of separation—there is not even the possibility of it—and into the beginning of the illusion of separation so I can look at it carefully and use it as part of the teaching.”

Barbara and Hal have a new granddaughter about one week old today. They were able to see Zoom pictures of her the day she was born being held against her mother. This infant had no idea that she was separate from her mother. She was in a different environment than she had been the day before; instead of water environment and warmth, hearing the mother’s heartbeat, suddenly it was cold and she was wrapped up. But the mother and father’s voices were still there. You could see how their touch and voice reassured her.

At some soul level she said, “Yes, I am ready to take birth.” Clearly not her first incarnation. But for each of you, although it is not the first, it feels new all over again, coming from that more heavenly realm suddenly into this heavy density experience and into the illusion “separate, separate”. Where is home? Feeling lost and afraid.

You have all come through one to three years of this program. Those with less time in the program had other background that made it appropriate for you to be here with us. All of you are holding the intention, maybe not consciously about earth advancement in consciousness, but about the opening to higher and higher vibration and love. You have literally chosen this heavy material path as your process of awakening in yourself and of awakening the earth.

The earth’s vibration and your vibration co-create each other. When there is a lot of fear and negativity on the earth, the earth’s vibration is lower. If you get dragged into that, you keep pulling it down. When you see what is happening, and you back up and say, “No, I choose not to be pulled down into this heavy negativity. I remember the light. I remember love,” and then you work with the appropriate practices to more fully manifest that light and love, you contribute to the transition of the whole earth.

At the simplest level you are the elements. Of course, there is that which we call awareness, consciousness. But the body is made up of the physical elements. And all of the physical elements—earth, air, fire, water, energy—these are part of everything throughout the earth. You are the trees, the mountains the volcanos, the deserts, the ocean. You inter-are with these—I would say it that way, rather than that you co-create these. You do co-create these, but more important, you inter-are with these.

When you tend to the vibration of the elements in yourself by holding spaciousness when there is contraction, by awareness of contraction that might lower the vibration, and just holding that situation in love, your heightening vibration touches everything.

In a simple statement, “LET THERE BE LIGHT, and there was light.” You are the light. “Let there be water,” and you are the water. “Let there be mountains and firm land,” and you are that firm land. You are each expression of that original arising of the elements into form that became this earth.

So many loving energies came together to hold out their hearts and love to co-create this earth grounded in high vibration and love. Yet with free will, that sentient beings could choose to deny their high vibration for as long as they chose to do so.

There would be no punishment for doing that, but there would be repercussions. If you push something, it will push back. If you drop something, it will fall. If you open something, it may swing shut. Earth has its own physical laws. It has its own energetic laws.

Earth was never, never intended as a realm for punishment of any sort. Every sentient being on earth, the essence of that being throughout its karmic history, came here willingly, or in some cases because after coming willingly it had created a cycle of recurrent karma that pulled it back. But you understood what you were getting into and that there was going to be karma.

Think of it like seeing boats on a shore. The wind is blowing and there’s strong current. Nobody is going to force you on the boat, but you know that out there there’s a place you are needed, far across the sea. You can cling to this shore and say no, or you can climb on the boat. When love climbs on the boat there is no guarantee that it will be a comfortable journey.

Soon it is going to storm, one moment please… (Barbara has a small leak in her roof, Aaron is covering some items with plastic…) A little rain—one of the elements! We just want to protect the electronic equipment…

So, you make the decision. People are crying out for help, out there. “I am willing to go. I choose to go.” You get onto the boat, and the boat is pushed out from shore into the current. Big waves, wind. Your small boat is tossed back and forth. You’re afraid you’ll be submerged by the waves. You hold the intention to move to where you are needed and that you will co-create a safe landing with the ocean and the stormy skies.

You have had your safe landing. You’re in, I suppose right now it’s 21st century Earth. Who knows where you’re going? This willingness to step in, stating, “I will go,”—that song, “Here I am, Lord. I will go. If you’ll lead me, I will go, for the highest good of all beings.”

And then the boat truly launches into the sacred darkness, into the darkness that is made sacred by your beautiful intention to grow within yourself and be of loving service, to raise the vibration of everything for the highest good and harm to none. And then you cling to your mast and you ride up and down on the waves and see where the storm takes you. It takes enormous trust.

I said this earth plane is never punishment, and some of you are wondering why then are there some very negatively polarized beings here on earth?

Still not punishment, but if the intention is not for the highest good of beings and harm to none but for service to self, and one comes into this plane, it becomes a place to explore that whole path of service to self, on and on and on until it finally becomes clear that one cannot evolve further in the path of service to self. Up to that point, the darkness was seen as something desired. The darkness gave the… (I hesitate to use the word ‘soul’, but we don’t have a lot of words here; not ‘essence’ either, because the essence is pure; the consciousness of that being) —the darkness gave the consciousness of that being a sense of permission to continue in service to self because everything it saw around it was service to self.

But then there is the shift, seeing that service to self will not see it through, seeing a new possibility of love. At that point, the darkness becomes—again I am caught by the English words; it doesn’t ‘become,’ it opens up to its truest expression as teacher, and it is sacred. Everything is sacred.

This Earth, almost like a small boat heaving up and down on the stormy waves—the universe’s waves; this Earth floating through the universe, looking for a safe landing. And when there are enough sailors on the Earth able to hold balance on the rocking boat, I will not say without fear, but without getting caught up in the stories of fear, just noting, “rocking, balance,” and staying balanced, this ability from all of you is what is leading the Earth into its—again, ‘safe harbor’ is not the best metaphor. It does for some part of it, but not all. It leads the earth into a safe harbor, but it also helps the Earth become the guiding star that shines everywhere, with so much light!

Think of a small village that might have found the tallest evergreen in the vicinity and designated it to be the Christmas tree. Hung various decorations on it, but there at the top, above the forest, hung a brilliant however-many kilowatt star, so that people throughout the forest in distant villages might look out and see this star. This is a beacon of hope so that people who are lost in the forest, have been lost for eons, might come into their hearts and say, “I see a star. I see light. Where I have only seen darkness, suddenly I see light.”

Your whole earth is becoming such a beacon of light. Now, no surprise, as such a beacon of light, it does draw darkness too…

(covering the computer to protect against the roof leak)

Are you ready to step up and say, “Yes, I am a beacon of light. I am a part of a beacon of light. And that which knows itself as darkness, I invite it into the light. But I am also willing to step into the darkness to help remind it that it is also light.”?

I’m not talking here about how you do this. We’ll talk a bit more about Eden tomorrow and what it might look like. Just asking you to look at anything within the self which is resistant to knowing itself fully as light and expressing that light. And at the times where it seems very dark, to come forth, to open. Letting the light out; opening the heart.

Light!

Love, presence.

This is the gist of my talk today. Now I’m going to move into a guided meditation. Some of you have done this with me before.

You all know the stories about the Tibetan saint Milarepa. The first story where he’s sitting by his fire and the demons of fear and hatred appear. Grotesque looking creatures with bulging eyes, big fangs. Milarepa takes one look at them and says, “Sit by my fire, have tea.” He doesn’t grab a stick and try to chase it, just, “Sit by my fire, have tea.” They ask him, “Aren’t you afraid of us?” He says, “Yes, but your hideous appearance only reminds me to be aware, to have mercy. Sit by my fire, have tea.”

“I offer you tea. I offer you my fire’s warmth. I will not push you away. You can sit until you’re ready to leave. You can sit as long as you like. Sit by my fire and have tea.”

Now, this is the most frequently told Milarepa story. There are other related, but different ones. I’m going to read you the beginning of one. This is drawn from a dear friend of Barbara’s, Aura Glaser. She wrote this for Tricycle Magazine. (https://tricycle.org/magazine/demons-mouth/) She was for many years a dharma teacher. Now she is more serving the dharma as a photographer.

I’ll read it to you in Aura’s words, here.

One day Milarepa left his cave to gather firewood, and when he returned he found that his cave had been taken over by demons. There were demons everywhere! His first thought upon seeing them was, “I have got to get rid of them!” He lunges toward them, chasing after them, trying forcefully to get them out of his cave. But the demons are completely unfazed. In fact, the more he chases them, the more comfortable and settled-in they seem to be. Realizing that his efforts to run them out have failed miserably, Milarepa opts for a new approach and decides to teach them the dharma. If chasing them out won‘t work, then maybe hearing the teachings will change their minds and get them to go. So he takes his seat and begins teaching about existence and nonexistence, compassion and kindness, the nature of impermanence. After a while he looks around and realizes all the demons are still there. They simply stare at him with their huge bulging eyes; not a single one is leaving.

At this point Milarepa lets out a deep breath of surrender, knowing now that these demons will not be manipulated into leaving and that maybe he has something to learn from them. He looks deeply into the eyes of each demon and bows, saying, “It looks like we‘re going to be here together. I open myself to whatever you have to teach me.” In that moment all the demons but one disappear. One huge and especially fierce demon, with flaring nostrils and dripping fangs, is still there. So Milarepa lets go even further. Stepping over to the largest demon, he offers himself completely, holding nothing back. “Eat me if you wish.” He places his head in the demon‘s mouth, and at that moment the largest demon bows low and dissolves into space.

“Eat me.” I think that’s enough said for now. —I think I will read a bit more from Aura, because she has good insights.

The first stage of this journey is awareness. We begin to see what is happening. Milarepa comes back to his cave, and finds that it is full of demons—maybe they‘ve been there all along, but now he clearly sees them. We experience this dawning recognition as we begin to see the things we have been running from, hiding from, or trying to push away. Our patterns of avoidance and denial can take so many different guises that often we don‘t even really see them until our awareness begins to deepen.

…A lot of times we look at the things that we do without recognizing that what‘s really driving us is a need for approval, a need to be needed, or a need to fit in. And sometimes our most obvious destructive behaviors conceal something else that is even more difficult for us to acknowledge. We may, for example, be willing to acknowledge our anger, but unwilling to look at the fear and vulnerability beneath it. So we “work on our anger” without touching the raw place underneath…

…As Milarepa‘s story unfolds, we find that there is a discovery process at work. When the direct attack fails, as it inevitably does, he tries another approach—indirect manipulation. He begins this third stage when he decides, “I‘m going to teach these demons the dharma.” There is subtle fix-it energy at work here. The indirect manipulation looks like a greater acceptance and accommodation, but it is still rooted in the rejection of experience. We are still bent on avoiding and getting rid of what we don‘t like. …We begin to use our spiritual practices and all the things we‘ve learned to perpetuate a disconnection from experience and a disembodiment from life. Our idealized image of what it means to be a spiritual person doesn‘t allow for self-knowledge that contradicts it…

…This is the fourth stage in the story. Milarepa relinquishes his solutions and strategies and surrenders to the presence of the demons, and to whatever they may have to teach him. At this point we begin to see everything that arises as an opportunity to deepen our understanding and to soften our heart. We view our life situations as inherently workable. We are willing to be with our experience…

(loud thunder; covering more equipment; calming Banner)

…We view our life situations as inherently workable. We are willing to be with our experience, whatever it is, without judgment, without trying to fix it or get rid of it. And somehow this willingness, this gentle allowing, starts to calm things down.

In order to be with ourselves in this complete way, we need to be in contact with our inner resources of self-compassion and lovingkindness….Without that, we won‘t be able to stay with whatever‘s arising. This connection to our inner goodness is like the rope a rock climber uses to stay in contact with the steep rock face. Without that rope of connection, we can free-fall into self-blame and self-hatred and actually intensify the existing wound…

It’s a beautiful article. I’m skipping a lot.

…This ultimately brings us to the fifth and final stage of complete letting go, where all resistance is gone. We no longer demand that life be on our terms. Instead, we begin living with the understanding that the source of wisdom is in whatever is in front of us—it is in whatever is arising in this moment. Wisdom is not somewhere else. It‘s not in someone else. It‘s right here in our own bottomless heart.

“Eat me.” Into the duality. Break through the duality. Find the light in the darkness as well as knowing the darkness in the light, and rest there.

To me, this ability is both the essence of the dharma path and the fruition of the dharma path. This is what we have been following.

(releasing the body to Barbara for group discussion)

Thank you, and my love to you all. I am Aaron.