October 26, 2021 Tuesday Evening, The Eden Project
How Do We Invite Ourselves Back Into Our Heart?; Eye Gazing/Mirror Exercises
Barbara: Good evening to everybody. I’m going to talk for a few minutes. Before we get started now, please go and find a mirror. It can be just a small one. This is what I have. Please bring some kind of mirror.
For those who were here last week, Aaron had you looking into his eyes, close up. He’s going to do a repeat of that and then invite you to look into your own eyes. Make sure you have a mirror handy. I’ll wait for a few minutes while everyone gets one. You won’t need it yet, you’ll need it later in the class, but get it now…
Let’s get started. Good evening. First, at the beginning, before many of you were on, you know I sent out that beautiful description of the shared funeral and the connected energy. Well, please meet B, who has been a student and friend since 1989. He’s the one that wrote that. I invited him to join us tonight.
I’ve just spent a beautiful week on Zoom at an international Dharma Teacher’s conference. These conferences are held every four or five years. They’ve all been live before. I’ve been to three or four of them. One memorable one in 2000, out of Spirit Rock with the Dalai Lama there with us, was amazing, wonderful energy.
I have a very sweet memory of dear friends sitting next to me and signing. We were purposely sitting near the front to give me some chance of lip-reading whoever was the speaker. We were gathered in a room, many of us on the floor in a big circle and then people sitting in chairs behind us, maybe between 150 and 200 people. We were quite close to the Dalai Lama and she was fingerspelling to me. He was looking at us.
When it ended, he beckoned, and I walked up. He said, “Are you deaf?”
“Yes.”
So he asked me, “What is it like to be deaf?”
I said, “Just, no hearing, no ears.”
He said, “Is it painful?”
I said, “It was; in the beginning there were a lot of stories. But now,” by that time almost 30 years into it, I said, “no stories, just no hearing. No ear contact, no hearing, no hearing consciousness.” And he responded with a smile. It was very sweet. I cherish that memory.
At this conference many really rich topics came up. There were two keynote speakers each day, then there was a choice each morning and each afternoon between three smaller talks. They were on relevant topics, so it was hard to choose. Then there was usually a chance to break out and just talk amongst a few people, so I feel I got to know some people. I don’t know much about them except how they relate to this or that dharma topic.
One of the talks and subsequent conversations that really moved me was on a topic called “Parts Work,” that some of you have probably heard of, and that I had heard about and read about. But the talk about it was much fuller than anything I had read.
It raised the question, for the group of about six of us in the breakout group for half an hour, what parts of myself do I dismiss? What parts of myself do I really open to and invite? What stops me from opening fully to myself?
Aaron commented then about the last Tuesday Aaron night, that as we sat looking into his eyes, people felt a deep experience of connection with him. No self, just dissolving into him.
He said, what would happen if we do that, let people come into a place where they’re deeply connected with me, and then invite them to look into a mirror, and to ask the question of what am I dismissing in myself? What do I push away in myself?
Other talks brought up a similar thread; very specific talks about the aggregates and our relationship to the aggregates.
When I look at the aggregates—form, feeling, thought, impulse, consciousness—what am I open to in myself, and what do I dismiss?
Then B sent me that beautiful story that he wrote about his friend P’s burial, but how the whole community came together there to help P move through the transition process and then the burial.
We here are a community. Hopefully, we will not need to bury each other, but that may happen. But in what ways do we hold each other in our hearts, hold ourselves in our hearts?
I’m reminded here, and some others of you probably got the email from Q also, that they just signed on a new apartment. I think that this whole class together helped co-create that apartment for her; just so much energy holding her in our hearts. For those who don’t know, there was some water damage—landlord’s fault, broken pipes, and he wasn’t going to fix it right away. He said, “You’ll have to fix it yourself or move.” They decided they had to move. When she talked about that, so many of us responded with so much love. Part of what we’re learning about in this class is how we co-create, how we bring our energy together to co-create for the highest good. They just found a new apartment and they’re happy with it. Not perfect, but they’re happy with it.
If we can’t hold ourselves in our hearts, we can’t hold each other in our hearts. The Eden that we’ve been dreaming about and just envisioning and trying to learn how to co-create involves holding ourselves in our hearts. What part of myself do I not hold in my heart?
I had a lot of meditation time during the conference week. I had nothing scheduled. There were several group meditations each day. I was looking at my physical body. It’s an older body. Next week it’s going to be 79. Well, how did I get there? This body just doesn’t function as it did at 69, or 59, or 49.
I started physical therapy last week, and I’m very delighted about it. Just to try to see how I can invite the weak parts of my body to strengthen. And I discovered in meditation how much I’m holding those weak parts of my body away from me, not inviting them into my heart.
So for me, it was about the body, but it was also about sadness and anger, pain about Hal’s situation. Worry about how I will be able to manage to take care of him. All of these stories. Not “what is in this moment,” but stories.
We’re going to take just a few minutes here of quiet. Please consider, what parts of yourself do you not fully open to? What do you not embrace? What needs love, to put it simply? I’m going to be quiet for just a few minutes.
(sitting)
Now please reflect on a part of yourself that you truly do embrace.
(sitting)
Thank you, and Aaron will incorporate.
Aaron: My blessings and love to you all. I am Aaron. Our Eden Project class is about inviting ourselves and the whole world to become the Eden that we would like it to be. The world cannot become that Eden without you, without each of us. You are the building blocks for Eden, and you truly loving yourself is vital, because how can you love anything else truly, deeply, if you don’t love yourself?
We have talked at length about the various bodies—the physical, the emotional, the mental, the spirit. The spirit body is the essence of you, but you are here on this mundane adventure that must include all of the heavier bodies too. It’s so easy for you to be dismissive of those bodies.
When Barbara lost her hearing, her first reaction for over a decade was to be dismissive, “Oh, I don’t need the hearing.” It was so painful to her. She was so angry, in so much pain, and trying to convince herself, “I don’t need it.”
So this response to His Holiness 30 years later, just no realm of hearing. No ear contact, no hearing consciousness, just that.
Each of you has lost something dear to you. It may not be a physical faculty, or it may be. It may be a beloved companion, a child, a spouse, a friend. It may be a capacity that you had. I doubt if any of you can run the way you could run 20 years ago; it’s okay. But for some of you there’s so much pain about what you cannot continue to carry, what you feel you have lost. How do we invite ourselves back into the heart?
I was deeply moved by B’s email to Barbara, the story that he wrote, because in a sense each of you are a community within yourself. You are the dying one, and you are the ones who are helping you to die. You are the living one and the ones who are helping you to live. You are the one who brings food to yourself, joy to yourself, comfort to yourself, if you will allow it. Do you allow it? What limits it? In what ways have you put yourself out of your heart? And what would it mean to invite yourself back into your heart?
With that in mind, I want to just try an experimental exercise. How many of you were with us last Tuesday when we did the gazing into my eyes? About half of you. I know that all of you are not participating regularly in every module, are relying on the transcripts.
Let’s try this here for a few minutes. I’m going to pick up the camera so I can bring it close to my eyes…
Relax your gaze, as you do with the Mother in darshan, and just look into my eyes. No separation…
(gazing)
Buddha eyes, each other’s eyes, the eyes of love. Christ consciousness eyes. No separation, no self. Allow yourself to come into my heart fully, and me to come into your heart…
(gazing)
You are always in my heart anyhow, so you might as well just come on in. I do not evaluate you or criticize you. I do not find faults. I only see the essence of the awakened one within you. All that radiance…
(gazing)
I think this is the way that B’s friend must have seen those who were with him at the end, just resting in their hearts, looking into their eyes…
Why wait until you are dying to allow yourself to be held in another’s heart so fully? Can you do it now?
I am not pushing you, here. You are free to maintain any boundaries you need to maintain. But such boundaries are so painful when they come from a place of fear.
One heart we all share—can you be there?
(gazing)
I love you, and my heart has a deep open space for you, if you will just allow yourself to enter.
(gazing)
I feel great joy, feeling many of you letting go of the separation and melding your hearts to mine and to all of ours.
(gazing)
I love you very much. I don’t have to agree with everything you do or think or say—that’s not what love is. Love is simply this coming together of hearts.
It is the foundation of our Eden, which can never exist in separation grounded in fear, hatred, greed.
You have come together this year to learn how to be part of the foundation of Eden, so let yourself go. Come into my eyes, into my heart. Let yourself go. Literally let the separate self go. Feel the awareness and love that remain.
(gazing)
I do not love this or that about you; I love the essence, the truth of your being, that core. Because when you are there and I am there, we are one, and what is there not to love?
(gazing)
Thank you. Now at this point, without any speaking, please take up your mirror, if you have it there with you, or if necessary, go into the room where the mirror may hang, and I would like you to look into your own eyes in the same way you just did mine. We’ll ring the bell in 5 minutes…
(mirror)
If there is any hardening as you look, look into my eyes for a minute and then back to the mirror when you’re ready.
I’m going to invite the bell, here, to bring back those who may have left the room to find a mirror.
(bell, bell, bell)
May we have some sharing, here? Just whatever happened for you. It may have been joyful or painful, or beyond joy and pain—whatever you would like to share.
(Participants were not picked up by audio.)
Thank you, B.
(sharing not recorded)
Thank you, Q. Yes, I’m sure that the Zoom screen cuts into the connection. And also, for some of you it may have felt better to see my whole face than just my eyes—I don’t know. Naturally, if you were looking at me, you would have seen the full face. So, I was trying to give you the experience of the eyes so they were big and present. But for some of you that may have been limiting. For others of you, it may have just been too uncomfortable to look that deeply. Maybe more to be seen that deeply, because of course the eyes that you were looking into are looking into you. Any experience is fine; we’re not looking for good experiences but honest experiences.
(sharing not recorded)
Thank you, Q. I know last Tuesday we had a problem with the camera, and the face and eyes were blurry. Perhaps it was easier to fall into the eyes that were blurry—I don’t know.
(sharing not recorded)
As most of you know, Barbara is blind in her right eye. It sees a bit; I believe they call it 20/400 vision. A bit of blurriness, coming more into perspective as the years go by. But there’s probably a difference looking into her left eye and her right eye because you’re looking into the eye that can see, or the eye that cannot see. I wonder if that was a difference, for some of you. Backing up, you don’t look so deeply into one eye or the other eye but more into the whole face. You can experiment with this with your own mirrors.
Now I’d like to try something here. I’ll give you more chance to talk, but most of you have had darshan with the Mother. So I’m going to invite the Mother to take over the body for a few minutes and invite you to look into her eyes. See if it’s any different for you.
I think we won’t bring it too close. Close, but not too close. Mother, will you take the body?
The Mother: My love to you, my dear ones. So let us just look into each other’s eyes and love each other and yourself, because you are me and I am you.
There is so much energy moving back and forth; can you feel it? Feel it with each other, also. You are all so close. Many of you have been in class together now for over three years. Feel the connection, one heart to another. Only one heart, truly, one heart we all share. This is the living heart of love.
You are that awakened heart. It is not realistic to expect yourself to be that 24/7. It’s fine that you can’t do that. The question for me is, can you increasingly open to this truth of what you are? You are love and I am love, and in that, we connect, and we connect with everything, in that field of love.
Time with The Mother
I’m going to give the body to one more being. So, Yeshua will take the body and we’ll see how that feels, and then some chance for further discussion.
I love you all very much. Thank you for this time with you.
Yeshua (B): I am Yeshua. I greet you in love. Most of you have been with me incorporated in this body before.
This being love is what I came to demonstrate 2,000 years ago. It wasn’t something I could; it was something we can do, and that we must do, if this earth is going to continue to advance into higher vibration.
So now, just for a few minutes, feel yourself with my energy. And feel the awakened consciousness within yourself vibrating with that same consciousness within me. There is nothing I can do that you cannot do, for you are awake and you are love.
(exercise)
Joy and sorrow. Fear and love. Unity of the true self and the idea of separation. You are love made visible, it has been said.
You have been working with Aaron on the balance between the Dharmakaya and nirmanakaya, resting on that sambhogakaya bridge. If it were only Dharmakaya, how would you learn anything? We’ve talked about this, that you came into the incarnation to learn how to be present with fear and contraction, with body pain, with all the stories, without becoming caught in them. To increasingly remember your true self. That is all that’s asked, just to keep trying. And to know that I walk with you. I hold your hands. I am with you. You are in my heart. And as I said, there is nothing I have done that you cannot do. But it takes hard work.
Aaron is a wonderful teacher. You are all wonderful teachers for each other. In your small groups you let yourselves into each other’s hearts.
Now just be with me for a minute, or said in a better way, be me for a minute, and let me be you…
(exercise)
You are the light of the world. It is you who give birth to this Eden, to this awakened earth through your loving hearts and your hard work; through your commitment to release suffering in this heavy density world. You are doing it so beautifully, and I thank you for that.
Now I will return the body to Aaron.
Aaron: So, what happened for you as you first connected with the Mother and then with Yeshua? Share whatever you would like about the experience. Maybe it was no different. Maybe one was easier to connect with than the other. And I’d also like to raise the question, what blocks you from your connection? How do you attend to that which blocks connection? How do you relate to it—to fear, to all the experiences of separation—separation from each other, separation from yourself.
(sharing not recorded)
And we are blessed to have you, Q, and your loving heart. I’m not surprised there is a difference for you—being with me, looking into my eyes; being with the Mother; being with Yeshua—that’s why I wanted to try this. You have different relationships to each.
And then, my question: what is your relationship with yourself? Not to answer now, but to consider this week, as you repeat this exercise with the mirror. Is my heart open to myself in the fullness of my being? Can I find within myself the intellect that is Aaron, the unconditional love that is the Mother, the awakened consciousness that is Yeshua? Because they’re all there. Sometimes you catch one part, sometimes another, and that’s fine.
(sharing not recorded)
Thank you, Q. Each of you will resonate differently with different energy. Q, you said that you had some painful experiences that you were working with, and the vastness of Yeshua’s heart gives you more space to work with that pain.
It’s also important, though, to—as I know the depth of your practice—to be able to come back to feeling pain. In this moment there is pain. The question is not to go into some Dharmakaya space where there is no pain but to stay on the bridge, not being a somebody but finding the emptiness that can relate spaciously with the pain and yet skillfully acknowledge the pain.
This is for all of us aspiring to help support the world’s birth into a higher vibration, the world’s transition. We are not trying to transition into a space where we forget about pain but where we transmute the pain with love and bring it into a higher and higher vibration. But there’s still going to be pain.
I’m not going to bring Yeshua back right now because it’s too hard for Barbara to have us keep jumping back and forth. But I know if you asked Yeshua, “Do you remember pain in your lifetime 2,000 years ago?” he would say yes.
He was not trying to avoid the pain but to use the power of the loving heart to transmute pain. And within the vipassana practice, we intellectually watch: the conditions are present and the pain arises, and then the conditions cease for a bit and the pain falls away. And then it arises again.
Then you step back one giant step. It would be like watching the sun rise. Standing in your backyard watching it comes up. It goes overhead and then it sets and it’s gone. Then it comes up again. But if you go out in a spaceship and you can see the earth and the sun, the earth moving around the sun, it’s a whole different perspective.
That which is painful will arise and pass away, and yet nothing arises and passes away.
Barbara shared in the last email before this class that Vimalakirti quote1. I’m trying to think if I can remember it exactly… I can’t. I can’t remember the exact words, and I don’t want to misquote him. But please read it again after class.
Everything is both impermanent and permanent. Suffering on a conditioned level is permanent and is going to be permanent until some faraway future time, because the conditions for suffering are still present. And even in a transitioned earth there are still going to be some conditions for suffering.
Love, freedom from suffering, these are not mundane objects but supramundane. They may come and go from your experience, but they are always there, if not right in front of you then behind you. The awakened mind, the awakened heart-mind is always there. Sometimes you can access it, sometimes not, but it’s always there.
Part of my focus in this class tonight is to help you learn what brings you back into that awakened heart-mind and helps you be stable there with the suffering, not apart from the suffering.
So, let us hear from some others.
(sharing not recorded)
Thank you, Q. In what ways can you more frequently offer that loving energy to yourself? What leads you to withhold it in any way? You don’t have to answer that, just think about it.
Is there anyone else who would like to speak? You don’t have to, I just don’t want to deprive anyone of the opportunity.
I’m going to give the body back to Barbara. Stay put! My blessing and love to all of you.
Please spend some time with a mirror this week just looking into your eyes. Spend some time looking out into the trees and the sky, pure awareness, sky gazing. Last week when we met there was a full moon and some of you went outside to look at the moon. Look at a butterfly or flower. What allows you to merge with these beautiful life forms? Look at a spider or a wasp; what allows you to merge with that kind of life form from which there may be some natural separation? —Not natural separation, some learned separation. Just explore it. There is nothing special you are trying to do; just to learn.
And then coming back to the beginning tonight. What parts of yourself do you habitually push away and hold separate? What would it mean to allow that part of yourself back into your heart? That’s all. Keep it simple. Just an inquiry.
I love you. Thank you.
Barbara: Thank you, Aaron. So, Aaron told me what he was going to do. I hope it was an interesting experiment.
He is saying, remember that he, the Mother, Yeshua, they’re always there. Ask for them. When you’re looking into your own eyes, see Yeshua there. See the Mother there, as you look into your eyes. Feel that aspect of yourself that is the unconditionally aspect of the Mother, the awakened aspect of Yeshua and unconditionally loving Mother.
So, I started tonight talking some myself about my experience. I found that I’m much more at home from the heart chakra up, as probably is true for many of you. That I don’t breathe deep into the abdomen. I separate a bit from the lower chakras. The lower chakras are like an engine that keep things running rather than a heart presence.
So as I’ve been working with physical therapy, seeing what I might learn to do to walk more stably, because I have no inner ear balance, and with one blind eye, no visual balance. What would help me to ground, to come down into the base and spleen chakra, to bring energy down there? What prevents me from bringing energy down? Well, I don’t really have an answer for you yet—this is work in progress. I’ll share with you when I learn something about it. I think a lot of it is just habit, for me.
What parts of ourselves do we hold out of our hearts? What have we separated from? How do we best invite it back?
So thank you. Are there any other comments? We have another 10 minutes, so you’re welcome to comment, but we don’t have to use that 10 minutes.
(sharing not recorded)
I think the tool is vipassana. Just bringing attention to when there is contraction and closing off, noting it. And then raising the question, what is this contraction? What is the ground for it in this moment? And can I also see that this contraction is arisen out of conditions and is not self? Right here with the contraction, can I find the uncontracted? If I rest in the uncontracted, does that part that I’ve locked away come back to me a bit? It may be a specific body part. It may be the physical body. It may be the emotional body or the mental body. Or it may just be negative thought, or anger, or fear. What part of myself am I not really allowing to be there, and holding space for? The vipassana is the primary thing that will help us to see that.
Others?
(sharing not recorded)
I’m rereading what you said, Q… When I read this, “…the relative self, the not very real or authentic self,” but these parts are real. If we say, “Oh, this is not real,” we’re dismissive of it. As soon as we’re dismissive of the fearful self, or the self that feels pain and says, “I shouldn’t feel pain,” as soon as we’re dismissive, we can’t let it into our hearts.
With compassion we see, “Yes, this is part of the real self, and I choose to embrace everything, not to say these are good parts of me and these are not good parts of me.” But really to embrace everything. I don’t know if that answers your question.
(sharing not recorded)
Next week, Mediumship and Eden at 6pm Tuesday; I will see many of you there. Tomorrow night, vipassana with John…
So, that’s all. Good night. Have a good time looking at yourself in the mirror and asking, what am I pushing away? Bring it back.
One more thing, here. Part of this conference, in the smaller groups there was one that was focused on writing. People talked about using writing as a meditation, as a spiritual tool. People finding that if they allow themselves to just write, let it flow, sometimes that connects them with some of the parts of themselves they’ve pushed away. It allows an opening.
Another morning was with drawing, looking at our faces and drawing our faces. You don’t have to be a good artist to do this. Sit and look in the mirror and try to draw your face. See what comes out.
And then, people were sharing. These are, some of them, very experienced dharma teachers of many decades. Talking about what led them into the dharma, and the gratitude for some of these painful experiences in their lives that truly opened a pathway of truth and awakening for them. I’m sure many of you feel that, too.
So, as you look at the things that you’ve shut away from yourself, don’t want to let back into your heart, instead can you take that pain and try to find where there could be some gratitude for it? From me, thank you, deafness. Thank you whatever it may be—loss, pain, sadness, all of it. We don’t have to want to keep it going; it’s okay to say, “Yes, thank you, and now it’s time to be on your way.” But, still, “Thank you, thank you.”
That’s all. Good night, everybody.
-
*The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti* translation by Robt. Thurman, page 29:
do not teach an ultimate reality endowed with activity, production and destruction! …nothing was ever destroyed, is destroyed, or will ever be destroyed. such is the meaning of “impermanence.” …That which has no intrinsic substance and no other sort of substance does not burn, and what does not burn is not extinguished; such lack of extinction is the meaning of “peace.”↩