January 11, 2022 Tuesday Evening, The Eden Project Class
Resistance: What’s In Our Freezer? Guided Meditation to Meet Power Animal
Barbara: Last class we worked with meeting your higher self and guidance.
Picture yourself balanced on a narrow platform, maybe a tall pole with a small platform over a sea with waves. You wish to bend over to help people who are struggling in the water. You can’t bend very far over unless you’re firmly anchored to the platform. If you’re not connected to the platform, you’ll fall into the ocean.
What anchors us to this platform of the open heart, presence and love? What supports us so that we’re balanced and can reach out?
Last week we worked with the higher self and your spirit guides. Tonight, we’re going to go back to that and include power animals. We’re also going to work with the dharma itself as a support, the Brahma Viharas, and the deep practice of presence, of awareness. So, wisdom and the open heart, all helping us remain balanced so we can reach out. —Not just reach out, but so that we can reach in, looking at the places of pain and confusion within ourselves.
Aaron’s been working a lot with me this week on what he calls the “deep freeze”. I have this heart—for me, a reasonably open heart, a place of deep love. And when things are not as I want them to be and I don’t really have time to deal with it, those things go into a deep freeze. It’s usually around my solar plexus chakra.
I always hold the intention to get them out later and look at them. But often they pile up, and I never get to look. So, I have a very stuffed freezer. You all know what that’s like! The leftovers from a meal—you just stuffed them in the freezer. Push them into the freezer, all of these various areas of pain and confusion, that we’ve either resisted pulling out and looking at or just never had the time to; we hold the intention but we never get to it. Perhaps we really don’t want to.
I have a big upright freezer here in this office, and it hasn’t been cleaned out for six or eight months. The more it gets packed, the more I resist going into it and emptying it out and cleaning it. It has six or eight months of little bits of leftovers in there, most of them labelled, but still, I have no idea what’s in there. And I really don’t want to look at that!
What’s in our freezer? What’s in this place, that we’ve put out of our hearts? And how can we really open to it?
We’ve done a lot of work through the years with resistance— the direct experience of resistance; why there is resistance. Resistance arisen from conditions, impermanent, not of the nature of a separate self. And yet, it’s still there.
Is there anybody here in the class who has really looked deeply at resistance itself, the direct experience of resistance, in the past month? You don’t have to answer that; just think about it. Most of us don’t do it. We don’t do it because we don’t have time, we don’t have energy, we don’t feel like it’s high priority, or mostly because we don’t want to look. There was resistance to look at it the first time, so we threw it into the freezer; we still don’t want to look at it. It’s much easier to go into a blissful meditation than to look at the dark places.
But it’s so important that we do take time to look at these places, and to invite deeper healing. This is going to be one of the top priorities for the healing workshop at the end of this month—working lovingly with the dark places, which have a way of being one of the predominant causes of the various mind/body/emotional distortions. Which, when they start in the mind, eventually move into physical distortion.
We won’t be able to go as deep in this class in terms of talking about it. We’ll go deeper in the workshop because we’ll have a full week. But I hope all of you will work with this in your meditation.
Remember that as we work with these places of ancient pain in ourselves, whatever we’re doing touches the whole world and is for the highest good of all.
I had an interesting discussion last weekend about—some of you have heard Mary talk, Mary Magdalene. What is a Magdalene? That’s not just her name. What she said was profound. Let me find that statement from Mary, because I was very moved by it. It’s about one page, and I think I’d like to just read it to you….
(Reading excerpt from transcript)
The Builder Race, the creators, co-creating with love. Never from the ego—”Oh, I have an idea. I want to make this happen,” but from a place of connection, totally woven together. Coming to a consensus on what is at this moment for the highest good, and what energies might come from the other to co-create it.
There is no duality on the ultimate level, but on the mundane level we have Creators and we have Destroyers.
Destroyers are those with much unresolved in themselves, so that the chakras are closed. There is a fear of expansion. They want to keep themselves closed in. If nothing can expand, then the seeds that are planted will die, will be destroyed.
The, what I’m calling Creators, with the open chakras and the ability to pay attention to what has arisen, will also have some degree of closure, as happens for all sentient beings, but whatever arose, is seen. That which is seen loses its power to destroy. That which is buried has much more power.
So, we have the Creators or expanders, and the diminishers or Destroyers. In a non-dual universe, there must be both. The diminishers, Destroyers, have a part. They help to awaken the creative opening movement.
If everything was simply created and nothing passed away, there would be a duality. There must be arising and dissolution, arising and dissolution.
Dissolution does not have to come from a negative place, however. There can be a very natural flow.
(Barbara: Now I’m skipping a bit. So, she’s speaking about the Brother/Sisterhood of Light, of which we’re really all a part, some as Creators and some as Destroyers, but in this class I would guess we’re all more aligned with Creators, willing to observe the negative contraction that will destroy and teach it to release with love, rather than to destroy.)
The role that I see of these Creators, Co-creators, today on Earth—as we observe the strong fear that leads to destruction in a negative way and that does so much harm—is to plant the seeds of light and love into the earth by being able to hold those who destroy in the heart with compassion; to say no to them with compassion; to help them learn how to allow dissolution without destruction, without that energy that says, negatively, “Get rid of it.” Letting it dissolve.
When it dissolves in this way, the positive energy is transmuted and absorbed by all that has touched it. Thus, the object passes but is not destroyed. Only, the negativity may release. This is the practice of the Magdalene!
(Barbara: And the point had been made earlier in this transcript that this Order of Magdalenes is from ancient times, way before Yeshua’s life.)
This process is antithetical to negative polarity, whose ego cannot conceive of giving away that which is deemed “good” for the self. Grasping for the small self, it negates all it touches.
Everything is arising and dissolving. But nothing ever is lost, only recycled, as positive or negative energy. Positive energy is an ultimate reality and cannot be lost. Negative energy, through time, loses its negative core, which is a relative reality, and begins its slide toward positive polarity.
Barbara: There’s more. I’ll send you this whole piece of Sunday’s transcript from Mary.
So, what we’re doing here, as we look at the places of darkness in ourselves, gently and compassionately we look in the freezer and see, what’s rotting in there, that’s been in there for five years and really needs to taken out? Check it out and see what can used, what needs to be tossed.
It’s very hard to do this. We all have a lot of resistance. So, one of the things we’ll look at tonight is the actuality of resistance. And also, in his meditation class tomorrow night, John will be speaking about resistance, teaching about resistance and working with resistance.
That said, our plan for tonight is, as you will have read, Aaron, and Yeshua channeled through Colette, are going to discuss resistance.
Of course, I can channel both Aaron and Yeshua. But it’s harder for me to bring one into the body and then the other. And Colette has developed as a very clear medium. Aaron and I have much gratitude for her willingness to participate. I’m not suggesting she is the only clear medium amongst you, but she’s one with whom we’ve been practicing. And it will make it easy for Aaron and Yeshua to have some dialogue on resistance, when speaking through two different humans.
Then we’ll look at something that’s not been allowed into the heart—an old memory, and old limiting belief, old pain—and just gently invite it out, whatever portion of it. You don’t have to bring the whole thing out; whatever portion wants to come out.
And then, with a guided meditation, working with our higher self and our guides, and meeting our power animals.
And then going into the place of darkness— into the freezer, so to speak— and seeing what wants to come out, what wants to reveal itself.
So, just a gentle beginning to looking at what we’ve pushed aside. I want to remind you that this must be a gentle and compassionate practice. There’s nothing that you are trying to fix. There’s nothing wrong or broken. We’re just allowing ourselves to look gently into the places of darkness and invite them to the surface so they can heal. Just that.
Are there any questions, before we begin? Please remember kindness and gentleness are core.
With that said, I’m going to bring in Aaron, and invite Yeshua to incorporate also, and we’ll let them go with us for 20, 30 minutes, and then we’ll begin to move into the meditation half of the class.
Aaron: I am Aaron. I greet you in love and light. So, what is resistance? It is essentially one expression of the mammal. It is just how the mammal functions. When something is uncomfortable, you tighten up, the chakras close. There is some degree of fear, discomfort. The energy field closes. The result of the closed energy field shows as resistance. There’s a hard shell developed.
Many of you, when you experience that hard shell, first reaction is to try to break into it; to take the pickaxe and hammer away at it. Feeling itself threatened, it just hardens further.
The only way is with love and compassion, with kindness to the self.
I think here of an animal. The kitten in the house, its claws are long. Barbara was holding it to clip the claw and Lester was scared and struggled. Barbara’s first impulse was to hold it tighter. And I said the tighter you hold it, the more afraid he’ll be. Be gentle. Relax. Let him be reassured that he is safe. And this is really what you need to do with yourselves.
I want to keep passing this back and forth with Yeshua. So, Yeshua, I invite you to speak. I can feel your energy here.
Yeshua (C): My beloved ones, I am Yeshua and I greet you in love. It’s my joy to be here tonight and to share this time with you and to speak back and forth with my precious and beloved brother, Aaron, to consider the whole concept of resistance.
As Aaron just explained, when you experience resistance for any reason it’s the natural way of the human body, the human mammal, to go on high alert, and hunker down and shroud and protect itself. And that does serve a purpose. But when it comes to resistance related to internal states— your emotions, your thoughts—that resistance, while it may seem protective at the moment, actually separates you from that part of your experience of the memories or the emotions, and even the physical sensations of those.
So when you wall that off and separate yourself from it, you don’t have relationship with it to communicate or work with it. It becomes hardened like a wound that gets calloused over and just really never heals. It’s still infected inside.
So what we want to look at tonight are some of the ways that resistance shows up, and ways that you can work with it. And truly, working with it with love is the only way it can be worked with. Any other way, despite intentions, will harden and separate you from those internal states and experiences. So, my beloved brother, I pass this back to you.
Aaron: I thank you, Yeshua. It opens with love and also with wisdom.
I’ve said this a thousand times: Whatever has the nature to arise has the nature to cease. Fear, pain, shame, feelings of unworthiness, anger and confusion, these are all conditioned experiences. They arise out of conditions. They have no ultimate existence.
And yet, they do have an existence. We can’t ignore them. But if we give them power, believing them to be an ultimate reality, they become stronger and stronger, bigger and bigger.
So, along with compassion, it’s vital to look at an experience like shame, for example, or physical pain, and know this has arisen from conditions and right now it’s very uncomfortable. I do not want to be with it.
But I can start by simply knowing that it IS arisen, and that this mind/body/spirit that I am, has the ability not to close but to stay open to the experience. To breathe with it. To give it some space. Even to turn to it and begin to ask it, “What are you here to teach me?” In this way, there’s much more spaciousness with it, much less fear of it.
The practice here is to gently allow it to come up into the body, into the open heart so that it can be explored and seen for what it is.
You’ve probably all played with hand shadow puppets. Moving the hand on the wall so it’s a duck quacking, or whatever it may be. If you look at it close, it’s small. But depending on where the light and the wall are, it may be huge on the wall, and it can be very terrifying, especially to little children. You’ve probably had the experience of showing this to a little child and having them scream and flee in fear, until you point out to them, “Do you see how my hand is doing this? It’s just the shadow on the wall.” And then you teach them how to make such a shadow. They begin to see that that which we call the shadow has no ultimate or substantial reality.
And thus it is with the places of darkness within—they have no substantial reality. And this is the core of how we work with it in meditation, which John will be talking about in some degree with you tomorrow. I pass this back to Yeshua.
Yeshua (C): As Aaron mentioned, these places of resistance have no actual reality and yet they are experienced within the body/mind/spirit as a place of contraction. And the discomfort of that feeling can bring up reactivity, which gives it more power and more intensity. Then when you feel afraid of that discomfort, or the sensation that comes up, you wish to push against it.
Those sensations of resistance may be related to past trauma, heartbreak, feelings of guilt or shame. They can be related to large, significant events in your life. Or they can be related to very small things— such as a memory as a child when a parent chastised you and you flushed with shame— and now you’ve carried that sense of shame with you for so long. Often the sense of resistance and the intensity of it is not always in proportion to the magnitude of something that occurred in your life.
The first place to start in working with these places of resistance is simply to be aware of it. Most of you are very intuitive. You are deeply practiced and you have awareness of what it feels like within you when something’s coming up that you wish to push against, to resist.
So, I ask you as you go through your daily life, to more subtly attune your awareness to small triggers of resistance and to be with them. As you gain familiarity with these sensations, these cues, in due time you will learn how to move into that space very quickly without allowing it to become some big monumental thing that has to be dealt with.
There are many layers to this. I will pass this back to my beloved brother and later we can talk more specifically about how to deal with resistance. I pass this to you my beloved brother, Aaron.
Aaron: Thank you, Yeshua. It’s a joy to be sharing this discussion with you.
Yeshua (C): It’s my joy.
Aaron: Ahh… I smile! Where we have come in 2,000 years! And far beyond that, because of course, 2,000 years ago was not our first knowing of each other. (Yeshua: Yes.) That one I was as Nathaniel, and you as Yeshua, our history goes far back before that.
The things that have come into your mind as frightening or painful objects, you think why would I allow that? Why would I invite it?
Someone shared with me today some thoughts of balance. Some of you enjoy riding waves in the ocean. They might be big waves; they might be just little swells. Most of you, if you get into the ocean and you have the surfboard or the canvas raft, and you climb on your raft and relax, you want it to bob up and down a little bit. You want there to be movement. And it challenges your balance a bit. It’s fun.
How long would you lie on the raft perfectly immobile on a perfectly calm, flat, motionless sea? Would it get a bit boring? But you say, “Well, where are the waves? I came here to experience the waves and practice riding the waves and balancing the waves.” So, you get out and seek that movement somewhere else.
If you want to learn about balance, you must have practice at being unbalanced so that you can find the innate balance in yourself.
If you only choose to be perfectly balanced, how would you learn about balancing?
Barbara’s little grandson got his first two-wheel bike for Christmas. There are some precious videos that her son took of him saying, “Let go, Daddy—I want to try it!” Well, of course he didn’t want to fall. But he also understood in a deep way, “I have to do it myself. I have to find this balance for myself.” And there he goes, pedaling and daddy is running.
“Let go, Daddy—I want to do it.” This is the whole human experience, to find the empowerment for the vastness that you are, the love that you are, by feeling a little bit unbalanced, out of the field of love so that you can find that field of love. This is what you are here to learn.
But then, when the unbalance comes, there’s fear of it. The old fear of not good enough, helpless, and that gets shoved into the deep freeze, one part of it upon another.
One of the most important things is simply to remember, “This is what I came to learn. And I did not come to fail. I am ready to learn this.”
Throughout this life, at times you have not believed you were ready to learn it, and so, like the child riding the bike: “I can’t do this!”—Crash! And after he crashes four or five times, he may say, “I’m out of here.” Maybe he’ll try it again a year or two years later. He’s ready; it’s just fear.
When we start, not with the “I can’t do it” but “I choose to, for the highest good of all beings”—what Mary was saying here, that we consecrate our effort for the highest good of all beings. That each of us has the opportunity to practice love and wisdom and compassion, and to release the power of that love and wisdom and compassion literally out to all sentient beings. We have the power to do that.
So, you do not start by saying, “I’m going to… I think I can… I will… I should…” but “I choose to. I am the one who is awake and ready to do this, or it would not be before me. I have not chosen to destroy myself. So, I come in here ready to open my heart and take this next step. Just look at this one place to which I have previously been unable to open and see it for what it is, and thereby end the duality.”
I pass this to Yeshua.
Yeshua (C): Thank you my beloved brother.
As Aaron mentioned, you all have the capacity to do this. As you walk through the incarnation, especially with so many of the challenges that seem to be quickening on this earth at this time of transition, it’s easy to forget who you are. My beloveds, you are the lightworkers who came for this time.
Learning to work with resistance from your own personal experience, from your karmic lineages, is important. And why is that important? Because it frees you. It opens you to be a column of light— to be a light worker.
All the hard work you have done—every measure of opening and healing, every resistance that you move through, every resistance that you befriend and allow to release—everything that you do is not only for yourself but blesses the entire earth.
You are then more able— I won’t say to bring in more love and light because you are love and light—but you release that which blocks it so you can seed that love and light into the earth: to open that great column of love/light into the heavens, if you will. And as you do that, you help raise the vibration of the whole earth.
So as you are willing to move into the sacred darkness, to discover the flowers and the gifts there, and bring those out into the light, those gifts are not only for you, they are for all beings and the earth. And that is what you came to do as a light worker.
Remember that larger perspective as you go into these places of resistance, pain, and fear. Though the process may be difficult, your healing, your release, blesses the whole creation. I pause. I pass this back to you my beloved brother, Aaron.
Aaron: Thank you, Yeshua. And actually, Mary is here, asking to come in. We read a little of her words from Sunday, and she asks to share a bit, so she’s going to incorporate. I’ll release the body to her…
Mary (B): I am Mary. My love to each of you. Something about which I am passionate is the seeding of this earth with light and love.
This earth was created to be a realm of high vibration, with the potential for that. To demonstrate that potential— a heavy vibrational planet with solid matter, and yet vibrating at such a high frequency that the experience of love and light become radiant from this earth and to all who dwell on the earth. This is part of the whole transition into a higher density, the heart of your Eden Project, or a heart.
Think how it is if you had need to walk into some dark cave, perhaps, because you heard crying coming from within the cave. Fear would come up. Part of you would want to go in, because your heart is open to that pain being expressed by the cry, and part of you would resist—”I could be hurt. Is it safe?”
Think how much easier it would be to walk into that cave if either two or three of you were to walk in together, or if light came on in the cave, lighting it up so it was not dark.
You are each of you born into what seems to be an earth that is a dark cave. Some of you received from birth that parental love that helped you learn to trust your capacity to enter the dark places. Some of you tried to enter those dark places and got slapped back, or found support withdrawn, so you learned fear and to mistrust your own essence that knows itself as light and love.
Your reason for the incarnation—I cannot say the reason but a primary reason—is to come more deeply to know what you truly are. To know the essence of yourself as love and light, and then seed that love and light literally into this earth plane and into all the creatures of this earth plane, of all sorts.
Each of you as you express out that essence help to make it available. An earth of such a high vibration cannot support a virus like Covid, cannot support the environmental destruction that’s happening, because when there is that higher vibration these distortions simply dissolve. I won’t say ‘simply’—not simply at all. Well, yes, simply, but not easily. But they will dissolve.
This is an essence of the whole, what I think of as, earth experiment: to see if many loving, conscious beings, aware that they are awake, even if not yet fully awake, if they can raise the vibration to a point so that extreme negativity no longer wishes to try to flourish here.
You are doing it, despite appearances of the degree of hatred and disease and environmental disaster—yes, you are doing it. And a lot of that is simply negativity pushing back.
When negativity pushes back, you hold firm. You look it in the eye and just say, “No, you may not do this.”
I love you all, and I encourage you to explore these darker places with patience and love, and see how you can bring in much more light for yourselves and for the earth. I pass this back to my beloved Yeshua.
Yeshua (C): Thank you my beloved one. As Mary expressed, when you heal and become more open, you can be with negativity with compassion and an open heart and yet say no. This whole process of working with your own internal resistance is the key to that. There is a tendency—as you are working with painful places and feel this resistance— to push against it or shove it in a closet and lock the door with a deadbolt (laughing); anything to push it away, to not go there, to not deal with it. When you engage in this pattern of avoidance, as I mentioned at the beginning, you create a dynamic of separation between you and whatever you experience as those places of resistance.
But as you begin to tenderly engage with that place of resistance, you can being to inquire and explore: “What is this? How does this sensation feel? How does my body respond? How do I respond emotionally? What thoughts and stories are coming up?” And as you see how resistance plays out in your experience and you become attuned to that, you can then befriend it and ask, “What have you to teach me?”
You may find in that place of resistance things you have put in the deep freeze—as Barbara mentioned earlier—for many years of this lifetime or even many incarnations. It may be very frightening and you may think that this is a terrifying monster you can’t possibly face. But when you come to the point of finally opening the freezer door, peeking in, reading the label and unwrapping it, you may find that you have changed so much that this thing that you feared for ages, is nothing to be feared.
You’ve grown, you’ve healed so much since that experience. You can greet it gently, “Ah…yes, I do remember that experience and it was very painful. But thank you. It’s brought me to where I am now.”
And I don’t mean to say that all engagement with those things around which you have resistance will always be an easy or peaceable a relationship at first. But as you let go of the fear you can become curious and have a willingness to inquire and to sit with what comes up. Then rest in that place of spaciousness, as Aaron has often taught you, and watch what is coming up: what are the stories, and your conditioned patterns of reactivity to those? You can be in an open place with all of that and see it arise— but not necessarily hold hands with it and go for a walk! (laughing) Being in that place of spaciousness releases the contraction and allows for healing, openness and radiating the light.
The world you live in is a world of polarity. This earth was created as a plane of freewill. People have the choice to choose a negative path or positive path. And although it may be hard to believe, those who choose the negative path are no different than you, as each being is an expression of the one Creator. But those who choose the negative path are on a different learning trajectory.
As you learn to meet your own painful and contracted internal states with love and compassion, you can peaceably be with others who choose negativity. Instead of being in anger and fear and resistance, and seeing them as “other,” as being separate from you, you can bring that same openness, love and wisdom into the interaction, knowing in your heart that both of you are the Creator, and both have free will. And yet with love and compassion still say “No, you may not do harm.”
But until you come to this place of peace within your relationship to your own wounding, your own pain, your own inner resistance—when you see others enacting great harm, or what you would call evil, in the world—you also bring that energy of resistance, contraction and pushing against into the external world as well. That only increases all those places of pain, conflict and suffering, even though you have the intention to do good and not harm.
So your inner work is not just your inner work. It becomes the foundation for how you live in the world. It changes your relationships in the world. I leave you with that now and I pass this back to my beloved one, Mary.
Aaron: I am Aaron. Mary has given me back the body. We could go on talking about this for the rest of the class period, but I do want to give us some period of practice with it.
I’m going to release the body back to Barbara, ask you to take five minutes to stretch, and then we’ll begin with the meditation period. Yeshua, I just want to see if there’s anything else you want to add, before we close this portion of the gathering. I thank you, Yeshua, and I release the body to Barbara. Colette, I thank you, also.
Barbara: Thank you, Aaron. I’ve been working with Aaron on what we’re learning here, going to my own places of pain in both present life and past lives.
Aaron asked me to just pick one place, and I chose the places of helplessness I felt in this and past lives, when I could not prevent myself and others from suffering.
But of course, if people are going to suffer, I can’t stop them from suffering; I can only open doors for them.
So, I looked in myself at the places of shame and futility and anger at myself that I could not prevent the suffering that I saw around me, and how I was then creating a duality between love and hatred. Seeing the suffering and thinking, “It should stop.” Not respecting that people have a free will choice to suffer until they’re ready to stop suffering.
It’s been a very powerful experience doing some of the meditation that Aaron’s going to lead you in, in the next hour. Coming to these places of willingness to let go.
So, I hope you’ll also find it powerful. Let’s take 5 minutes and then we’ll start again.
(break)
Aaron: I am Aaron. We’ll begin.
Our first step will be finding support. Take a few minutes here to center yourself within your intention to be of service, with love; that intention to alleviate suffering, to invite forth increasing light and love on this heavy density earth and within your own heart.
Resting in this intention, without force, just joyful invitation, reach out to your higher-self and/or your guidance and invite support.
Feel them present with you. There may not be a direct conscious experience of this aspect of yourself, or of a guide. But at least feel the energy that’s there, loving energy.
Tonight, I want to introduce you to a different piece of support, which is the power animal. You all have one or several power animals.
What is a power animal? It is simply spirit expressing itself in some different form, often as an animal but it can be in the form of a butterfly or a flower. It may not be an animal, specifically.
It is an essence of you, part of you, co-communicating with you, co-creating with you.
So, let’s try this as a guided meditation.
We’re walking down a grassy lane, shrubs on either side, a lovely path. You have been told that you will see an opening to a cave. That it will be safe to enter. That when you enter, you will feel yourself sliding downward into the earth, but promised no harm will come to you as you thusly slide.
Walking… And here, behind a large boulder, you see a small opening— a cave that is lit gently from within, inviting.
Step inside, and you will see a steep slope. It is safe. You can actually sit down and slide, if you like. It could be fun.
Down deep into the earth… Letting go… Sliding into a place deep within the earth.
Watch for any resistance. You are not alone; you are safe. It is a voyage of discovery.
Why do we need to go here? Because we’re going to find the power animal not specially on this earth plane but in a different kind of place. I can’t explain it—I choose not to take the time to explain it tonight, so just bear with me.
Sit down and slide, down into darkness, and land gently on a moonlit beach.
The light from the above world is gone. Now, in this plane, ahead of you a vast sea lit by moonlight. Gentle ripples in the water.
Ahead of you, there is a sailboat, bobbing up and down close to shore. No other being in sight. Feel the gentle invitation to board the boat, sit and make yourself comfortable.
If there is any resistance, any fear, pause and restate to yourself: “My highest intention is to open my heart, that I may be of greater service to all beings, and may heal that within myself which cries to be healed.”
The boat will not move until you are ready. Once you feel settled, look ahead of you in the far distance and you’ll see an island rising up, not really as a mountain, just a large hill. But there seems to be some light beyond the moonlight radiating from that space. It feels welcoming.
When you are ready, give your boat permission to leave the shore. It will sail itself.
Gliding gently over the waves, over the small swells… A gentle breeze blowing from behind… Moving you across the sea.
When you do this on your own, please take five or ten minutes for this journey. But here, for lack of time, we’re going to simply arrive at the other shore.
The boat does not slam into the shore, it just gently comes to a stop, the breeze dying out. And you wade ashore.
There’s a beautiful sandy beach, small dunes, and a path that climbs up through small woods. Up and up, to a high hilltop…
Emerging out of the woods, this lovely grassy hilltop… And there in front of you, a large rock, flat, and with thick cushions and blankets.
You are weary. This rock invites you, “Rest here…”
You have been reassured nothing here will harm you. You have entered, here on this island, a different realm. You are no longer on earth. It is a place you might think of as of magic, of power, of love.
And you are so tired. So lie down on the comfortable cushions that are offered.
The moon has been left behind, and here there is sunlight and warmth.
Pull up a blanket, if you wish. Feel the warmth in your body, the warmth radiating out of the rock. Close your eyes and relax. You are safe.
Now I would ask you to state your highest intention, for this moment, not the eternal highest intention, although it could be that. But in this moment, “I hold the intention to be of service. I hold the intention to deepen in love. I hold the intention to release that which is not helpful to this mind/body/spirit complex, that which is ancient and I have dragged around forever. I hold the intention to find support to release it.”
With such intention in mind, “I invite the support of my power animal, whatever it may be.” It may come as a tiger, or a butterfly. A kitten or a horse. A snake or a giant tortoise. A fox with silver coat, or a stag with silver antlers. It may come as a small brown mouse, or a bird.
Whatever comes to you, thank it and ask it for its support to help you realize this intention.
Feel its true love for you. Feel how when it is with you, you feel empowered. It wakens something in you.
If nothing comes, don’t worry about it. Just continue to ask, and rest here.
Perhaps no power animal comes, only your guide or your higher self. Perhaps a small cloud comes, or a breeze, or some raindrops. Who knows what form assistance and guidance will come?
I’m going to ask you to take a few minutes with this. If we had an extra hour, we’d do this for 20 minutes. When you have the recording, I hope you will try this for a longer period, because just a few minutes may not be enough time. This is to introduce you, not to absolutely realize something.
I’ll be quiet now for just a few minutes…
(sitting)
Perhaps you have come to some connection with the power animal; perhaps not. It’s fine either way. You’ll have time to practice with this on your own through the week.
You’ll find that this power animal, once you recognize it you’ll see that it’s always been with you. That it’s available to you when you need it.
If you have not connected, don’t worry about it. And if you have connected with your higher self or a guide, don’t worry about it. They are there, and when you are ready you’ll have a stronger sense of meeting one or several of them.
Moving inward, now, to whatever best supports you, to the love within your own heart, to your own most loving intentions. Please look inside yourself and find something that has been stored, pushed into the darkness, and that perhaps raises itself to be seen, to come out of that deep freeze and become known.
Note the intention for yourself that whatever it may be, that it may be seen and enter into the process of healing and release.
If there is fear, turn to your guidance, or simply turn to your friends here in your sangha, for support. “I choose this for the highest good of myself and all beings. I choose to see just this, this one place of fear, of grief, helplessness, pain, or darkness. I invite it for the highest good of all beings, that I may see it for what it is: simply a conditioned object, a mental or physical object. I choose to know it, so that it may no longer hold me into darkness. I choose it. I invite it. And I invite help to be present with it.”
Again, I’ll be quiet for five minutes while you do this…
(sitting)
I am Aaron. Please begin now to ease yourself out of this sacred space. To thank whoever has come, whether it be power animal, guide, higher self, or simply the sunlight or the moonlight, the stars or the breeze, or the rock itself.
Offer the intention that any learning, any increased spaciousness, release of contraction, any joy, that the merit of this be dedicated to the highest good of all beings.
Offer thanks for this opportunity to come to more deeply know the expanded, awakened self.
Through what we have done here, may all sentient beings find ease, release of suffering, and closer connection to the awakened aspect of themselves. May the whole earth, indeed the whole universe, benefit by what we have just done.
I am Aaron. I’m going to release the body to Barbara. We have about ten minutes for sharing of whatever would like to be shared.
If you have not found anything there, if you just laid on that rock and said, “Nothing’s happening,” please don’t give up.
Trust your capacity, because you are essentially light, to open and invite in that light and release whatever release serves the highest good.
My love to you, and thank you for participating in this with me. I give the body back to Barbara…
Barbara: Thank you, Aaron. My voice is unusually hoarse tonight. I’m not sure why—too much talking, I think, the past two days.
I understand from the Chat that some of you find it difficult to understand me, and I am sorry for that.
I hope that the transcript will reach you as soon as possible so you’ll be able to read this. But I hope that you can hear me enough to make the audio file useful.
Let’s just open this for anybody who would like to share anything. It can be a profound experience, or it can be as simple as, “Nothing happened,” —whatever you would like to share.
(Notes about class registration)
Q: I connected with my higher self about a year ago. I actually made it a point to not strengthen or open up that relationship. I think there was some fear there.
This being came to me—I invited this being to be with me this evening. I call him the Honored One, an Australian Aboriginal elder. I realize that he’s always been with me; I have that inner experience of that. And he’s the one who’s protected me on what I call my little adventures in life, when I would go off and bike ride or motorcycle, or whatever it might be. People would oftentimes ask me if I was afraid, and I’ve not been afraid because he was always there supporting me.
So, it’s a great experience to allow myself to get that close to my higher self, know that it’s safe and that I can call on this being any time. I’m grateful for that experience this evening. Thank you.
Barbara: Thank you, Q.
Q: I had a powerful experience. I met my power animal, that I’ve met before, which is a stallion, and this time a hummingbird, which I’d not met before. And my horse, my stallion, grew wings and we flew out into the universe and landed in a sacred space. I felt that we were practicing a lot of tonglen together, breathing in love and light, and breathing out that to the earth, and breathing in the suffering from the earth.
I wanted to mention that, because when we got to the part that was more difficult—looking back down on Mother Earth whilst practicing the things that came up for me that were difficult, like shame, and Yeshua was there—everything that we worked on together, it felt like in this sacred space, felt safe. And I was removed from the earth and worked on it, and it just all felt so safe. It was a really beautiful feeling. I wasn’t bogged down by it at all. And so I just thought I was share that experience, something to play with.
Q: I would like to share about my power animal experience. I met this time the energy, the power animal of a great bear. During the first hour of this evening session I was grinding with question of— I was struggling, wanting to ask this question about issues that I struggle with that are perhaps patterns of resistance with me.
I wanted so much during the second hour to be able to ask Aaron and Yeshua and Mary about this. No, we were going with the power animal.
So I went into this space, and here was power animal Bear, which was wonderful, because it could phase into white bear and brown bear and black bear. But it was all about that I needed a very large presence to take me in hand, in no uncertain terms, so it needed to be large—not a butterfly or a frog, but something bigger than me—and it had enormous presence of heart and compassion and intelligence.
In my process of being with this animal—I don’t know how this occurred; I could not explain it—but when we finished, all my issues of concern, my questions that I’d been so wanting to ask, were all answered. The energy was completely shifted with me. And I have an entrance into a reality for myself that I never could have anticipated and I don’t know how to describe. And I thank you very much.
Barbara: Thank you, Q. That’s a wonderful note to close on for the evening. I’m so happy that you experienced that. I encourage you all to keep practicing with this.
That’s it for tonight. Remember that tomorrow night John will be taking this into the meditation areas. Our vipassana and pure awareness practice are so important to this. I hope many of you are participating in the meditation class, and I hope you’re all doing some kind of meditation practice regularly. We’re beginning with this finding support, and with vipassana, and in future weeks will look at the Dharma itself as support, and the Brahma Viharas too.
My love to you. Thank you for being here tonight. I want you to know that I’m very excited about this class and the work we’re doing. It’s been profound for me, as Aaron and Yeshua and Mary and others have shared their ideas with me about where this class can go.
The sacred darkness experience is challenging, and you’re all ready to do this. It’s so powerful for healing of ourselves and the whole earth, our gift to everyone everywhere. We can do this. No pressure, just gentle intention.
That’s all. Good night.