Guided Meditation on Life Intentions via Reflecting on the Birth Process

January 21, 2023 Saturday Afternoon, Healings and Ever-Healed Workshop, Part 1

Aaron: My blessings and love to you. I am Aaron. If you want to go somewhere, you need an intention. You have to know where you’re going before you can get there.

Part of this comes from the heart and the mind, deciding what it is you want. Also, exploring what blocks your opening to that which you seek. Part of it is simply a matter of mastering a multitude of tools.

Close your eyes for a moment and try to see this with me. A word of caution—what I am saying is not realistic, because before birth into any form, there is consciousness—awareness, let’s call it, of where you’re going, what will come next, what you choose. Then you shift out of that place of total awareness and into mundane consciousness. The view closes down.

Let’s try to follow this as best we can, now. You can leave your eyes open or closed, as you wish.

Here you are, on the spirit plane, this wondrous essence of you, surrounded by your guides, all loving beings. They have helped you to see certain specific areas of karma in which you’ve repeatedly played out a challenging pattern and not been able to resolve that pattern and let go of it.

Maybe a pattern in different lifetimes, in different forms—not always human—of being abused in some way, or you became an abuser yourself. A lifetime in which you lived in great isolation, or maybe a lifetime in which you lived in such a press of others that there was no space around you. A lifetime in which you lived in fear that your needs could not be met. A lifetime in which you lived in enormous peace and tranquility, but there was little to prompt you to grow.

You’ve looked at many different lifetimes. With the help of your guides, you’ve chosen a certain area and said, “In this next incarnation, this is where I choose to focus and to learn. I invite the circumstances that will best support that learning.”

Well, you could be a tree; a parent tree has been found. Or you could be squirrel or a bird, or you could be a human. Just for the sake of convenience, let’s limit it to human.

Think, now, about what your plan would have been with your loving guides. What is it you most hoped to learn in this lifetime? Of course, there will be many things. But for the sake of our discussion right now, choose one area.

You’re going to be human. What will help you most, to live in luxury or in poverty, or somewhere in between? With abundant love or some scarcity of love?

Where in the world might you take incarnation? What particular strengths and what particular weaknesses might this new body have?

You have come to a place of commitment with those who are willing to parent you in this lifetime. You’re still in awareness, as the fetus begins to grow in the womb. There are periods of profound awareness, of knowing the essence of your being.

But you also begin to experience, through this emerging mammal body, pressure, and movement. Some of the energy, moods and thoughts of the mother are experienced. Soothing and also frightening sounds come from the world around you. In other words, mundane consciousness also begins to develop.

You find yourself reacting to these conditions. But there is still enough awareness to watch the reaction. In other words, there is contact with a loud sound and the fetus recoils a bit. Let’s not call it fear; let’s call it almost instinctive reaction. And the awareness that you are that is present, the deep essence of you, knows what the fetus is doing; is able to calm the fetus.

Some contractions may begin, and you feel pressure. Again, the fetus moving into mundane consciousness. The heartbeat speeds up. The pressure may become unpleasant, and the growing fetus pushes back.

Then the contractions stop and there is a pause. Resting in awareness. Watching, observing how the fetus reacted. How you reacted, from the mundane sense, to that stimulus, that catalyst, feeling it to be unpleasant and frightening. At this point, for the fetus, there is still deep awareness of the intention for the incarnation.

We move through quickly; nine months passes quickly, and suddenly you are filling this womb, being pushed constantly. At some level, aware it’s time to move out, to disconnect physically with the mother and come out of the womb.

This may happen in a very peaceful, quiet environment, free of noise and bright lights, or it may happen in a big city hospital with many lights, noise. People rushing here and there. Not necessarily rough-handling, but people just saying, “Here’s this birth, and we have another one pending. Let’s get this one finished.”

As you emerge, you may be handled somewhat roughly, or, more likely, kindly; not necessarily lovingly. You’re wiped off a bit and handed to the mother, who may or may not have very loving feelings toward you; maybe a bit afraid, or maybe so happy to embrace you.

There are so many sensations that it’s hard to get back into awareness. Everything is new. Your eyes don’t register what you’re seeing; it’s all new.

Gradually, you lose the sense of awareness, of being led form the “one who knows” within you and into simple reactivity. Or perhaps you have been able to retain that sense of resting in the “one who knows.”

So, I’d like you now just to take a few minutes to experience yourself moving into the first moment of being somewhere in the world, with loving or not so loving parents, surrounded by love or by fear.

I’d like you to reflect on the question that you asked: what is the karma that I most hope to resolve in this lifetime, and what experiences will best help its resolution?

Become that very small few-celled fetus, and growing, and growing, and growing into readiness for birth, and into birth.

Let’s take ten minutes for this, just a ten-minute reflection. Be with whatever arises for you. See what your intentions are for the lifetime and how certain experiences came to you to help meet those intentions. I’m going to be quiet now.

(reflection)

Barbara: I’ve been talking a little bit about my experience with the meditation. I really wanted to get back into the womb, back inside a cave, to feel safe, because I felt so helpless and that I had no ability to control. I’m sure it was triggered by past life memories of fear and pain. I didn’t want to trust another being. I wanted to be in control.

I had a very loving mother. I have no memory of having been handed to her at that point, but I know she was delighted to have a little girl and held me lovingly. And that I was held with kindness.

But those several moments of separation, moving out of the Dharmakaya and suddenly finding myself in this body, this nirmanakaya experience, the form body, the mundane mind—Oh! Fear.

And I saw deeper than I have before how much of my life has been relaxing into the nirmanakaya, allowing myself to experience it.

So, Aaron then asked me, what is my intention? And the intention for me that grows out of that is to allow myself to be closer to this nirmanakaya, form body end of the bridge, and keep connection to the divine realm. Because it’s only from there that I can be of service in the world, and that’s my highest intention.

I know all this; it just was a little bit different with that ten-minute meditation. I was able to go deep into the emergence of this baby that I was and that moment of fear.

Now, the second piece of this that I also deeply remembered a more recent past life in which I was in some kind of a boat in the Navy. The boat was sunk. Diving into the water—very cold, cold weather, cold water. Hanging onto something that floated. The boat was burning. People were screaming around me. There was, I guess, oil on the water. It was burning. I knew I couldn’t help anybody; I couldn’t even help myself. But trying to move away from the boat and the fire and the screaming, and not wanting to hear it.

I looked very deeply at this karma, and I see how it’s related to the emergence of that baby into the world, all the sounds and lights, and not wanting to hear. Really wanting to get back inside the womb to be safe. Keeping myself separate.

So, Aaron asked me, then what healing would I seek from that?

It’s not just about my ears. It’s more about this whole body. If this body is strong and can walk and move around—the back is strong, the eyes can see, the ears can hear—I’m touching, I’m connected to the world—or I’m not; I’m withdrawing and armoring myself. And the intention in every way to open myself to touch and be touched by the world.

Especially—and this takes me back to one more reflection I had, during this short meditation. I had a very loving father. He was never physically or verbally abusive in terms of saying negative things to me. But he had a temper, and very occasionally he would yell. I don’t know what he yelled—”Damn it! AHH!” Just loud yelling, expressing his anger. And it terrified me, his anger terrified me, I think because in his anger I saw my own anger and fear of the anger.

If I truly want to be of service in the world, if that’s my highest intention, then I have to be willing to see and hear everything with compassion. To walk through everything upright. Present, with compassion.

So, this, then, is my healing path for this week: to be present with the various catalysts this life gives me with as much compassion as is possible. To allow myself to be touched.

And also, skillfully to remember that I have the right to say no. If somebody or something is pushing pain or heavy emotions at me, I have the right, not to armor myself so much as to shield myself and say no and to step back from it. To know I have that right, that we each have that right.

So, Aaron, is that enough? That’s a bit of what I got out of this. He says, Thank you.

(John shares)

Barbara: Thank you, John. Aaron is going to come back in…

Aaron: I am Aaron. Thank you all. On your own, I hope you will continue this exploration. Emerging into this lifetime. Just before that emergence, or quite a while before—before conception. What were your intentions?

We look at karma and see difficult situations, as John pointed out, wanting to explore unworthiness. To some degree I suppose one needs to explore the experience of feeling unworthy through actually feeling unworthy.

But from what I understand, from my own many lifetimes, more healing comes from knowing that nothing is ever unworthy. From feeling one’s connection with everything and feeling the love, then repeatedly setting oneself up to feel unworthy. A feeling of blame: “I caused this.” Feelings of people being angry at you, or you being angry at others.

So, the second reflection here. We just barely have time for this, and not much time for discussion until we come back after the break. I would invite you to find some, either what the first meditation led you to, such as John exploring unworthiness, or Barbara experiencing wanting to be safe and needing to feel control, not to be hurt, not to hurt others.

Pick something that seems primary: anger, fear, self-blame, blame of others, loss, body pain. Just choose any one that jumps out at you and begin to ask yourself, how might I have learned not to get caught in this belief about myself? Not to be reactive to it and hurt myself and others. How could I learn about it in a gentler way?

Barbara, as a young child, experienced the loss of the nanny who took care of her for her first six years. She had loving but very busy parents. And then Nanny was sick and abruptly had to leave, so she had a deep feeling of abandonment.

At a monthlong retreat, I gave her a suggestion. People were asked not to make eye contact, but I suggested, “As you walk past people, make eye contact with them and watch them look away. Watch the feeling ‘I am unloved’ and ‘abandoned’ arise. Be very clear in yourself this looking away is not about you. They are preserving their silence by choosing not to make eye contact. It’s not about you. And see how quickly ‘I’m unworthy’ and that contraction comes up.”

It took her a month. Many times a day making eye contact and having people look away, and repeatedly asking, “In this moment, am I unworthy? Am I being abandoned? Am I unlovable?”

She began to see how the “I am unlovable,” when they looked away, reflected the anger that she felt because of the loss of Nanny. Because of her pain at the situation—she’d heard about the Holocaust and WWII. Because of many losses. Because the anger was so frightening, she moved into “I am unworthy.” She deeply understood this by the end of that month.

And then it took some time, each time the feeling of unworthy came up, to ask herself, “What am I really experiencing here? Grief, or fear of grief, anger, confusion. Can I be present with it? And in that presence, can I find the ever-healed within me, the one who is not angry, right there with anger? The one who is not consumed by grief, right there with grief. The one who finds it hard to touch the heart with love, right there with that fear.”

This was for Barbara’s path. So, to simplify the intention here, I want you to find some quality that has seemed to be with you through your life. I prefer you not choose something like depression or body pain; that’s a symptom. Rather, the direct experience. It might be anger, or sadness, or loss, or fear, a feeling of being invisible, whatever it might be.

I would ask you to just spend ten minutes with that experience. See how this baby that emerged from the womb moved into that experience, theoretically with the intention to learn something.

And as you come to the experience of anger, or grief, or helplessness, ask, “How can I resolve this karma? How can I learn about this without being consumed by this experience? I choose to learn about this in a loving, positive way that does not hurt me or hurt others.”

In other words, if there was a lot of anger, not to go into the anger so much as to touch the one who is not angry. Begin to look at anger as an object. Contact with the anger, internal or external. Consciousness of the anger. The unpleasant feeling of the anger, and the different reactions that have habitually built up because there was anger.

Using Barbara again as example, there was the feeling of loss, abandonment, and the anger. Feelings of helplessness, also. Instead of trying to fix any of that, to say, “I choose, at this point, to learn about this in a deeply loving way. I invite that through my body, my mind, and my spirit.”

Do you understand what I want you to do? Are there any questions? Alright, let us do this, then, for ten minutes. When we end, I will ask you to simply go and relax for that hour. You can meditate more, or eat, or take a nap, and then we’ll be back together with you at 3pm.

Thank you. I am Aaron. I’m going to release the body to Barbara.

Barbara: Aaron is saying here you can imagine or really feel loving helpers coming, as you ask for support not to get lost in the conflicting emotion, but to move through it and into the wholeness. Feel the loving support around you.

(reflection)

Eat, rest, spend some time, if you’re able, meditating with either or both of these short guided meditations, and with the question, why am I here? Not just here in this workshop but in this lifetime. What am I here to learn? And how can that learning come in much less painful ways? How can I really open myself to the beautiful possibilities and break free of some of the old trauma and habitual patterns?

We’ll come back together at 3pm with a group discussion… Then we’ll break into small groups and come back together from the small groups with sharing what the core of what the small groups learned.

That’s all, and I’ll see you again at 3pm.