January 31, 2023 Tuesday Evening, Living Awake Class
Rewriting the Script: using imagination and imaginal cells to go into and release past trauma/darkness by imagining a more positive and loving possibility; guided meditation
Aaron: My blessings and love to you. I am Aaron. It’s good to see you all, many who I just saw Saturday, and I hope you’re doing well.
We’re moving into the second semester now, where I want to focus more on non-duality: of light and darkness, of contraction and spaciousness, of awake and not yet awake—all the seeming dualities.
We’ve talked a bit about what I call the path of sacred darkness, which does not differ from the path of sacred light. Imagine you are to focus on a bright light. If you were in a dark room, the rest of the room might be dark and this light, even a single candle, would be bright. Can you find any place where the light ends, and the darkness begins?
(Demonstrating) I can’t show you here because Barbara’s screen is lit up, but you can see the candlelight here. Once you light the candle, it begins to light the room. The light is always there, but sometimes it’s more apparent than at other times. I can’t control the lights in the room without getting up. I won’t bother to do that. You can imagine this, especially since a lot of our focus tonight will be use of the imagination and imaginal cells.
We talk a lot about the idea that right there with sorrow is joy, right there with the distortion is the ever-perfect. To some degree, you must be willing to go into that which is darkness for you, in order to perceive the light. You do not dwell in the darkness; you do not become lost in the darkness. But you also need not fear the darkness.
I’ve had a wonderful tutorial, these past few weeks, while I was working with you in the workshop. I can focus on several places with ease. I was receiving wonderful tutorial from my more scientific colleagues about the scientific background of the imaginal cells.
From some notes I took: Imaginal cells are disks. These catalytic microorganisms enable and activate the grosser form of the caterpillar to mutate into the butterfly.
Some of this is just as told to me; some is from magazines, like Scientific American. I’m going to put this in my own words and not read from my notes. I believe that I understand it, although not perfectly. I’m not a scientist.
The caterpillar, as it moves into the cocoon, its whole substance transforms into a kind of primordial slime, which become the nutrients out of which the intelligence of the DNA, intelligence of the intentional aspect of the caterpillar—not consciously intentional, but it did not intend to be a caterpillar, it intended to be a butterfly. It had to be a caterpillar en-route to becoming a butterfly. Its whole body dissolves and becomes the nourishment into which these disks implant themselves, and from which they grow and feed the growing body of the butterfly. It’s really quite wonderful.
I was helped by seeing it as the seed of a tree, just a tiny seed. We might have a mighty oak tree, or a maple tree, and a small seed. The seed implants itself into the earth, which is probably composed in large part of many of the dead leaves and droppings from the parent tree—again, that kind of primordial slime.
The seed doesn’t look like an oak tree, but it knows what it’s planned to become. If you plant an oak tree seed, it’s not going to turn into a pine.
What are you intending to become? You came into the incarnation with a purpose. You have a lot more consciousness about that purpose than the caterpillar.
The different articles I’ve been reading and ideas shared from spirit plane friends have often talked about the chaos of the present world. How all the systems seem to be dissolving is perhaps too strong a word, but turning into a kind of primordial slime. Everything is dissolving. The old world as we knew it a thousand, even two hundred years ago, everything is changing. And out of this ooze is the possibility for a whole new paradigm of Earth, of a higher density Earth. The old has to dissolve for the new to become.
The impetus comes from the third density humans like yourself, who have come into the incarnation holding this intention to help support the shift of the Earth, dissolving into its own primordial ooze out of which a higher density Earth can grow.
For the caterpillar, the whole caterpillar structure dissolves. For the Earth, of course, we do not choose to have the whole structure of the Earth dissolve but to let loose of the old systems and beliefs that have not worked.
Your intentions are very important here, and your imagination. I’m going to describe an exercise I worked with, with Barbara, and then ask you to do this guided meditation with me. Then we’ll have some time to talk about it.
When we talk about imaginal cells, of course the name is no object of chance. These cells do play on your imagination.
But what is the distinction between imagination and knowing? When does something you imagine become something that you understand and can see?
When Barbara was first drawn to action in civil rights, she, like many, had a dream for at least this country, in which all beings treated each other with equality, respect, and fairness. Here is Martin Luther King’s dream! It was just a vision, something she could imagine.
Gradually, through the years, as she saw the results of some of these sit-ins, Freedom Rides, and so forth, the imagined possibility took on a much deeper reality for her.
I think each of you can identify with that in some area of your life. You may have had a child, and you imagined this child growing up healthy and strong, loving and wise. You could see that that was a possibility, and it was also a possibility that the child could grow up sickly, reactive and angry. But you gave input and support to that which would help the child evolve in the way of love and wisdom.
At a certain point, watching your child, you began to see the deep roots of that love and wisdom, to really know, “My child has this potential.”
A few of you have spoken to me of adopting animals from a shelter; rescue animals, I think you call them. Some of these animals were very frightened when approached—snarled, ran for cover. You had faith in the potential of this animal to learn love and invited that love forth. And gradually there became not a hope, but a knowing: “I see the seeds of love and trust in this animal, and I further invite them forth.” And they came forth. In doing this, you’re using your imagination.
Now, for me, the big shift in my understanding these past few weeks has been to distinguish between imagination, which is just really a product of the mind, and the imaginal cells, which are literally cells. They have a potential to inform, and they have a potential for spaciousness or contraction, for different kinds of response to different kinds of catalyst. They come with an intention.
I’m going to keep this part of the talk a bit short. I’ve compiled nine pages of bits and pieces of different articles, plus things that I have simply said myself, to Barbara, and taken note of. I’m going to ask Tana tomorrow to post this on your website link so you can all take a look at it. There are some links on here that you can click that I haven’t even opened. You can read as much or as little as you like. What really matters is not intellectual understanding but living it.
When we look at darkness, your personal darkness is often based in old places of trauma, of pain, in this and in past lives, including lives not just as human but as vegetable, even as mineral.
What do you think the Earth experiences when it shakes with an earthquake, or a volcano erupts: Is it traumatic to the Earth? How do we respond to trauma? How does the intelligence of earth respond?
For the human, it is usually the old fight, flight, freeze. Either you fight back, or you run, or you freeze. All three of these prevent active participation.
If the caterpillar, finding itself dissolving into this primordial ooze, were to fight it, or to flee or freeze, it could never become the butterfly.
How do we learn to respond with a spaciousness, compassion for ourselves and others? How do we remember that we already know how to respond in that way?
I worked with Barbara repeatedly, let us say clarifying the guided meditation I wanted to lead tonight. For Barbara, picking a situation in this lifetime which was very traumatic and formative for her. Together we looked at the question, what does trauma do?
Barbara was born into a very loving family. Her parents truly loved her and wanted her and her brother, and a brother who was loving. Grandparents who were loving. Her father worked hard, was not much available in the home, and her mother did a lot of volunteer work when Barbara was young, doing work that felt important to her and the world.
They had a nanny in the house from the time Barbara’s brother, three years elder, was born. She was a loving woman who had raised her own children, knew how to care for a child. They trusted her and it was well-placed trust.
So, while Barbara spent some time daily with her parents, some days it might only be twenty or thirty minutes, and Nanny was the one who really took care of her; really was more like a mother.
When Barbara was going to be six in the fall and going into first grade, she was sent away to overnight camp for two months, which was common in that particular, can I call it culture? Sending the children to camp because there were polio epidemics in the city, and the idea was to get the children safely out of the city, which would have been back as far as 1945 or earlier.
She loved camp. She was not homesick. When she came home from camp, Nanny was simply gone. Her parents said Nanny was sick, so she had to go home. She was living with her son in a different state, not close by where she could come and visit easily.
Barbara cried and she was angry. She was told, “Don’t be angry—it’s not her fault. She was sick.” So, she’s gone, don’t be angry—what am I supposed to feel?
So, this was a deep trauma. Of course, it was rooted in past karma and invited at some level—allowed the participation of, let me say it in that way, to help support long-term karma that she intended to heal in this lifetime.
She blamed herself. “I must have done something terrible. I’m the one to be angry at. If I had gotten it right, she would not have left. I must have made her sick.”
This was re-emphasized a few years later, when the housekeeper in the house had a nervous breakdown. Barbara was home alone with the housekeeper. At this point, Barbara was probably eight or nine years old. With Nanny gone, when she came home from school, she would often hang out in the kitchen with Viola, help with cooking—not really help, but Viola took her under her wing and was very loving. Barbara had known Viola all her life. That evening, Viola just began crying and screaming, and Barbara called her parents. They were at a friend’s house. They came home. They took Viola to the hospital. Barbara was then told, “Oh, Viola is sick. She is going to live elsewhere. Don’t be angry; she’s sick.” Again, “I am poisonous!” thought Barbara, the child. “All of those I love and connect with, I poison.”
Barbara had done a lot of work with this trauma and it no longer affected her as trauma. She had forgiven the whole thing, let go of it. Understood the anger that she was feeling. Understood that she had not caused any of this. There was no need to forgive anyone, but she had still forgiven everyone. She had moved past the whole idea of being poisonous to others, being unlovable and unworthy.
But some of the deepest seeds of trauma were still there. She could see that in terms of, for example, when Hal had the stroke, five years ago now. The first reaction was of course concern for Hal, and then, “What did I do wrong?”
I had to remind her, “You did not to anything wrong. This is about Hal. Your work is to see how you can hold space for Hal’s situation.” She was able to move through that very quickly.
So, here I asked Barbara to use the imaginal cells and imagination to try something different. And she’s been doing this as a guided meditation quite a lot in the past few weeks.
I asked her in meditation to recall that five and a half year old little girl, who was so bereft at the loss of the mother figure. I asked her to recall the various fight/flight/freeze mechanisms—trying to fix, closing down.
Then I led her on a guided mediation, as I’m going to lead you all in a similar mediation, each choosing your own life situation.
I asked her to remember, to go very deep and remember how it felt when she came home from camp and Nanny wasn’t there. To allow herself to feel the pain, the grief, the anger that the adults kept trying to shut down, saying, “Don’t be angry. Don’t grieve. It’s not her fault.” To allow herself to feel that, that pain.
Then I asked her to imagine a different situation, knowing it was imagination—this is not how it happened—to see how it would have changed things for her. To imagine herself coming home from camp and being welcomed into Nanny’s loving arms. Spending perhaps 24 hours at home normal, as when she had left. Nanny letting her know how much she loved her.
And then Nanny sitting down with her quietly and saying, “Barbara, I am sick. I’m having trouble with my heart. The doctors want me to go home to my son’s house where I can be taken care of. Where I won’t have any steps to climb. Where people will bring me my food. Where my body can recover. Barbara, I love you so much, and it makes me grieve to think of leaving this house. I want to be here with you. But I’m sick, so I need to do this.”
Hearing Nanny tell her, “I love you. I’m not abandoning you. I don’t want this to happen. But I have to acknowledge that this is where my body is right now. And you didn’t cause it, and I didn’t cause it. Together we can take care of it. And we’ll talk every week on the phone. As I get better, I’ll come and visit you whenever I can.”
So, Barbara sat with that in meditation and began to feel how different it would have been if she had been reassured at that point: “It’s not your fault. These things happen to the human body. It’s nobody’s fault. But if you’re angry, it’s okay to be angry. I love you, and I can hold your anger. It’s safe to be angry.”
She spent some time in meditation working with this, just imagining, planting a new seed. Feeling how it would have been, and how dramatically it would have changed everything that came after. Just opening the imagination to see a different kind of possibility.
After she worked with this meditation very deeply a number of times, she said to me, “I see that I need never have gone to that place of self-hatred and of feeling unworthy and unlovable.”
And I pointed out to her, “Yes, you needed to do that, because it did not come just from this lifetime, it came from the intention to heal karma of many lifetimes.”
So, this opportunity with Nanny, painful thought it was, was a gift. And yet it could have happened in a much gentler way. If you had trusted that you were not poisonous to others, you could have moved on in your life and have others leave you, as always happens in life, and not blamed yourself but opened to grief in a different way. That would have changed everything down to a cellular level in your body. Now she can see that.
Her practice with this these past two weeks led her more deeply to understand that there is always going to be darkness and light, and that one can focus more on the darkness and trying to fix the darkness, or one can acknowledge the darkness—not shut it down; acknowledge it—and say, “Right here with the darkness, where is light?”
You have to be programmed to do that. The imaginal cells can help you program into a whole new way of being in the world and releasing some of the old trauma, growing into the butterfly.
Father John has been very helpful in instructing me, and others. I am able to see the caterpillar building this chrysalis around itself, and then the whole body dissolving into an ooze. There’s no caterpillar structure left. And yet the seed is there, just as the tiny seed of the giant oak tree is there in the acorn. The DNA is there. And the innate perfection is there. This process is so beautiful.
Then, the seed that is left, the seed of the awakened one, the loving heart of the butterfly, it draws in the nutrients of what used to be the caterpillar, much as your evolving self can draw in the nutrients of what used to be the frightened, angry, helpless human—those no longer being something that pulls you down but having become nutrients from which you can draw to grow yourself into the awakened new being that you are.
Some of the Brothers and Sisters of Light—especially Ariel, my teacher, but others also—have been talking to me about the whole Earth doing this. The Earth is not going to dissolve into a primordial ooze; it will keep its structure. But that which has not worked in the old structure has to decay and fall away for the new to take its place.
Some of the structures of society which you have felt were vital probably have to change, sometimes even change dramatically, to allow you to open into a fourth/fifth density consciousness. “An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth,” for example, was a very old law two thousand years ago which Yeshua came in part to speak to. And yet of course “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” still carries as a predominant idea in your world.
What if the ooze into which that would dissolve would allow that whole idea to fall away and something new and fresh and beautiful—unconditional love—to take its place, compassion, to take its place?
So, this is the theme, and tonight we will start with the guided meditation. I have not been able to talk with John, unfortunately, so I’m not sure what he has planned for tonight. But he’ll lead you in something that will support, or I know in some way be congruent with, what we’re doing. And John, whatever you have planned is going to be congruent, because we’re connected in energetically into thinking about this, whether we talk or not.
In this meditation, I want you to feel the seeds of light, of possibility. I’m going to ask you to go into some situation in your life, present life or childhood, something that was not necessarily traumatic but let’s say difficult or challenging. Something that you know keeps giving you feedback that is more negative, contracting, based in fear, based in old stories.
I’m not going to tell you every detail of the meditation now; I’ll lead it for you. I ask you please not to choose the most traumatic event in your life. Choose something that feels workable. To look at this and ask yourself, how can I imagine this might have been different? What kind of love and support might have been there, if I had known how to ask? Can I begin to see how the stories of myself not being good, of others not being good, of others not being trustworthy, of myself being poisonous, as was Barbara’s thought—how these were just stories and had no basis in reality?
I’m going to ask you to follow this new possibility using the imagination, really see it as, “It could have been this way. It’s no one’s fault that it wasn’t. But I invite it—it could have been this way.” Really allow it to be real for yourself. How would it have felt? What emotions might you have had? What might not have had to come up as self-defense, if you had had this love and support?
It might be a physical situation. It might be an emotional one. It might be about grief or pain or confusion. Choose something that feels workable. Because each of you will be working with different things, my instructions will be quite general. But I think you’ll be able to follow them.
I’m going to lead the guided meditation now. That’s all. We’ll go with this and see where it takes you. Joy and sorrow, light and darkness. The imaginal cells that can go into this sludge of old trauma and create something new and beautiful. See the non-duality of darkness, fear and pain, and light and joy and spaciousness.
Please make yourselves comfortable. Please bring your thoughts to something in your life that felt traumatic. Maybe you fell out of a tree and broke your leg and could not walk for a year. Maybe other children bullied you. Maybe you felt unloved as a baby. Maybe you were abused. Maybe just neglected, which is its own form of abuse. Maybe there was simply enormous anger; not knowing where to place that anger; placing it on yourself.
Try here, as we do this meditation, to narrow the focus into what seems like a formative situation where there was some kind of trauma, and allow yourself as much as is comfortable to remember it. I’ll be quiet for a minute…
Our focus here is the possibility for change. Our human metamorphosis requires conscious action, really a paradigm leap, catalyzed by human will and choice.
Looking at that past trauma, first, if you are able, hold your hands together and bow to it with that heartfelt “Thank you, Teacher.” I am open to learning. I see that this happened a certain way to me, and that my own level of consciousness drew certain ideas that became solid out of this happening. Like for Barbara, the whole idea that she was poisonous to others.
Holding this trauma in front of me, I invite myself to rewrite the script. Somebody caught me from falling out of the tree; I wasn’t injured. The parent did not die in an accident but remained available to me through my childhood. The abusive adult was removed from the home and loving adults surrounded me. Or, that abusive adult had a deep awakening, was apologetic, begged my forgiveness and truly changed.
Whatever this formative story was, I invite you to write a new script and settle (for just a few minutes) into really experiencing how this would have felt, what it might have changed for you.
You don’t have to do anything. We’re not asking for forgiveness or letting go of something. Just, ahh…
For Barbara, she interpreted Nanny’s leaving as because of her anger, that she had caused it, and turned the anger on herself. “I don’t have to interpret it that way. She truly was sick. I can open my heart to her now. This adult can imagine how hard it must have been for Nanny, can find compassion for us both and imagine how it would have been if week after week there had been loving phone calls and connection”—which Barbara would not allow; she was too angry. How it would have been.
How could your situation been different? If there were abusive parents, consider the possibility that they were not born abusive parents; they were people capable of love. Imagine how it would have been if you had lived with those loving parents. The situation did not allow them to manifest that, but you can manifest it in your mind and know, “I am safe. They are safe. I can shift this whole experience into a learning of love. I choose that. I imagine that. I plant the seeds for that.”
This is not lying to yourself about the actual situation but using the imagination and the imaginal cells to go into the muddy remains of the past and grow something magnificent with your loving heart.
Please do not force yourself. I asked you to use a situation that felt workable—not the most traumatic situation. So, you’re entering into the darkness and finding, through your imagination and creativity, ways to find light within that darkness. And, if not changing the historical past, changing the results of your past, because you are no longer closed in on, “It was this way.” Yes, perhaps you were badly abused—it was that way. But that doesn’t mean there was no love in your life. If there truly was no love in your life, you wouldn’t be here in this class right now.
I’m going to be quiet for five minutes, maybe more. When I see that most are done, I’ll talk again.