March 14, 2023 Tuesday Evening, Living Awake Class
The Non-Duality of Contraction of Fear and Spaciousness
Barbara: Good evening. We’re coming to that portion of this semester where we’ll start focusing more on sacred darkness. What is sacred darkness? What is sacred light?
Most of you have read Aaron’s book, Path of Clear Light. We’ve talked about light and spaciousness as two predominant expressions of the Unconditioned. But what do we mean by light? Some people experience it; some people don’t. And that’s why we’re using an alternative of not just light and darkness but spaciousness and contraction. Because where there’s spaciousness there’s light, whether or not we experience it. Where there’s a lot of contraction, not much light can come through—it’s dark. So please use whichever metaphor or direct experience works best for you.
There are a few things Aaron asked me to speak about before he starts. One of the things he wants to look at is the direct experience of fear. How fear is experienced for us. For me, when fear comes up, it’s a very contracting experience. My breath gets tight. My whole body tightens up. So, the past couple of weeks he’s asked me to watch the direct experience of fear more closely.
In the past I’ve tried to distinguish between fear and the reaction to fear, aversion to fear, which is also a contracting experience. He’s asked me in these past few weeks not to try to push that distinction so far; just to watch how when there is fear, there’s contraction. And whether the aversion to fear is the condition that gives rise to the contraction or the fear itself, doesn’t matter. Just focus on the contraction, and go into the experience; right there with contraction, where is spaciousness? He’ll talk more about this. He’s just asked me to share a little bit with you.
He started by asking me, what are you afraid of? I said spiders. I had a spider image on my desktop but I don’t see it. I don’t know what happened to it. But he said to choose a non-poisonous spider; google ‘spider’ and find one that when I see it, I go like that (contracts). Ah, spider.
I spent a lot of time just doing metta with that spider. Watching the spider and asking, who is afraid? Barbara is afraid. Is the whole of Barbara afraid, or is some old mind aspect of Barbara afraid? Is there a part of Barbara that can be open to the spider?
(Retrieves something from windowsill) Perhaps I’ve shown you this before, and I’m not sure how well it will come out. But many years ago somebody gave me this. It’s a beautiful silver-looking, wire spiderweb, with the spider a gemstone of some sort in it. He’s helped me to make peace with spiders.
But of course, he’s immobile. It’s different when they start to move. Even a little spider scares me. As some of you know, I had a very serious brown recluse spider bite on my abdomen about 15 or more years ago. I became very sick from it. The damage to my body lasted for months, taking antibiotics and other things. The affected muscles are still weakened. It’s the first time I’ve had a negative experience with a spider. That experience brought more fear.
I’ve worked with that fear. Not trying to stop it; just, right there with the fear, where is spaciousness? Can I find loving kindness with the spider right there with the fear? Can I find the place in myself that is uncontracted with the presence of the spider right there with the contraction?
So, Aaron’s focus here is the non-duality of contraction and spaciousness, of light and darkness, of fear and that which is not afraid. “That which is aware of fear is not afraid”, a favorite phrase of Aaron’s.
I’ve also been asking myself, beyond spiders, what am I afraid of? I’ve been able to go pretty deep with this in the past month. The power outage a few weeks ago, for some of my neighbors it was eight days. For me it was just intermittent and short term. Well, I’m not afraid of electric power outage—I can deal with that. But I’m afraid of lack of power, the helplessness. As I’ve watched in meditation, I’m seeing the ways that I’m aging and becoming less powerful! With all the trees that the storm brought down, as recently as ten years ago I would have been out there the next day with my chainsaw. Of course, this present body is not capable or at least it would certainly be unsafe trying to wield a chainsaw. So, I’ve looked at the logs, and they’re still lying across my yard. Big tree branches came down. Snow on top of them, so it’s not been possible to get them cleaned up. I can’t do the things I used to do.
I’m not afraid of death. I’m not really afraid of aging. I see that I’m afraid of the lack of personal power, the helplessness. I watch Hal, day after day, sitting in his wheelchair, lying in his reclining chair, and he’s powerless. He can’t even speak, so he can’t call out and say, “I’m hot.” “I’m cold.” “Please turn on/off the light.” “I’m thirsty.” He can’t do anything. If somebody is there, he can wave his one useable hand and point. Powerless, helpless.
Of course, as we age, if we’re fortunate enough to live to an old age, we’re going to lose some of our power, in terms of what we can orchestrate in the world around us in a physical way.
So, I’ve been looking at that. First, I came to the idea, well, I still have strong energy and I know how to work with it in meditation. But this is a way of avoiding the reality that yes, this body can’t wield a chainsaw, or walk to the corner, or try to find a place where I can get an internet signal if everything goes out and I need to call for help. I can’t do it. Powerless.
What am I afraid of? It’s not aging so much as powerlessness. What does that really mean? Are we ever powerless? Helplessness, powerlessness.
In meditation one of the things that came to mind was the 2004 episode with the wave. Seeing the wave towering above me and knowing it was too big, I couldn’t jump over it; I couldn’t go under it. It was going to catch me and lift me up and slam me down. Helplessness.
Then, moving deeper into that meditation: the one that is aware of the idea of helplessness is not helpless. That awareness is not helpless. The essence of me is not helpless or powerless. This is just the world’s story.
So, through persistence with these meditations the past month, I’m starting to get closer to non-duality. Keeping my heart open to the human who is powerless in that moment. And my heart remaining open with awareness of the essence that is never powerless. Aware , too, of the light in that not-helpless state, in that awake space.
Aaron, have I shared enough? He says yes, thank you. He says he would have put that into the middle of his talk, but it’s hard for me to come out when he’s channeling and him to come back in, so he’s had me state that at the beginning. Aaron will speak.
Aaron: My blessings and love to you. I am Aaron. Light and darkness. Contraction and spaciousness. Pain and absence of pain. Fear and freedom from fear. The experience of shame, and freedom from that shame. Anger, and the one who is not angry. All of these seeming opposites are truly not opposite. They are simply the reflection of your human experience.
When the conditions are present, the human will feel pain, sadness, shame, fear, anger, greed, and so much more. It’s because you are a mammal and are human that these experiences arise.
I’ve said to you a thousand times: You are not here to experience freedom from arising and passing away, but to learn how to be present with these experiences with a loving heart, free of contraction. And to use the experiences to know what you are beyond the human having that experience.
You are here to experience your power, your true power, over self-identification with the variety of experiences. Each time a challenging experience arises, and you are able to greet it with kindness and spaciousness, you bring more love into this earth plane.
For almost all of you, that was your commitment, or one of them, upon choosing to incarnate: to bring love where there has not previously been love, light where there has not been light but where you felt yourself closed in to darkness.
Some of you have heard me share a story in which a group of us needed to move through a cave system from what would be sure death on one side to freedom on the other. Moreover, we were to find the path so that we could come back that way and lead many hundreds of other people through this dark cave to freedom.
I had been through it once. I knew it was possible. There was a very high mountain; a labyrinthine cave part-way up wound its way through the rock and came out the other side. One could not easily go over the top. It was an arduous path, not something that children or old people or anyone who was not strong could do. The cave was an alternate way through. Without going through, thousands would die.
So, a group of us began to move into the cave. We had torches—no candles in those days, but torches. It was essential that we keep a flame going in a clay vessel, wrapped in a certain way that we knew how to do. We had hot coals and carried the hot coals with us so that we could always light a new fire. But there had to be something to light the fire. We had sticks of wood with grasses and material wrapped around and oil that we could dip the fabric-bound stick in, and then hold it to the hot coal until it lit up. That gave us a torch.
We passed through cavern after cavern. We had lumps of blackened wood that we could use to make X’s on a passage wall. We had rope or what passed for rope in those days. Some of us would stay at a fixed point and others would explore a passage. If it was a dead-end, they’d come back, following the rope, and we’d put an X on it and try another passage.
We had enough supplies to last us for ten or twelve days. And the journey through should only take about three or four days. I remembered from the first time that there were no tiny crevices that we had to cross; it was more or less open, but with some steep drop-off places.. And so, we walked. Gradually our food ran short, our water ran short. There was no wood inside to burn as a torch, and material for our torches ran short. The hot coal that we had been nursing to give us flame began to burn out.
Finally, more than a week into this what we hoped would be a three-to-four-day journey, we were out of food, water, and light. The group I was with, we sat down to pray together. There was no easy way to walk forward. It was pitch black. There was no little bit of light. We were under the heart of the mountain, nothing coming through.
The group were preparing to die. I was their leader. They said to me, “There’s nothing more we can do. We can’t go back; we can’t go forward.” In the cave system, some of the paths dropped off into twenty-, thirty-foot drops. We could not walk in the dark.
I sat, then, through a day and night in meditation, working with a somewhat esoteric practice that I remembered learning in a past life: a practice of light, sacred light, learned in the Himalayas. Opening to the light within myself.
I don’t know how long I sat there meditating. The others in the group were sleeping. After however many hours, I became aware that there were strange lights playing on the walls, flickering, literal light, and that I could project and focus that light.
What was this light? It was the light of the awakened heart-mind, the light of awareness, the light of love. It was not something that I could do; it was something that all beings could learn, because every sentient being carries this essence of divinity, expressing as light, literal light.
Some of you refuse to acknowledge that light—you only believe in your darkness. You live in the places that are ashamed of negative thoughts, and so forth.
But what if you begin to live in the place of delight, of joy, of your essence? To acknowledge that essence? You are beautiful, and you radiate from the sacred heart—the sacred heart of Jesus. The sacred heart of the Buddha. The sacred heart of the Mother. You radiate light!
What if you begin to trust that? To make a long story short, the others awakened. I didn’t know if others could see the light, but they could see it. We spent some time training people how to bring up that light in themselves. Then we found our way out. We marked the passage well, so we were then able to return, acquiring the needed food and water and torches to return what was then only a three-day walk. To come out into the land of despair where people were dying, and to save so many people, leading them through this passage.
It serves as a beautiful metaphor. You live in the land of despair, both worldly despairs, and, for some of you, personal despair. If there is no other despair, there is the despair of “I will die.” Well, of course you will die. The human, the aggregates, will die; you will not die. The awakened consciousness that you are will not die.
But so many of you live in the land of despair not only about life, but you despair of “I cannot stop my anger. I cannot stop my fear. I cannot stop negative feelings. I cannot conquer resistance to body pain or mental pain.” And you despair. How can you bring forth the light that you are if you live in this realm of despair?
So, my plan for these last months of the class is to go deeper into the non-duality of light and darkness. Or, for those of you who are more comfortable with this metaphor, spaciousness versus contraction. To help you literally use those experiences that shut you down as part of the path rather than as something that must be gotten past in order to reach to the path.
Anger is the path, fear is the path, sadness is the path, doubt is the path, because it leads you into the same light that I found. You may not see it as literal light as I did, but it leads you into knowing the light within you that is your essence and beginning to trust that essence, instead of believing that that essence is only available once you conquer the darkness. There is nothing to conquer, only more deeply to know your true self.
I’m delighted that we’ll have a full week for the retreat in June. The retreat practice will be aimed at helping you to use your everyday pleasant or unpleasant experience as part of the path; to truly know that all of these experiences are simply arising from conditions and passing away, and to come deeper into the knowing who you are. When the aggregates dissolve, what remains? This is Ajahn Chah’s One Who Knows. What is that One Who Knows? How do you live it? How can you use that which is disturbing in the human incarnation to help you better know and rest in the One Who Knows? Pu ru, the One Who Knows. The Awakened One, the Christ, the Sacred Heart of Love, you are that. But you can’t come to that until you move past your self-identification with that which you have labelled as self, and especially as negative in yourself.
I would like to start with a very simple practice, inviting you each—John is going to take it further with what he teaches, but just as a start here, what I’ve been doing with Barbara this past month watching the experience of fear.
I would ask you each to choose something in the physical world or in your mind that brings up fear. Not the most terrible fear; just a bit of fear. The little spider. Not a huge, aggressive, poisonous spider but just a little spider. But still, a spider or whatever that is for each person!
Is there a feeling of helplessness—not helplessness when the world is collapsing around you, but just helplessness when you’re driving down the road and you realize you’re lost? There’s a fear that comes up: feeling helpless, lost. The helplessness you might feel when you are sick, and you want to be well. But you cannot stop the sickness; it has to run its course. Fear when things are not going your way. When you want it to be this way and instead, everyone else is pushing against you, saying, “No, that way! That way!”
Instead of fear as an idea, I want you to think of some situation in which you can feel the fear arise in your body, because your body is a great teacher. Contracting, contracting. That which is aware of contraction is not contracted.
It is vital that we do not try to avoid the contraction by saying, “Oh, it’s just arisen from conditions. It’s not real.” Well yes, it is real. It’s a contraction; it’s real. And yet it has no ultimate reality. That is the key phrase: does this have any ultimate reality? The spider doesn’t have an ultimate reality, but that’s not what I’m talking about. It’s not about the spider or the flood or fire, or the anger of some person. It’s about your body and mind stories, saying, “Here is fear and I must conquer it.”
How do we come to know both the fear, the nirmanakaya end of the bridge, and the absence of fear, the Dharmakaya end of the bridge and rest wherever is stable on the bridge? Seeing that this reaction—fear, anger, greed, shame—that these are all arisen from conditions and not self. There can be no bypassing of it, not talking it down, saying, “It’s not real.” Right now, you’re experiencing it. Who is experiencing it? It has arisen from conditions. But it’s there. Can you find any separate self that is experiencing it?
What is it, this experience of fear? Feel the contraction in the body, because that will be one of the primary responses that fear will have. When you fear, there’s contraction.
Without trying to fix the contraction, can you find that “Ahh…” compassion for yourself, and that which is not contracted? Ahhh… And then just rest there a bit. We keep coming back to the question, who am I? What is this awareness? What is this awake presence that Aaron keeps talking about?
You are so precious and beautiful. Such loving, ancient beings who have had the courage and love to come into incarnation again and again to help ground the energy of love deep into this Earth and shift the energy here, bring it more into positive polarity. Establish that positive polarity for all beings and help the Earth to move into a path of positive polarity, to awaken into a higher consciousness. You have so much courage and love to have done this over and over again.
And you are doing it. I can only come in and talk to you about it; I have no place as a human on Earth anymore. But we are given the gift to be able to come in and talk to you, to give you some guidance about how to be the awakened human that you are and thereby to transform the whole Earth and the pockets of hatred and depravity on the Earth, through your love.
It can start with such a simple practice as looking at the place of fear and asking, who is afraid? Just the old, conditioned aspect of me. Well, I don’t have to deny fear or break past there being fear. I only have to know that it is not an ultimate reality. The ultimate reality of each of you is light, spaciousness and love.
Let’s try this for ten minutes, and then in the small groups we’ll talk about your responses to it. John is going to do more similar meditations and guidance with you.
With that, I’m going to ask each of you to simply allow yourself to reflect on some place of fear and ask: what is the direct experience of that fear in my body and in my mind? Is that all there is? Right there, can I find the one who is not afraid, even just for a moment? Can they shine forth? And breathe in spaciousness and joy.
I’ll pause now and ask you just to try this.
(pause)
Thank you. I am Aaron. Come on back. We have five minutes left here and then John will come. Is there anyone who would like to share something about their experience or ask a question? That was very brief, I know. We’ll practice it with much more time for it.
Q: I’d just like to observe—I’m not sure if these are other people’s experiences, but just very aware that fear is kind of a very visceral human body experience. And that we attempt, or at least my first attempt to help make fear better is to use the power of my mind to rationalize, to categorize, to try to understand. And that can actually kind of muddy up the whole experience. If I can simply remember that fear is something that exists within the tool of this body, then I can be a bit more at ease with it and a bit more able to be present with it. Thank you.
Aaron: Thank you.
Q: It’s an observation that I had. I had two or three areas that I could consider. And the observation was how I didn’t want to go there. I mean, I would try, and then I would fall asleep or doze off. There was a resistance, an uncommon resistance, to facing what I was feeling and experiencing.
Aaron: Thank you. And that which is aware of resistance is not resistant. Again, this is something where I’m delighted we’ll have a week in June for deep practice and discussion and support to work with.
Q: Aaron, it seems like we’ve been practicing this for a number of years in different ways, so it seems quite familiar to me. The essence for me is just being with whatever arises, in terms of some sense of fear or contraction. And then sensing the energy or the spaciousness of the love, the non-duality of it all—the non-duality of everything.
Aaron: Thank you—correct in all that you’ve said. Gradually you grow to have faith in your direct experience of that spaciousness, of the power of love. You grow with insight to see the contraction that comes along and not get swept away by it. Just recurrent practice.
I’ve spoken to some people who had just climbed a high mountain. There were weeks of training before. They had to strengthen their muscles; that was one part. They had to help the body adapt to the high elevation, the breath; that was another part. They had to look at the fear that it was a dangerous climb, or at least that people had been killed in the past—some people had been killed; some had been successful. There were different parts to it that each had to be practiced, and there had to be growth into it. Most of these people were experienced mountain climbers, they had climbed other mountains. But, coming to this mountain, they had to look at the different parts that were essential, if they were to make their way to the top.
This is not so different. Mindfulness, a deep understanding of dependent origination, a heart opening with love, deepening in the commitment of this human journey. Growing more familiar with this awareness, this essence that you are. Gradually all the parts deepen together. And when you are ready, there will be a burst of energy that takes you to the top. Then the next time you make the climb it will be much easier, and yet still challenging.
Any final comment here before we pause for a break?
I’m reminded of that beautiful song with the chorus:
Here I am, Lord.
Is it I, Lord?
I heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.
I love that song because to me it’s that commitment: “I have come into the incarnation for a purpose. It’s hard work, but I will go if Divine Essence is with me, leading me. Which it always is, but if I’m blind to it, I don’t experience it. I will hold the essence of love and awakening in my heart.”
Thank you. I will pass this on to John. My love to you. I am Aaron.