Thank you, Teacher

November 22, 2023 Wednesday Evening with Aaron

Thank you, Teacher—What Have you Come to Teach Me?

Barbara: It’s hard for me to channel and then come in and speak as Barbara, so Aaron has asked me to say some things in the beginning that would be perhaps better said in the middle. But we’ll put them into the beginning.

Whatever has the nature to arise has the nature to cease. When the conditions are present it will arise. Sometimes it will be pleasant, sometimes unpleasant, depending on the conditions. And when the conditions cease, whatever arose will cease. No matter how pleasant it is, we can’t hold onto it. No matter how unpleasant it is, it doesn’t cease until the conditions that brought it to us cease.

If we’re determined to hold onto that which is pleasant and keep away that which is unpleasant, we’re really going to suffer. No surprise to most of you, who have been through this dharma with me before. When we can open our hearts to things as they are, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be pleasant, but usually we can find something that’s of value in it.

Aaron asked me to talk a bit about losing my hearing. Fifty-two years ago (fifty-three, almost), after my first child was born—most of you know this. I had normal hearing. I knew nothing about deafness. But apparently the blood vessels that carry oxygen to the nerves became constricted. There was no oxygen to the nerves, so the nerves died.

So there I was with a newborn infant and suddenly not only deaf, but it affected the semi-circular canal nerves that affect balance. I was very dizzy. And then as the dizziness calmed down, I still had no balance, because no middle ear balance. I still have no balance.

That’s how it is! I still can’t hear, either.

I really suffered in the beginning. It was so hard. I couldn’t hear. I was so dizzy I couldn’t even read. I was so angry, feeling so much pain. And I thought, something is wrong with me—I don’t mean deafness, but I’m being punished for something. Something is bad about me. I took it as a spiritual issue. I thought it was karma. What have I done so terrible that I would be deaf? All the anger in the world at it did not change the fact that I was deaf and that I had no balance.

I struggled with this quite a bit. And then came a point where I was in so much pain that I prayed for help. I don’t know what kind of help I was expecting. But when I came into the living room to meditate the next morning, there was a presence in the room. I could feel his energy. I could see him. I went out of the room fast! I said, “Either I’m hallucinating or it’s real, and I don’t know which is scarier.” So I had a cup of tea.

I went back into the living room. This presence was still there. Beautiful face, deep eyes, high cheekbones, long silver hair and beard. I said, “Who are you, and why are you here?”

He said, “You asked for help.”

“How are you going to help me?”

He said, “You are suffering. Let’s look at the causes of the suffering.”

I said, “I’m suffering because I’m deaf.”

He said, “No, when you’re walking alone in the woods, you’re not suffering. You’re only suffering when you’re grasping to hear.”

Wow. I had never seen it that way before. And this was a couple of years into the deafness. It wasn’t immediate.

He began to teach me, and I began to see the truth of what he said. That the suffering was not because I was deaf, but because of how much grasping there was to hear; because of how strong the aversion was to being deaf.

He finally said to me, “What if you just allow yourself to be deaf? Try it for a couple of weeks and just see how it feels to be deaf.”

I said, “I already know how it feels. I hate it.”

He said, “You’re not giving it a chance. Try it.”

Well, in the interval I had found some things that were convenient about the deafness. I like it kind of quiet. I like to meditate. I like things peaceful. I like to walk in the woods, sit by a lake. But my husband is a big football fan, University of Michigan football, so I would go to football games with him. We had a deal: I would bring a book with me, and I could read, or I could close my eyes and meditate. Do you know anybody else who could sit in a football stadium with a hundred thousand people screaming and have it silent when they close their eyes? Thank you, thank you! I never thought I could say thank you to the deafness.

This was just the start. This deafness has been a profound teacher to me for fifty-three years. I’m sure my deafness has been a teacher to you, too. So many people tell me that.

It took me a lot of time. Not that first year, certainly, and not for another ten years after that, but finally I was able to say, “Thank you, deafness. Thank you for what you’re teaching me. Thank you.”

The things that seem like they will be huge loss, tragedies in our lives, at first there certainly is grief about them, fear. This is genuine; this is our experience. But eventually, we may look back and say, “Thank you, teacher.” This has been such a part of my life, and so much the heart of what I teach—and what Aaron teaches, really.

Almost six years ago my previously very healthy husband had a major stroke. I don’t think Hal or I are ready yet to fully say, “Thank you, teacher,” but we can certainly see the power of what we’ve learned. If I could change it, I would change it.

I can’t say that about my deafness. If I had a choice right now, “You can hear if you want to,” I would say, “Whatever is for the highest good. I’m happy to hear; I don’t need to hear.”

But about Hal’s stroke, if I could magically snap my fingers and all the effects, his paralysis, his aphasia, all of this is gone—sure, I want that. But Hal and I talk. It’s hard to talk to him. I have to ask careful questions where he can give me a thumbs up, thumbs down, or maybe. Yes, no, maybe.

We talk. I ask him, “Are you learning a lot?” Yes. “Have you become more peaceful about the stroke?” Yes. And so forth. “How can I help you?” I can only do it with yes and no questions—and this is to the man who was one of the most talkative people that you’ve ever met! Those who know him know: he talked. He loved to talk. It’s been very hard for him not to be able to talk. He’s learned how to be still, to be quiet. He’s deepened in so many ways. His heart is opened.

And my heart has opened. A lot of grief in the beginning; we did not expect him to live. But now it’s almost six years, and he’s doing okay, in part thanks to many of you who give donations to pay caregivers that keep him alive, because without caregivers, I couldn’t take care of him.

But he has a good life at home. He had a friend here today and they watched a movie. Friends come to visit him. People are so loving to him. And I see the ways it’s helped him to learn to value himself. To see that being the talkative life of the party guy is not why people love him; that there’s something much deeper in him that people love.

And so, people come and spend time with him even though he can’t talk, and he can’t walk. They spend time with because his eyes light up and he has a beautiful smile. People are moved by his presence.

I can’t say we wanted this stroke. I can say, “Thank you, stroke. Thank you for all the learning that it has brought Hal and me, and the ways it has connected our hearts at a deeper level.” The ways that it’s helped me to deepen in compassion.

Finally, jumping up to this past summer, many of you know I had a very serious foot infection in the bone of my foot. If it did not heal, they might have needed to amputate my foot; maybe part way up my leg, even. It was scary. I had to stay off my foot, so I spent four months really just sitting with my leg in the air. I could walk with my right foot normal and just pressure on the heel of the left foot, away from the wound, only walking five or ten feet. Really no walking for four months.

I’m a meditation teacher. What does a meditation teacher do when she can’t walk? I spent countless hours sitting on my very beautiful deck—a small deck, not a big space. A small garden. A small six-foot pond with a little waterfall, but very beautiful. And I spent a lot of time just sitting there and meditating.

The question was, what have I been running from? Now I can’t run; I can’t even walk. It was so hard in the beginning to sit still. Thank you, teacher. Thank you for this enforced confinement. Talk about meditation retreat and having to just sit! Four months of just sitting was tough. But my heart opened to myself in new ways, and I found a much greater depth of compassion.

Someone was speaking at the beginning of having found me and Deep Spring through my friend Carla. Many of you have readThe Aaron/Q’uo Dialogues. Carla was such a dear friend and I miss her. I learned so much from her.

I will tell you a brief story. When I first met Aaron, he told me to find a book about channeling. Someone had told me, “What you’re doing is channeling.” And I replied, “What’s channeling?”

Aaron asked me to go to a bookstore and find a book about channeling, so I went to a small bookstore in Ann Arbor and I asked at the desk for a book about channeling. They brought me up a few channeled books, including the Ra material and something from Emmanuel, all channeled material. Aaron said, “No, I prefer you not to read channeled material because then you won’t know that what you’re hearing from me, you’re truly hearing. You’ll think you’re just remembering it from the book. Please don’t read that.”

So I said again at the bookstore, “Don’t you have any book about channeling?”

“No.”

I was the only customer in the store, just me and the owner. I went back to look on the shelf. I came back up to the front desk, and sitting there on the counter was Carla’s book,Channeling Handbook. I picked it up. I didn’t know of Carla. I said, “This looks like just what I need.”

And the bookstore owner looked at me at the book, looked at me, and said, “We don’t carry that book.” It wasn’t in the store.

So, I said, “I want to buy it.”

He said, “I can’t sell it to you. It’s not my book.” But the two of us were the only ones in the store and no one else had come into the store. So he handed me the book and I took it home, and I read it.

I wrote to Carla. She could not type well because she had such bad rheumatoid arthritis in her hands, so she sent me an audiotape. I wrote her back and I said, “Remember, I’m deaf.” Oh! So, she can’t write and I can’t listen.

My ten- or twelve-year-old listened to the tape and transcribed it. For those of you who know him, this was my son Davy. I think part of what got him into his life work was transcribing Carla’s tapes as a ten-year-old and the interplay between us. We started to call each other, and Davy or my older son or Hal would sign for me, because I had no deaf telephone in those days.

Anyhow, within a few months I went down to Kentucky and spent a week with Carla. We loved each other, Carla and Jim. That’s how that happened.

We get what we need. When we’re ready, the teacher shows up. Sometimes it’s a delightful teacher, as Carla was. And I’m so grateful tonight, on the eve of Thanksgiving—Carla, thank you! I feel your radiance with us, cheering us on.

Sometimes it’s a very harsh teacher. Losing someone we love. Losing a facility like hearing. Having a stroke, for Hal. Losing my ability to walk for four months.

Sometimes it’s joyful; sometimes it’s painful. But we can still say, “Thank you, teacher. Thank you. What have you come to teach me?”

This has become such a core question in my life, when something comes up that’s hard. “Thank you, teacher. What have you come to teach me?”

And this doesn’t mean we go along with it. In other words, if I had temporarily lost my hearing, I wouldn’t say, “Well, since deafness came, I guess I’m supposed to stay deaf.” If they would say, “We can do this treatment that will restore your hearing,” then what has the new hearing come to teach me?

Sometimes we can change things; sometimes we can’t. But what I’m talking about goes much deeper than acceptance. Acceptance can be a “grit your teeth and get on with it.” This is really a heartfelt opening. “What have you come to teach me?”

I learned so much this summer in those thousands of hours of meditation, and it’s changed me. It’s softened me. It’s opened my heart. It’s led me to deeper compassion. I can’t say I’m delighted that I had this foot infection this summer. If it had not been the infection, something else would have pushed me to stop, because I was running faster and faster and I needed to stop.

Stopping, stopping. Being present with things just as they are. Pleasant and unpleasant. Beautiful and terrifying. Being present. And finding how awake we are, and how loving we are. Thank you, teacher.

So, I ask myself, for what am I grateful right now? I ask myself that every morning when I first wake up. For what am I grateful today? And that does not imply in any way that there are not things I’m sad about or angry about or afraid of. But right there with the sadness, the anger, the fear, there’s that which is grateful and willing to be open and present.

Okay, Aaron; have I said everything you wanted me to say? He says yes, thank you. He will come in. He will talk. Love to you all.

I’m going to add one more thing here. This past few years since Covid is the first time we’ve not had our children and grandchildren present for Thanksgiving. They live in Seattle, L.A. and upstate New York, so a great distance away. But for so many years they all tried to come home for Thanksgiving.

I know if I had said to any of the three of them, “I really need you to come for Thanksgiving,” they would have figured it out. This summer taught me not to be afraid of my life. Not to be afraid to be alone, because I’m never alone. I don’t mean just because of Aaron, but none of us are ever alone.

They each said to me, “Mom, if you need me, I’ll come home.”

I said, “I’d love to have you home. But I don’t need you to be home. If it’s convenient, come home. But four days is a very short time to fly all the way across the country. Come another time when you can stay a week, not just four days.”

Letting go. And there’s no pain in it. I’m perfectly content. Sure, I’d love to have them, but I’m perfectly content to just enjoy a quiet day tomorrow with Hal. He’s probably going to be watching football games, but I’ll find something else to do.

So, this summer dropped a big load of fear away from me. Fear that I had passed years ago, and yet little tendrils of it were still woven into me. I can’t say I’ll never be afraid again. I can say I will not be afraid to be afraid. I will not need to fix it if I’m afraid. When the conditions are present, fear will arise. When the conditions cease, it will cease. It’s okay.

Okay, let me give you Aaron.

Aaron: …I forgot to press record. I just said hello and my love to you. You did not come into the human incarnation simply for joy. Not to get things, not to hold onto things. There will be joy. There will be enormous joy. And I love the fact that that is so. But there will also be pain and suffering—two different things. As long as you’re in a human body there is sometimes going to be difficult emotional and mental pain.

When you first incarnate and are somewhat asleep, you suffer because there’s pain, and you try to get rid of it. As you wake up, you come to understand the distinction between pain and suffering, and not to be afraid of the pain, not to push it away and not to hold onto it as a martyr. Instead, you become able to ask yourself, as Barbara stated: what has this pain come to teach me? What has this confusion come to teach me, this grief, this feeling of helplessness? What has it come to teach me?

You are spiritual warriors in a vast universe of beings who are striving to awaken. Most have not yet awakened. Some are just starting. There are many levels of consciousness in this universe. Within these vast levels of consciousness there are also positive, negative and neutral polarity.

Older souls hold the intention to move again and again into an incarnation, if you’re human, or into some other level of consciousness, depending on the form, with the intention of raising the polarity, raising the vibration, of living with love.

Those—my friend Q’uo calls them the “loyal opposition”—those of a different polarity, they’re not bad. They’re seeking the same thing you are seeking, but they have not yet graduated to a point of concern for the highest good of all beings and so live with service to self.

They move through the various levels, just positive or negative: third density negative, third density positive, fourth density negative, fourth density positive, and so forth, to sixth density. Coming to the upper edges of sixth density, for the positively polarized being, that being will further awaken into seventh density. However, sixth density negative polarity is a dead end, because within service to self, there is a proclaimed distinct self and other, a duality, and seventh density is a realm of non-duality, as is eighth. Higher density cannot exist within this realm of duality.

The negatively polarized sixth density being must therefore eventually understand that it’s at a dead end and, holding the intention to move into a higher density, it must backtrack all the way back to first or second density and shift its polarity if it wishes to ascend into seventh and eighth density.

Those of you who are presently highly positively polarized third density beings, many of you emerging into fourth density, even fifth, some of you have had this in your ancient history. You have had to do that backtracking and eventually to understand what non-duality means.

When I speak of service to self and service to other, that seems like a duality. Perhaps it’s better phrased service only to the self and service to the expanded self, which includes this small self and every other small self, not exclusively this small self.

At that point, there is the intention at first of service to all beings because I want to help myself. But gradually, that resolves and there is only intention of service to all beings and the understanding that there is truly no duality.

There’s no duality in positive versus negative, because both contain each other. The positively polarized being has held the commitment to service to all beings, harm to none, while the negatively polarized being is still caught in the limited idea, “Service only to me, and if others are hurt, so be it.”

Then we have you, for whom we are grateful. You who have said, “Yes, I am waking up, and I will come into a human incarnation with the intention to truly transcend separation. To live in service to and for the highest good of all beings. And to do that, I am willing to look at those issues that push me back into the small self,” such as fear, strong emotions, grief, body pain, wherein you move into and contract into the small self.

The word ‘contract’ is vital. What we are looking for is expansion, and I bring this up because one of the best paths to expansion is gratitude. We do not practice gratitude to get something else; we practice gratitude because ultimately we see there is nothing else we can do. To love each being, however it presents itself. The small spider, the giant redwood, the angry people in the world, to love them all.

To love them enough to understand that out of compassion one must say no. No, you cannot kill each other. No, you cannot destroy the environment. But I don’t hate you that you do that. I understand that you have simply not yet learned how to take care of everything and treat it as if it’s all God, as if it’s all divine.

And so, each being comes into incarnation over and over again, learning this at ever deeper levels. Experiencing pain. Experiencing loss. Experiencing heavy emotions and confusion. And finding within all of this worldly chaos the heart of light, of love, which exists within the self.

Most of you here are very old souls who have entered into incarnation many times. Within each incarnation is the intention to move past the old narrow thinking of me, self, separate, and to start to understand how you connect to everything. How you can live in that expanded state of energy, of light, truly cherishing everything. And how you can forgive yourself and others when they do not cherish everything.

To forgive does not mean to condone; simply, not to blame. You can’t blame them; they simply have not yet had the opportunity to learn it. You have to help them.

How do we help a group like Hamas, who is out to destroy all Jews? How do we help Israelis who may seek to destroy Palestinians? How do we open our hearts to the Russians who would destroy Ukrainians? How do we open our hearts to Ukrainians who would kill Russians? How do we find compassion?

Some of you have said to me, “Aaron, why was this world designed as it was, with so much killing, pain and loss?” The world was designed this way as a teacher. It was never intended to be that Garden of Eden. If you wanted the Garden of Eden, you would have stayed there, not yet awake; more as a child living in a paradise in which you had no free will. Everything would be given to you. Everything would be easy. There would be no sense of separation from anything or anyone.

And for those of you who have asked me, “Well, why couldn’t we stay there?”—because free will is vital. There, the choices do not come because you look at A, B, and C and say, “I see this would be easy for me”, but when you understand, “I have to choose that because it is the best way for everyone. So, I’m willing to struggle a bit myself so that all may live with ease and with joy and with freedom.”

This is such a powerful statement, my friends, of positive polarity. You came into the incarnation with the intention of boosting positive polarity, first here on Earth and then throughout the universe, the multiverse. Helping to shift the multiverse into a place of positive polarity.

It was not a negative statement about negative polarity. We have compassion for those of negative polarity. We hold them in our hearts. But we choose not to live that way, only in service to self, but to be models that it is possible to live in service to all beings, for the highest good of all beings and harm to none.

And in this way, as we persist through the experiences of this world—which is a leader in this work—as we persist, we gradually tip the polarity of the universe and, expanding outward, of the multiverse.

And this is why you have come. You have not come to be comfortable, although that’s fine. You have not come just to be happy, although that’s fine. You have not come to avoid challenges, although that’s fine. You have come to bring in the power of free will. To say, “I am love. I hold love as center to everything, and I love you.” And to bear witness to that in your life over and over again as you become more skilled at it.

One of the most skillful practices is gratitude. When there can be pain about something, anywhere from the headache or the sprained ankle to the loved one dying, to deep sickness, to whatever hardships, and you are still able to love even through the feeling of despair, to allow that love to come through, this is the strongest statement you can make to negative polarity. It’s a way of saying, “I am love. You are love. And I will not put you out of my heart. And I will not put myself out of my heart.”

My challenge to you, then, and tonight we’re going to spend some time with this, is to ask each of you to reflect on, what challenge of recent weeks or months or years has been especially difficult for me? And in what way can I say, “Thank you, teacher. What have you come to teach me?” And to gain insight into what it has come to teach.

You tell me it’s too hard, and I don’t believe you. It’s very hard; nevertoohard, because this is what you took birth for, to grow in this way. To expand the heart center. To truly love one another and find the divine in everything. This is what you took birth for.

Through my many lifetimes there have of course been many challenges. A story that I’ll abbreviate here because I’ve told it at length before.

I was wrongly taken prisoner for a crime. In the place where I lived, there was no trial by jury. The lord of the province said, “You’re guilty,” and I was then sentenced to imprisonment and put into a cell, which was just a hole in the sand.

I was given a little area of shade, two sticks with a blanket over them, that could shield the sun from me. Food was lowered down to me, and water. I had a bucket for my body wastes, and it was pulled up; not daily. Once every week or two I was pulled out by a rope, water was thrown on me to cleanse myself a bit, and then I was lowered back down. No books, no conversation. Barely edible food.

I was so filled with anger. I was innocent. They would not listen, that I was innocent. If the lord said, “You’re guilty,” then I was guilty. I spent several years just being angry and pushing everybody else away from me. Because I was so angry, nobody wanted to treat me with kindness. It took two or three years before I really could see I was the one that was creating my suffering.

Prior to this happening, my ambition had been to become a monk, to join an order of monks and live in silence with my brothers without conversing, without recreational things, eating simply. Just doing spiritual practice.

Now I had free time. I did not have to work to feed myself. It was bare food, but it was enough. Everything was provided for me. And instead of using the time for my spiritual practice, I was busy being angry.

Finally, I got it: I don’t have a choice about being in this hole, but I have a choice about how I am going to live with it. And I began to soften and to change. When they lowered my food, I began to talk to them and thank them. When they pulled me up for my bath, I inquired about their families, about their lives. And they found me to be congenial so they kept me up top a bit longer. They found better food for me.

I’m not going to go into all the details. This story is in the archives somewhere.

But eventually, I was spending most of my days pulled up, sitting under a tree. They would give me breakfast and leave me alone all morning, and I would meditate and study. And then, mid-afternoon, they would pull me up and I would bathe.

Then people who wished to speak to me, to consult with me about their suffering, would come, and I would talk. I did not say, “I’m the teacher,” just, “I am here. I’m happy to help if I can.” And so, I began to have a very rich life of meditation in the mornings and then a time to be of service to others in the afternoons.

I found that people loved me as I loved them. I ceased to look at what happened to me as misfortune, but to understand the blessing. Because perhaps I never would have become a monk; perhaps I would. We don’t know.

But as it was here, I had everything I needed to awaken. And it was such a rich, loving environment.

Eventually, someone confessed to the crime. The governor said, “You’re free.” No apology, but I didn’t anticipate one. I had so many friends by that time, twenty years into this life. They built me a small shelter near the tree where I used to sit. They continued to bring me food. And I simply became, I won’t call it “the monk,” but the old man sitting under the tree. The community protected me, so my mornings were still free for meditation and prayer and my afternoons for service to others. It was such a blessed life.

But of course, those first years I was enraged and I would never have said thank you. Looking back, I see how blessed I was and how perfect it was.

Everything arises out of conditions and ceases when the conditions cease. You are the master of these conditions. You keep trying one way or another to understand the conditions, to hold space for those conditions which bring joy, peace, love. To release those conditions that bring negativity, pain, and suffering.

I know many of you very well, and you are getting it. You are waking up. You are learning what brings you joy and ease, not just for the self, but for the world.

So many of you have been asking me, “Aaron, we hold this terrible pain in the world right now. What can we do here, from a distance?”

You cannot uproot the causes of hate there in the Middle East, or in Ukraine or Russia, or in Somalia and other places, for example. You can only uproot, understand and release the causes of hate in yourself. You can only find what counterbalances such negative emotion within yourself and bring it forth.

But when you invite forth gratitude, ease, joy, compassion, patience, generosity—when you bring these forth, they move out into the world, and theydochange the world.

Have you ever had the experience to come into a room where people were agitated? And perhaps you or another person in the room was centered and peaceful, able not to participate in the agitation, nor to try and stop it. Not to say, “Be quiet!” But just to listen and hold space. If you’ve had that experience, you have seen how eventually the energy settles down because there was one person present who could hold the space.

So I say this and people say, “But Aaron, that’s not doing anything across the world.” But of course, it is. This is one world: furthermore, one universe, one multiverse. Each person whose heart opens with love, each person who learns a bit more about being non-reactive, changes everything.

This is the gift you have brought into the incarnation. And I so love you for it. I love your courage and your patience. I love your willingness to go out there again and again and work with harsh conditions with an intention to ease the suffering of all beings. To bring love.

My beloved friend Yeshua, he’ll talk more at the December Aaron night, when Yeshua and I will talk and dialogue. But this is why he came to the Earth. He came to teach you about your capacity for love regardless of the harshness of conditions. And also, the possibility of compassion for yourself when you feel unable to love. Both sides are vital to this: to trust your capacity for love, and to understand the power of compassion.

And so, what I’d like to do now is to ask you each to sit for five minutes reflecting; what is one thing within your present life that has been a big challenge and where your heart is somewhat closed? And how can you say thank you to this challenge?

It might be physical, emotional, relationship challenge. A physical body challenge. The loss of a loved one. Whatever it may be, in what way can I genuinely bring my hands together and say, “Thank you, teacher.”?

You have to ask the next question, “What have you come to teach me?” You may not know the answer here, but you ask, “What have you come to teach me?” And then you begin to hear the answer, to understand the answer.

So, I’m going to give you five minutes of silence and then I’m going to invite you to speak into the silence as you wish. Do you understand the question? Yes. Okay, so please look into it.

(sitting)

Barbara: This is Barbara. Aaron will come back if there is a need. This is just to share. It does not have to be profound. But I find we each teach each other. Sometimes what somebody says is so meaningful to somebody else. So, please share if you feel comfortable. No pressure.

Q: I have trouble saying no to people. And when I say yes, I really don’t mean it. I get a little edgy, a little frustrated, “Why do they pick on me?” In part, because I want to belong to all the groups. And because with my upbringing, you always say yes to your parents. So I’m slowly learning, but I have to say no with love. And I’m not quite sure what that means, but I have to get away from my individual edginess and get away from thinking the other people shouldn’t ask me. Thank you.

Barbara: When somebody asks you and you tense up, can you stop and just say, “Thank you, teacher.”? (Yes.)

I want to say something else about that. We don’t have to get it perfect. Somebody is pushing us. We don’t like it. It just becomes an automatic response: Ah, thank you, teacher. And the energy of my hands touching and my heart opening. Just, this is tough. Ah, thank you, teacher. It’s compassion for myself. Gradually, it opens my heart so I can relate to what has come up in a kinder way. That’s all.

Q: What I thought of in the question that was asked was, how I can get triggered, mostly at work, when someone, often just in an email, reacts in a way that causes other people fear. Their energy in the way they present something is very much harmful to others, or causes other people pain.

Then, thinking about what has that come to teach me, that I am more and more often seeing that the reaction is my reaction. I own that part of it. And that person and I aren’t separate. There’s something that they’re mirroring, there’s a piece of me to look at. And so I think about how to respond to them with love, explaining in a way that their manner of presenting harmed others. It’s kind of uncomfortable. But I think that’s what the teacher is, is to be okay with speaking out if there’s an injustice. Thank you.

Barbara: Thank you. And also to be okay with holding silent. Both speaking out and holding silent. The question for me, is who is speaking out or who is holding silent? If fear is speaking out or holding silent, then that’s not the direction for me. What happens if love either speaks out or holds silent? And sometimes it will be one, sometimes the other.

Q: I have some similar problems in the workplace, where I have coworkers who are very unhappy with an unsympathetic boss. During lunchtime they would complain and talk about the boss. The whole one-hour lunch is sometimes very negative. I find myself unable to stay in such negative conversation. That sometimes I want to inject my own opinion and suggest that they look inside themselves, especially one particular coworker. She doesn’t take it very well. So, I’m learning that I have to be patient in such conversations, and maybe just to sit there and hold compassion for how I feel and for how they feel.

Barbara: Thank you. And again, you can play with, as this person is complaining, just, “Thank you, teacher. Thank you, teacher.” It’s a reminder: this person is here because she really pushes my buttons! I don’t like it, I don’t want it, but this is teaching me something. If I open my heart and just am present without a lot of “should be this, should be that,” just still, “Thank you, teacher. What have you come to teach me,” it can be very powerful.

Mindfulness is so important. When we watch ourselves becoming contracted, watch anger arising, watch wanting to take control, shift things, and we just notice, “contracting, contracting,” that doesn’t mean that we don’t respond, but we don’t react, because we’re mindful and see what’s coming up. And then: thank you, teacher. Okay, this is reminding me to have compassion, to have patience. And compassion can be strong and speak clearly, but it doesn’t speak with anger.

Let me say it differently. It may speak with anger. It doesn’t speak with blame. It can speak strongly, but it’s not an explosive kind of anger. It’s just, there’s anger. Not trying to use that anger to force somebody to take my view.

Q: I was thinking about a pretty terrible fight I had with my son in California when we were there last September. I was really hurt by something that he said. He was very angry. We were both very angry. In sitting with it, I kind of thought we were both past it. But I realized I’m holding onto something from it. What I was able to come to was, I could see his hurt and his anger and his feeling of inadequacy and rejection and unworthiness, that he was just projecting his own discomfort onto me in a way that was angry. And I responded in like. Through sitting just now, I was really able to just feel compassion for him, for his heart. I was able to feel the love in his heart and the love in my own heart for him. It felt like I was able to go into a place of deep compassion and love. I felt like I was able to dissipate whatever was still being held inside of me from that uncomfortable time together. So thank you.

Barbara: Thank you. Aaron is just conscious channeling here, not incorporated. He says his love to you.

Aaron: I am Aaron, but not incorporated. When you are able to respond in that way and open your heart to the other person’s pain, there’s an opening of energy. The power of the heart comes through. The power of love comes through. And this energy can change the energy in another part of the world, like where the Ukrainian soldier and the Russian soldier are facing each other with fear or hatred. It can change everything, because energy is energy. And it has no boundaries. It goes everywhere. So as compassion opens in you and compassionate energy is released, it can touch anywhere in the world. That is all. I am Aaron.

Barbara: Some of these challenges are really the karma of many lifetimes. And we’re working through it, just resolving a little bit at a time. Changing the karma in ourselves and throughout the world.

Aaron is suggesting to me that I might share something because he says it’s felt by many of you.

In my more recent meditations through the summer and fall, when I could not walk I had to lean with all my weight on my walker, and I developed very sore shoulders. In meditating with these sore shoulders and inviting the release of the pain, asking the pain, “What have you come to teach me?”

I was doing a journey of sorts and saw myself as a turtle. There was a blazing forest fire. Turtle was down on the ground in the streams and little rivulets and mud. The trees above were dry; they were burning. But turtle was way down in the mud. Turtle could propel himself with his flippers, so he was walking and swimming. Creatures that were burning were jumping on his back. And turtle did not say, “No—get off.” He said, “Come get on my back and I’ll carry you out of the blaze.”

But meanwhile, it was getting heavier and heavier and heavier, and he didn’t know how to say no. It wasn’t compassion that moved him so much as a sense of duty. So, when I asked myself, and asked turtle, “What would compassion say?”, the immediate answer was compassion would say let those few number that I can carry climb on my back, and I’m happy to carry them out. But at the point where it’s sinking all of us down into the mud and the flames will catch us, then I have to say no. And I saw how hard it was to me to say no in that way.

I’ve been asking how it applies to my life. I’ve gotten better at saying no to people asking me for time for this, time for that. People will call me and say, “Can we talk for 15 minutes?” And in the past, I would have said, “Of course.” And now I’m more likely to say, ‘No, please email me and let’s set up an appointment time. Tell me how long you need, if you really only need 15 minutes or half an hour, but not now.” And I would have felt so much guilt about saying no in that way. It’s becoming much easier these past few months.

And I do make a time to meet with that person; that’s fine. But it’s not just drop in, “drop everything on your schedule, answer the phone and talk to me now”—“Oh yes, I should do that.” How to find that place of compassion and kindness for myself and others, to say no in that way.

So then I was looking at that around Israel and Hamas. How do we say no to those who are killing from either side? Finding the place of kindness rather than the place of anger, from the place of kindness I feel more able to say a clear “No” and set boundaries. From a place of anger I cannot set boundaries. Aaron suggested I share that as food for thought for others.

Q: I recently started working with the protector deity Ganesh. The way he protects is by removing obstacles. So, I’ve been having to give a lot of thought to what are my obstacles. Not something I really like to think about. But it’s become quite apparent that one of my primary obstacles is a sort of deep well of self-hatred. So, I’ve been thinking this evening about what that is teaching me. I think that the message is that—so I focus on self-hatred, then that is making me focus on being a solid, reified self. And that that is something to let go of. I’m hoping Ganesh will help me with that! Thank you.

Barbara: I want to get something from my windowsill here… Here is Ganesh, the remover of obstacles. He sits on my windowsill. Ganesh will help us, entities will help us, spirit friends will help us with whatever we need—removal of obstacles and releasing of old fears and old distorted beliefs. Butwehave to do the work. They’ll help, but ultimately each of us has to be responsible to do that in ourselves.

I see with so many people, as I’ve worked with people for 35 years now, how powerful people find that power in themselves. First, they don’t believe they have that power, but gradually they come to see, “Icando this.” To know how powerful we are. I find this very beautiful, when we know how powerful we are, and we hold the deep intention to only use that power for the highest good and harm to none. I offer my power, and then it becomes part of THE power, and that can change the world.

Q: I’m in a situation now where I’m in a divorce. It’s been a few years. We live across the driveway from each other. My ex does not want to see my face or hear my voice still, so it’s very awkward. I use metta, and I have an especially beautiful picture of him that I use to just send him love and wellness. And that helps a bit. And then also, as I grieve, I have an image of us hugging and crying and remembering the good things. It really fills me with some peace.

But just now in the meditation I was thinking, “Thank you, teacher. What is it teaching me?” It’s a really hard one because I feel confused by it. I guess I’m learning about the sense of being shunned or rejection. Also, me letting it not be about me, that it’s just space that he needs.

I used to say, “Thank you, teacher,” to him all the time when we were together. Now I’m having a hard time finding that part. But the metta is my lifelines, I have to say. Thank you.

Barbara: Thank you. I can feel how hard this situation is. It may not be so much right now thatheis the teacher so much the circumstance of his living across the drive is the teacher. That’s really a hard situation. Being able to open your heart to this. And not understanding why you have to see him constantly, but okay, I can release any malice. I can open my heart to both our pain. Not right or wrong, just opening my heart to both our pain.

I’ve watched you for a long time with this, Q, and you’re doing a remarkable job with it. I think you know that. Please let go of any idea that it “should” be perfect.

A related question that comes to me is, how do we not take sides? People have been asking me for this past month, which side do I think is right, the Palestinians or the Israelis? Neither side is right; neither side is wrong. Two groups of people, each in deep pain. The question for me is, with these two groups and anywhere in the world, how can we really learn to hear each other?

As Aaron was suggesting before, our energy does change things in the world. When I can hear other people, that has an effect. If I can hear my neighbor who might be angry with me, somehow that energy moves off onto the other side of the world. Just opening, opening. The possibility of listening, deep listening to each other. The only way we’re going to heal this world is truly learning to love each other.

Yeshua would like to come in and speak very briefly.

Yeshua(B): My blessings to you all. I am Yeshua. I greet you with deep love. Barbara’s tired so I will keep this brief. But it felt like an important opportunity because many of you have asked me, how did I not hate those who crucified me? How did I not hate those who hated me?

You will want to make up your mind. Have you come to this incarnation to practice love or to practice hate? Hate is a habit grounded in fear. When you recognize mindfully “the conditions for hate are arising in me,” and you open your heart compassionately to yourself, those conditions resolve. Love is the only ultimate reality.

When I say “Love one another,” I don’t mean put on a mask of love but open your hearts to that ultimate essence of love that pours out through you, each of you. You are the messenger of love, and you have this capability.

But if the self is feeling angry, afraid, in pain, then the love must first come to yourself. Compassion for yourself that this fear, these uncomfortable emotions are present.

So, you need to bring that love to yourself in order to love others. If it’s only a facsimile of loving yourself, a pretense, then it only is a pretense of loving others also, and others can feel that, that it’s not genuine.

How do you cherish yourself? How do you cherish yourself including the difficult mind and body states that are part of being human?

You acknowledge the intention to move into an incarnation, so of course there are going to be difficult mind and body states. And these are not bad, nor to be fixed, but to be treated with compassion. And you, my dear ones, are the masters of compassion, if you will just allow it to open in yourselves.

Sometime in December we have a four-hour workshop on a Saturday (December 2, 11am to 3pm EST)… This is going to be our focus. I do not just speak to remind you of the workshop, but for those who are interested, we’ll be going into this with much more depth on that day.

I am Yeshua. I will leave the body. I want to offer my love to all of you, and my thanks to all of you who have had the courage to come into incarnation, to be human, to live the love of our Divine Essence, of the Mother/Father/Creator, to live that love in the world.

You tell me, “I can’t do it,” but you are doing it. You fall short—of course you do; you’re here as a human. Even I could not do it to any perfection. At times I felt anger and wanted to hurt. But I did not act that out and neither do most of you. Give yourself some credit for that.

Aaron is going to come in and just say goodnight…

Aaron: I am Aaron. My love to all of you, and we’ll close this session now. Thank you for being with us tonight. We look forward to seeing some of you next month for the Christmas stories, whatever night that will be, on a Wednesday. Some of you for the workshop on December 2, some of you for Remembering Wholeness, and of course the ongoing class next Tuesday.

My love to you all. May you be happy and celebrate all that you have to be thankful for. Be thankful for this humanness, which is so precious, such a great gift. I am Aaron.

Barbara: Thank you, Aaron. Happy Thanksgiving… Much love to you. Enjoy your turkey or tofu, or whatever it is you’re eating. Love to you, and goodnight.