April 22, 1992 Wednesday Evening with Aaron
What Does it Mean to be a Co-Creator?; Saying No to Small Creatures (Ability to Communicate); Issues of Trust with Plant Devas and Small Creatures; Co-Creating with the Earth
(Barbara okayed release of the co-creation excerpts from the April 22 session without review.)
Q: About the various animals that are eating various parts of our yards; why they are doing it, how we can control it, or do we simply tolerate it?
Barbara: (laughing) I’m getting a sort of picture of Aaron, covered with aluminum foil. He looks like the Tin Man, and he’s doing a dance like a scarecrow.
Aaron: Good evening and my love to you all. I am Aaron. There’s a common misunderstanding among humans that since you are the most intelligent of the creatures on Earth, let us say, that you have the right to dominate the others. Each
plant and animal has its own growing to do, and its own life to live; it just comes to incarnation (inaudible).
What I wanted to speak about tonight is the idea of being co-creators rather than manipulators. Now, I’m going to leave off the long talk, perhaps I’ll share it next week. What does it mean to be a co-creator? We’ve spent time here talking about talking with plants before you plant them, and asking, “Where should I put the garden?”, not just “I want the garden there.” It’s easier to deal with plants because they stay still. If they don’t like your choices, they can die, but that’s about it.
Each being has free will, regardless of being plant, animal or mineral. In a funny way, we come to some very profound lessons here. We’ve talked about when one
tolerates abuse from another, and when one says no. This is something you can practice with your ants. If you have planted tulips with their agreement, and with their agreement they are flourishing, and small animals are coming under them and not
even eating them, just biting them off, it’s probable that they are getting nourishment from the stems, or enjoying the stem itself. You have the right to say no. It is not skillful to hate that small animal or to wage a war with it.
How can you say no to it without waging a war? First, sit down in your garden,
under the trees or wherever the damage is being done. Send out the thought—you needn’t say this out loud, or your neighbors will wonder who you are talking to in your back yard; it’s perfectly all right. The animals don’t hear your words, but they will get the intention of your thoughts. “This is not acceptable to me. It is also not acceptable to this tree or plant. I will make an effort to provide you with appropriate food. You must leave my tree or plant alone.”
Then, be prepared to follow up on it. “I’m going to put a fence around it, or pie tins that clatter in the breeze, wind chimes, anything that moves or glitters. I’m not going to do that with hatred, but to remind you that this is not yours to destroy.” In fact, this is the same practice that many of you find difficult to do with humans, to say, “No, this is not yours to mess with. I don’t hate you for trying, but that’s it.”
Sometimes these small creatures can do a great deal of damage and they can lead you into anger. It’s a wonderful opportunity to practice looking at that anger as it arises, noticing that these creatures are doing nothing that’s not natural to them. They are eating what they need to survive. “Here it is, growing. I’ll eat it.” And yet it creates discomfort, and at times, financial strain for you, if it’s destroying something that is of value to you.
Why is it so hard to say no? Why is it so hard to say no to a human who trods on
your toes? There is an unspoken understanding that if I am a spiritual and loving person, I must be a doormat. A doormat very often has resentment. If you can be a truly loving doormat, and that brings fulfillment to you, fine. But I sense your resentment over being a doormat, very natural resentment. There’s the fear that, if I speak out, my anger is going to manifest itself. “I could kill these small creatures. They are spoiling the garden!”
My dear ones, I’ve told you over and over again, there’s nothing wrong with your anger. But to use that anger in a way that harms another is unskillful, and leads to adhering karma. So you are given a wonderful learning opportunity, how to say no, which frightens you because saying no brings you too close to your anger. How to say no in a loving and firm way, and then follow it up with whatever appropriate actions are necessary to ensure that this destruction doesn’t continue.
There are many possibilities. If necessary, get a live animal trap. Simply trap it and then release it. Take it elsewhere. No harm will come to them, but once they’ve been trapped once or twice, they are going to have more fear of approaching that garden, and more respect for it. That would be a (inaudible) measure in my (inaudible) mind. Try noisemakers. Barbara has at times strung posts with string and aluminum pie plates that reflect and clatter. She had deer and pheasants eating her corn, and
found that the most effective way of keeping them out. If that is too unlovely for you, try perhaps glass jars, and do ask these small creatures, “What else can I feed you?” Talk to them first.
Okay, if Barbara had placed this (?) about her trees—she looked at the trees and thought about the time it would take to string up glittery noisemakers, and decided to simply let the deer have the trees. You might want to make that decision.
Does that answer your question sufficiently or would you like me to speak further about it?
Q: We’ve heard some stories about people who are effective in talking to animals and insects. Are just more in tune than I am, because when I asked the earthworms to move, they just didn’t move. How can we be more in tune?
Aaron: We have two questions here. Part of their success relates to their same level of communication that people were using in attempting to put the candle out. The
same principles of manifestation are present: that your request must be for the good of all beings, and not just a selfish request; that it be clearly stated; that you ask with love, and then bring your energy to focus on the request that you are making.
But be aware that you are human, and all of you don’t have the necessary skills to communicate that clearly. You can develop those skills through practice, but, meanwhile, find another way to protect your garden! When those small creatures see that you mean what you are saying, it will help them to learn to listen to you. Remember, they are not subservient to you. Nor are they really peers. They are unique unto themselves and you are unique unto yourself; yet you are part of each other, and part of a whole world that works together and interrelates.
In order to clearly communicate, “I want you to stop gnawing on my tulips,” or my fruit trees, you first need to be very clear that you want that, and clear also that the want is not accompanied by rage that they are doing this.
When they feel rage from you, like any other being, it’s hard to listen. When somebody is talking to you with rage, you screen it out, you shut it out.
When you feel guilt about your rage, so that you come to it with, “Gee, I’m afraid I’m going to starve you, but I’ll put out some other food. Please will you guys leave us alone, is that okay? I know I shouldn’t ask, but…”–when you approach it in that way, of course they also can’t listen.
When it’s a very clear, calm, focused, “This is the way it needs to be. You’re causing destruction,” you can offer them some of your tulips, some of your fruit trees. The reason I suggested asking them what they want to eat is that they may not really want your tulips or your fruit trees. It may be simply what’s available but not the preferred food at all. If what you hear back is that they really relish these tulip stems, than follow that suggestion. “This patch is for you, and the rest of the garden is for me. There are plenty of stems here. Leave mine alone.”
The clear communication comes from clarity with your own irritation or anger, and
moving past any guilt in asking, in making a clear request to leave this alone. If there were schoolchildren walking by your house each day, and you had dumped a gravel load, and each day as they walked by they picked up rocks and aimed them at your mailbox because they liked to hear it go “ping”, your first impulse might be rage. “They are scratching and denting my mailbox. They are going to break my car window,
if they miss the mailbox.”
Then, as you think about it, you might realize that it’s a target for them to aim at, and they are having fun with that. Thought: there’s an old mailbox. I’m going to put it in the field out there, and I’m going to put a pile of rocks next to it. “Help yourselves! I’ll even help you measure off twenty yards, forty yards, so you can see how far you can throw it and still hit it. I have a new mailbox, and I’ve painted it carefully. Please leave it alone.” Can you hear the difference between the way you, as a young child, enjoying that ping, would hear that request, versus, “I know that you are enjoying what you are doing, and I don’t want to push you around, or order you around, but I like my mailbox, and I”m afraid it’s getting scratched, and do you mind not throwing rocks at it?” They’d laugh at you.
How about the other: “You’re destroying my mailbox—get out of here!” Are you going to respect that? But a clearcut, “Look, I just painted this. It’s a new mailbox. And it’s only a few feet from my car, and my car window’s going to get broken. So, I’ve put this back in the field for you, a mailbox on a post, and I’ve marked a distance. There’s a big pile of rocks. Please would you use it, and respect my wish not to throw rocks at my mailbox?” Can you hear that? Can you feel the difference? It’s the same communication.
It doesn’t matter if you are speaking to a human, animal or plant, or what you’re speaking to. There needs to be a certainty without guilt. “I have a right to ask this.” A clarity that I’m not feeling rage about it, I’m just making a reasonable request. It is for the good of all beings. I’m not being selfish here, and I am taking the other beings’ needs into consideration.
Does that answer your question?
(Q asked seedlings if they would like to be planted or not, and the ones
that said no, he put aside, but when he was done, he had space left in his garden, so he planted them. What should he have done?)
Aaron: Q, we have here an issue of trust. The first seedlings, those that said yes and you planted them, the devas of the seedlings moved to some level of trust and respect for you, which is hard for plant devas to do, because most of you don’t listen to them, and they are used to being ignored. So they respond to humans as if humans
were at war with them, which has been their experience. Therefore it’s not just the individual seed we are talking about, or the individual plant, but creating a situation of trust with a whole garden.
Yes, you should’ve listened. You should’ve respected what they said. If you had extra space left in the garden, you could have gone back and asked them again. “I have extra space, and I would like to let you in.” And if nobody said yes, then you’ve got extra space; use it to plant something else.
I would suggest, and this may sound absurd to some of you, but we are talking about trust here. I would suggest that tomorrow you apologize to the deva of those plants. That you ask each individual plant that you planted at the end, “Do you want to stay here or not?” My thought is that perhaps, you said these were some of the weakest ones, you offer some degree of shelter, perhaps a piece of plastic, a plastic tent over them, or whatever small amount of shelter they might need to give them a safer growing area. When I say safer, it’s not that they mind being plucked up by an animal, perhaps, but a more sheltered growing area. And give them your love, and let them know that they have your love. Perhaps they will choose to stay there. If you hear from them, “No, we told you once, and we are telling you again,” if you respect that, it will help your communication with the rest of the garden.
Q: Why aren’t the animals listening to me, the earthworms?
Aaron: It is this whole question of trust, in part. It may not be you individually that has destroyed the trust, but you as representatives of humans need to re-establish it with these individual devas. Do you understand?
There is what is called an elemental, very small connection between each plant and the elements that nurture that plant, the soil, the water, the sun. For those with very good hearing, you can hear the voice of each small nature spirit. There is also an overall spirit of that kind of plant in the garden, which as you have just said, will communicate as a mother might communicate for her small children. When someone comes along and asks the little children if they would like some ice cream, and they all nod yes, speechless, the mother says, “This one likes chocolate, that one likes vanilla, and this one shouldn’t have any ice cream because it will make him too hyperactive. This one, just a small serving, and that one, a big serving. He needs the nourishment.” And the children are just saying, “Yes, yes.” So you may think of each plant as a small child and the overall nature spirit as the mother of that species in your garden. Talk to both. The child doesn’t like to be ignored, but the mother would like to be consulted, as she has a clearer idea of what her children’s needs are and can express it more clearly than perhaps the children are able to do for themselves.
Does that answer your question?
***
Q: Aaron, I request that you talk more about Earth.
Aaron: Let’s talk about the Earth. What I want to speak about here is, most directly,
your interrelationship with the Earth. I’d like to start off with a story, a very brief story.
There is a tale in Buddhist literature, told of the Buddha. One of his disciples
was walking through a village and people stopped him and asked him a question
about his master, the Buddha. They said, “We would like to know which of these four answers you most see as true and will help us understand your teacher’s thinking. When this man, the monk Gautama, dies, would it be most true to say that he, the
monk Gautama, no longer exists, this monk still exists, this monk both exists and does not exist, or this monk neither exists nor does not exist? Which of those four would be true?”
The disciple thought about this question for a few minutes, and then said, “None of them really catch the essence of what is real.” These villagers were very dissatisfied with this answer. “One of them must be true. Either he still exists, or he no longer exists. He both still exists and no longer exists, or he neither still exists nor no longer exists. There are no other choices.” The disciple came back to the Buddha, and said, “I know that none of them were right, but I can’t understand quite why.” The Buddha spoke to him, raising the question “Who is this monk who is me? Do I exist, can I ever cease to exist?”
If a tree falls in the forest, does it cease to exist? The wood from that tree rots, and moves into the soil. Plants grow out of the rotting compost. An animal comes and
eats all of the plants. Does the tree cease to exist? Or is it simply moved into another new form inside the animal? The animal dies. It also decays into the soil. A new tree grows. Is it the same tree that was related to its ancestor?
Everything moves through. Each of you is what I would call a flow-through. There can not be either existence nor non-existence, being nor non-being. Neither is true, and both are true. Being cannot begin because being cannot end. The form in which that
being is manifested changes. When you understand that, not just conceptually, but from an experiential understanding, watching the world around you carefully, seeing how each flows into another, then you know that you are not separate from anything else.
As humans have evolved, they’ve discovered that they (inaudible) a fine breed, and the ability to manipulate. They’ve been given a liking for power and the arising of fear that often leads to the wanting to control. So we have here the willingness to manipulate and control the environment, and the brain that is capable of doing so. This has put the human in a different relationship with its Earth and all that dwells there than any other being has ever been in before. Suddenly you are separating yourself, moving in to a duality of human and Earth. As soon as you do that, you need to manipulate it, to control it, to make it produce what you want, where you want, when you want. And at that point you have lost consciousness of it as a living organism, not only as a living organism, but as an extension, as a source of yourself.
The question seems to me to be not how do we better manipulate the Earth so as to subdue environmental problems, but how do we reconnect with the Earth? How did
we sever this connection in the first place? How can we come to know that
fundamental of level of connection, and move back into a fundamental level of
respect, reverence even, for all of life of which we are a part of this vast (inaudible)?
I said to some of you the other day that the Earth itself is an entity. It’s not just a lifeless blob on which life has planted itself. You know that life energy gives off an aura. The Earth has its own aura quite separate from everything that grows on it. The Earth did not come into being simply to be a foundation for other life to take hold on; the Earth came into being for its own reasons. It incarnated, you might say, and this present Earth is one incarnation of the energy you may choose to call Gaia. It is a living, feeling energy in its own. Its essence is to nurture. It cannot nurture when those that it would nurture destroy it.
We were talking earlier about the plants, about the plant kingdom, about the devas of the plant kingdom, the nature spirits of the various plants and trees, have come to distrust humans, to feel that humans have tried to manipulate them, and to fear
human intervention. The Earth doesn’t share that distrust. The Earth is too simple, in
a certain way, to distrust. It is a very quiet and a very old spirit that has one wish and one thought: to nurture the life that lives through it. And yet, it can be harmed, and is obviously being harmed.
The Earth willingly serves as co-creator with man in whatever man creates. If you create fluorocarbons that create holes in the ozone, it will effect all that grows on Earth, but it won’t really effect the Earth, except insofar as the Earth seeks to nurture. It grieves, in a sense, when that which lives upon it destroys itself. People have asked me if we will destroy the Earth. I don’t think that you are going to blow this planet into small bits. You may create conditions so that life as you presently know it is unlivable on this planet. That is your choice, to do that or not, as you wish.
That does not mean that the spirits that you are will no longer have a school, but
simply that the schoolroom will have changed. Would you rather go to school in a beautiful school with big open windows going to the out-of-doors, with trees and
flowers and butterflies? Or would you prefer to be in an inner city school with all brick walls, with windows looking out at air shafts? To walk outside you need to put a gas mask over your face. You dare not walk upon the Earth because of acidity there
which will burn you; no barefoot walks on the grass. Which do you want to come back as to—the beings that you will be, as we say? Which do you want your grandchildren and great-grandchildren to come back to? It’s not just you children and your grandchildren, it’s your future incarnations.
This is a question of karma. You reap what you sow. If you create a situation out of your desire to manipulate the Earth for greater material gain, or power or comfort, if you create a situation that destroys some of what the Earth now has growing upon it, then you, in your future incarnations, will reap the pain of that. When you grow past some of your materialism, some of your desire for power and control, when you move back to an intimate knowledge of your connection with all of life that grows on you, that lives on you, and with the Earth itself, then you will make more skillful choices.
How many of you, literally, are (inaudible)? How many of you would drop a burning match or cigarette in the middle of your living room? How many of you would take your water tank and throw mud in it? Much less far worse things? Can you begin to learn that the Earth is no less your home? Your body is a flow-through, and Earth constantly enters it—the air, the water, the thoughts of those around you. The Earth moves through your body, your mind, your perceptive processes through your senses, And then it flows out again in some other form. You drink water and you urinate. You breathe out water vapor. It runs through your body and your body processes it, including the impurities where there are impurities.
The question, then, is not how to manipulate Earth better, but how to move into deeper awareness for yourselves, and how to begin to teach others the essence of this connection. At the same time, to begin to look at where the need to manipulate grows. What makes that arise? Seeing the fear that makes me want to control the Earth, can
I come to better understand and let go of that fear so that I can let go of the need to control, and move more clearly into being a co-creator of my environment, rather than a manipulator of my environment?
This is the challenge I see for all of you, if your children are going to be able to grow up in a world where they may also enjoy walks on the grass and (inaudible) sunshine, and drink fresh water. That is all.
As you breathe in, bring awareness to all that lives in each breath that you breathe. You are not just breathing in oxygen, hydrogen, whatever, you are breathing in an infinite variety of life. Bring awareness to that moving through your body, that some of it comes to rest within you and lives there. Some of it moves out with the exhalation. You exhale carbon dioxide. What about the trees and the plants outside? They bring that into themselves and renew the oxygen in the air. Think about the miracle of this process, whereby each being is given what it needs.
May all beings, from the tiniest of microscopic life to the Earth Mother herself evolve without harm or violence from other beings with whom they share this planet. May all beings of any size feel the reverence and respect of others so that they may be free to express their own true natures, of peace, of joy, of connection. May all beings everywhere, from the minutest to the greatest, find perfect peace, and find their way home.
I thank you for allowing me to share these thoughts with you tonight. I have enjoyed our evening together and hope you also have. I wish you all a good night. That is all.