April 2, 1997 Wednesday Evening with Aaron
On the Group Suicide in California; What Makes a Group a Cult?; Saying No in Relationship
Barbara:Aaron is saying his original planned program was the next Awakened Heart talk, but there have been so many questions coming through about this mass suicide that he wants to talk about that. He wishes to talk about the primary questions you have about how people get into that kind of distortion. What was really going on there? Were they just crazy? He said it’s not a question of whether there really is a ship they’re going to, but, what gets people into a distortion where they’re willing to destroy themselves in this way. And what does it mean, really, to commit suicide?
Aaron:I am Aaron. I would prefer to say this myself. My love to you all. The question about the nature of suicide in this situation is, what lives? What dies? If one clings to the tenets of the small ego self, one kills the Self (in capital letters), refusing to open to the deepest level of your being. Is it ever necessary or even useful to actually destroy the small self in order to let the higher self live? This is so much the heart of what we talk about here, that one must not attack the arisings of the small self but draw them into the loving heart. So I’d like to talk about this on various levels. What really happened to these people in California, and what does their act mean for you, who are also engaged in spiritual work? And a further question that grows out of all of this, who do you trust? How does one find the discernment to know if the teacher is leading you astray?
Are there related questions? I pause.
Q:After we die we have a life review but I also have heard that what we believe we create. So I am wondering what does happen to their souls (this group of people). Do they go to the place they created in their minds, or do they get an awakening?
Barbara:Aaron says he understands your question.
Q:I would like to hear what he said about the people in California and why they decided to act at this time.
Q:That is interesting to me too. Any personal question I would have might grow out of Q’s question about what really happens when we die and how do you adjust to the difference between one’s expectations and the reality of life on another plane.
Aaron:I am Aaron. Let me begin with a small bit of metaphysics. Most of you have heard me use the term “wanderer.” Just in brief review, all of you incarnate on Earth in this human form are human but you have gotten here by various routes. Just as here in your United States there are Native Americans and people of African, European, or Oriental ancestry, all here now and residents of one country, so there are beings who evolved through first and second densities on the Earth plane and then moved into third density, and there are beings who experienced first and second density on other planes and came to the Earth plane later on.
Wanderer is the name which others have previously given. Some people have said to me, “Aaron I don’t like that name.” Well it’s true, they’re not presently wandering, they’re here. Yet there is often a sense of having come from someplace else, and some deep sense of challenge. Being that “stranger in a strange land.”
Sometimes wanderers have been of 4th or 5th density and have agreed to come back into 3rd density incarnation because that density at present is the only way to experience the earth plane in human form. This is not taken as a setback to them. The reasons to come into the earth plane are two-fold: there is some sense of confusion, some distortion that has not been resolved on the higher planes, and there’s a need to come into a situation in which that which is held in confusion can be resolved. And also, there is a deep desire to serve, and a plan for that service. The plan is usually based on the skills and wisdom of that entity which it carries into the earth plane.
One of the striking things about wanderers is that they often have a very strong sense of being from somewhere else, a somewhere which they can vaguely remember, and want so much to go home. There’s a terrible pain for them, homesickness.
Because of that pain, and if they have not had guidance from within or without that helps them more deeply understand their choice of incarnation, such beings can often become, I hesitate to say desperate, but willing to grab at whatever presents itself. They’re trying so hard to make sense of the human experience. There are many wanderers. I would estimate that approximately one-sixth of the earth population at this time are wanderers and another sixth are beings who have moved through the various densities of the earth plane but have also spent much time off the earth plane. This is akin to the Native American who travels in Europe or Africa. First and second density were on this plane yet they have a very clear sense of other planes of being.
I’m not going to argue with you whether there really are spaceships, beings in spaceships, and so forth. Of course there is other intelligence in the universe. How they move and what they do is really of no consequence in this discussion. So it doesn’t matter whether there really is some kind of spaceship hiding behind this comet or not. What matters is that here we have a group of people whom I would say were all wanderers, most of whom had been of higher density before coming to the earth plane, all of whom found them captive in Earth’s karmic field. All had experienced some confusion in the incarnative state, which confusion was condition which led them to be drawn back repeatedly into third density physical experience. All of them wanted to go home.
They had forgotten something vital, which is the service they were here to perform. It’s not only wanderers but all of you who have the opportunity to serve as well as to learn in earth experience. They had forgotten about that aspect of their experience, that they came here for a reason. Nobody reached out and grabbed them. Nobody held them at knifepoint and said, “You must incarnate on Earth.” They chose it out of love.
I don’t want to get into a deep psychological explanation. It is sufficient to say that there are beings whose emotional imbalances leave them more vulnerable than other beings. And yet, if you deeply enough connect with the loving heart and learn how to rest in that loving heart, it serves as a great force for stability and corrects the imbalance of heavy emotion.
From the messages left by these people, one hears that they believed they were happy. Happy because they had found others who understood their intense desire to go home, their intense need to make clarity out of the confusion of their lives. And the sad thing is, they were right to a degree. They weren’t home, in the way that such beings would experience it. Home for these beingsissomeplace else. They WERE strangers in strange land, trying to live amidst beings who suffered an equal distortion in the other direction, which distortion is to totally deny the spirit and proclaim only the physical human experience. Each side calls the other crazy.
But, my dear ones, you are bodyandspirit. Regardless of which you deny, the distortion is equal either way. Those who totally deny the spirit and involve themselves only in the physical aspects of existence have deprived themselves of a major part of experience. But of these 39, … one of them said, “I am 31 years and there’s nothing left to live for.” I find that tragic. Here is a situation which is such a great gift, because this schoolroom is so precious. It gives you the opportunity to learn everything you need to learn, not only for the progression of your own soul but in ways in which you may offer such teachings unto others. “Nothing left to live for.” That is the despairing voice of a soul that has lost touch with the gifts of incarnation.
So it’s very sad. Presumably this was the karma of these beings. What drew them together? Had they followed this leader before? I would not violate their privacy to look in the Akashic records but my conjecture is yes. It’s hard to make a statement about group karma, because of course each being is unique, but it seems to me that overall, the beings in this group had hoped to learn about generosity, service, love. but of course, in their pain and confusion they lost their vision and they turned their backs on such lessons.
If the pain is too great, one is always free to leave. One must recognize that when one does leave in that way, the most precious thing one loses is this particular incarnative opportunity for experience. In the perfect situation you have the free will choice to say, “I can’t do it. I’m leaving.” What saddens me is that for each of these beings a different choice, to stay and understand the pain of their experience, to learn to deeply open their hearts to themselves and others, could have led to a resolution of the karma and the to freedom they sought and of course did not find by leaving as they did.
I understand that disciples of this sect would argue with me and say they have clarified everything and are truly are going home. In rebuttal I would simply reply, if they had clarified everything they would not need to leave. Rather, they would see the immensity of suffering on earth and the deeply compassionate, loving heart would not only invite them but demand of them that they put aside personal desires, remain and serve that suffering, offering the deep wisdom and love of the highest Self.
There are 2 different directions I’d like to go from here, in response to the questions you have raised. Rather than trying for a smooth talk where each portion leads logically into the next, I’m just going to call these part one and part two. One is to answer your various queries about what happens to these beings or any beings after death. One is to trace in more depth exactly what makes a group a cult.
You live in a world where spiritual teachings are available everywhere and in incredible variety. Never have beings lived in that situation before. In some cultures there may have been a few sects with differing beliefs but basically people through the centuries were born into a culture and stayed with the basic beliefs of that culture in that incarnation. Here, you have it all available to you. How do you choose from what has been aptly termed ‘spiritual smorgasbord’?
I suggest a few guidelines as you ponder which path, which teacher to follow. All of you are learning to follow the voice of love within. You do not do this by stifling the voices of fear. To stifle anything is a fear-based action. You follow love’s voice by resting so deeply in that heart of love that the voices of fear are seen for what they are. Fear is a distortion of love. That’s all it is. You do not have to kill fear. You invite fear into the loving heart where it is transformed, in the way that what you term garbage becomes compost..
You must listen closely to discern, is it love or is it fear? Of this leader who told them, “We are going home. Follow me.” one could say “Yes, that sounds loving.” There was strong discipline; is that a sign of fear? I think not. Many monastic societies have discipline. Friends who have been monks talk about shaving their heads and putting on monk’s robes, following the very precise disciplinary laws, hundreds of them, thevinayaof Buddhism. But nobody says to them, “You must do this or you are bad.” Rather, they are invited to explore the practices for themselves, to make the decision for themselves, “Does this form of discipline lead to deepening compassion and wisdom?” Now presumably this group of 39 also said, “Yes, this works for me.”
The distortion that I find most telling is one that this instrument read, “Do not think for yourself. Listen to the leader.” If you are told not to think for yourself, that it’s evil to do so, because it creates more ego, then that which could choose, and responsibility itself, are smothered. This highest Self, it is wise and infinitely loving. It’s not yet pure awareness, it is spirit-body and mental-body together, but it has very profound wisdom. It doesn’t need to kill anything in order to exist.
The ego self is just the ego self, a conditioned aspect of being. If there’s a physical and an emotional body and demands of those bodies, they are just demands. How could that which is divine and eternal in you depend for its existence on getting rid of that which is merely the conditioned physical and emotional bodies? If it depends on those for its existence then it’s not eternal.
If it IS eternal, then we could liken it in metaphor to the sea. The sea doesn’t depend on the waves or absence of waves for its existence. If there are waves, even if enormous waves, the sea doesn’t care. If the waves die away and the sea is flat, it also doesn’t care. It is just the sea. The heart knows this. Nothing needs to be gotten rid of, but all the conditioned arisings are embraced and drawn through the loving heart which transforms them.
These heavy emotions such as anger in you are not evil. Anger is simply energy. It is energy to do loving service or energy to murder. What are you going to do with it? Anger is just energy!
So, what I call positively polarized spiritual teachings lead you deeper and deeper into the wisdom of your own heart. They do not dictate. Yes, there may be rules. But nobody is told they are evil if they break the rules. The rules simply exist as the lubricant that makes it easy for people to live together. They are not presented as rules which you are good if you follow and evil if you don’t follow. Even murder and theft are not tokens of an evil force but of fear, pain, misunderstanding and delusion. The murderer, even the habitual, cruel murderer is not evil, but deluded and ignorant. However, if you wish to break the rules, that desire causes discomfort for other people. Then you may choose to leave or be requested to leave. This was not how the situation was presented. It was presented in terms of good and evil.
Any teacher who sets him or herself above you, who says, “I know better than you, and you must do what I say,” that teacher is deluded. He or she may know better than you, may have more clarity, more maturity. If he sees something that you do not yet understand, he can try to explain it and if you still don’t understand, he can simply step back and say, “Fine, do it the way you need to do it. If you want to talk about it again in awhile, I’m here. I hold you in my heart. I embrace you and set you free.” A positive teacher does not enslave, a positive teacher sets you free. She leads you deeper and deeper into your own inherent wisdom and love.
So these beings, I would not say had the misfortune, but more correctly, the karma, to find themselves with a teacher who carried fear based distortion of confusion. I do not believe there was any intention to harm nor was there strong intention of service to self stemming from ego. I find he offered a sincere statement of his beliefs. But those beliefs were based on a dualistic fixation. Those who followed found themselves bearers of the same misunderstanding and that it was more comfortable to remain with that misunderstanding than to challenge it. You must always challenge!
When you ask, “What will these beings experience after their death?” a necessary, related question is, “What were they experiencing in life?” All of you get caught, to some degree, in the distortion in which they were caught. The distortion grows out of fear, desire to control, desire to be safe. When one cannot look clearly at that distortion and open one’s heart to fact that it has arisen, then either the distortion becomes the enemy, or that which catalyzed it becomes the enemy. One creates certain habitual patterns revolving around control and safety. One armors oneself, and points a finger of blame at the catalysts. Do you think that distortion disappears with the event of leaving the incarnative state?
Constantly, life offers you the opportunity to look, to see what your habitual patterns are. It keeps tossing you catalyst that says, “Look! Look! Pay attention!” Some of you do, when thus invited, and some others simply retreat into a place of illusory safety. That illusion of safety takes one deeper and deeper into service of self. It closes the access to the ever-open heart. One completely loses touch with that loving heart, and then the fear distortion gets bigger and bigger, and the habitual patterns of control, setting boundaries, and so on, become more deeply engrained. When I say “setting boundaries” I do not mean here setting limits, in terms of saying no to another’s abuse, for example. That is a loving thing to do. I mean creating separation, seeing one’s self as separate from others. That is the way I am using the statement “setting boundaries,” as another place of safety. All of you have myriad habits created out of the desire for safety and the delusion of duality. The desire for safety is not bad, but it does grow out of illusion.
I cannot make a blanket statement, but I would conjecture that most of these 39 came to the Earth plane precisely because of the need to more deeply explore this illusion of separateness. In 4th density, you’re part of a group energy. Everyone is fully telepathic. You have not yet fully shed the emotional body, but before you enter 4th density, you usually have found some equanimity with that emotional body. This means you can hear others without judging them, and you can experience your own emotions without shame. There is no attachment or aversion to emotion. One simply sees it as conditioned arising, the cloud that flows through you because the wind is blowing in a specific direction. Thus, one doesn’t need to suppress or enact the emotion. I conjecture that most of these beings found themselves experiencing some kind of judgment of others’ emotions or discomfort with their own, in 4th density experience, and that many of them, if not most, came to the Earth plane to learn more about their relationship with their emotions and the ways that the arising of emotions led them to screen themselves off into a sense of a separate self.
So, now they’re dead. They’ve lost this body. The question was asked specifically by several of you, what will happen to them? What happens to any being when it leaves the body? First, we have different degrees of clarity upon leaving the body. Those who are very ensnared in a particular bias may find themselves as what we call earth-bound spirits. There can actually be a whole delusional system that persists after death so that one cannot quite believe one is no longer in the body. Ironically – again I will not violate their privacy to see where they are – my conjecture would be that many of them have created this group delusion for themselves. They may actually find themselves within the experience of an illusory spaceship, playing out the whole delusional system they had begun on the Earth plane. This does not mean there is no real spaceship. It is not useful for me to say whether or not this ship exists. But if the self-delusion is solid, they would not be able to experience the real ship because of the force of the expected ship, the delusion-ship.
Those who are more open-hearted will break through it faster. Some of them may maintain that delusional system for a very long time. But of course there are no walls around them, no one is reinforcing that delusion but themselves. So they left their bodies to be free and in so doing, they may have trapped themselves, not because they committed suicide but because they died holding on so deeply to an expected reality that it’s very hard to break it, to consider any other possibility. I repeat, I am not saying that it’s not possible that there is some extra-terrestrial ship out there. But by their very clinging into the heart of fear, these beings have excluded themselves from the possibility of joining the positively polarized extra-terrestrial energy in any immediate way. They’re not finished with the Earth plane. They’re going to need to come back.
They will take as long as they take. I said nothing is holding them into their delusional system except their own blinders. In fact, there will be many loving beings surrounding them, available to them, extending hands to them. Many beings go into this shadow place that they have created. Those who are more open will see the light, experience the love and slowly begin to understand how they had confined themselves, how they had created for themselves a specific structure of control based on fear and service to self.
Because I believe that most if not all of these who suicided truly are at heart positively polarized beings with delusion, rather than negative beings seeking to create pain and turmoil for themselves and others, I think that they will rather quickly open their hearts to the reality of their situation, once they are awake, as they were not able to be awake on the earth plane. Once they wake up to the whole of what has happened, each of them will follow the same process that any being follows at death. They will look back on the life, look at the blueprint or the plan for the life, see where they got caught, what the basic confusions were, and when they are ready, move back into incarnation in what seems to be a situation that most ideally provides them opportunity to learn what they must need to learn.
To kill the physical body is not a sin in the way some of your religions present it, but it’s very karmically expensive because it’s a symptom of one’s entrapment in a certain system of delusion. The energy of the killing itself further closes the walls of that delusion, makes it even harder to open out of it. As with any being, for any harm they did, for the families whom they caused pain for example, they are responsible.
Many of you are raising the question here, and it feels like a valuable question, and an opportune time to speak to it although it’s off the subject of this group suicide, what of the being who chooses to die with such as your Dr. Death, as he is sometimes called, a man who is dying of cancer perhaps, or AIDS, or a being who is dying of a progressive disease that is going eventually to create terrible pain and helplessness, can that being choose death without creating more adhering karma? Yes, it is difficult but it is possible.
It saddens me that those who make this choice to leave the incarnation before they are in such great physical pain that they are overwhelmed with it and unable to stay open-hearted, do not have the spiritual counsel that would make this choice a positive rather than a negative choice. So I think for most people who make such a choice, it comes out about karmically even. If they had stayed and suffered terribly and were not ready to be open-hearted with that suffering, it might have created new, difficult karma. And yet any sense of choosing death as escape also creates difficult karma. It CAN be a very viable path but only if one is sufficiently mature, wise, and skillful, and has good guidance.
As regards the new karma, of course that also is not a problem from the ultimate perspective. Would you want to graduate before you had learned the lessons you came to learn? Incarnation is not a test with trick questions meant to entrap you and force you to replay the incarnative experience in a way that wastes your time. Incarnation is a teacher that works with you to insure that you have mastered the lessons you need to master to continue to evolve in love and in wisdom.
There are so many more directions that this conversation can go. I am aware that this has been a very long opening talk. What I am attempting to do here is simply respond to your questions sent to me telepathically, rather than a pausing and hearing them aloud. I do this because we have a small group today. The last area I want to address brings me back to where I started here.
There is that within you which is divine, which is eternal. The only real death, the only real murder that is possible, is to act in such ways as to kill that divine or eternal. Since it can’t be killed, we might say to shut it off in such a dark and distant place that one has less and less access to it. You can’t kill it. But there are beings, highly negative beings such as Hitler, comes to mind, who have shut off the divine part of them so deeply in darkness that it will take a very long time for it to come back out into the light. This also is part of a being’s free will choice.
Eventually that being, perhaps not until 6th density, will realize that negative polarity is a dead end and begin the exhausting, lengthy path of moving back into the light. Nothing is lost. Every being will find its way back into the light. But meanwhile, there is very real suffering, not only for the one who is lost but those who are influenced by the one who is lost.
“Do no harm.” The primary commandment of every religion is “ Do no harm.” I would ask all of you to reflect upon a very straightforward question: what are the ways in which I offer harm to the Self? The ways I offer harm to that which is most divine within me. If I am greedy, if greed arises out of fear, and if I choose to enact that greed instead of to be present with the fear, understand it, and not relate to it in that way, I do myself harm.
If you wish to live with the precept, “Do no harm,” then you must examine everything. To examine does not mean to cease to have sensations and emotions, but to examine the ways that you attack what arises, close yourself off into that dark place, rather than learning from the human experience.
I think that this entire subject was sensitive to so many of you. This instrument received so many emails and phone calls about it because all of you are spiritual seekers and you understand how easy it is to get lost along the way. There is fear. How do I know I am choosing truth and love? Trust yourselves, my dear ones. Your heart knows the difference. I should be happy to hear your questions. I thank you for your attention. That is all.
Q:I would like a good definition of cult.
Aaron:I am Aaron. I would define “cult” as a group of any size, of beings who are drawn together by a common need, such as to feel safe, loved, to be powerful, even to wish to do service, but individually do not yet have the maturity to move past the illusion of duality. So they divide their judgment into good and bad, us and them, and so forth. They polarize themselves. It doesn’t matter whether they polarize themselves in them name of God or Satan, if they see themselves as separate and come to believe it is their task either to fix others or merely to fix themselves. Usually there will be a leader who has this initial distortion which others agree to. This is a very simple definition. I sense that is what you are asking for. Clearly, it’s a subject we could speak about at great length.
I want to emphasize that while beings in a cult are not necessarily negatively polarized, in terms of service to self versus service to other, the fear distortion is great enough that it leads them into this closing away of themselves. While there may be prompting within themselves of service to other, they are unable to enact that aspiration. I pause.. Is that sufficient?
Q:A good start.
Barbara:I’m paraphrasing Aaron. He says he does not want to step on toes. He says he will stick his non-existent neck out. Since he doesn’t have one anyhow, he’s not in any great danger! He says you all know how deeply he loves the one you all know as Jesus, that what this Master taught was love. Those who have historically called themselves …
Aaron:I am Aaron. I will say this myself. This instrument does have a neck so I will preserve it by letting the statement come directly from me. Not ask her to stick her neck out. I speak of those who historically called themselves Christians and yet believed they must murder in the name of Christ. These were also in a kind of a cult. Can you see that? I pause.
Barbara:(paraphrasing) He’s saying it comes down to fear and control as opposed to love, faith, trust. With love you let each being choose its own course, being firm that you will not let being A harm being B, say. but that unless being A offers harm to another, it is free to blunder its way through. You just keep offering whatever may help, and that being’s free to take it or not to take it. When you insist that he take it, then you shift into cult. The cultist “knows” that he knows best! So he thinks power over others “for their own good,” duality of “us” and “them,” concepts of “good” and “bad,” that these are all symptoms of cult.
(Reviewed to here)
Question:When is it okay, or how do you know when it is okay to leave, not by suicide, a particular situation? Example, when I am in a conflict with another and I have sought learning and found it, yet the other seeks no learning and only wishes to be a victim, at what point can I walk away and not cause further karma? How do I know when I am at that point?
Barbara: Aaron says this is a wonderful question and he thanks you for it.
Aaron:I am Aaron. This question is at the heart of so many of our discussions, and yet it seems we cannot really talk about it enough. It is so very much at the heart of your human learning experience.
You first must know in yourself that place of deep love not only for another, but for yourself. There’s nothing simple about loving the self. You offer kindness to others; sometimes it’s difficult for you to offer kindness to the self.
If you were outside in a park and saw a child take a stick and raise it as if to beat a small puppy, you’d have no difficulty taking that stick, grabbing the hand, stopping the child. “No, you mustn’t do that. You may not harm a puppy. You may not hit another.” It’s very clear. Can you see that in that situation, while there might be anger, the basic prompting is love?
Maybe the way the situation evolved was that the child was sitting on the grass and the puppy came running over and bounced its paws on the child. Maybe you saw the fear in the child’s face. And then there was a stick beside him and he picked it up and moved as to hit the puppy. It’s a two-year-old, a three-year-old; he’s scared. The basic emotion in you is not anger or hatred of the child. You love the child and feel compassion to his fear. But it’s very clear he may not hit the puppy.
The difficulty in transferring this to more adult human relationships is that it’s not so clear-cut. The other figuratively or literally lifts his arm to strike you or another, and instead of compassion, because you see a two-year-old’s fear, anger or hatred arise, judgement arises. “That being is BAD.” Then the self which aspires deeply to be loving feels it cannot speak out of that place of judgement or anger, so it bites its tongue and thus enables that negative behavior.
There are two voices in you, a voice of fear and a voice of love. Those who do not aspire to positivity, who do not aspire to offer their energy lovingly, have very little difficulty saying no to another’s transgressions. They can say it from a place of anger and hatred. It doesn’t disturb them. It’s only when you move into a place of deep positive polarity and highly aspire to offer your energy very purely and lovingly that you get confused because the anger arises.
There are two parts to resolving this. One takes on-going practice at seeing the arisings of judgment and anger and other heavy mind states of the self without condemnation of those arisings. When you find enough spaciousness for those mind states and the fear from which they’ve grown, you cease to be caught in them. It’s just the clouds flowing by. You don’t have to suppress it, you don’t have to act it out. You simply note: here is anger, here is tension, here is greed, judgement, jealousy, whatever may be there. And your heart is open to yourself. Then and only then can you easily find that loving voice, the voice that could say no to the child, “No, you cannot hit the puppy.” Then you understand that no comes from a place of love. It’s the kindest thing to do for yourself and the other, to say no, to set limits. To enable another to do harm to you or to harm someone else is to support their creation of negative karma for themselves. If someone repeatedly yells at you, even hits you, and all you do is cringe and say, “Oh, it’s okay, I understand,” that is not loving.
You may understand their fear and pain. You offer both, “I understand your fear and pain, but you may not use it against me.” In this way you ask the other to become responsible for their own emotion in the same way you seek to become responsible for yours.
When is it okay to leave that relationship? If the other continues to act despite your clarity and willingness to say no, if after you say no several times they continue with whatever form of abuse they were offering, then you need to ask yourself a very simple question: Is there any way that I am continuing to invite and participate in this abuse? Is there something I am still learning, not by being abused, but is there something I am still needing to learn about how to trust my heart, how to say no? That doesn’t mean you need to stay in the abusive situation, only you need to see that there is still something that you are learning.
When to leave. The general guideline I offer people is, if the other being can hear you, if the other being is generally trying to learn—I don’t mean if they simply keep repeating the old pattern without any attempt at change, but just give lip service to “Oh, I’m sorry”; I mean if they are genuinely trying to hear you, to learn, to understand; if you see changes, even subtle changes; and if there is some love between you, something positive—I don’t just mean love as in we’re partners, or parent and child, loving friends; if there’s some real love and connection between you that provides a foundation for the work you do together, then it’s useful to stay.
If there is only pain, so that you feel that you are needing to force yourself to stay and think to yourself, “But I should be learning something here. I’m learning tolerance, perhaps,” well, if it’s that painful, why would you need to stay? Your learning does not have to be painful. If this being insists that its learning must be painful and it will continue to draw you into its pain, then you need to say no, if it can hear you. If it goes on with its own painful learning but ceases to try to draw you in, or if it begins not to be so pained in its own learning as well, then there is real benefit in staying.
I think the basic question is, am I being guided by fear or by love? Of course, there’s going to be some of each, but which is primary?
Please don’t ask me how will you know. Trust your heart. Your heart knows.
Does this sufficiently answer your question or may I speak further on it, and if so, can you offer specific question? I pause.
Barbara:Aaron says this is such a basic issue and many people have faced it, he wonders if some of the others want to talk about their experiences of it. He thinks people’s experiences may be helpful to you.
Q:It has been a significant shift for me when I began to look at how myself and other people relate from a place of fear. And that fear is a distortion of love. That was pretty profound for me.
Barbara:That allows you not to separate yourself so much, so you could hear them better. Aaron is saying that doesn’t mean that you acquiesce. Aaron is saying when your own anger to protect yourself from their fear and anger is not coming up, then you have access to this loving heart which knows what to do.
Q:It was a real good foundation to build on, to be able to better communicate with people in my life.
Q:I have been working on these issues in my relationship with my mother a lot and having a lot of trouble with being able to set limits, or to get her to look at certain things without getting so angry myself, that I was caught up in the anger and was not coping.
The last time I was home, a couple of weeks ago now, she is very ill and that changes my reaction to her because of the pain she is in, and because of the fact that much of what I call her nonsense disappears when she is faced with a real situation. She is very real and brave.
One thing that happened when I was there was interesting. At one point, she was suddenly very depressed and angry, and saying that if she was going to be so sick and weak, she was a worthless old lady and ought to die. What was interesting was that as she started that, I felt this very familiar and old sensation of her sending out this profound and strong wave of depression and anger. And I recognized that as this very old pattern that all of my life I have either fought or been swept away with. Probably for the first time I did not do either of those, and I said nothing and breathed and pulled in energy and sent that loving energy to her. It profoundly changed how I felt.
Barbara:It kept shifting …
(Next tape)
Barbara:Talking here about people with verbally abusive parents that the person really wants to forgive and find a relationship with the parent, and the parent continues the abuse.
Aaron has said there has to be consequence. You have to be able to say to that parent, not from a place of anger but from a place of love, “If you start telling me how bad I am or abusing me verbally in whatever way you’ve done it before, I simply am going to pick up in the middle of dinner and leave.” And then do it. And it’s a very hard thing to do because there is still that which wants to be loved by the parent or partner whoever it is, wants approval, so there is a lot of fear in doing that. What am I going to lose if I do that?
But until you can find that place of love that’s willing to, not critically, not condemning them, hearing their fear with compassion, but “No, you may not do that. If you’re going to do that I need to leave.” Not necessarily to leave the relationship forever, to leave for right now. And he has advised people sometimes to find a place to go, to really plan it out and know that you can follow through on it. That you can say, “I’m not punishing you by leaving. I’m simply protecting both of us. If you can’t find a way to control yourself so that your anger doesn’t pour out on me and hurt both of us then I need to remove from the situation lovingly for both of us.”
He says to explain that ahead of time, not in the moment of anger but ahead of time, so the person knows this is going to happen if I act in a certain way, and be prepared to follow up on it.
He has said often one can’t guarantee results. But often that’s just what the other person needs to be willing to look into themselves and realize, “I can’t do this anymore. This person is not going to play this game with me anymore.”
He says if there’s enough love there, and if the person is ready, then the person may begin to look at their own anger or whatever distortion they’re offering. And if they’re not ready, there’s no way you can make them ready. There’s always the thought, “If I just stick it out, maybe they’ll come around. Maybe I can fix them. Maybe I can make them better.” But there’s no way to do that. You can’t make them better.
Aaron keeps saying, you can hold the door open for someone, but you can’t push them through it. You hold the door open not by tolerating their abuse, but really by being loving and saying no to their abuse.
(handwritten question is given to Barbara)May I read it aloud? “At times I am being guided by both fear and love, and sometimes I agree and sometimes I disagree on an issue. Big turning points seem to come because of fear and love at the same time. Sometimes it’s difficult to determine whether you love due to fear or fear due to love.” Aaron says, generally both if you are human. “I truly want to learn my lessons even if they are painful, but sometimes I feel as though the other half of my pain is bailing out on me and I am in limbo waiting to see whether or not learning will continue in this situation or whether I should seek another situation in which to receive the lessons. I don’t wish to jump the gun, yet I don’t wish to be the dead dog either.”
Aaron:I am Aaron. I hear your question. My suggestion to you would be as much as is possible to forget about what the other is and is not learning and focus on your own learning. Whatever catalyst he offers to you through his own fear, in large part that is simply a mirror of your fear, and your fear a mirror of his. Whatever catalyst you are offered, you always have choice: to relate to that catalyst primarily with fear or with love.
When I say to relate to it with fear or with love, I do not mean that fear won’t arise. This is just it. You are not incarnate to learn how to avoid fear. Fear is a catalyst for compassion. You are incarnate to learn how to relate to fear in a loving way, not to be freed of fear, not to need to escape from fear, not to need to throw your fear at another. Really, not to get into any kind of relationship with fear except to note that it is present and to make space for it in your heart.
It sounds to me like this catalyst is quite useful for you right now. The places where I would draw the line are, if this being uses alcohol or drugs, moves into a non-conscious state, if in that non-conscious state especially there is any kind of physical abuse, you don’t need that kind of catalyst to learn.
But if, as I believe I understand it, this being is simply caught in his own fear and the anger is derived from that fear, he’s not offering you any real threats to your being but more a threat to your ego, then it seems at least temporarily like it’s a useful catalyst.
Each time you change yourself a bit, open your heart to a deeper degree of compassion to his pain, but simultaneously become able to say no to his pain, you change the old rules by which you’ve been playing.
If you are playing a tennis game, and one of the things your partner did every time you hit the ball rather forcefully over the net was to come in close to the net and slam it in such a way that it went whizzing past inches from your head so there was real fear of the force of this ball, you could go after that hit and try to slam it back, or you could say to your partner, “This feels like unsafe tennis to me. Anytime you slam the ball in that way from now on, I feel I’m going to need to leave the court. I’m just going to walk off and sit for a few minutes and then I’ll come back and we can try again. Or you can tell me when you’re ready to try again.”
This is very challenging to do. Within this movement for yourself is the core of your own learning. As soon as you change the rules in that way and walk off the court, his old techniques no longer work. If he’s feeling overwhelmed because you hit him a hard ball and he can’t slam it back at you, because you’re not going to stay there for it, when he sees that you mean it then he will have the invitation through you to make his own decision. You may find that he is able to look at the reasons for his reactivity. He may not be. Perhaps it’s useful to share.
I would draw the line at anything that is physically dangerous to you, or any place where he becomes so out of touch with reality that he really could harm you with no intention to because he’s not aware that he’s doing it. Beyond that, spend a little more time with the catalyst. Keep asking yourself, what am I offered to learn?
I remind you, you are always free to leave. There’s nothing bad about leaving. It simply means you still have this lesson to learn and you will need to choose to open to a new catalyst. It may be that the new learning will be much easier so you don’t have to force yourself to stay.
Again, I think the primary question is, is there love here? If it’s just grit your teeth and stick with it, then you’ve lost the power of love to teach both of you.
But if there is still some love, let that love be the foundation of your work. Nurture that love. Communicate with each other in deeper ways. In times when there is no anger or confusion, find ways to sit together simply face to face. Sit with feet touching and look into each other’s eyes. When was the last time you did that and told each other what you admired about the other, loved, respected, depending on the nature of the relationship? Find ways to strengthen the friendship, the love, the connection.
Does this answer your question? I pause.
Aaron:I am Aaron. There’s a challenge here not only for the partner but for the self. The small ego self wants to be safe. It’s found certain coping devices to be safe. It wants to feel in control. I would conjecture that there is a sense that you’re going to have to give up some of the more unskillful coping devices. When I say unskillful, not unskillful in that they don’t work. They worked in that they established safety, but there was a terrible price for that safety, which was a cutting of self and other out of your heart.
In order to allow yourself and your partner back into your heart, certain barriers are going to have to come down, and to allow those barriers to come down is very frightening because you thought you needed them for survival. So part of you wants to leave because to stay means to confront the reality that certain barriers do have to come down. Do you understand? I pause.
Q:Oh yes.
Aaron:I am Aaron. Seeing what needs to come down, please do not attack it with a pickax. I think this is a major difficulty for many of you, that you see the barriers that have to come down and you get on that self-fix-it campaign and say, “Ah, I’ll get rid of this one and this one.” That’s cruel to the self. There must be something to replace it.
If you had a very ramshackle house, walls caving in, roof leaking, you might think, “I really need to replace this house. It’s rotten. It’s falling down.” But you will have no shelter, to go out there with a pickax and tear that house down and leave yourself shelterless. Why do that? Instead you build yourself a shelter, a house that is stable, filled with light, and when the new house seems finished enough and inviting, then you don’t need the old house any more.
As you cultivate this loving heart and become more practiced in resting in it, then the old fear-based coping strategies fall aside by themselves. I pause.
Barbara:Are there any questions or comments about this? It’s getting late and close to ending time.
Q:I grew up in a Christian, God-fearing home. I find many of your insights helpful. While I understand there is only love and fear, I fear death—a fear of the unknown, if you will. There is a great struggle and confusion in my mind and I do know to embrace my fear, but I don’t fully understand how to do so, or if I’m capable of embracing this fear with love.
Aaron:I am Aaron. My dear one, do you doubt your divinity? How could that which is the deepest expression of God, expressing itself out into the world in human body, be incapable of love? I am not saying it’s easy, but it is the purpose for which you are incarnate.
Jesus said it so simply and beautifully, “Love one another.” “Turn the other cheek” does not mean be a doormat to another’s abuse. It means be so steadfast in your love that it becomes a vehicle which transmutes fear, ignorance and distortion, and in this way serve yourself, all beings, and God.
Can you do it?
If you believe you must do it perfectly, no, you cannot. If you are content to simply open your heart and take small steps to become increasingly mindful, more present in your experience, to observe what gives rise to fear and when the heart is open, with those small steps you climb the mountain.
You do not have to be perfect. You do not incarnate to be perfect. You incarnate to learn to love. I pause.
Barbara:There is a book I would recommend to both of you by Stephen Levine calledA Gradual Awakening. It’s a wonderful book. It talks about awakening, opening the heart to love. I don’t think we have it in the bookstore, we are out of it. But many bookstores have it.
Okay, anybody else? We usually take a minute at the end to share any joys and sorrows. Is there anybody who has anything to share? (No.) That’s all then. Good night.