March 22, 1993

[This session was preceded by a period of tuning and meditation.]

Aaron

I am Aaron. Good morning and my love to you all. How have you done with your homework? Did you experience those moments of separating, window shades drawn tightly closed? It is a painful experience and not necessary to incarnation. Let us look together at the process. When you enter the illusion in which you feel the heart closed so that you are separated from that beloved source of light and that your own light does not shine, what is really happening at that moment?

When there is careful looking each time the heart is experienced as closed, you see the presence of fear. That in itself means nothing. Who is afraid? Afraid of what? There is a cycle in which you experience fear and separation. There must be the illusion of a solid self, separate, subject and object. As you experience the self as solid, the fear becomes more solid, enhancing the sense of separation and bringing you further from your true Self.

There is a poem by Rumi that Barbara encountered this morning. I would like to ask if K or C would read this. It is on the right-hand page of the page marked:

I would ask you always to remember that you need not seek God elsewhere. The Divine is within yourself. To me, this awareness carried deep within you is the key to working with the heavy energies and catalysts of the earth plane. As soon as you experience yourself as separate from the Divine, then self solidifies. Then fear increases and becomes stronger. Then the darkness closes in further and you become more and more enmeshed by your sense of separation, of vulnerability and of fear.

We spoke of this a bit earlier this morning; and I asked those who were listening to envision an expansive blue sky with a brilliant sun and here and there some small wisps of clouds. As the winds shift, the clouds are brought together and slowly form what seems to be a storm cloud that blocks the sun. You have two choices: to react as if that cloud were solid and move to protect yourself by fetching your jacket or your umbrella, or to remember the sun is still shining—“There’s nothing solid here, just bits of that same material I’ve seen floating through the sky. They’ve simply come together.”

Because you are human and must function at both levels, of course if it begins to pour, you put up an umbrella; but is the umbrella to protect you from harm or is it to keep you warm and dry? There is a difference. When you relate to the clouds in your life as threatening you personally, then fear solidifies, self solidifies, and your response to those personal clouds becomes one of fighting a war with them. You believe they must be gotten rid of at all costs so that you can return to the experience of the sun!

When you can, note the existence of those clouds without feeling personal threat, just clouds coming through; but because when clouds do come together it may rain, you note, “I could get wet and will then be uncomfortable. So I will very skillfully put up my umbrella.” Here there is no fear, there is no personal threat. You always know that the sun is shining above the clouds. The energy does not contract with fear and prepare to do battle.

If your own personal cloud in some moment involves another being that is angry at you, raging at you even because of a self-perceived threat to itself, your fear leads you to strike back at that being verbally or even physically, or to move to protect yourself in a way that connotes your own anger. When instead you can see that being’s fear and pain, you may still, figuratively, put up your umbrella. You may step back out of its reach. You may choose to leave the room or the vicinity of this angry being without reacting with fear.

There is that one moment where the self begins to solidify and you experience perceived threat. “I could be hurt. My needs might not be met,” whatever the fear is about. There must be attention to that moment when there is suddenly self and other, and the other perceived as threatening to the self. There must be attention to the arising of anger, should it be there, against that perceived threat. With strong mindfulness, that first perception of solidified self, of fear and of any other heavy emotion becomes like a waving warning flag: Pay attention! Can there be compassion for this seeming self that is feeling fear? “Turn to the light within me, open up to the Divine within me, remember the sun is still shining.”

This is a tremendously powerful tool. It takes much practice to learn to do it skillfully. And before you even begin the practice, it takes much honesty to look at the places in the self that want to respond with anger so as to get even with that which seems to threaten. Once you do that work and can pay attention to the arising of fear, and even pay attention to that which wants revenge and just treat that as more fear, give yourself a literal hug with the thought, “It’s okay. Whatever I’m feeling is okay.” As you offer that compassion to yourself, you begin to be able to offer it to the catalyst. Then self and other dissolve, not immediately but slowly. The more practiced you get at it, the faster the dissolution of separation. And it is no longer my fear, but our fear, our pain. In this way, the first arising of fear becomes a catalyst, not for hatred, but for compassion. A reminder: The heart is at risk of closing; keep it open; remember the light is still shining.

When we look at what leads to the sensation of the heart’s closing—of separation from God, from others, from self—we see that need to protect. This is another area on which you may wish to focus, another tool: releasing of fear. If you pay close attention, you can literally feel the closing of the fearful heart, but you remember the light is still shining within it. You might envision the heart as a rose. Within its core is the most brilliant light imaginable, comparable only to the light of God. Sit in meditation and feel your connection with the Divine. Visualize the opening of this rose. It cannot be forced; but the allowing of the experience of loving connection opens those petals, and you experience the radiance flowing into the heart center and the radiance flowing out.

As you come out of your meditation and re-enter the active stages of your life, watch carefully. What happens when there is a catalyst which seems to threaten? Can you see the sun seeming to be cut off and the petals closing? If you remember, “This is illusion. Fear is illusion. It seems solid, but it is created out of my own delusion of a separate self,” then you can ask yourself, “Is there a desire to get caught up in this fear?” Sometimes that is easier. It is very beautiful to feel your connection with all that is, but it takes a great deal of responsibility to live that connection constantly without giving in to your anger. You are human. I am not condoning giving in to anger, only suggesting that for the human there is a constant struggle to remember your connection and ask yourself to express that connection in your choices rather than to express separation.

So, you note the illusion of fear and how solid it seems. Come back to the heart center, that place where the light is still brilliant. If the fear is so intense that like the storm cloud it seems to have totally blocked out the sun, then for that moment you are going to have to be the source of light. You may not feel God’s presence, and although your intellect tells you, “God is still present and I am only cutting off the experience of that,” still you are not feeling it. So, where is the light and love to come from that opens this blossom, this rose, and allows reconnection?

It comes from your deep practice of loving-kindness and compassion with yourself. When you see this being sitting alone and afraid, can you reach out with love to it? What if you wandered down the street protected by your rain gear in a heavy storm and there was a child alone, sobbing on the curb? Would not your heart reach out to this being, to shelter it, to protect it? Can you not do the same for yourselves when you find yourselves soaked in a storm, hemmed in by heavy rain clouds so that you cannot experience the light?

Yes, the fear is illusion. Now you are recognizing “caught in illusion,” but also changing your perspective to know that this is illusion: “The sun is still shining. I am going to keep myself open to that sun even if I cannot seem to experience it. And then I’m going to give love to this being that’s caught in the storm, this being that wants to revenge itself, that wants to scream out its jealousy or its sense of betrayal or greed. I’m going to love that being.” It is very hard, but it is the deepest gift you can give, not only to yourself but to God. For to love that which is easy to love is far less of a gift than to love even the angry, jealous, bitter parts of yourself and of all beings.

I want to speak more about different ramifications of this work, especially in connection with the specific questions you have raised. Before I do that, I would like to turn the microphone over to Q’uo so that this brother/sister/friend may offer you its own wisdom and thoughts about this work. That is all.

Q’uo

I am Q’uo. We greet each this morning in the love and in the light of the one infinite Creator. We keenly feel the pleasure of your company and gratefully respond to your call for information.

As the one known as Aaron says so clearly, the separation of the self’s consciousness is an illusion. The physical vehicle is an organized illusion within the grand scheme of illusion that is sensory haven for all of third-density work. Each is aware that this is a dream. However, each knows, too, that this is a purposeful dream, a much-desired and desirable illusion—a delusion with which each seeker learns to cooperate, so that learning the lessons of love may become more and more harmonious and the spirit within more and more harmonized with.

It is easy to dismiss one’s pain. We may use pain or fear to mean the whole range of defensive maneuvers and postures taken by the self as catalyst bursts upon the conscious awareness. We find, however, that the entire process is effectively weakened in its efficient functioning if the seeker looks down on its own suffering. This suffering is not the product of weakness. It is a product that is as strong as it is weak, as informative as it is repulsive. The emotions that are negative are described as heavy, yet this suggests that there needs to be a lightening of the weight of emotion. We suggest that it is the seeker which turns to the negative emotion and allows it to remain seemingly heavy, just keeping it company for the moment, who will more speedily and comfortably find itself able to allow this weight of energy to begin its natural movement, spiraling upwards from the momentary affliction or suffering experience.

We wish to borrow a tale this instrument has read to illustrate what we intend to mean. There was once an old sage who dwelt in one simple room, meditating and praying. So this sage lived for all of its fullness of years. In the twilight of its incarnation, a young, beautiful stranger burst into its humble room with a newborn child, naming the old sage as the child’s father. The sage did not spend time and energy attempting to make it known that it was not the truth. Rather, the sage took the babe and straightway began to work as a shipyard laborer so that it could feed the child. Several years went by with the old man creaking and suffering as he worked the long hours. The babe grew to be a small child. One day this woman, the child’s mother, entered again this sage’s dwelling place and took the child away, saying that it was, after all, her child. Again, the sage did not argue with the woman but simply began again its interrupted life of meditation and prayer.

To resist one’s pain is to intensify it. The pain is a lie, just as the mother lied about the sage being the child’s father. However, when some catalyst strikes a resonance which causes the fear and pain of suffering, to spend effort and time objecting to the situation as a lie is to miss an important point. Yes, negative emotions are a dream within a dream, a lie within another larger system of lies or illusion; yet there is purpose here. As the one known as Aaron has put it, the moment of feeling that impulse to pain is a red flag saying, “Pay attention.” Do not look away, but look attentively at that impulse. Allow that impulse its rightful focal position. Look with attentive caring. Enter into the darkness, the small death of negative feelings. If not at the moment, as soon as possible go down into the darkness of your own perceptions and listen to your own being. It suffers to change, to become new, to move on. A portion of that which you are expressing must die. Let this be as it is.

The verb to communicate is extremely important in this work. Allow heavy feeling to communicate, to become intelligible. Do not swat it away or cover it up. If time must pass before this acceptance of the self can take place, then that is well. But to most efficiently use the goodness of catalyst, the intensity and seeming reality of the nuances of this dark emotion need to be remembered and respected. This acts like a benediction. The suffering of self is thus forgiven by the self which respects these seemingly unacceptable feelings. This allows the energy in these feelings to resume the natural spiraling upward. Denial and resistance attempt to control and abate the suffering. Acceptance and attentiveness within the very darkness is a way to allow the self to be transformed naturally. You have often, perhaps, considered how the child is born into incarnation in pain. Yet the mother is, in the end, totally accepting of this pain, for it has brought about a beloved new life.

In the matter of the spirit’s learning the lesson of love, you are both mother and midwife to the growing child of transformed consciousness that is your continual identity within the chances and changes of illusory incarnational life.

We would at this time turn the microphone back to the one known as Aaron. We are those of Q’uo.

Aaron

I am Aaron. I find deep joy in sharing this teaching/learning with all of you and with my brother/sister Q’uo, especially joy in the ways that we may enhance each other’s thoughts. That which Q’uo has just expressed might be capsulated in a specific spiritual principle: Do not dialogue with fear. This does not mean “get rid of fear.” As Q’uo has pointed out, there must be respect for the suffering. There is no getting rid of here, only being present with what is, with all of what is: the joy and the suffering, the separation and the connection, the illusion and the reality.

When I say, “Do not dialogue with fear,” what I mean is, do not give fear permission to be in control. When you relate to those catalysts that lead you into fear and separation with more fear and a need to get rid of them in order to come back to some place of connection again, some place of love, then you are dialoguing with fear. Fear is controlling you then because there is still this part of you that wants to get rid of this and grasp at that. When you become able to simply be present with what is, then you are no longer reactive to it. There is just fear. There is just pain.

Yes, it may be terrible fear. It may be agonizing physical or emotional pain. It no longer has the capacity to shut out the light. You allow its presence. You move with compassion to the being that is experiencing that catalyst and immediately you are in the light, suffering whatever fear, pain, grief, bewilderment there may be, but still in the light. There is no getting rid of here and no grasping. The energy in the lower chakras becomes blocked when fear assumes such solidity that you begin to fight back. With the second chakra, for example—the spleen chakra—there may be a sense of a self and an other self, a sense that the other is in some way attacking you. Then need to defend arises. The energy becomes distorted at this second chakra and you begin to act, as I have just said, in a dialogue with your fear. At some level, you are aware of the distortion whereby the second chakra is no longer open and spinning freely, whereby energy is not moving through. Fear is intensified. The sense of self is intensified. And there is a grasping to get rid of this catalyst and to reopen one’s energy.

We were asked about Q’uo’s statement about the cells in the body. I will let Q’uo enlarge on that if my brother/sister wishes, but wish only to say to that, that each cell reflects the whole. When there is energy distortion that creates a sense of the second chakra being closed, that distortion is duplicated in each cell in the body. What I am saying here is not technically correct, only an attempt to provide a visual image that may help guide you. If you visualize that second chakra being blocked, the back, the abdomen, the head, the neck—all reflect that blockage.

Each cell in your body, in a sense, has all of these seven chakras within it. Each is a reflection of the whole. You know that there are many energy meridians through the body: organ meridians, junction meridians and so on. They all interrelate. Each reflects the whole. You do not cure the distortion of the back or neck or head or abdomen by grasping at the release of blockage any more than you cure that blockage itself by grasping at the release of blockage.

Each of you has a physical body and a light body. The light body is the more pure reflection of the spirit body, of the soul. Within the light body the energy is always entirely open. The physical body energy is heavier. It replicates that light body as best it can, but is moved and distorted by the play of physical sensation and emotion. When you focus on the perfection of the light body, there need not be grasping at that perfection, but a reminder: “I am this light body as well as the physical. I have compassion for the mud puddles into which the physical illusion leads me. But I also remember my perfection.”

You might sit in meditation with awareness of where there may be distortion in the physical body and in the chakras of the physical body, and focus on the third eye, allowing yourself to begin to visualize there the entire light body. Focus on that as clearly as you can with no grasping, only an awareness, “These are both part of all I am.” The seed of perfection is real. The physical body is very capable of healing itself of distortion, both energy distortion and the physical ramifications of that energy distortion, if it is simply bathed in love and allowed to reconnect with the perfection of the light body.

All of you who do energy work, such as mudra meditation or polarity therapy—many different names for different specific kinds of work—what you are really doing is allowing a reconnection of the physical body with its distortion and the light body, using your energy in one way or another to help forge and strengthen this connection. You do not heal another. You invite the situation in which the body may heal itself by reconnecting with its source.

This is a large topic. I will be glad to speak further on it if there is request to do so. I only want to skim the surface now in so far as it relates to working with the distortions of the lower chakras and to the physical distortions of the body.

Can you see the difference when your focus is, “I must correct this physical distortion?” You are grasping at that. The universe gives you that which you focus upon. This is the nature of the universe. When your focus is the seeming closedness of a specific chakra, and there is a grasping—“I need to fix this in myself; I need to change this, get rid of that, become that …”—the universe hears your fear. On an ultimate level there is no duality. To attain this and to get rid of that are heard as part of the same thing. When you shift your focus, the universe reads you differently.

Thus, instead of asking, “How can I get rid of my fear? I must become a more loving person, which means getting rid of my fear, getting rid of my anger” … Instead of that dialogue with fear, when your focus becomes, “How can I express this energy that I have in service to all beings and for the greatest good of all beings?”—that focus allows the experience of fear or anger or jealousy if that is what is present. There is no need to get rid of anything then. If your learning to express your energy more purely involves, at this moment in time, the experience of discomforting physical or emotional stimuli, so be it. You do not have to like that stimulus. Can you simply allow the presence of it and send love to the being that is experiencing it?

It is this refusal to get caught in a dialogue with fear that becomes the most important part of the reminder for compassion. It takes awareness because it is a trap that you so easily fall into because your habit of dialoguing with your fear has been so constant. I feel some confusion in all of you. I am going to give one very concrete example.

A being perhaps wants to learn to give its energy with generosity to others, and yet is aware that often when it is asked to give in a material or energy form, there is a contraction, a sense, “What if I need this time or energy or resource?” It may then state an affirmation, “I can be generous,” and try to remind itself, even convince itself to be generous. It may even skillfully note the arising of fear and still say, “I will be generous.” But at some level there is grasping to the generous and aversion to the fear. Instead of making the affirmation, “I will be generous,” which strengthens this grasping and aversion, if the being’s focus becomes, “I will work as lovingly as I can with whatever emotions are present in my experience,” then the intention is very different: not to “fix” but to relate to with kindness.

Please note that I am not arguing over the use of skillful affirmation. One must ask, “Is this affirmation a way of keeping me grounded in the aspirations of the loving heart, or is it a way of disguising my fears or aversions?” When one knows one’s fear of giving and returns gently to the center of the open, loving heart, one touches that core space of generosity. Then, through skillful affirmations, one reminds oneself that the core exists and one can dwell within it.

The seeds of generosity, of patience, of loving-kindness, of connection, of energy, of truth, of morality—all of these are within all of you. This is not something you have to go out of yourself to find. You only allow those seeds to express themselves. So to be generous to another you do not have to affirm and cling to, “I will be generous,” only to attend to what blocks the natural impulse to generosity. Here you are not getting caught in conversation with your fear, only noting, “Fear is present,” and offering it the love and compassion that it needs to begin to dissolve enough that the natural generosity may be expressed.

You will find the same principle is true with any emotion that you are experiencing. When fear leads you to shame or jealousy, a sense of betrayal, rage; when you can offer love to the human experiencing that emotion and let go of grasping at, “I shouldn’t be raging. I shouldn’t be jealous. I should be giving in this situation. I should be patient”; when you can see all of those judgments and just note, “Here’s judgment again,” and come back to the focus, “I wish to offer my energy, to manifest my energy as purely as possible for the good of all beings, including myself. I wish to touch each being with love. I intend to touch each being with love”—this process gives the universe a very different message. But it must be honest. You must really look into yourselves to see, “Is that the message I’m ready to offer? What fear is blocking my readiness to offer that message?” and attend to that fear over and over and over again; because each time you think fear is gone, it re-emerges. It is not a burden laid upon you, but a gift of the incarnation. Fear, pain, whatever you are experiencing, is precisely what you need in that moment to lead you more deeply to paying attention, to give you the opportunity to practice loving-kindness and compassion for yourself and all beings.

I know that there are some specific questions here. I also would like to give Q’uo further opportunity to speak so I will pass the microphone over to Q’uo, offering that Q’uo make the decision whether it wishes to speak itself before your questions or ask for those questions. That is all.

Q’uo

I am again with this instrument. I am Q’uo, and greet each again in love and in light.

To end our portion of this session of working, we would ask each to move with us in visualization. Each entity please choose the situation which first comes to mind wherein you have felt your senses thrum with the running of the energy of heavy negative emotion. Feel the first impulse hit your consciousness—this striking of the self, this violation of calm and serenity. Allow it to seem, as it does, a wrenching, tearing, pulling of the self in a descending gyre until the body is flattened on the dust of a barren land. Taste that acrid dust. Know this dust is made of self-condemnation. Feel the body as it is flattened by this suffering moment. Call out within yourself:

“The world is a trouble and a sorrow. The world is a trouble and a sorrow. The world is a trouble and a sorrow.” ²

Feel the intensification of that sorrow. Feel the healing enter into this celebration of sorrowing self. Take this body into your arms, self crooning to self, self comforting self. Rock with this poor, pained child. Sing the lullaby of faith, of hope:

“When I carry my title clear to mansions in the sky, I’ll bid farewell to all my fear and wipe my weeping eye. I will wipe my weeping eye.” ³

Let the child stand on its own now. It hopes. It knows it is on a journey home. Homeward goes the sorrowing, healing soul.

Breathe the fullness of that rising natural realization of the exact opposite of the original pain. Feel the strength build as the realization is allowed to bloom that this, too, is of the nature of the one infinite Creator. This, too, is of love. This, too, is holy. And rise in spirit singing, “Holy, holy, holy …” ⁴

Are there any brief queries before we close our portion of this session?

[No further queries.]

We would then leave each, until later, in the love and in the light of the one infinite Creator. The one known as Aaron, we believe, will also speak not now but this afternoon, as you would say. So for now, Adonai. We are those of Q’uo.