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

I am Aaron. Good morning and my love to you all. I hope you have had a restful night. A few of you are aware of dreams in which you were observant of the movement between contraction and opposition to it, and to dancing with that catalyst and the resultant contraction about which we spoke last night. We have been talking about this balance between the ultimate being—which is whole and knows its wholeness, which experiences no veil separating itself from the reality of its wholeness—and the relative being which perceives itself to be less than whole and is struggling to become whole.

You are not incarnated to get rid of that struggle, but to live it out and learn from it. You must cherish the experience of the incarnation without getting lost in it. This, to me, is another aspect of the devotional life: the willingness to work in an ongoing way to keep both doors open, cherishing and living the incarnation from a perspective that sees it clearly.

You are the mother tying the child’s shoes before it leaves to march in the parade, straightening its collar, adjusting the outfit, smoothing its hair. And you are simultaneously on the tenth-floor balcony observing not only the whole parade but the infinite landscape through which the parade marches. From that perspective you cannot see whether the child’s shoe is still tied; but if it is not tied, if you had not given that care on the relative plane, then it might stumble and fall, disrupting the entire parade behind it. And that disruption you would see from your balcony.

So, you must attend to both, attend with infinite care to the details of relative existence. And that attendance is what I name as devotion—attending but without fixation, with the spaciousness which sets you up on that balcony. You might even move to the sixtieth floor where you can see all the neighboring villages and all the other parades.

I want to invite you to do a small inner exercise with me. Walk into a bathroom with me. Turn on the faucet and observe the water filling the sink. Suddenly it threatens to overflow and the faucet that turned it on does not turn off. It seems to turn in only one direction. The water is up to the top lip now and here it comes over the top, running down onto the floor. Try to turn it off again; it will not turn. Feel the tension building in you. It is streaming over the top now, a literal waterfall, and you know that this bathroom is directly above the living room. It will leak through. Quick, gather towels. Mop up the water. Toss the saturated towel into the bathtub and take another and another. If you go fast you can keep up. Can you feel the tension of that? “Me against this water.” This is the relative human. And now I walk into the bathroom and pull the plug. Whoosh! The water goes down the drain. Feel the tension relax?

Life constantly hands you its barrage of overflowing sinks, of problems to be solved; and your energy contracts into a self that will handle those problems. This, my dear ones, is not devotion. This is control. This is fear.

Even if that sink was above not your own but your neighbor’s living room in an apartment, and if your desire to stop the water was so that no harm would come to your neighbor, implying focus on service to another—when you are meeting the issue with that contraction of fear, you are simply moving into a perpetuation of an old pattern which believes that the ego self must be in control. If it must be in control, then there is something “other than” out there of which it must be in control.

So, you move into the myth of strengthening the self, being the powerful or capable or good one. There is nothing “other than.” In the moment when you symbolically pull the plug, you shift tracks from the fear track to the love track. You come back into harmony. The universe is not throwing mud on you in order to make you feel small or inadequate. If the universe does fling mud on you, in some way you have invited participation in that experience because the soul sought the experience—that 4X4 beat over the head that we talk about—sought the experience because there was a higher area of learning which it sought, and it did not know how to open to that area of learning.

I want to offer a brief example of Barbara’s experience here. She did not ask for the tendonitis in her shoulder or the hernia in her belly. The conscious self did not want these distortions. The conscious self wanted to be healthy and free of pain. The higher wisdom sought the experience of moving into full harmony with the universe and was aware of the use to draw to itself the catalyst needed to make evident the areas of delusion, so as to allow the fullest possible expression of this intended harmony. The personal self agreed, without knowing the details, “This learning is the highest priority. Whatever it takes, I agree.” It was offered milder lessons of the truth of harmony and was unable to pay attention to those. It truly needed something either life-threatening or physically painful to catch its attention.

And so, the body began to manifest these symptoms, these symptoms rather than other symptoms, because they grew out of a karmic stream, because there had been past injuries to the body in these areas and there is a cellular level of memory which perpetuates that distortion until it is released. My intention here this morning is not to explain how karma works in depth, so I will leave off that particular track and be glad to answer any questions about it at another time.

Simply put, here was the human frantically mopping up the floor, and it needed to be reminded that the water is not “other than.” You need not attack it. Instead of perpetuating the practice in which you find yourself in opposition to it, stop. Use whatever practices are necessary or useful to release the tension of these old patterns in the ways that you practiced in the dance last night. That is one type of practice for coming back into this sixth-floor perspective; and then you see all of the other possibilities, nothing in opposition to you. Pull the plug or open your heart or whatever is appropriate in that circumstance—“Nothing against me.”

To do this over and over and over is to live the devotional life. This is coming back to the memory, “I am divine and everything is divine, and I do not need to live my life in fear and disharmony.” To do this is so difficult because the personal self is so attached to its fear, attached to its perpetuation of its mythical separation. It has felt safe, albeit alone, in that separation. And you are constantly asked to give up that mythical separation which has held you alone but safe, to offer your fear of the Divine—not getting rid of it, just releasing it/offering it—to offer your unworthiness, another illusion; to offer the myth that you are bad or broken.

My dear ones, all of those myths served a purpose to the personal self. You come to one and then another and you ask, “This one, too? Must I let go of this?” Yes, all of it. With each letting-go there is resistance. When you learn to greet that resistance with a gentle kindness, it is not so hard.

After some time, you find that you can be observant of the parade on the ground level from a basement window that watches the feet go by and sees all of the untied shoes. And you can watch the parade from the sixtieth floor at the same time—a spaciousness which reaches out and ties each shoe as it passes by, but without any fixation on any of this passing parade as “self,” without any self to protect, just love which comes up to the highest floor and watches the whole process.

At this time I would like to pass the microphone to my brother/sister/friend Q’uo. I want to state here that it brings much joy (I speak for myself here but I know that Q’uo would echo my words). It brings me much joy to share with you in this dialogue pattern, each adding the richness of our own perspective. We speak as two souls speaking to this gathering of souls, all of us gathered together. I thank you with loving and grateful heart for wanting to share with this circle in this way. That is all.

We are those of Q’uo. And we, too, greet you with love, light, and joy in the infinite Creator.

How pleased we are to be exploring that great Mystery which is the ground of being with you. To us it remains an inimitable and ineffable Mystery; and at the same time, as we become more ripened as spirits, we become ever more deeply in love with this Mystery. We know not at what point we shall move beyond distortion, but we care not; for the delight of consciousness is like the odor of remembered flowers, a scent of supernal beauty that stays with utmost clarity in the memory.

We have been talking about the core of the art of living well, shall we say. That core being the establishment of a truly peaceful and non-judgmental attitude with regard to the self in all of its human vagaries. We have encouraged you to have mercy on yourselves and to allow healing, to touch the jagged edges of the wounds that the self’s reaction to catalyst have caused. But how to do that? We are not speaking of releasing the self from the processes of self-determined ethics. We do not discourage the seeker from creating personal standards or from attempting with a whole heart to fulfill and honor these ethical commitments; but rather, our concern is that the sense of self not be diminished in the self’s regard by the straying from the subjective structure of perceived righteousness or justice.

This work is important to the emerging metaphysical being. To enter into these processes with healing is for many difficult due to the self’s disappointment with itself. We might suggest as a tool to be used in moments of self-judgment, the visualizing of a scene upon the stage of consciousness in which the Creator’s hand is downstretched, open, palm upward—that hand being as tall as you, you being just able to reach into the palm to give to this outstretched hand of love the gifts of your humanity; for we assure you that the Creator finds these gifts precious. Here is the thing not done. Here is the thing done in error, omissions and commissions that you perceive as erroneous. Give them up. One by one let them tumble into that palm, one upon the other. Here, envy and pride … all the sorry gifts of the undisciplined self.

Now look upon these bits of colored stone that are the form of these metaphysical gifts. To you, when you gave them, they were gray, ugly, broken pieces of self, fit only for the trash. Look now and see the beautiful colors of these shards of a life broken as they gleam and shine—blessed, accepted, and transfigured by the love of the infinite One. These are gifts indeed.

When these gifts have been given, when you see these colors, retreat a step at a time from the visualization and come back to the self—forgiven, blessed, renewed. You are loved in every tiny iota of the fullness of your being. There is, then, the opportunity to begin anew; and truly this chance is always real, not a mirage. For metaphysically speaking, the one who turns over its perceived errors is doing substantial and blessed labor. Take the deep breaths of the light that dwells as plenum in all that there is and know that you are made new.

We would at this time turn the working over to our beloved cohort, that prince in monk’s robes, our Aaron. We leave this instrument in love and light for the moment. We are those of Q’uo.

I am Aaron. As there will be a fourth session, my choice is to keep the next body of material separate and offer it this afternoon, and to focus our attention here for now. One of you has spoken to me of the questions of the human as teacher and learner. Each of you is always a teacher to other. At times, that which it teaches is the personal ego self. At times, that which it teaches is the Pure-Awareness Self. She states that it would be ideal if all who taught could teach from that highest level, but of course you cannot. Thus, your teaching of another is a process of discovering and analyzing that highest awareness in yourself.

For many of you, because you are aware that the teaching comes from the ego self, you become frozen, afraid to offer that because of your abhorrence that you will offer distortion and thereby defile another. I bring this up as one area about which we would like to hear your concerns. Please offer any other questions that come to your minds and to which you would have us speak.

In the exercise that Aaron described last night, is there a way to do this without anyone else with us?

I am Aaron. I hear your question. You may constantly do this. There is always a partner, although often not a human partner. There is the sink that overflows.

This instrument showered this morning and found some water on the floor. Immediately her energy contracted against the water. Then you must offer that small, whispered, “Dance with it. The water on the floor is not my enemy.” If you stub your toe and there is pain, you can fight with that pain or embrace the pain and soften your energy field around it. If the letter which you sought was not in the mailbox in the incoming mail, feel the contraction—wanting, wanting, grasping—and remind yourself, “I am not in opposition to the universe nor the universe in opposition to me. That letter not coming is the catalyst … this is the water on the floor by the tub …”

What is your relation to the catalyst? You will see it constantly at every red light, at every wait in the supermarket line. Noting the contraction, you make the skillful and loving decision to move back into harmony, to observe the contraction with a certain spaciousness and kindness. You are not getting rid of the contraction. If you are late getting across town and hit a string of red lights, you may note at each one that there is contraction.

If you walked across a graveled driveway strewn with rocks and your feet were bare, many of them would prick your feet and there would be pain and contraction. You would not say, “There should not be contraction,” but you, out of kindness to the body, might feel anger towards the driveway. “Why does it have to have sharp rocks?” You might think, “Next time I will bring shoes to cross this road,” but you do not think, “I shouldn’t feel pain.” You do not think, “My body should not contract. My body should like the pain.” There is kindness to the body.

With emotional catalyst—the red lights as you drive across town—the energy contracts in the same way. Just come back to, “What is tense?” Come back to harmony with the universe. “The universe is handing me precisely the catalyst that I need. Can I sit here with each light, on the ground floor with the human squirming, wanting the light to change, while from the top floor, awareness is observing how much tension this human is feeling and offering it love?”

As you nurture that higher perspective, you begin to keep the door open so that you can come into painful catalyst, observe the painful contraction, and not fixate on doing anything about the contraction—not getting rid of it or flinging your anger about it on another, but just noting, “Here is contraction,” and dancing with it.

As Q’uo just pointed out, this does not stop you, for example, from putting on shoes and going out and removing the sharpest rocks from the driveway. You learn to act skillfully from a place of love; to relate to the world in ways harmonious to the human’s value system; to bring about change, but from a place of love and not from a place of fear. May we hear others of your questions directed either to Q’uo or to myself, or else simply thrown out loosely for us to decide who will answer?

Usually when I channel I can feel that the energy of the circle is upholding me perfectly. Occasionally I can tell that in addition to this energy, my essence is somehow being tapped and I am spending a lot of my own energy. Can you give me any insight into whether this is random or whether this is as it should be?

I believe we would both like to speak to this question. May I speak first? This is not random. It is the place where the ego self has become more solid, where there is tension—perhaps internal tension about the answer or some thought that the self should know the answer, so that the self ceases for that moment to be a perfectly clear instrument and offers also its own opinion or need or fear into the workings. And this is fine, although uncomfortable and certainly less clear in the resultant channel. But it is your catalyst, your opportunity for learning.

There is a level of mind present in you which is observing this tension. My sister, may I suggest that when you experience this tension, you simply begin to note it as “Tension, tension …” I would suggest that you use a very non-judgmental label. To say, “Ego is present,” becomes a judgment. Your observance of this situation in yourself simply points out the presence of some tension within you about the question or about the receiving of the answer. And as you note it, “Tension, tension …” you find an infinite spaciousness opening to that tension and you find yourself coming back to the clarity which is your preferred way of channeling, both for the clarity of the answer and to not drain your self’s energy. I believe Q’uo would like also to speak to this. I pause.

We are with this instrument. We are those of Q’uo.

We would say to this instrument: My child, you remember the parable of Peter in the boat at night on the Sea of Galilee 1, how Peter saw his teacher walking upon the waters to him. Recall how Peter leapt from the boat and walked to meet his beloved rabbi. Only when Peter became aware that he was doing an impossible thing did he begin to sink. And then Peter remembered to reach out his hand to grasp his teacher’s. Always your beloved’s hand awaits your reach. Always the turning to trust will not be in vain.

We are those of Q’uo. May Aaron and we have the next query, please?

When Barbara and I danced a bit last evening, there seemed to be several stages of release as we did. The final stage caused a different sort of contraction because I seemed to perceive flashes of some immense, bright space. But the sense of personal me couldn’t find itself there, so it kept retreating. Is it so that there is perceived these stages of release?

I am Aaron. I hear your question, my brother. It is hard to think of it as stages so much as continuum from utmost involvement in the personal ego self with no notion of the expanded self to total resting in the expanded self. There lies a vast continuum. Because the mind cannot experience the subtleties of that continuum, it may see it in terms of plateaus. But in the reaching of each plateau, there is a continuum.

Ultimately you open into that space of light. There is no personal self there and there need not be a personal self there. But that does not mean the personal self has ceased to exist. On the ultimate level it never did exist, but was simply one expression of the Divine. But on a relative plane it does not and will not cease to exist.

If you have a screw to set in a hole and you go to your toolbox and get the screwdriver, turn the screw, and then put the screwdriver down—five minutes later has the screwdriver ceased to exist? It does not exist in that space/time, but it still exists. When you reach that place of infinite spaciousness and innate clarity, the personal self simply has no need to exist in that space/time. You will come back to it when you need it.

There are very valuable meditation practices which teach you to rest stably in this infinite space and Pure-Awareness Mind, to rest in the divine Self, and to reopen skillfully to the personal self when you have need to do so. You cannot take out the garbage merely from the soul self. Your humanity is needed. I would pass the microphone at this time to Q’uo. I pause.

We are those of Q’uo. My brother, we ask: What now remains as the direction of your seeking upon this planet within this pattern?

[Pause]

We are those of Q’uo. And in your silence lies a gift that you give yourself. For skill can wane and heart can fail. Yet upon the sea of consciousness there is that spirit which abides, moving over the water to create and alike to destroy. It is in the opening to and allowing of this overarching energy that the seeker will find answers that have no words, but only open the door into that purity of emotion within which lies personal truth.

We are those of Q’uo.

Thank you, Q’uo and Aaron.

Is there a further query at this time?

I have been working with anger in my partner. I understand his pain and why he lashes out at me, and yet am hurt by this. I don’t understand why, if I can see with compassion that his road is different and I can learn from him … how can I be hurt? When I think about this it makes me sad and teary. That’s my question.

We are those of Q’uo. My sister, was it the immortal bard which asked, “If you prick me, do I not bleed?” It is appropriate to hurt or to be hurt when there are negative emotions directed upon your hapless head. This is his gift to you. To the world it is a kind of abuse to be tolerated. To the spirit it represents, as do all catalysts, an opportunity to respond rather than react, to allow the self to feel mourning, grieving, returning anger and resentment, and every iota of reaction. And at the same time it remains a viable option to decide to create a response that bears feeling from the heart and that turns from pity of self to peace in the end, and from anger to the sender of these errors to an embrace of the arrows that wound and the anger that smites. Until that entire energy is seen as the self, confusedly striking out at its own self, this friction seems hot and very physical; yet the issues underlying this catalyst are old and cold as stone. The challenge is to warm—with your allowing—that system of karmic friction, by your honoring of pain and your utter willingness to suffer until all is balanced.

We are those of Q’uo.

I am Aaron. I would also speak to this question. Amongst those of you who place high value on offering your energy lovingly to others and who look with abhorrence on the possibility of offering your energy in ways that will hurt another, there is popular misconception that when you are abused, you must be doormat to that abuse.

The partner offers its anger in seemingly inappropriate ways. There is indeed real compassion seeing the fear, the pain, and tightness out of which the partner’s hateful words have grown. There is the understanding that the partner’s highest intention is not to hurt you but to defend itself, and that it simply does not know how to defend itself without hurting you. As Q’uo has clearly stated, of course there is hurt, especially as you grow in understanding and in ability to control that which would fling out of yourself in harm to others. The hurt is that the partner is not willing or able to grow in that way and so perpetuates its own pattern of offering hurt to you.

There may even be compassion about that, seeing that this partner is stuck there. So, there you are with your compassion and your sense of hurt, and a stoicism which says, “I will abide. I will tolerate.” And, as Q’uo has said, to be willing to suffer as the karmic threads work themselves out is an essential part of this.

But also, there is a time to speak your own truth, not from a place of fear which would defend in the same pattern that the partner defends, but from a loving place to both of you which says, “This is enough.” The statement is not offered in condemnation of the partner, but offered in the same way that a loving parent picks up the crying two-year-old who is having a temper tantrum and who has begun to pick up items, such as pots, and fling them. The parent does not condemn the two-year-old; it understands that the child is exhausted. But it wraps it in its loving embrace and prevents it from doing further damage. It holds it lovingly until its energy has quieted.

It is important that the parent does not say, “You are only a two-year-old.” It respects the force that is moving through the other, but recognizes that it is not skillful nor appropriate to allow that force to fling itself out at the world. Sometimes the two-year-old will cry all the harder for a bit.

When you say to your partner, “I understand that you are angry, but your statements do cause pain. Is that what you want to do? Is your priority here to defend yourself and cause pain in me, or is your priority to help us learn to communicate better? But you see that neither of us knows how best to allow that communication at this time. If your real wish is to communicate, can we wait until your anger settles itself a bit? And can we then attempt that communication?”

In such a way you begin to allow the partner the right to its anger, the right to its fear. There is a certain respect for its processes. But there is a clear statement, “While you have a right to your own processes, you do not have the right to pour the energy of those processes on me in hurtful ways.”

Of course, it is more complex because sometimes the partner does not seem to be ready to hear that statement. I do not pinpoint the question here; but in certain circumstances you will find that the other wants to perpetuate the pattern of its fear and cannot tolerate your invitation to move beyond its fear, and so it becomes necessary that you part ways. In that situation you will have to ask yourself, “Am I willing to allow the continuance of this pattern of fear and continue to participate in it in order to have that which I value from this other person, or am I no longer willing to allow the perpetuation of those patterns?”

Most often if you are patient … it will not happen all at once, but if you are patient through weeks, or months, or even years, the other will open to your invitation. When I say patient, it is not that you will have to wait years for the beginning of opening, but for the fruition.

Both instruments are becoming a bit tired. May we ask for just one more question? And we’ll continue your questions in the afternoon session. I pause here.

In the bathroom meditation Aaron was speaking about, he said that when we move from a place of control, we contract into a self that can handle an overflowing sink. He also called this moving from a fear track and not a love track. Obviously this is not truly effective; but there is the habitual thought that to be effective in a situation that we find overwhelming, we do have to take personal control. Love is unlimited. Why don’t we find it easy to trust that?

I am Aaron. I hear your question. You say there is a habit that, from a place of fear, you do have to take personal control. What does personal control mean? The small ego self is one piece of personal control. The higher self is a different aspect of personal control. This is partway on that progression from enclosure in the small ego self to resting in the Pure Heart/Mind, the Pure Spirit Body that is the ultimate level of your understanding, and unrelated to the personal. The higher self includes the mental body, but it is a place that is free of fear.

My friends, you like your problems, even though you claim to dislike them. You invite them back over and over and over. If you do not have a problem in yourself, you go out and find a comrade whose problem you can solve. To be a problem-solver helps you to feel strong, safe. You repeat the same patterns over and over and over.

If indeed there are infinite solutions, if in fact there has never been a problem, only a situation that needs loving attention, then you must begin to ask yourself why these “myriad solutions” elude you. What is there that does not want to find the solution, because to do so is to give up being the problem-solver, to give up studying the problem?

I would ask you to begin to work from a very different place. Here you are in the bathroom with the sink water rushing over the sides of the sink. Your final goal is a dry floor. You had a stack of a hundred towels, but now there are only four or five left. Clearly this is not going to work. What if you stop this mad rush to be in control and begin instead to visualize just what it is that you want to have happen?

What if G were to begin to visualize a loving and harmonious relationship with her husband? What if she sees how that experience of mutual fear can become two people treating each other with respect? Several things may happen. She may begin to have insight into why she is attached at some level to the perpetuation of the pattern of disrespect, the ways that this pattern keeps the ego safe even though the heart-self longs for communication and light. As she comes into awareness of the ways she has perpetuated the pattern, the heart’s deepest wisdom intuitively will provide the pathways leading into harmony. I said before and I repeat, you must be willing to offer up that which holds to disharmony for ego-centered or defended reasons.

As Q’uo pointed out, you must be willing to take that hand which offers to you the strength, the courage, the love to follow in the path. It is not easy. But within those two movements—to offer up that which has so long been held and to seek the Divine without and within—within those two movements is the doorway to growth, to healing, to peace.

At this time I would pass this microphone to my beloved friend Q’uo for final thoughts and the conclusion of this session. I thank you all deeply for allowing me into your circle; and also, on behalf of all who live for the greater opening of love in the universe, my thanks to you for the courage with which you continue to seek those openings of love in yourself. That is all.

We are those of Q’uo. Dear ones, vampires and vampiric energies, those spears which assail and wound, seem to come from the enemy. Yet you are always wounded by your very self. You cannot go around such energy. You cannot escape from this energy, for like an ill wind, it will blow where it will. Yet you can enfold such wounding energy in an embrace which accepts the energy, honors it, and takes it in without fear. Love does abide—not your love, but the Creator’s love.

You cannot overspend the love that comes through you. The task lies in allowing the self to become transparent so that the love flowing through creates that glow that recreates the face of the earth. You tremble on the brink of miracles. Lift high your hopes and live by faith. We shall speak again soon. Meanwhile we leave each of you with great thanks in the love and in the light of the one infinite Creator. We are those of the principle known to you as Q’uo. Adonai. Adonai.

  1. Holy Bible, Matthew 14:26-32. ↩