Group question: How do we work with this harm and with our own distortions so as more clearly to offer our energy with non harm?

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

[On this occasion, Aaron and Barbara presented practices.]

I use this practice to remind myself that I have the ability to become a purer vessel and to remind myself to tend to all three areas of my extension into the world—body, speech, mind.

The positive precepts—traditional Buddhist.

With deeds of loving-kindness, I purify my body.

With openhanded generosity, I purify my body.

With stillness, simplicity and contentment, I purify my body.

With truthful communication, I purify my speech.

With words kind and gracious, I purify my speech.

With utterances helpful and harmonious, I purify my speech.

Abandoning covetousness for tranquility, I purify my mind.

Changing hatred into compassion, I purify my mind.

Transforming ignorance into wisdom, I purify my mind.

If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it.

Abandon what is unskillful. One can abandon the unskillful. If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it. If this abandoning of the unskillful would bring harm and suffering, I would not ask you to abandon it. But as it brings benefit and happiness, therefore, I say abandon what is unskillful.

Cultivate the good. One can cultivate the good. If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it. If this cultivation were to bring harm and suffering, I would not ask you to do it. But as this cultivation brings joy and happiness, I say cultivate the good.“ (The Buddha 1)

Aaron will lead us in guided meditation and prayer.

To begin, draw in and exhale several deep breaths.

[Pauses are indicated with ellipses.]

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Relax the body, tension leaving with the exhalation, mind letting go, coming into this breath, this moment.

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Make yourself at home in the universe, resting in that space which truly is yours.

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Be present for this one eternal now.

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Open totally.

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If something hangs on or if there is aversion, it is okay; it will go on its own. Nothing to do but touch all arising lightly with choiceless awareness.

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Opening into this precious moment, allow to arise in yourself the awareness of your connection with all that is—no longer your joy or your pain but our joy, our pain.

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Seeing the joy and pain of all beings, allow to arise in you the aspiration to serve all beings, to move beyond your own small fears and troubles; and instead, to use energy, courage and awareness to alleviate suffering throughout the world.

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This statement of intention is important, bringing awareness from my suffering to ours and offering the self as instrument for the alleviation of suffering.

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Rest in that intention for several minutes, allowing awareness to spread, moving beyond the small self.

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As you expand outward and come to rest in the divine self, the eternal and pure awareness, feel the presence of the divine in all its aspects.

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Rest in the nature of pure awareness, pure mind.

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Allow yourself to rest in that space, feeling the energy which surrounds you.

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Now the second step: to ask for help from all that surrounds you. Open to the spirit plane and to the divine in your own nature.

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In your own words, ask for the ability to hear that wisdom and to share it for the alleviation of suffering of all beings.

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Offer yourself as a receptive instrument, not for your own benefit only, but for all beings.

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And rest in that space, open and attentive, heart unbounded, ready to listen with that loving heart.

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Finally, offer thanks for whatever you will be given. Then sit for several minutes in silence.

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I am Aaron. My love to you all. Bring yourselves into your body. I request that you allow yourselves the experience of the inhale and the exhale—to come deeply into your body for this particular meditation. I would like you to feel that inhalation and exhalation in the belly. Breathe in … belly breath … feel the breath coming into the abdomen and then breathe out. Let the body be soft and open. Now, let attention move upwards from the body to the heart. This living heart is the core of your being. The brain is the servant. It is in the heart where the true Christ or Buddha self dwells.

The body may experience pain and react by distorting itself or contracting. The brain may experience fear or discomfort and turn to what it is good at, which is directing the show so as to protect the organism from that which it fears or finds discomforting. The heart can watch all of that movement and know that it is merely the superficial movement of waves on the surface and does not affect the true being.

It is in this heart that I invite you to rest. Whatever physical sensations may arise, you can attend to them skillfully, without fixation. Whatever thoughts or emotions may arise, you can attend to them skillfully, without fixation. From a loving heart, we offer the deepest affirmation of our being. Please join me silently in offering that affirmation if it feels appropriate to you:

Today may I offer my energy in a loving-kindness to all beings, including myself. If judgment, fear, greed, anger, or any such contracted emotion arises within me today, may I greet it with love and invite it into the heart where kindness may soften and transform it. I offer myself fully as a servant of the light. To be a servant is not to be somebody but to be nobody. I simply offer my energy that the divine may make use of it in ways that the divine itself determines, not the ways which I determine. As much as possible, I offer my energy in that spirit and my whole being in service of God, of love, of light. I ask for whatever help may be offered to me by all loving beings on every plane to help me express and nurture this resolve. Through allowing myself to be an instrument of light, may I help to bring more light into the universe so that increasingly all beings everywhere may be free of suffering, may be happy, may find perfect peace.

The last writing on the page is also from a traditional Buddhist prayer. Please read it with me if you would like:

“By the power and truth of this practice, may all beings have happiness and the cause of happiness, which is loving-kindness. May all be free from sorrow and the causes of sorrow, which are fear, hatred and delusion. May all never be separated from the sacred happiness, which is sorrowless. And may all live in equanimity, without too much attachment and too much aversion; and live, believing in the equality of all that lives.” 2

It is traditional in these teachings to offer outwards whatever merit comes from this work, not to take it for oneself, but to offer it back out to all beings. The offering reminds me of Jesus’ words from the Bible, “not my will, but thine.” 3

May whatever merit comes from this practice go to the enlightenment of all beings. May it become a drop in the ocean of activity of all of the Great Ones and their tireless work for the liberation of all beings.

[A question was formulated to address the concern that, while there may be no intention to harm, harm does sometimes occur: How do we work with this harm and with our own distortions so as more clearly to offer our energy with non-harm?]

I am Aaron. My love to you all. We are talking of how we serve others and of purification of the self to be offered in that service. I would toss a question into your stew pot here. Some years ago C. and Barbara met with a man from their church. He was very negative and expressed tremendous fear. He was violating the spirit of the meeting by bringing his fear in and publicizing it out to the meeting, condemning and judging specific people vocally within the meeting.

The three of them spent a number of hours talking together about what he calls his righteous anger and need to denounce these others who had done him harm. The women were able to hear his pain. He was not really able to hear them and their suggestions that he bring love rather than hatred to these places of perceived harm.

One would have to say that this man was bringing in a very distorted channeling of his own negative bias. He was being a channel for fear and dissension. It caused much pain for many members of the church. C. and Barbara experienced his fear and negativity, not with pain or fear, but with a sense that they really could not speak to it. Yet this man opened so many doors for so many people through the catalyst he offered. Was he being a good channel or a bad channel? Was what he offered of harm or of benefit, or some of each? What does “good” mean? What does “bad” mean?

Clearly you do not intend to offer your energy with the intention of harm. And yet, even when there is no intention of harm, sometimes harm is what comes out. This man had no conscious intention of harm. He felt it a moral necessity to let people know that he felt they had harmed him, not to let them continue what he perceived as their distortion. That does not release him from responsibility for the great pain that he caused. But the negative bearing of his attack on others ultimately served as catalyst which brought much insight for many. So it needs to be understood that there are many factors which determine the labeling of “good” or “bad.” That is all.

We are the principle known to you as Q’uo; and we greet each of you in love and in light, those lasting and active principles of the one Creator.

We come to you as brothers and sisters of sorrow, for we hear the call of your Earth. We hear and are pierced by your sorrow and distress; and we thank you always for this call, this willingness to work with the catalyst which comes to you, not cynically, but hopefully. The deepest sorrow and the greatest pain are as fallow fields within which is sown the kingdom of love. There is the parable within the holy work known as the Bible, of the kingdom of love being one precious pearl buried in a field. The one who seeks the pearl sells all that he has and buys the field. 4

We hope to help each of you relate to your humanity. But there are subtleties involved when the self-aware seeker turns within. The mind sees the self. It sees the self watching the self. It sees the self who is watching the self who is watching the self. When the self perceives negative emotion, it sees the self seeing negative emotion and the self seeing the self seeing negative emotion. This creates the crowded universe and does not enlarge mercy. And so, we would suggest that as you watch yourself, as you perceive dealing with seemingly negative catalyst, that you remain within that first self-awareness which observes—the observer in a court room typing out what is said and who is responsible only for getting the words set down aright. There is no judgment involved in reporting what occurs. Last evening the one known as Aaron and we worked with that crumpled piece of paper; and it is always helpful to remember that no matter what you are perceiving, it is still no more than a temporary chimera, a shadow flashing upon a sheet of paper whose other side remains completely clean and untouched.

In working to become better, may we suggest that what each is actually responsible for is becoming more oneself. The urge to be better is answered within your earth world by a list of preferred adjectives: worthy, generous, loving … You could think of desirable qualities for a good long time and create wonderful, inspiring lists of good qualities. However, you are an unique being. You are like the snowflake, that crystal that is quite obviously snow, yet whose kaleidoscopic patterns are unique. Only you in all of the created and uncreated universes is you. Therefore, we ask that you encourage within yourself the perceptive ear that notes those moments when you can feel yourself being who you feel you are.

Each of you within this circle has by seniority of vibration earned the opportunity to incarnate at this time. Each of you has two main goals: You wished to move through the intense incarnative experience, repeating for yourself your lesson of loving, which you felt could use more polarity; and you wished—for you, too, are brothers and sisters of sorrow—to lighten the planetary consciousness of this sphere you call Earth.

Your instrument is your self. Learning to play this instrument involves doing those practices, those scales if you will, which enable you to develop a sweet melody as you live your life. If you can see the flute or recorder or any reed instrument, perhaps you can see your energy centers as those buttons which you press to make your melody. Thusly, you wish in each case to clarify the energy that is there, to make it more itself, to make each energy true—not another’s truth, not a teacher’s truth, but your unique note of sound. For example, let us take the note of any ray, say the yellow ray. Your hope is not to make brighter or larger that energy, but rather to find the truth, the balance that does exist. Once all the energies are played upon consciously, they begin to adjust and balance themselves.

We would at this time transfer the microphone to our beloved brother Aaron. We are those of Q’uo.

I am Aaron. Q’uo’s example of the melody of the flute brings to mind another image, which is that of a pure spring giving rise to a series of streams running in different directions, eventually drawing together again as they enter the sea itself. The water that enters each stream from the pool around the spring is absolutely pure.

Think of yourself as this streambed; this pure water flows through you. Some streambeds have accumulated a good deal of debris. The purity of the original water never changes. If you add something into that pure water and then lift it out, the water is unchanged. If silt falls to the bottom of the clean, rocky streambed, it will affect the water until the streambed is cleaned again. Then the water will once again be pure. Even if you add chemical pollutant into that water and then filter it out, you have the same pure water again. But for some periods of time it will be affected by the quality of the streambed or the additives.

As you experience that pure water moving through you, you bring different ingredients into it. Figuratively speaking, you bring chemical pollutants into the stream of Pure Awareness through fear, greed and anger. If you do not attend to the pollutants, do not then filter them out, the person downstream who wishes a drink will receive water that is chemically impure. The pure water is there, but somebody has got to filter out the pollutants.

You have two areas of work, as I see it. One is consciously to deepen your intention to offer your energy with love. This means to pollute the water as little as possible or not at all. And second is to understand that because the human is what it is, it is going to pollute the water at times. Then you must be responsible for what you have created.

The problem is not that you occasionally pollute the water, but that when you do so, you then turn on yourself with shame and judgment instead of turning your energy to clarifying that which you have polluted. You let the pollution go past because you are so busy condemning yourself that the water became clouded in the first place.

My dear ones, if you were already perfect, if you did not occasionally offer your energy in distorted ways that give rise to cloudiness, you would not be here in incarnation. The more you can stay in each moment, noting the various contractions of mind and body which give rise to the distortion of fear—which distortion tends to pour pollutants into the water—the less you actually have to pour those pollutants out into the stream of life.

By way of simple example, your intention is to offer your energy with kindness. Somebody who is feeling much fear and pain approaches you and belligerently attacks you with his words. When you notice your own arising defensiveness—arising of discomfort and desire to attack that which is the source of your discomfort—the more present you are with that arising in yourself, the less you have to act it out. Noting how much discomfort there is in the self, you might also note the discomfort in your assailant. Allow your heart to open in compassion to that assailant. Then you respond from the heart, responding to his pain instead of reacting only to his words.

This response may be the statement, “No, you cannot attack me like that.” The no is offered from a place of love, not from a place of need to defend, not from a place of fear. There is no ego involved in that no. It is the kindest thing you can say at the moment for yourself and for the assailant, who is creating a great deal of negative karma for himself: “No, you may not speak like that to me; and I will not stay here and hear it.”

To be loving does not mean to be a doormat to negativity. It means to speak the truth from the heart. Step one, then, is to practice being present as much as is possible. Within that presence, you watch the conditioned arising of the body and mind and understand how you move into negative mind states which wish to cling or defend, and which thereby poison the situation.

A very useful practice is what I call “clear comprehension of purpose.” This practice has several parts. I would speak here only of the beginnings of the practice. First is to understand your primary purpose. To defend yourself against that assailant is a purpose. It is not bad to wish to defend yourself. But there is a higher purpose, which is to create increasing harmony and understanding. Will you look at these two purposes and your choices of words or action that lie before you? Which choices are most suitable to the attainment of the highest purpose?

In this practice of clear comprehension in a given situation, we note our highest purpose and we ask, “Is this proposed speech or action suitable to that highest purpose?” If it is not suitable, and yet the intensity of the catalyst is such that you enact that unsuitable movement and offer outward whatever reactivity may have been called forth by the catalyst, then you will have a new catalyst and may again examine the highest purpose: Is it to save face and lay blame elsewhere or to accept responsibility for what you have wrought?

Let us return to our metaphor: The water is polluted; do you have the courage to be responsible for it? Your self-judgment, even your sense of shame, are not ways of being responsible. They are deterrents to responsibility. What are you going to do, sit there and condemn yourself while others drink your poisoned water? Or are you going to go and clean it up?

You clean it up in very simple ways. You observe the source of the pollutant and close it off. If the source is great anger, you close off the anger by opening your heart to it, making a bigger container for it within you so it does not need to pour out of you into the world.

Anger is not bad; anger is just energy. When there is a lot of it, it needs a big space. If the source of the pollutant is seen as pride or jealousy or greed, you attend to each of those in the same way. There are many specific practices that are available to help you create this bigger container. One of my favorite comes from the teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. 5 It is very simple: “Breathing in, I am aware of my anger; breathing out, I smile to my anger …” and again and again until you feel that space enlarging.

You must both acknowledge the heavy emotion and also offer a willingness to embrace it instead of attacking it, thereby to invite it into the ever-spacious heart. That is one way to become responsible for the pollutant that is already pouring out of you. The other is simply ask for forgiveness. You cannot ask for forgiveness while distortion is still pouring out. You have got to attend to it first, and then you mop up. Mop up by asking for forgiveness. If you are clinging to your shame and self-judgment, then those mind states are what need the bigger container. That is where the poison is coming from.

Remember that the pure spring is always there. Remember that in human form, you are never going to be a perfect channel for that pure spring. There is always going to be some distortion. Deep mindfulness will reduce that distortion; and a sense of loving responsibility will mop up and readjust the flow, will clean up whatever distortion has been created.

Do you think you teach more when what flows through you is absolutely pure? Would it just be possible that you teach more when what flows through you does become distorted, and then you very lovingly attend to that distortion, thus helping others also to learn that they do not need to be perfect—they need to be conscious, loving and responsible? Your distortion also offers a catalyst to others through which they are given opportunity to practice with their own fears and distortions. This learning is, after all, the primary motivation for incarnative experience. This is not justification for poisoning the waters; but when the entire movement is deeply considered, it may be better understood that as long as you are human, there will be spills, and they are all part of the learning process of the incarnative experience.

I would ask the same question also in a different way: In which way do you learn more? What would self-perfection teach you? This is the old story. One does not need pain to learn; but pain says, “Pay attention,” and that attention allows learning. The pain of your mistakes does not teach you, but it does catch your attention.

My friends, you do know all the levels on which you are working. You can never excuse great intentional harm to another by saying, “Well, it’s their karma,” or, “I’m working on a different level.” When you are working to the best of your intention, noting the arising of fear within you and attending to that fear with skill, cleaning up after yourself for the bits of fear that have sent themselves out into the world, then you have got to have faith that, while some of this fear did escape and created a pollution, out of that situation can come some good because of the heart’s great desire to offer its energy with love.

This highest intention to offer your energy for the good of all beings is of utmost importance. It is not up to you to determine how that good is going to come about, only to constantly ask yourself, “What is my highest purpose here?” and to work with clear comprehension of this purpose.

You know that the highest purpose is to offer the energy with love. Remember, you are in third density largely to learn faith and love. If you did not have this veil surrounding you so that you clearly understood exactly how different movements of energy through you became distorted, why they became distorted, and in what ways that distortion might actually be of service, you would be denied the opportunity to learn faith around these distortions. This is not to be taken as instruction to consciously perpetuate the distortions; but if they occur, both trust them and ask how you may purify them.

You wished for a clear-cut question and answer. There is no clear-cut answer, except for one: Pay attention and act with love. Be willing to be responsible and to learn. Do not be afraid; but if you are afraid, do not be afraid of your fear. Give that also a bigger container so it does not need to pollute the water. Where it has polluted the water, clean it up.

Whatever flows through you when your primary intention is to offer your whole being in loving service to all beings, the divine will take and use for holy purpose. It is that in which you need to have faith. Let the loving heart offer its intention for service. Act, speak and think based on this intention and with awareness, and offer that which is prompted by fear and the notion of separate self to the divine. Trust the divine plan for even your fear.

I would turn the microphone over to my brother/sister/friend of Q’uo. I pause.

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

The loving energy that is you is impossible to dissect. It has an integrity unique to your system. Often seekers target one or another aspect or energy center for renovation, and feel that this energy needs to be improved, cleansed, or altered. This is a less skillful model than that approach to improving the instrument which sees as its first goal the balance of the instrument as an whole. Some entities have little strengths compared to others, yet because they have somehow found the balance within and have harmonized that scale of being, that melody arrests the listening ear with delight. To have a more powerful indigo ray, for instance, has less virtue than to have an indigo ray which is euphonious and promotes travel between it and the other energy nexi.

In working with the self in this regard, we find it helpful to ask that which the one known as Ra first offered to this instrument: “Where is the love in this moment?” By turning to this universal question, by asking, by desiring that quality, that question, you open doors within your deeper Self—that self which abides in the awareness you do not have access to in your conscious mind. This deeper Self knows where the love is. Therefore, by asking that question and then by abiding in faith with patience and an inner knowing, that which is sought shall come to you. The thousand and one specific details of everyday occurrences are taken from that world of manifestation and handed up as a noble and holy offering to the Creator: “Here is my confusion; here is my pain; here are all my emotions; here is my confusion; here is my mental anguish.” And that great Being which lies within embraces the self, the concern, the anguish of unknowing, and responds in silence with love.

Within the moment of asking lies the perfect and balanced response. The skill of the seeker is to trust that process and to keep the mind upon the question, “Where is the love?” and to keep the mind upon the moment wherein the question is asked. If you can come to the present moment and know it, you have entered eternity. If, when you come to that present moment, your question is, “Where is the love?”—in that moment you have entered love. The concern about articulating and beautifying or crystallizing the energies can then be set aside, for in the moment-by-moment-by-moment succession that the illusion of time offers, your instrument shall be aided; and rehearsal always helps. Each moment is another rehearsal. The whole of your life removed from the illusion of space and time is a song. You can no more know the song than know your life. You are in the middle of creating a life which is a gift to the one infinite Creator.

The way the question is asked is far more important than what is asked, for the attitude that asks the question is that point of view which will limit the answer. Thusly, abide in love and look in all things for love—even with rage, with fury, with the strongest and heaviest of emotions. There is at the heart of that emotion a purity and an essence, a color; and there is the same beauty in those dark colors as there is in those dark colors that create variety and depth in a tapestry. All things you experience are as these threads going into the tapestry of your life. To identify this or that thread, then, is to lose sight of the picture, the whole of your tapestry.

At this time, we give our farewell to you for now, unless there be queries after the one known as Aaron has completed the material that he wishes to share at this session. As always, we ask that you hear us with discrimination. Thank you beyond our ability to express through this instrument for this wonderful chance to share love with love. We leave you in that love which is all that there is and that light which manifests in all this world of duality. We are those of Q’uo.

I am Aaron. I would like to share one thought with you and then ask for your specific questions. Last night we spoke of the wrinkled sheet of paper, of the relative reality that the wrinkles existed and the ultimate reality of the ever-perfect sheet. We suggested that both realities are true and that it is useful to stay balanced between the two. When you are working with the wrinkles, with the so-called negative distortion of your being, are you any less perfect? Are you any less whole?

Most of you relate to yourselves as broken. When you ask, as Q’uo suggested, “Where is love to be found?” can you see that the love is to be found in both the idea of brokenness and in wholeness? The love is always there in the wholeness—that is easy to see. The sense of brokenness is catalyst which sets you looking for the love. Therefore, the love must also be in that sense of brokenness. The love is in the inspiration which inspires you to seek the love, and that inspiration is often the negative and painful distortion. Nothing is dual here. Within the shadow is found the sunshine!

When you begin to experience with more clarity that love is in everything—not just in the ultimate perfection of you but in every expression of that perfection—then you do not need to worry so much over distortions nor to enhance judgment and shame about them, but simply to attend to them. Recognize, “This distortion does not separate me from wholeness, nor from the divine. It is simply a distorted expression of that wholeness.”

When you work conscientiously in this way, instead of each distorted expression becoming something that grabs at your energy so you must frantically go and fix it, each distorted expression just becomes a reminder to ask, as Q’uo suggested, “Where is the love? Where is God in this fear, in this anger, in this judgment? Can I find God right here?” If you look, you will find you can.

When the expression is distorted and causes discomfort to self or to another self, it must be attended; but regardless of its effect, it is still expression of the divine. I would ask you to visualize a crystal. If you hold it up to the sun, the sun plays through the crystal and creates a rainbow of light. That rainbow is direct expression of the sun. When you look at that rainbow of light, can you see that the sun is there? If the light is shining in somebody’s eyes so that they are uncomfortable, then you must attend to the crystal; but there is no good or bad to it, just sun and its various expressions.

Using a different metaphor, when you sit in the sun and feel its heat on your back, that is a direct experience of the sun. It is of a different intensity than if you could fly up into the heart of that sun, but still it is the sun. Sometimes the heat on the back feels warm and gentle. Sometimes it may burn. We do not say that only the pleasant experience of the sun is the sun. Every experience of the sun is the sun.

When you ask, “Where is love to be found?” especially when involved in a painful experience, it is a way of reminding yourself, “Even right here is God.” With that reminder, your energy field opens. When you are closed and defended it is very difficult to learn. When you remind yourself, “This is okay; it’s workable. And the divine is present even in this,” you allow that opening of the self which is willing to be present with the experience with all its discomforts. Then love announces itself.

Here is where you become increasingly willing to offer that which has arisen, to let it be and allow the divine to use it as it will. To offer it does not mean to get rid of it. It does not mean to say, “This one is bad, God, please take it”; rather, it is a statement, “I haven’t the faintest idea what’s going on here, but my deepest intention is to use all of this turmoil and confusion and everything that is coming through me as a way of offering service to all beings, for the good of all beings.” You can say to yourself, “I don’t know how to transform this mess. I don’t know what to do with it. All I can do is offer love.” It is this way that you offer it.

There is a discarnate energy which is a guru to this instrument. He comes into her experience on occasion. During this summer she was on an extended meditation retreat and experienced the presence of this one. In offering her instruction, he offered the suggestion, “Let go of everything; give everything away.” At first she misunderstood: “Am I to give away my house, my car? What does he ask of me?”

Through the following months she moved to a deeper understanding of what “give it all away” means. Are you identified with your fear, with your unworthiness, with your shame, with your judgments? Give away the identity with it. You may say you want to be rid of it, that it is very painful and unpleasant—fine; but nevertheless, you are invested in being that person who is fearful or is self-judgmental and who is going to be the one who improves. There is so much “somebody” in these notions. Be nobody; give it all away.

Within this rising intention to allow whatever comes into your experience and offer to God—not to hold on to any of it—lies the ultimate path to service, because with that offering “somebody” disappears and “nobody” remains. In more precise terms, that which is contracted can stay contracted or can open itself. This process means not making anything special happen, just allowing an open heart which watches it all moving through and continually offers whatever moves through with a trust that the divine will make good use of it.

I would ask of you during your afternoon and evening to watch closely something which arises in your experience. In very simple physical terms, if there is a loud noise, such as a shout, “Hey!” do you feel your body energy contract around that noise? Fear and the energy of fear contract. There is nothing bad or good about the contraction; it is simply a knee-jerk kind of reaction of the body. You may feel the reverberations of that contraction for a bit, and then eventually it will dissolve again. If, instead of a physical noise like a shout, what you experience is an energy catalyst such as somebody else’s sorrow or anger, there will also be response. You have emotional nerve endings as well as physical nerve endings. Your energy field will contract.

What if, instead of one shout, there was an ongoing unpleasant noise and growing discomfort with that noise? The contraction changes from contraction as reaction to pure hearing, to a contraction around the feeling of strong aversion to what is being heard. That pure sense awareness, hearing, is not the aversion to hearing. The relationship to the hearing is not the hearing itself. In hearing there is just hearing.

Each mind or body experience will have its own energy movements. Can you feel the difference as I demonstrate it here, how in that one shout, “Hey!” there is that momentary contraction, which then may continue with some reverberations and then release? It may have been unpleasant, but it is passed; there is nothing holding it. When it continues, then fear may arise: “How am I going to get rid of this?” Then there is a contraction around the contraction, a secondary contraction. Or perhaps there is contraction and then judgment around the contraction, a different sort of secondary contraction.

What I would ask you to do is to deeply observe the movements. Note the physical or mental catalyst, the physical object contacting the physical sense or the thought touching the mind. Note that there is a contraction carried in the body when this occurs. The contraction in itself is just a contraction. There is no adhering karma in it. There is nothing that needs to be done with it other than to relax and observe it, just to know that it is present. Smile to it! If it is a difficult experience, do as Q’uo suggested: Ask, “Where is the love?” with a truly open heart and mind.

If there is some relationship with the contact and the resultant contraction, note that as a new contact. For example: Judgment or aversion, each, is a thought; they have touched the sense base of the mind. With that thought there will again be a first contraction, just the wind rippling the water, so to speak. Again, note it as contraction. Is there anything which follows?

It is not the experience of hearing, seeing, touching, knowing and so forth that pulls you out of center and into a place of self where adhering karma is created, nor is it the contraction around that touch. It is your relationship to that contraction. It is this truth that I would ask you to observe for yourselves this afternoon and evening.

My deepest thanks to you for allowing me to share these thoughts with you, and for your willingness to attend to your experience and do this deep work. That is all.

Q’uo spoke about energy entering the being from below, through the feet, and from above, and that there was a meeting place for these energies that is somewhat dependent on the allowing of energy through the lower centers. Could Q’uo speak about what this meeting place is; and is this a place where energy entering into the illusion enters in a different way than the light issuing from the other energy centers?

We are those of Q’uo, and believe we grasp your query.

The meeting place of the upward spiraling light and the instreaming inspiration has been known within your cultures as the kundalini; and the ability of the self to become transparent to whatever distortions exist within the energy centers leads to an increased ability to experience a freely flowing upward motion so that the kundalini, in your culture’s terms, rises. This involves being friends with the various energies of the mind, body and spirit; not the perfecting of those energies, but the balance of them in the acceptance of self as self without explanation or apology—that relaxed self-confidence that this instrument would say makes one comfortable within one’s own skin.

Does this answer your query, my brother, or may we speak further upon it?

So it is that the distortions in the centers do not limit the rising of the upward spiraling light, but rather the relationship, as you said earlier this morning—the relative harmony of the entity’s acceptance of the aspects of self.

This is so, my brother.

So this is … this sounds to me like what Aaron mentioned earlier when he asked us to consider the possibility that the distortions provide us with opportunities to learn and to enhance our abilities to offer learning experiences that help others, through our loving attendance to those distortions.

The entity who loves self, who loves self as it is in all its dirt, is an entity with mercy to offer to others in all their dirt.

To allow a knot to be a knot, a tangle to be a tangle, is the beginning of the end of that tangle or knot. To ignore is not to allow; but to see, to love, to accept, to forgive and to move on, knowing the whole—that is helpful.

So, it is the distortions that allow one to increase polarity?

This is perceptive, my brother. Polarity is exquisitely central to your task here upon the third planet from your sun. You have one great choice to make: Shall you radiate or shall you contract and hold, giving it all away or grasping all for self? That polarity of radiance is the service-to-others path. It is what we came to share, and we say to you that it is your radiance within all the suffering of every day that expresses this polarity of love.

May we answer you further, my brother?

No. Thank you.

I don’t understand the seeking polarity. Selfish or unselfish what?

To serve others is to serve the self. To serve the self is to serve all that there is. There is no answer to your question. The attempt to separate selfishness from unselfishness works upon a false premise. The self is an whole, so polarity is expressed moment by moment as you choose to forgive, accept, allow and look for the ability to do this in difficult situations; and is that which will move you into a finer degree of awareness. Thus, the very time of difficulty where you see that the love energy is sacrificial and painful—that is time to rejoice; for in loving the unlovable, you are truly choosing to polarize in service to others.

We are those of Q’uo; and as the energy is moving away as we speak, we would close this meeting with the promise to ask for further queries at a future session. We leave you and yet leave you not. We leave you in all that there is. In the company of each other, see the face of the Creator. Adonai. Adonai, each light. We are those of Q’uo.

  1. The Anguttara Nikaya: Book of the Twos, #10. ↩

  2. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sogyal Rimpoche; Harper San Francisco, 1992. ↩

  3. Holy Bible, Luke 22:42. ↩

  4. Holy Bible, Matthew 13:44 - 46. ↩

  5. Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step : The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life: New York, Bantam Books, c1991, pp 57-58. ↩