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

My greetings and love to you all. My joyous welcome to this circle of seekers, and in gratitude for the invitation to join you in your circle.

I want to return to this aspect of your experiences as a balance between human with its physical body, which has aches and pains; its emotional body with its joys and sorrows; its mental body with its mix of clarity and confusion; and its spirit body. The balance is between this human expression and the ultimate essence of love that you are.

You speak of taking incarnation and experiencing a veil of forgetting of who you are—a veil which pushes you deeper into the seeming confines of the human. This is just as it needs to be, because through this human come the greatest expressions of compassion, generosity and love.

I give you a very simple example. If I had a vast apple orchard, literally thousands of healthy, vibrant apple trees, what if a being knocked on my door and said, “Please sir, would you give me an apple?”—and I gave him one? One might say that was an act of generosity. If I gave him a whole bag of apples, one might say that was an act of even greater generosity. Certainly it is; I have freely given something of mine to another. But there is a clarity within me of the infinite abundance which lies behind me. There is no fear which prevents my giving or in some way influences my giving and makes me pause. Yes, it is still generosity if we define that word to mean a free giving from oneself, but what a difference if I have but one apple in my pocket and no access to more. I know this is my supper. I have walked for ten miles and just sat down under a tree in the shade, pulled out that apple and polished it on my shirt; and I’m looking forward to its sweet juiciness to quench my thirst as well as my hunger. Then you approach me and say, “Please, would you give me your apple?” Fear now may arise: “If I give, what will I eat? Will I be safe? Will my needs be met?” Through that fear, the voice of love must speak with resounding clarity in order for the apple to be offered. It is the force of this voice of love that I define as true generosity.

You can offer that apple for many reasons. You may practice self-discipline: Push the fear and annoyance away and give the apple. Or the fear may remain—silent, unspoken, beneath the surface. Then the apple is given but not with joy. To give the apple with real joy, you must have acknowledged and transformed your fear. Within fear is generosity. Fear, transformed, is generosity.

Here we have a different experience of giving. It is not just that joyful giving which comes out of the strength of knowing infinite abundance, out of ten thousand apples. There is a deep joyfulness because you have moved through the fear with love. You have not allowed fear to control you, but been able to give despite the fear and to transform the fear. It evokes faith that your needs will be met, although you still may not understand how, because that was the only apple.

There is a different possible scenario. If the other is grasping, punishing, in order to shame you into giving the apple, there may be anger but also a fear that says, “I must give this apple in order to feel good, feel generous.” Here the primary fear is not whether one’s needs will be met but is the desire to be “good,” to please another. One need not be slave to that fear. “I must give” is a harsh judgment which considers the self to be less worthy to receive than is another. That is also a fear which love can transform. Here the outcome is to say no to fear and to the asker, to keep and eat the apple, or perhaps to share it. One does not act to punish the other but to affirm that the self’s needs are also to be honored. There is nothing wrong with this response. It is a different practice of generosity, responding lovingly to the fear by kindness to the self. The point is that when fear is not the master, the innate generous heart will know how to respond. Fear is the catalyst offered to the human, which prompts it to learn how to transform that fear into loving-kindness or generosity.

This is the love which the earth plane offers you the opportunity to manifest and express out into the world. I do not want to talk about degrees of love here, but love which is manifest in the face of fear is a far more transformative love, transformative because it touches that fear with kindness and teaches you the ultimate lesson that there is nothing to fear. Only through practice with fear do you learn that you do not have to be reactive to your fear but may relate from the ever-opening heart.

Your earth-plane experience constantly offers you such lessons because you live with this veil of forgetting. Of course, as you reach a point of deeper spiritual awareness, the veil has holes poked in it. It becomes translucent in parts so that the light shines through. It is even quite transparent on occasion, but as long as you are in human form it will never be continually transparent.

Your fear is not an obstacle. Your fear is wisdom itself when you abide with it, smile to it and are not ruled by it. It is then that the heart develops, then that you truly begin to live in the heart and express from that heart out into the universe.

You are in incarnation for a purpose. That purpose is not to have discarnate experience—not even continuous discarnate clarity—but to be incarnate and to work with the catalyst of your incarnation with love.

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

We are those of the principle known to you as Q’uo, and we greet you in the love and light of the one infinite Creator. Let us give thanks to you one more time, each of you in the circle, for this opportunity to be a voice to you upon the path. We find your companionship heartening. We marvel at your courage, for you must express within this veil of unknowing.

There are two distinct ways to proceed upon a heartfelt path of learning and serving; and as we were saying to the one known as J. last evening, either technique or method of seeking is fruitful. However, the seeking with mind and opinion is that seeking that takes place in the shadow world of night with just the dim moon to offer its mysterious light to the darkness. In this dimness it is very easy to misrepresent to the self that which is seen. Discernment is difficult. Upon the other path, the path of the open heart, the light of noontide is offered to those who can surrender their small will and their hopes and expectations set upon defining that which is developed and manifest in the future.

Let us give a concrete example of the mix of these two ways. We describe now the way the one known as Jim came to the conclusion that he should join this instrument and the one known as Don. The one known as Jim had lived a simple and monastic life for some years before he encountered the ones known as Don and Carla. He also was a good friend of another teacher who lived some 2,000 miles from his home in rural Kentucky. He had decided that it was time to embark upon a path of service to others instead of remaining alone. His mind said to him, “I shall go 2,000 miles and offer my service.” Thusly, this entity packed his worldly resources in the back of his truck and drove the 2,000 miles. When he arrived he found good work to do, but his heart kept knocking at the door of his awareness, saying, “Is this your place?” Finally, this entity honored that knocking on the door and determined to sit in silent meditation for the period of the weekend. He completed all his chores having to do with the service to the teacher and retreated for a long weekend alone. After all this preparation, he went into meditation and immediately he knew he was to drive 2,000 more miles back to Kentucky and join this instrument and the one known as Don.

Could the one known as Jim have come directly 70 miles down the road to L/L Research? We say to you, no; he could not. He was too sure that he knew his way. He had plans in hand, and therefore he had to work through these concepts and opinions. The miles were not at all wasted. There were no errors in this roundabout journey.

Now each of you seeks the most efficient way to serve. And whenever the grace comes upon you to stand in the noonday of that sun within, then we say, “Wonderful, exquisite,” yet it is not often the case that sufficient surrender to the spiritual forces molding your destiny is enough completed that the apparent short cut through can be taken. Most often there is the mixture of the self attempting to predict and control the flow of energy with that openhearted surrender.

What we wish to impress upon you is our honest belief that the longer and seemingly roundabout route is not merely acceptable as a substitute for the blazing purity of surrender, but offers valuable catalyst which enables that sun within to begin to manifest within the inner consciousness. It is for this seemingly roundabout journey, this peering into the folds of velveteen night, that you donned what the one known as Aaron has called the earthsuit. We hope you may find it in your heart to embrace this walk in the shadows of mortality. We hope you may come to value and enjoy your swim through the seas of confusion, and may find play and sport in the swim and flow of inner tides. You shall be tossed about in these currents of unknowing; and as you suffer, you may often doubt the efficacy of your own seeking. This is the very situation you came to Earth to experience. Within, at noontide, you claim your wholeness easily. But you hoped to come into the shadow world and act as if you saw the noonday sun. Faith is that throwing of the self into the midair of complete surrender.

Against all logic, there comes in cycles the time of blind choice. At those cusps there is the desire to do right; and the instincts of mortality are to hold, to control, to reach and pull. The muscular take of those who choose to develop these cusps is that brave decision to release and surrender, and to claim the surety that all is well, that all will be well, and that for the moment it shall be given you what to do.

We would at this time offer the floor to the one known as Aaron. We are those of Q’uo.

I am Aaron. Can you see that efficiency is often the voice of fear? There is within the human that which wishes to stay in control, not only for its own safety but also for the safety of those around it. It wishes to pattern the universe and make it predictable.

On the astral plane there is never a sense of being unsafe in the way that the human experiences such danger. It is clear on the astral plane that there is nothing that needs to be ordered or controlled, but that disorder has its own delicate and lovely order, and you can just let it flow.

Who wants to be in control? Often your reasons may be the highest: wanting to offer one’s energy in service to all beings, wanting to alleviate suffering. But my dear ones, life is chaos; life is messy. Thoughts and emotions do not arise only when invited, and like good little children reporting themselves and then stepping back into a line. Thoughts and emotions are a class of rowdy children raising their voices out of turn. This is human incarnation.

It is easy to keep your equanimity in heaven. You are here incarnate to learn this equanimity regardless of the catalyst and even regardless of your response to the catalyst. Then, while you are shrieking, “Eeek!” and running from the mouse, there will be that within which is centered, still and knows its safety.

In very practical terms, in fourth density you are going to move into telepathic energy groups. Every thought or emotion that arises in you will be telepathically received by your peers in the group. Every thought and emotion that arises in them will be heard by you. This is the nature of fourth-density experience. Thoughts and emotions are not going to cease to arise just because you are fourth density. If this circle was fully telepathic now, would that be okay with you? Is there something that has been said or thought which you would not wish to share with the whole group? Did you glance at someone across the room and think, “Her hair or clothing looks frazzled today,” or, “Why did he frown at me?” Certainly each of you has had what we would call negative thoughts or emotions in the past three days. Would it be okay if everybody heard this, or would there be a sense of shame? What if you heard this from your neighbor? Would there be discomfort with that hearing?

You are not incarnate to stop thoughts and emotions from arising but to find equanimity with them so that when you enter fourth-density experience, everything within you can be shared, everything from without can come freely to you. And judgment does not arise, shame and embarrassment do not arise; rather, there is complete equanimity with those thoughts and emotions so you can fully hear each other.

Now you are limited to learning from your own direct experience. What if you could totally empathize with another? Can you see that, then, others’ experiences also become very viable tools for your learning? This is why compassion is learned so deeply in a higher density, and wisdom also, because so much more experience is directly accessible to you.

So, here you are in this third-density form, experiencing this wide array of thoughts and emotions, of confusion, joy and sorrow. Your first instinct is to wish to order this madness, to force it to stand in line and salute; and report, one at a time, and only that material which is pretty. But you cannot do it. That is not the nature of human experience. The nature of human experience, while it is often beautiful, is also dirty, smelly, chaotic. You are here to learn equanimity, to learn to open your heart to that chaos. The chaos is not your enemy; the chaos is your teacher.

When you ask, “How can I be a clearer channel in the way I wish to channel?”… The fear of which Q’uo just spoke wants to order experience. It wants efficiency: “Cut out that four thousands miles; go straight to Kentucky.” It does not leave room for the great journey in which you are immersed and which purifies you, which teaches you.

To desire order and efficiency is not bad. Of course some of that desire is from a place of love, which wishes to release disorder to alleviate suffering. Only some is fear-based. Can you distinguish? If it is fear-based, can you observe that movement with kindness and without fixation on it? This instrument has a magnet in her office which says, “Bless this mess.” It is precisely that attitude that you need to bring to your lives.

I would share a brief story about efficiency. Some years ago this instrument worked one day a week as a volunteer for a service organization known as Seva. She worked in the office, where her job was to receive the order forms for donations offered as gift in another’s name, such as to commemorate a birthday. She would send a thank you to the one who had paid for that particular donation and send an announcement of the donation to the one in whose name it was made. These were all very loving donations in support of many beings. They were financial donations; merchandise ordered for self or other; and service donations, such as a cataract operation offered to a blind person in Nepal or a goat offered to a woman in Guatemala, which goat would provide her some means for a livelihood.

Barbara sat down one day with a great stack of these forms to be sent out. She saw how many thoughts she had, which slowed the process. She said, “This isn’t efficient. What I’m going to do,” she thought to herself, “is to go through the whole list and write all the donor address envelopes, then choose the appropriate card that says, ‘Thank you for your donation’, and slip it into the envelope. Then I’m going to go through the whole pile again and write recipient envelopes. I’ll simply pull out the individual card: ‘A cataract operation in your name’; ‘Happy Birthday’; ‘Merry Christmas’; ‘A hundred dollars in your name’; ‘With blessings to you’…” So she started separating these gifts, creating an efficient order of replying. She spent a day on it. By the end of the afternoon she was weary, and she had not really covered more ground. She took a walk and asked, “Where did I go wrong? Why didn’t it go faster?”

Suddenly she realized the heart had not been present. Her previous process was slow because she would read the words and feel happy about how Mary Smith in Seattle offered this cataract operation with great joy to help another, and how much love Mary had for her mother to honor her and offer this gift in her name. When she wrote the cards, then her own joy at such generosity was a part of the writing. She was involved in the whole process and honoring the process. The cards were done more slowly but with love.

My dear ones, it is so easy to fall into the trap of cutting out your heart, finding a mechanical path that does not have to feel the pain of the Earth. Mechanism insulates you against chaos, pain and disorder. You are never going to create perfect order; you are not here to do that. You are here to find equanimity and love.

I am asked sometimes, “Aaron, if this disorder does in fact add to suffering, then why is it bad to attempt to order it?” To attempt to order it is not bad, but attachment to ordering it creates the suffering, not the disorder itself. When there is attachment, the motivation is largely fear-based; “I’ve got to fix this” is the stimulus. When there is no attachment, there is a willingness to go into things the way they are, to feel the wind blowing and pushing on you and the trees, to sway back and forth, to feel the currents of the river ebbing and flowing, to feel the whole movement of life.

When you feel in this way, in connection with all that is, then the loving heart can respond with an intuitive awareness: “If I offer love here, it will shift that current so beings are not drowning in it. If I offer kindness there, it will gentle the push of that wind so beings are not blown off their feet.” Then that movement comes from a place of deep love, which trusts the ways of the universe, which does not need to fight a war with the universe but offers its deepest love as co-Creator of the universe. Offering that loving force, which the universe may draw into itself and use in the best ways, you are no longer saying, “This has got to be fixed.” You are saying, “Here is love, which can apply itself as it is needed.”

This is the greatest skill you can master. You master it first by observation, by seeing how fear serves as a giant pusher, how your energy field armors itself and wants to push back. As these pushes keep coming fiercely within this realm of chaos, you learn to dance with the energy. It pushes and you yield a bit and observe it; as the pushing stops, you let the energy flow back. There is no longer anyone who yields or pushes, only the play of the unconditioned, the play of God. It is a dance of love, not fear. It is a very masterable skill. In order to learn it, you must first of all be present. You must observe the way that the physical world of material objects and thoughts pushes at you. You must observe the discomfort with that push and the small ego self that wants to be safe, wants the others it holds dear to be safe. You observe the one who wants to fix the push or fight it.

As you observe the flow of these movements in yourself, increasingly you will see how much choice you have. The heart of love opens! You will cease to need to attack the voice of fear in yourself, but instead will offer compassion to it. This is the second phase after presence—a nurturing of the deepest truth and resolve to live that truth until each moment of the mind and body cannot help but reflect truth. Thus, the lessons offered you by that arising fear will be mastered, because fear will become increasingly a catalyst for compassion. And you will become a force in the world which is centered and offers love. Not less important, you will ready yourself for fourth-density experience.

Each of you has some kind of mindfulness or meditation practice. It is very useful to use this time of practice, at least in part, as a way of observing your relationship to the aspects of life which push at you and at fear’s reaction to fight back. To all of this you offer love, both to that which wants to fight back and to the catalyst itself. The more you practice this, the easier it becomes, and the more freedom you have to live with great joy and peace within this chaos that we call third-density experience.

I would like to offer the microphone to Q’uo. Whenever Q’uo has made whatever statement it wishes to make, I will open the floor to your questions. I am Aaron. I pause.

We are those of Q’uo; and before we speak, we would suggest the time is right for the seventh-inning stretch. We shall be with you when you have stretched. We are those of Q’uo.

[Pause]

We are those of Q’uo, and would offer to you last thoughts before the question period. To know yourself as human, as the featherless biped, may seem a great restriction, a great inconvenience. But no, know and trust that the moonlight is glamorous and deceiving, and that your wandering steps are all perfectly as they need to be. Take yourself lightly. Take love with profoundest dedication. Know that your greatest treasure, your central purpose and your patience are all wrapped up in the everyday life lived devotionally. In the world of the Father, all things are featured. Persist in your attention to the daily; for each task, each tale, each silly piece of paper in the paper mountain of your culture is full of learning for the one with ears to hear and heart to understand. Know that as you touch others, you meet yourself. The one known to you as Jesus offered two rules of life: to love the infinite Creator and to love the other self as the self. These suggestions encompass all you need for your journey.

This instrument sang this morning, “To give and give and give again, as God hath given thee; to spend thyself nor count the cost; to give right gloriously to the Lord of all the worlds that are and are to be.” 1 May your worries be blessed with quietness, your concerns touched with grace. May your heart open.

We would at this time open the meeting to queries of Aaron or ourselves, or both. Please proceed with the question.

Q’uo, I am interested that the path to equanimity seems to be anything but. It is not a process. How much of the instructions that we garner are just keeping us busy or stopping us in our tracks, and how much a ladder to our goal?

We are those of Q’uo.

My brother, all of the seeming missed steps and mistakes are necessary. This instrument has a memory: the story from a friend whose cat, upon finding her mistress at the front door, would race around and around the living room, run between her legs, dash into the kitchen, jump up upon the counter top, run around the counter, dash around the floor, jump at the refrigerator and then walk to her bowl. The cat knew that only after she did these things would her mistress provide food. The human mind says, “But it simply took that long for the woman to reach the storage place for the food. All the running was for nothing.” We say to you, did not the cat enjoy the exercise, enjoy the time between the coming of the mistress and the food?

You must do something between this moment and when you die from this planet. You can choose when you rest and sit and await without motion. How this defeats the desire for which you entered this veil of illusion! The times of your life are instructional. They give you exercise; they give your emotions opportunity to refine. That process creates the beauteous and clear emotion, the mellow and harsh tones of the various positive and negative emotions. And so, it is the work of incarnation to begin to listen to and appreciate the dance of the emotions and mind and habit and encountered parts, confusingly and seemingly wrong-headed as these things must be; for it is in the fires of these steps of learning that realization of wholeness is found. So embrace the seeming trading of goals for mistakes, for seeming roads wrongly taken, and see that, truly, you cannot waste time as long as attention persists. Simply keep paying attention. Pay that treasure of time and talent. Pay it without concern for whether it seems worthwhile. Simply give of yourself as you see aright to do. And the moment of samadhi shall take you in the midst of that sea and never leave it for a moment, that confusion.

May we answer further?

No, thank you.

I am Aaron. I would like to add an illustration to the thought that Q’uo has just provided, taken out of the experience of this instrument.

At one time she took a walk in the woods, in a lovely wooded park. Since her last visit, the trails had been changed. She knew from prior walks that there was a shortcut that led to the beach. She walked down a path that seemed to go in the right direction, but it became narrower and narrower. Then ahead she saw what seemed to be a dirt-covered clearing—a patch of dirt, not quite as big as this room.

On the far side she saw the continuation of a trail. She stepped out into it and sunk literally up to her armpits in mud. She had the presence of mind to fling her arms out as far as she could. She was quite alone. Her feet were not touching the bottom, so there was nothing solid to push from. Slowly she grabbed the sticks and leaves that were within reach and built some kind of cushion for her body. Slowly she inched her way out of that mud, certainly not without fear. She crawled out to the other side, literally covered with black mud from head to toe.

She decided she needed to go back to the main trail, to stop looking for shortcuts, so she sought a way around this patch of mud. She tested with a stick and saw that the patch of mud was not an isolated one but was a strip of marsh which cut off the land nearer the beach from the land where she had at first been walking.

The undergrowth was very dense beside the trail which she followed. Thinking that eventually it would take her to a passage across this strip of marsh, she walked and walked for perhaps two hours. She found herself walking in circles, came back and said, “But I was just here. Was I, or was it just a look-alike?” She began to leave a small mark and proved that she was going in circles.

At first there was anger when she observed the circles. “I am wasting my time,” she thought. She was not concerned about getting into serious trouble. She knew she could push through the dense thorns to the beach and simply come out with some scratched skin. She knew if she did not return by nightfall, people would set out to look for her. By morning she would be found; but the night would be very cold, and all she wore was a bathing suit.

All of these dark and dreary thoughts went through her head as she came to the same tree for the third time by a different route and said, “I’m still going in circles.” It was only after she had been around four times that she finally had the wisdom to simply sit down. She walked a bit until she came to a patch of sunshine where there was a clearing in the trees. She sat in the sun, which warmed her a bit, and began to meditate.

When she opened her eyes, finally now at ground level, she saw before her a deer trail. She had only been walking on old human trails. Clearly, if anybody knew how to get through this, it was the deer. So she proceeded again but this time crawling, following the deer trail, which took her across that strip of marsh by a very thin ridge of solid land and back to the main trail. She recognized the trail itself. The way back was but fifteen or twenty minutes.

Were those first few hours wasted? She could not have come to the readiness to crawl and thereby find her way out via deer trails until she had explored the human paths. I find this a perfect metaphor. Perhaps as you become more wise and experienced, you cease so strongly to be reactive to the voice of fear and begin to hear the voice of love earlier. Maybe then you only have to walk the unnecessary but once before wisdom steps in and says, “Settle down and listen.” Part of being human is not only learning how to listen, but how to listen through the voice of fear when it is going to set you walking in “meaningless” circles for awhile.

As Q’uo was talking just now, this instrument said to me, “The question is that I waste so much time walking these meaningless circles. I seem to learn so slowly.” But, my dear ones, you learn as you learn. However many times it takes before you finally learn, it will take. Once you have learned it, that is it. Then the next division in the trail appears.

Again, you practice the same thing: It is very easy to hear love when fear is not shouting. When fear is shouting, you must quiet yourself enough to hear the whisper of love beyond the shout of fear. As Q’uo just said, no time has been wasted. You are learning to hear better.

May we speak to your further questions? I pause.

Aaron just said that we come to the same lesson again and again. This is the lesson of love? And the teacher is always fear? A question: Is the teacher always fear?

I am Aaron. Fear is nothing but a distortion of love. Please do not think of the teacher as fear. Think of it as love in one of its many guises. I pause.

Aaron has often said that whatever we choose to do is our own free will, but we will learn to make more skillful decisions. Q’uo said that there is no way to waste time. We learn from our mistakes. I have a belief that we may ask for guidance from God or spirit as to which path is the clearest or most skillful path at any moment. Could either Aaron or Q’uo speak to that? Is that correct?

I am Aaron. Both Q’uo and myself may wish to address this. I will speak first.

In accordance and full agreement with Q’uo, it is impossible to waste time. It is not wasted time. You are learning; and yet when you do not pay attention because of the force of your fear, your learning takes longer. This is not to be viewed as wasted time. It is what you needed. Yes, your learning can be less painful and more in accord with the paths of love. With that aspiration in mind, yes, you certainly may ask for help.

Your asking is a statement of your free will, a statement of your readiness to receive. In the story I just told, Barbara dashed in mad circles before she was finally ready to sit down and say, “I need help.” Fear was directing her, and it took her an hour and a half to settle her fear enough to simply realize that there had got to be a better way, to sit down and meditate and ask spirit, “How can I get out of this? Where is the path?” The time was not wasted precisely because the next time she came into a figuratively similar situation, she remembered the lessons of this situation and asked sooner.

What was driving her in the beginning? First there had been real terror in that pit. She screamed for help. There was nobody around. She realized that she literally could die in that mud hole, which was over her head, and that she had to get herself out. When she finally got herself out, then she allowed herself to give way to the terror she had felt and which she had pushed aside in order to find her way out.

If one were to find oneself in a similar situation, literally or figuratively, and remember how one had learned to bring kindness in, how to ask for help, then increasingly one will walk an harmonious, clearer path. Your primary question here is, “How can I become a clearer channel?” Everything you need for clarity is within you. Everything that prevents clarity is within you.

Clarity is only one goal. Learning, growth and the expansion of the path of love are equal goals integrated into the whole tapestry. To grasp at clarity is to negate the other goals. I hesitate to use the word goals. I think a better word would be fruits—clarity is just one fruit. To grasp at clarity is to turn your back on the other fruits. At what cost, then, is that clarity attained?

You have stated your belief that we may ask God or spirit for clarity as to the most skillful path. Yes, of course you may, but the most skillful path to what end? In the desire to avoid pain and confusion, do you wish clarity for comfort? Do you wish to cut out some of the loops because you are exhausted? Do you wish to cut them out to impress others or to feel like a “good” person? Do you wish to cut them out even because they seem unskillful in their impact on others? But perhaps those extra loops are precisely what is needed, as in the case of Jim’s trip west before he knew where he must really go or this instrument’s circles in the woods. The path is a treasure hunt. Clues are everywhere.

To ask is to acknowledge your confusion. It is to state your highest purpose, which is to enhance love and harmony. But what is the primary motivation for asking? Is there still desire to control and fix? Asking cannot be fruitful if it comes from a place which merely seeks avoidance of pain. To ask is not to request clarity about the path itself but to seek equanimity with the discomfort of the confusion. You open your heart to that discomfort. When the heart stays present, then as you just suggested, you open the heart and pray for guidance. It is not that the time would have been wasted otherwise. It is simply that you are now ready and expressing that readiness through your prayer. So the answer you requested becomes more available to you. Do you see how it works? I pause.

There is an aspect of fear … Specifically, J. and I may work in Detroit in a hospice community. We have had one conversation with staff there. The opportunity came through a friend of mine. After one conversation we set a time for another. I know there is no necessity to do this work. It has come to us in a way. Part of what was discussed was teaching a class of staff members about how to meditate, how to work with their burnout. We are still looking at what will be taught, what is needed. Nothing is set. I see the fear rising in me saying, “I can’t teach that kind of class,” yet there are many things I know that can help those people. My question is that I am aware of many places where our service would be appreciated and needed. I have been praying for guidance about this. When I hear Q’uo saying there is no way to waste time …

I am not motivated by fear. My motivation is, “What is the wisest path? Is this the path to follow at this time?” Comments from Q’uo about making this choice wisely and not primarily out of fear?

I am Aaron. C’s fear suggests that there is a certain goal, which is to offer the self in service and for others to benefit from that service. Fear suggests that anything that sidetracks from that is a waste of time and energy. To offer the self in service and for others to learn and have some of their suffering alleviated by that route is a fruit. For you to learn about the fear in your self is another fruit. If the first time service is attempted, it falls short of what you would desire in terms of the final offering, if you thereby learn what you still need to practice, if you thereby learn to relax and allow your great wisdom to flow out of you, nothing has been lost. Such learning is a great fruit.

Can you see how you are clinging to what you believe must happen, looking for a specific result? You are not being a co-Creator with the universe, you are trying to direct the entirety. Instead, you may offer your intention that you and all beings may benefit by this situation as much as is possible. You must acknowledge that there is also motivation to be the “good servant” and fear that you will fall short—even motivation, if such exists, to be helper to others or win approval. Noting all the motivations and that love is primary, you may enter into the situation with an attitude of surrender of control, without expectation that something special is going to happen for you or anybody. You take these multiple motivations and with loving and earnest heart offer the entire confusion to God while reaffirming the primary motivation. Then, whatever happens can be taken as learning. I pause.

I have the same question. Is there guidance? I see that it is okay to go ahead with it. What I am asking for is, are there wisdom and guidance around in making such choices? No fear, just love. Is that available?

We are those of Q’uo. We are with this instrument, and, my sister, we believe we grasp your query.

Of a certain, guidance is about you and about all at all times. The world of spirit greatly desires to support and strengthen each beloved spark of the infinite One. It is indeed a skillful and loving thing to ask for guidance. This instrument has a short phrase which it uses constantly within itself: “Lord, show me thy ways.” It prays daily, “Lord, in all we do today, help us to serve you.” This passionate embracing of guidance does not in any way fail. However, sometimes the answer from guidance is a silence and a lack of further information. Sometimes the answer is even, “No.”

One who passionately embraces equanimity is upheld from moment to moment, and of this you have been the witness many times. However, when the guidance is negative or simply silence, then it is that the human must move forward without that feeling of being supported. The support is there; but at that crux, the guidance and support is opening by its silence the opportunity for moving in confusion. One may move for months or years, sensing into and cooperating with the outpouring of one’s destiny. But inevitably for some entities there comes the desert experience where the air may be full of night, the heart is blind and the fear is joined by doubting. At that time when the seeker feels most alone, when guidance seems gone, the act of love is simply to persist in faith in that memory of how it is to live with guidance. In those times when spirit seems silent, we suggest persistent attention to the subject coincidences and synchronicities of the moment-by-moment experience; for all of the creation is alive and is connected with you, and your hopes and desires.

There is much time and skill behind your query. And we feel that you are aware of the guidance to a point that denies the possibility that there is none or that it is unwise to rely upon the support network of spirit. Certainly, always open to the help available. But when that revolution of cycles comes and suddenly you find yourself riven, then it is for you the opportunity to walk by faith alone, untroubled by seeming flaws and disasters, large and small.

The human experience seems to be about doing things well. But you are not here to do things. Primarily you are here to develop an attitude, a core vibration of being, shall we say, that is as close as possible to the original vibration of love. As you live through confusion, the way to maximize the proximity of your vibration to that of love itself is to surrender any holding on to the web of support and in allowing it to seem to fail without becoming upset. You then have the chance to express a shining faith that says, “Whoops. I know nothing. I haven’t a clue. But all is well and all will be well. And embracing that health that demands that I am whole, I have no clue at the moment, but I still know that I am precisely where I am, and it is good.” To view the mess that sometimes occurs and to dance in the tatters and in the cleaning up, and to joy in all of it—that is faith.

May we answer further, my sister?

Thank you. No.

Is there a final query for Aaron or us?

My observation is that as we experience this equanimity, we can have joy despite turmoil. Guides that work with us provide a short cut, and part of their gift is quiet—letting us learn patience and love at a deep level. I really have no question, just my observation of what has been shared these past few days.

My brother, we could not say it better.

Thank you for your gifts.

We truly thank you. We bless each. Enjoy your dance, my sisters and brothers, and know that no sorrow is wasted, no joy unheard. We are those of the principle known to you as Quo, and we leave this instrument and you in the love and in the light of the one infinite Creator. Adonai.

I am Aaron. I would also thank you for the great gifts that your seeking brings to all beings, and the gifts of your sincerity and loving hearts.

When there is confusion in your lives, can you remember to greet that confusion with love? The one known as C. said about this upcoming work, “I don’t have a clue.” That is a highly accurate statement for most of you at most times in your life. You often have no idea of what you are really doing while you are busy doing what you think you are doing. What can you do but smile and trust and take the next step? And when you do, you will find love there, I assure you. My blessings and love to each of you. I am Aaron. That is all.

  1. Words by Geoffrey A. Studdert-Kennedy (1883 – 1929); melody, “Morning Song,” attributed to Elkanah Kelsay Dare (1782 – 1826). ↩