DSC Books: The Path of Natural Light - Part Two

Wednesday, May 11, 1994

Aaron’s talk

I want to start here with an energy meditation. Each week we take this a little bit further. We have been working on the practice of opening one’s energy when it’s closed and of exchanging energy with other beings. What I’d like you to do is sit with you eyes open for several minutes and look at these flowers. If it is useful, they may be taken out of the vase and passed around, or simply allowed to sit in the middle, as serves your needs.

Squint a bit as you look. Soften your focus. Try to include not only the flowers, but the energy field around the flowers.

(Long pause.)

Those of you in the front hold out your hands, low so as not to block others’ view, toward the flowers. Those who are observing, see if you can see the energy field. Those in front, can you feel it? It’s particularly intense because there are so many hands. As you feel it, open also to see it. Each of you has one or another sense that is more fundamental for you.

(Long pause.)

I would suggest that those who are in the back feel free to come up, a few of you at a time, and feel these flowers. It is more forceful if there are several of you doing it at once. The rest of you watch and see, with your gaze unfocused … It’s hard to describe the process but, if you watch, you’ll catch it. The harder you try, the further you get from it. It takes deep relaxation. Just open watching. You will start to see lines of energy, almost like the lines you see when you have magnetic filings on a piece of paper pulled in one and another direction.

(Long pause.)

Are there others who would like to feel this? It will help them if hands are put out from the other side as well so they feel energy all around.

(Long pause.)

In past weeks, I have described this energy stream, which goes from your light body down to the physical body. As your physical body has an aura of energy which surrounds it, so this energy stream surrounds what I call a “light line” which is like the umbilical cord between the incarnation, light body and the Infinite. This light line is the silver cord seen by people who astrally project. It is the incarnation’s link with the divine or highest aspect of itself, and, beyond that divine projection, on into the Divine Itself, into God.

I described this energy stream using the metaphor of children’s balloons, that you could think of the light line as being somewhat magnetized so that the balloons don’t wander off into infinity. But it’s a loose magnetism so they float out a ways; there’s space. As you could visualize, if a red person and a blue person were to pass, each with open energy fields with the balloons of the energy stream spread out, they would mingle with one another.

What I would like you to do now is first to expand your own energy outward as much as you can. This is tricky. You cannot try to expand outward. Rather, you allow the natural outward expansion. The best way I know to do this is to focus inward, rather than outward. You’re not pushing yourself outward and forcing your energy out. Focus inward on this light line that comes from God through your own highest self down through the crown chakra and straight down to the base chakra; feel it pulsating with light and energy. Truly rest in that most divine aspect of yourself.

Breathe in and feel the energy coming through the crown chakra. Breathe out and feel it filling you. With each inhalation, draw in more of that energy. God is not “out there,” God is in here, right in your heart. Focus in.

(Pause.)

The more deeply you can rest in the divine core, the more your energy field opens and these metaphorical balloons expand outward.

(Pause.)

Now focus your energy on these flowers. You do not need to see their energy field, you have felt it. I want you to see if you can concentrate deeply and allow-whether it’s seeing, hearing, feeling-allow a sensation of the intermingling of your energy field and that of these flowers. I’m going to be quiet for a few minutes while you do this. If you lose it a bit, come back to this moving in to the light line.

(Long pause.)

I am Aaron. We have lost some on the tape. It will do. When your energy field is open, that which passes by you touches you and leaves its trace which you have requested. Let us paint these balloons with wet paint, red and blue. As the blue balloons brush by your red, they leave a bit of their blueness, and your red leave some redness on the blue ones. When you know what you need-not selfishly, but for the good of all beings-and ask for it with an open energy field which allows for the free flowing of energy, that which you seek will naturally seek you.

A simply example: Several months ago, Barbara was flying to Germany and was to meet her travel companion in the Newark airport. They left it very open where they would meet. They each had their ticket and if they didn’t meet until the flight, that was okay. Barbara had flown from Detroit. The friend was already in New York. When she landed in Newark, Barbara checked into her continuing flight and then went to get dinner. After dinner, she thought to herself, “It’s time to meet Michele.” Just that. She was not feeling any fear about it, just “It’s time to meet Michele.”

Newark airport is a vast place: thousands and thousands of people passing through crowded and lengthy hallways. She cleaned up her things, took her suitcase and walked into the hallway, and there was Michele, who had also thought to herself, “It’s time to meet Barbara.”

There’s nothing amazing about this. Your minds are in contact on another level. You all have the ability to be telepathic. You do not need to manifest that now, but the inherent ability is there. When you open your energy field and allow it, making the statement of your needs without grasping, what you seek gravitates toward you. The only condition in that is that it must be for the good of all beings. Nothing strange about that either because if it’s a selfish need, of course, it grows out of fear. When there’s fear, your energy field contracts. What is sought might come right past you but there’s no space for it. You don’t recognize it when it approaches, so you may call it to you and not see it or not know it. When you are connected, open and unafraid, you naturally ask for that which serves all beings because selfishness is simply not a possibility.

I know you all have such examples in your lives. You have words like “coincidence” and “synchronicity” but, in truth, it happened because you were open and you asked.

This leads me into talking about prayer, a request of several weeks ago from a few of you. Prayer sets up a response on many levels. First of all, you do not need to consciously believe in God to pray. That which we call God does not demand that it be labeled as such in order to hear you. Second, “God,” as we have attempted to define that here, does not answer your prayers. God is not a puppet master in heaven who says “Yes” to this one and “No” to that one. Nor does it say, “Pray a little harder and then I’ll do it,” to a third one.

There is one energy which, for simplicity’s sake, we call God. It is the core of love and light in the universe. It is that which is. Each of you, in your highest energy, is a projection of that which we call God. We’ve used the metaphor of the sun, a child’s drawing of the sun with sunbeams, little triangles, coming out. There is nothing in that sunbeam that is not the sun itself. It simply projects out from the core.

Each of you has a light body. In answer to a question, no, not entirely synonymous with soul, but it will do. Each of you has a light body which is simply a projection of the divine.

When you move into the small ego self, you are not working from that divine core, so you relate to each other from “down here” personality to personality. When you pray all you are doing is moving into this light line and energy stream, moving up to the core, to the sun, to God, and then moving out another person’s light line, or another energy’s light line.

Let us use an example, then, when Barbara was in the hospital last month, a healing circle formed around her one night, perhaps a dozen of you, with very loving energy. There was understanding amongst that group that they could not pray for Barbara to get better, not to need surgery. The prayer had to be simply a gift of their loving energy that she would find the healing she needed.

On a very literal level what I saw happening that night is this: Barbara was experiencing much pain and some fear. This light line of hers was clamped shut because her energy was so contracted. The energy of the group around her sent their “prayer energy,” let us call it, up through their own energy stream up into that place where you are all one. And, because it was directed at Barbara, it came down into her energy stream as gentle touch.

If you’re feeling contracted and another comes along and just gently touches you, it’s hard to keep that fear contraction, isn’t it? In a sense, that touch helped open her energy field. As it opened, the divine energy began to come through that light line again. The more it came through, the more release of her energy field, of this energy stream. Then, as these-I keep using this metaphor of balloons because it’s the closest approximation I can make. The reason balloons is not accurate is that we think of them as being six or twelve inches around. But these are invisible. Think “grains of salt.”-These balloons of her energy field began to expand, allowing space for the balloons of others’ energy field to come in. They rubbed against each other the way a purring cat rubs against your ankle. The whole energy field was comforted, supported. It began to dance. The vibrational frequency expanded and, as that happened, the organ systems of the body found renewed vitality because of the increase in energy. It was very literally a healing circle.

This is no different than what you do for yourself if you stub your toe. If you curse at it and stamp up and down and say, “Why did I do that?” with anger at yourself, the energy field closes. As it closes … How can I best describe this?

There are twelve basic organ meridians of the body and many junction meridians that connect the different chakras. Organ meridians relate to at least one of the seven basic chakras. As your energy field opens, the chakras begin to spin. Energy is imparted through the whole energy meridian. Those organ meridians which are functioning least are opened and allowed to function more fully.

In the case of the stubbed toe, there may be a shock to the nervous system because of the pain. Certain things shut down. When you bring anger to it, you enhance the absence of energy and it creates further damage. When, instead, you sit down and gently hold that part, sending love to it as you would to a child sitting on your lap with its stubbed toe, it very literally reopens the energy field.

It doesn’t start at the toe. What you’re doing is releasing the constriction around the light line so that the highest energy can begin to flow through again. That released constriction opens the chakras. The new energy comes and whatever meridians were sluggish pick up energy.

Back to prayer. Another form of prayer: asking for something for yourself or another that you perceive as needed. Perhaps you are lonely and pray for love and deeper connection with other people. When you do this from a place of fear and grasping, again, these energy balloons constrict the light line. They’re jammed shut with an elastic form around them, shielding. Nothing can penetrate. You feel yourself cut off from the divine, you feel more intensely separate and lonely. The more lonely you feel, the more fear, the greater the constriction. What do you do?

If you can remind yourself of the truth: I am not separate no matter how separate I feel. I feel so separate because I’ve literally slammed the door shut, shut off my energy. At that point there’s a choice. For many beings, when they blindly feel that shutting off of energy, there’s a panic reaction and a desire to grasp energy wherever they can. These are the people you see around you who express such great neediness, clinging, begging for attention. They stir your pity, maybe even your compassion, but they do not draw you into friendship. You may act lovingly to fill their need, but you recognize that you’re filling a bottomless pit.

When you can recognize this pattern in yourself, that is the first step to changing it. It’s not that God answers your prayer and manipulates another energy to come toward you. Not at all. Your prayer is a way of getting into deeper touch with your own divinity. You’re not praying to God out there, you’re praying to God right here in your heart. When you allow yourself to feel that divinity in yourself, as we did earlier, to expand inward and rest in that light line, to know it’s there even if you can’t feel it at all, just to trust that it’s there, and on the basis of that trust to ask yourself to relax, to let go of some of the fear, then you feel as if the light line begins to open again.

Basically the process of prayer, then, is one which reminds you enough of your own divinity that you allow the energy field to open and become connected once again into that heart that we all share. And from that place you draw in what you need.

One of you is asking, “Does God not have any part in prayer then?” God has everything to do with prayer, but stop seeing God as a puppet master. God is inside each of you. The more reverence you have for that which we call God, the more faith you have and the less constriction you experience. If it is helpful to you to relate to a personification of God, such as Jesus, that’s fine. But Jesus also doesn’t approve this one and disapprove that one. Rather, that energy becomes a channel for your own loving kindness. It helps you to connect the place of deepest aspiration in yourself with the core of all aspiration and love. Think of Jesus or any other great saint or teacher or incarnation of the divine as a pathway that helps lead you more strongly back into the divine in yourself. Once you have found the divine in yourself, you know it everywhere, even in the smallest insect or blade of grass.

I do not expect to cover prayer, affirmation and manifestation in one night. I will give just one more example. You see on the TV that there is horrible war going on in another part of the world, people suffering. Does it do any good to pray for them? What if their energy is so closed that they can’t receive your prayer?

You can only invite another, you cannot force them. As in the example with Barbara in the hospital, had she chosen not to respond to this energy so lovingly caressing her own energy field, that would have been her choice. I ask you a simple question: If you are feeling very, very frightened and angry and a very gentle and loving being comes along, just sits with you for a few minutes, then gently puts a hand on yours, maybe a few minutes later an arm over your shoulder, simply allowing its loving energy to enfold you, how long can you hold onto that fear and anger? Do you come out of it faster with that loving energy attending you?

You cannot end war across the world, or strife in your own living room, through prayer. But you can invite those involved in that strife, personal or national, to let go of fear and reopen their energy fields. This is what your prayer does. It moves very directly to where it’s aimed. It only invites if there’s no grasping quality to it.

We used an image several weeks ago: When the energy field is contracted tight in fear around the light line it’s like a baseball bat. If their strife frightens you and you demand they end it, it’s like swinging a baseball bat at them. Can you accept that they must do this work themselves? You can’t even know what’s best for them. For whatever reason, they allow this suffering as part of their learning. You cannot take their lessons away from them. Your example of being willing to approach them with your open energy field is what finally can touch their heart and begin to allow them to experiment with options to fear. Any of you who have ever responded to another’s anger with loving kindness have seen this in action. All I’m doing is explaining the technical aspects of why it works. We come back, then, to the fact that you must pray with an open heart and no grasping.

This brings us back to the very fundamental question: What do I do with my own fear? That has been the subject of many, many talks here. There are many diverse ways to work with fear. One of the most simple that I know is to recognize, “Fear is present in me,” and see if there can be a relaxation about that. No fear about the fear.

We have taught many relative practices: working with mindfulness, working with nurturing compassion, and so on. And we’ve also worked with this ultimate practice: coming back to the divine in oneself and resting there. It cuts right through it. It doesn’t mean fear instantly dissolves, but it’s very hard to maintain fear and hold onto it when you recognize your own divinity and your own unlimitedness.

This brings us back to the basic practice that we started with tonight, one of the many, practices we’ve done this winter: learning to rest in our own divinity. So, we’ve come full circle. I would be glad to answer your questions after the break.

Questions

Q: If we have previously been affected by another’s negative feelings or prayers, how do we protect ourselves while allowing our own energy field to expand at the same time?

Q: Is it possible to be too open to another person? Can that person take energy from you? Or, can you transfer your energy to another person voluntarily? Does a person’s energy field ever become depleted or only contracted?

Aaron: I am Aaron. I want to touch on these questions, leaving us time for the serial rape question (Listed later in this transcript). I would like to continue the discussion of these next week.

First, visualize this energy field again: the open light line, the balloons floating outward. Fear contracts it, pulls all the balloons together and puts a wrapping around it. The wrapping gives you the sense of being protected but, because of the tightness, it closes off the light line and moves you into separation.

There’s something else that’s possible that we haven’t yet discussed. The energy field can remain expanded. You respond to that energy that seems very aggressive and angry with an absorbent shield. The shield doesn’t confine your energy field because there’s no fear involved. To refuse to allow another to be violent to you, to say no to their violence, does not have to be an act of fear. It’s a loving act, for both of you. It is the refusal to be co-dependent with another and participate in their violence. You can then, literally, shield against that while allowing your own energy field to remain expanded. The process is less of a shielding than an allowing in and then releasing of the angry energy. There is no fear of it.

That’s the first step that you learn. All of you have done that at some time. It’s what you do with an angry child. The two-year-old is mad because you won’t give it a cookie. It kicks you in the shins. Your energy field doesn’t close in fear. You know the child needs a hug, but you also don’t need to let in all the child’s anger. You naturally shield against it, or absorb and release it. We spoke of the blue balloon which leaves its touch of paint on the red. Here the blue touches but you don’t allow it to leave its imprint on your energy. You accept and release. The energy is not “painting” yours.

Again picture these balloons that are spread out. In this practice, from my perspective, each balloon takes on a glow. It’s as if each of your blue balloons becomes shielded individually so that the angry red balloons that are rubbing against it can’t rub their paint off on it. There’s just a glow to each one. The red balloons knock around in there if they are able to. More likely, that other being is angry enough that its energy is contracted, so it’s more like a red baseball bat swinging through. The air current of the swinging bat sends more blue balloons drifting out of harm’s way.

The baseball bat may swing more and more furiously at first. You allow and release. Here you must understand the fear of the one who feels cut off from its energy source and so grasps at, sucks at another’s energy. Today, C pulled briefly into a parking space where a bus would be, and the bus dispatcher became infuriated. When C did not respond back with anger, the bus dispatcher became angrier. He was swinging his bat, trying to make contact, so that he could draw energy from her. He was more frightened because his own connection with the source energy is cut off by his contraction of fear. He swung more and more wildly. In the first practice, if you remain settled around them, eventually they stop, just like a child having a temper tantrum. Slowly, the energy field reopens and they start to connect again with your more loving energy. So, that’s how it looks to me visually.

The second practice comes after the first has been learned. You allow that person’s energy to mingle with yours. Instead of shielding to keep the energy fields separate, and then releasing the angry aspects, you really allow them in. When you do that, you must move into this light line very firmly. You must be deeply aware of drawing in that divine energy. Here, instead of releasing their energy, you become an active tool in its transformation.

In the second practice, you are so deep in equanimity with their fear that you can let the swinging balloon-bat connect, let it rub off some of its tension. Instead of merely accepting and releasing without penetration, you allow it to penetrate and help to transform it. This is an advanced practice; we will not discuss it further tonight.

Nobody can offer their negativity without your permission. You cannot be possessed by an external negative energy without your permission. When I say “without your permission,” if you move into anger and are not conscious of that move, it’s a way of giving permission.

Each of you has some balance of positivity and negativity. None of you, no matter how loving, is fully positive. When you hate your own negativity and you feel the presence of other negative energy, how can you not hate that negative energy. Your energy field contracts. You cut off your own source of divine energy. Then more fear arises. You start to look like one deprived of oxygen.

Picture yourselves all as underwater divers with hoses. This one gets angry and, in reaction to his anger, you grab your hose and squeeze it. “Oh! I can’t breathe!” You start looking for somebody else’s hose that’s flowing that you can grab hold of to breathe.

When you’re in that state, yes, you’re vulnerable and negative energy can move into you. God does not protect you, your love protects you. Your mindful consciousness of what’s happening protects you. The faster you can observe the constriction of your energy and come back to center, the quicker you open up. It is that opening and reconnecting with the divine that protects you.

These are important questions. I would like to talk more about them. I would also like to go into this question of fear. Is it acceptable to you that we put these aside for now with the promise that we will come back to them next week for your further questions about them and go on into this serial rapist and dealing with fear? That is all.

Q: Aaron, how would you suggest we deal with the fear that is arising from the serial rapes in Ann Arbor?

Aaron: I am Aaron. There are two levels of response that are appropriate. One, nothing happens by accident. Those of you who are here in Ann Arbor are being offered a chance to learn something, as is this one who is hurting others. This being’s negativity and fear feeds off negativity. The police have said in the newspaper, if you become violent when you are attacked, he’s more likely to become more violent. You can see the pattern there. Negativity loves to create fear and feeds off of it. At a subtle level, this being’s energy is feeding off the fear and turmoil he’s creating. The more he creates fear in you, the more you enter into his pattern and become co-dependent with him in creating fear.

However, fear is obviously not something that can be switched on and off with a wisdom that says, “Well, it’s not useful here so I’ll flick it off.” You cannot get rid of fear by saying “I shouldn’t be afraid.” Fear calls for two responses. Fear relates to helplessness. It makes you want to do something to get rid of that sense of helplessness, so it calls for the response of anger which draws adrenaline out, makes you feel empowered, gives you something to foist your hatred on.

The other response possible to fear is a growing compassion for this human right here, (pointing at heart) for each of you who is afraid. “I shouldn’t be afraid” becomes “I am afraid.” You begin to imagine the possibilities of harm to yourself or loved ones. Can that fear connect you to the pain all over the earth of beings who are suffering harm from the aggression of others? Can it lead you deeper into compassion for the human condition in which you are all so vulnerable to each other’s reactivity? Can you cease to see persecutor and victim? Can you see that this serial rapist is just as afraid, terrified, because he feels so cut off? He’s desperately grasping at energy. He would not define it that way, but his hostility is an outgrowth of his fear.

As you move toward deeper compassion, your own sense of fear that wants to run starts to dissolve. What I would call a healthy level of fear remains. This is that same level of fear which allows the energy field to stay expanded but puts up appropriate screening to another’s angry energy. In this case, it’s the level of fear that says, “I love to walk in the woods and I feel cheated of that and angry, but right now it’s not a safe thing to do.” Unfortunately, you are not at the point in your development where you can say, “My open energy will protect me and I’m invulnerable.” You haven’t developed your powers of loving kindness to the point that this man’s fist is going to strike at nothing. So there is a certain healthy level of fear which leads you to appropriate action for your safety without closing up your energy and moving into hatred.

The best way I know to practice all of this is in your daily meditation. A friend of ours has said, “You can’t start out by lifting hundred pound weights or you’re going to get a hernia. Start with ten pound weights.” When you sit in meditation there are constant bits of fear that arise. You notice how your heart closes and you move to defend against that which feels threatening. Because you’re simply sitting there in your meditation space and there is no actual threat in that moment, you can practice dealing skillfully with the thoughts of that threat. As you become more and more practiced with keeping your energy open and working with compassion instead of judgment when fear arises in a quiet space of meditation, then you begin to take that practice out into the world. The more you do it, the better you get at it.

Those of you who have been working continuously with mindful attention to fear are going to find it much easier to open your hearts and not judge this being. You must also use wisdom in where you choose to walk. That’s not an act of fear, but an act of love, not to give him the opportunity to attack you.

Those who have not practiced this in meditation, start. Be gentle with yourselves. If you feel much hatred toward him, much anger at him, simply know that there’s anger and hatred. Don’t look for an on-off switch but a dimmer switch. As you meditate and work with the level of fear you’re experiencing, you might use a loving kindness meditation to remind you, this being is suffering too. In fact, I’d recommend that for all of you as a way to help yourselves and to help you.

As you do a loving kindness meditation, visualize this being and acknowledge, “You have suffered. You are suffering. You are feeling confusion and fear and anger.” Look deeply into this person and see how much fear he feels and see if you can open your heart to him. This practice will help you deal also with your own fear and, yes, it will felt by him although he may not consciously be able to let it in. It’s that purring cat rubbing the ankles. He may kick the cat away ten thousand times but, eventually, the persistence and loving kindness is going to get through.

We’re out of time. I would be glad also to address more questions about this next week. I thank you all for sharing your energy and thoughts with me this week and for allowing me to share mine … (Tape ended.)