DSC Books: Seven Days: A Journey Into Awareness - Days One to Three

Day One

Mexico City, November 1996 (Section 1)

Barbara: Hello and welcome to you all. You know that Aaron and I will be leading this retreat together. Some of you may be unfamiliar with the idea of working with a discarnate teacher. You can see me, but who is Aaron? For that matter, who am I and what leads me to be sitting up here? To begin, I’d like to introduce myself, talk a little about Aaron and how I met him, and tell you about what this spiritual path has meant to me.

I lost my hearing in 1972, soon after my first child was born. I coped well with the loss, on the surface. I continued with my sculpture and teaching and had two more children. Through those years I was aware that although I did what I needed to do for myself and my family, I was very bitter about the isolation my deafness seemed to impose.

This anger didn’t negate the fact that my life was full. I had a loving and beautiful family, work I loved, and caring friends. I honor in myself that I was able to cope well with so difficult a situation. But in striving to cope, I didn’t allow myself to feel the pain of my isolation, which is real. In my fear that pain would overwhelm me, I denied it, and turned my anger to outward things. I couldn’t see that it was the anger, not the deafness, that deepened my sense of separation. I was angry at people who talked in my vicinity when I couldn’t understand and angry at God. I lost all sense of a spiritual aspect to my life.

Slowly I became aware that I had to look at what was happening. My previous religious affiliation was as a Quaker but it had been years since I had attended Meeting for Worship. I began to meditate again as a daily practice, although with no clear sense of direction. I also wrote daily in a journal, a tool that put me into deeper touch with my subconscious mind. I felt drawn to read from spiritual teachings, especially those ideas from eastern religions concerning reincarnation and karma. As I opened to myself and became more caring and forgiving, I found an increasing inner peace.

Despite all that I was learning, I still felt rather stuck. I was still bitter, cut off from normal human communication, and blamed others for my situation. If only they would write … or talk slower … My isolation felt like a punishment and a formidable burden. I began to pray for help, understanding that I just couldn’t go any further on my own.

As the weeks passed, I began to notice that in the question/answer format I often used in my journal, the “answer” part was beginning to speak from a new perspective, pushing me to open myself to new ideas and ways of thinking.

Soon after that, I met Aaron. Suddenly, one day during meditation, I was aware of a figure standing just off to one side. I asked him who he was and very simply he told me he was Aaron, and was my guide. I felt overwhelmed; I got up, left the room and got some tea. When I came back, he was still there.

I’m not going to suggest that I took this casually. The idea of a “spirit guide” was new to me; I wondered briefly if I was hallucinating. But every time I looked, Aaron was there, just patiently waiting for me to be ready to move ahead. It was important that I never felt any pressure to accept him. He made it clear from the beginning that we had all the time I needed to be ready for any learning that he offered. I wasn’t frightened because I felt so much love, felt a gentleness and connection dimly remembered from some unknown past.

At first my rational mind tried to ask, “Who is Aaron?” Slowly I realized it didn’t matter. I began to listen with my heart, and not play mind-games. I understood that it was irrelevant whether Aaron was simply a deeper part of my subconscious or was external. I was getting information that I needed for growth and to which I hadn’t had previous access. As I began to trust that information, and my own ability to hear it, I became clearly aware of Aaron’s existence as a separate entity.

He tells me he is a being who has evolved beyond the need to return to the physical plane. He is from “beyond the causal plane.” He defines himself as a “being of light,” which he says we all are. I’ve come to know him as a being of infinite love, compassion and wisdom. He also has a wonderful warmth and sense of humor. He is a teacher.

As my trust deepened, Aaron led me on a beautiful journey into myself, into past lives to unearth the sources of some of the pains of this life, examining the questions of isolation and separation on which my deafness forced me to focus.

(We’re asked to stop while the microphone/simultaneous translation setup is adjusted.)

Barbara: I want to suggest something to you while we’re waiting, part of our whole process of being here for these three days. One can wait the way one often waits, with a little impatience, or one can just sit, breathe, and be here in this moment. You have a choice. We’re here to share and learn, and to be quiet too. We have expectations about how this learning will evolve. We look for it everywhere but in the reality of this moment. But that’s all there is, just this moment!

You can be tense, wonder “What’s going to happen, when will we start?” or just relax and do what you’re here to do, which is to meditate. I invite you to simply breathe a bit and bring attention to that breath. Know when you’re breathing in; know when you’re breathing out. If you feel tension in your body consciously bring gentle attention to it too.

I once was at a long retreat. I had an interview with the teacher, and he was busy with something, I don’t know what. He sat me down in a hallway and I guess he forgot about me. I sat there for one hour, agitated. “Why is he keeping me waiting this long?” A second hour … winding down a little bit. Third hour … finally, by the middle of the third hour, I was very peaceful. After another hour he came in, astonished to find me there. He was very apologetic. “You’re still here? I’m so sorry.” But I was just meditating. Especially at a retreat! What else did I have to do? The first irritation and impatience was just an old story about the way things “should” be. That’s all that made me angry that first hour.

Again, with apologies to those who cannot understand, I’ll keep the words very few. Close your eyes, bodies relaxed but erect. (Pause) Bring your attention to your breath, just where it touches at the nostril. Feel the cool air coming in, warm, soft air flowing out. (Pause) Don’t label it, “In … Out.” These are concepts. I want you to be aware of the experience of the breath, of the physical sensation of the in breath, the physical sensation of the out breath. (Pause)

(We do this for several minutes.)

(We are notified that the sound system is working now. Bell sounds three times.)

Barbara: I was talking about myself and my first experience with Aaron. I began, with his help, to see the difference between my deafness as physical experience and my relationship with my deafness. The deafness was just deafness. Some of us may walk with a limp, or have a bad heart, or not have good vision and need thick glasses. So, I was deaf, an unpleasant experience, but not a big deal. My suffering and feelings of separation grew out of my anger around my deafness and my feeling that I had to fix something, that something was wrong with me that I became deaf. Did I become deaf because I was “bad”? I was so angry, had always been angry, even as a child. Now I recognize I wasn’t more angry than most people, but to that child the anger seemed enormous. Now I carried the additional anger at not hearing people. This discomfort with and judgment of my anger was cutting me off and creating the sensation of isolation. Then, feeling alone, I attacked myself and the deafness even more.

Of course it was difficult to be with people and not be able to hear them, but with Aaron’s guidance, I found that I could sit very comfortably with friends. Instead of trying to grab hold of every word, growing angrier and angrier and pushing them further away, if I just relaxed they were very eager to turn and tell me what they were saying. And if I didn’t hear what they were saying for five minutes, that was okay. I could just let it go, without fear. I started really to relax around hearing and as I did that, my whole relationship with my deafness was changed.

As a Quaker, I had grown up with the idea that there is that of God in everyone. This is primary to Quaker belief. So, it was a concept. Fine, there is that of God in me, in us, in you. What does that mean? What I experienced personally was that when I felt happy and loving, I felt connected to God. If I felt angry, greedy or jealous, felt negative kinds of emotions, then I felt very cut off from God. As I explored my deafness and the anger it engendered, I started to understand how that sense of isolation born out of deafness was really the same experience, that I was separating myself. I started to see that the sense of isolation and separation from God was based on my own judgments of myself and not on anything coming from God.

There had been a dual relationship with myself, where I said, “This is good in me and that’s bad in me,” Now I began to find “God” in everything about myself. As I accepted myself more, I had much less need to react to what I was experiencing. If one is angry, it’s just anger. Anger is a kind of energy. We tend to think that we have to either bury our anger, and not express it, not let ourselves feel it for fear that it will leak out, or we have to enact it.

So, Aaron started to teach me another way of being-not only with anger, I’m only using that as an example-with any heavy emotion, just breathing it, knowing I’m feeling it, making space for it, not judging myself because I’m feeling it. I stopped fragmenting myself into what’s acceptable and what’s unacceptable, stopped wanting to take that “unacceptable” half and throw it away. I found an acceptance in myself and, with that acceptance, a very deep level of peace, because as I stopped judging myself, I stopped judging other people and found I could really listen to and hear other people more clearly. I wasn’t angry at other people as much, so it was not only that there was more space around the anger, but also I stopped being as angry. I stopped feeling like others were purposely withholding words from me.

It wasn’t only anger which decreased but any heavy emotion, whatever we’re feeling when the little voice comes along and says, “I shouldn’t be feeling this.” Anybody here who’s not familiar with the little voice that says, “I shouldn’t be feeling this”? It really is this war with the way things are, with ourselves and the circumstances in our lives, which creates our suffering.

There’s so much that comes up in our lives that we cannot control. You go on a picnic and it’s raining. A loved one gets very sick. You aren’t offered the job you wanted. We can’t control those things. We have good health; we can’t hold on to good health. Who knows how we’ll be tomorrow? The house burns down. If our happiness depends on things outside of ourselves, we’re never going to be happy.

With attention, we start to find acceptance of ourselves and our lives. Within that spaciousness and acceptance there’s a tremendous amount of peace. We end the war with ourselves. What we learn about ourselves then is carried over to the outside world, and we end the war with our world.