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

Day One continued (Section 6)

Barbara: We’re going to give you a chance to ask questions to me or to Aaron, questions about what I spoke about, what Aaron spoke about, questions about meditation.

Question: (Question is asked in Spanish, translated to Hal, who signs to Barbara.) Why don’t you just answer the questions yourself?

Barbara: Aaron knows things that I don’t know. The questions that I can’t answer, I pass on to Aaron. He is my teacher; he knows more than I do.

Question: (In Spanish) (About the relationship of Barbara/Aaron and about Barbara’s own inner wisdom.)

Barbara: I can only tell you what I experience. When I first met Aaron, I was confused about a lot of things that very slowly and clearly he led me to understand, not really by his words, which were just signposts, but by the meditation experiences to which he guided me. Then I could understand more deeply. I respect him as my teacher. There is much that I have learned from him, but there is still much I don’t know.

If I understand what you’re asking correctly, I have within me what I would call highest self, which is the deepest, wisest, aspect of me. It has much wisdom. I don’t always have very clear access to it, and my experience is that Aaron is an older, wiser being. He takes some of it a step further, so that I do connect with my highest self and also with Aaron. We each have, what Aaron calls, highest self, which is the mix of spirit and mental body.

We each also have guides on the spirit plane. Sometimes these guides might not be that much wiser than our own higher self. Sometimes they may be much higher level guides. What we need is always there. When I channel Aaron, often the material that comes through is not something that I consciously know. For example, last month a medical doctor came to talk to Aaron about a patient of his, a patient who seemed to have a split personality disorder. And so he and Aaron were talking about some of the chemical factors and neurological factors involved. Now, this is something I don’t know anything about at all.

Similarly, Aaron has taught me Buddhism with very specific, technical terms, terms that I have no experience with, so I know it’s not coming from me, but it’s coming from somewhere. So, I experience Aaron as a separate energy, but also the thoughts that come through are often things with which I have no experience. Could it be from my higher self? It could be. I can’t deny that it could be. I don’t experience it that way. I do experience my higher self and I experience that as something different from Aaron. This is funny because Aaron’s primary teaching to us is that there is nothing separate, and yet I experience him as something separate from me. Who can understand that?

Question: (In Spanish) (About Barbara’s connection with Aaron.)

Barbara: Basically, yes. Aaron first came to me as my personal guide. I understand that our connection goes back many lifetimes, that we knew each other in incarnation before his final incarnation. He tells us that his final incarnation was five hundred years ago and he has no more need to come into human form. But our connection with one another goes way back. So, he came to me as my guide. He is my guide in this lifetime. What he taught me was very valuable, and people started to ask me, “Could I talk to Aaron? Could you teach the meditation he is teaching?” So, I started to offer it to people. At that time I was still a sculptor, and I had been a professional sculptor for twenty-five years. This was the focus of my life. I had no conscious desire or intention to become a channel or teacher of meditation.

Aaron told me it was my choice. I could simply learn what I need to learn, and go back to my sculpture and teach other people just indirectly through my being. Or I could choose to channel him for bigger groups like this and teach this directly. It was my choice. So, nothing forced me to do that. It simply seemed this is what I needed to do with the rest of my life. It was a scary decision.

Question: Did you have spiritual experiences as a child? Did you experience Aaron?

Barbara: When I was a very young child, I used to meditate and experience the being that I’ve come to know as my guru. He was at that time a living being, but I didn’t know him in body then, but experienced his energy. I had no idea who he was. I was a small child. It was very powerful to me, but as I grew up, I put it aside and didn’t consciously meet Aaron until thirty years later. During that span of thirty years I did not directly experience the presence of spirit. I meditated and prayed, had spiritual concerns, but I never even considered trying to experience spirit directly as I do Aaron.

Question: Do you always experience Aaron?

Barbara: When I meditate, generally it’s a silent meditation, not talking. Aaron’s the one that promoted this when I first began to work with him. He would talk to me for a few minutes and then he would say, “Enough words. Go and meditate,” so as not to understand it only on a cerebral level, but really understand it on a heart level. I know he’s there but there’s no intrusion on the silence.

Then, while meditating, a question may come up, or at a time when I’m not meditating, I may simply have a question for him. Last night, we had a small session, and afterward a number of us were gathered around the table. People asked me some questions that I could answer and other questions where I really felt I couldn’t answer, I feel Aaron’s energy. I can only liken it to a nonphysical gentle push. I just feel his presence there. I feel his thought pattern and energy pattern as if he’s saying, “I would be glad to answer this one if you would like me to.” He never forces himself on the situation, but if there’s a question that he’d like to answer, he simply says, “I am open to speaking now.” I really always feel his energy around me. It’s like, if Hal and I sit in the same room, in the living room, and we’re both reading. We’re not talking to one another, but I feel Hal’s energy sitting in the room with me. And if I want to ask Hal a question or to hear something that I’ve read, I simply say, “Hal, do you know anything about this?” And we talk. It’s almost the same thing with Aaron.

Question: Is he always there? Can you invoke him? Or is he away somewhere and then you call him?

Barbara: As I just said, it’s like sitting in a room with Hal, and Hal is just sitting there, but he’s reading his book and I’m reading my book. We’re not talking to one another, but if something comes up in my book that I want to share or that I have a question about I can just say, “Hal, what do you think about this?” It’s the same thing with Aaron. If something comes up that I have a question about, I simply ask him and he’s there. Since I have made a connection with him, I’ve never experienced him not being there.

Question: In other words, he’s always with you?

Barbara: Once he told me he was going on vacation. (Laughter) I was going to be on a silent meditation retreat, and I didn’t need his instruction. We discussed the retreat and then he said, “You’re all set. I’m taking a vacation.” He said, “If you need me, call and I’ll come.” And I knew it wouldn’t take long. I wouldn’t have to wait around for a few hours for him to drive back from somewhere. He described his “vacation” this way: Aaron basically is spirit body. He puts on, he says, a cloak of personality. He uses his mental body as a tool in order to express himself, because he’s using this personality and mental body to be able to participate and teach us. It doesn’t pull him out of the clarity of his spirit body, but does require effort, to maintain this “cloak.” So vacation was an opportunity just to rest there and be spirit. So, when I asked him, “Where did you go?” he said, “I simply allowed myself to be spirit for that week, not to bring in the mental body at all.

Question: To your knowledge, are you the only channel for him?

Barbara: Aaron says so, yes. However, several people that transcribe these tapes regularly have found that when they have a question about the material, such as if when the tape is turned they missed a sentence or two, if they ask Aaron, he tells them. They underline it in the transcript for me to check it out with Aaron, and it’s usually right, so they’re getting it clear.

Question: Can we ask Aaron if there are other spirits in the world who channel other people?

Barbara: Oh, absolutely there are. Everybody has a personal guide. You are all capable, to some degree, of hearing that guide. Our only problem with hearing it is our own disbelief that we can do it. Something comes to us and we say, “I don’t trust that.” We’re not used to trusting that we can hear spirit. Your intuition is a wonderful example. Your intuition really is your own highest self, not a spirit guide, but your own deepest wisdom. Sometimes we listen to our intuition and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we say, “Where’s that voice coming from?” and we don’t pay attention. And usually, we wish we had paid attention, later.

Question: My friend would like to know if anybody in the room would be able to channel their own spirit guide? Would it be possible?

Barbara: In learning about channeling, something we do in Ann Arbor is hold “How to Channel” workshops. Maybe twenty people will attend. Aaron and I teach people how to open to their spirit guides, how to channel. How to hear it, how to trust it, and then we start practicing, so that people actually start vocally channeling their guides. Hal did this. Many people have done this. Very few of the people that do this take that on to channel for large groups like this, but many students with whom I work with regularly in Ann Arbor now channel their own guidance for themselves. They tape it and then they write it down and listen to it afterwards or they write it out as it comes through. It is not hard to learn to do that. The hard part is to learn to trust it.

Question: Do our guides know our faults? Do they always know what we need from them or do we specifically have to address that?

Aaron: I am Aaron. We are capable of knowing your thoughts. As Barbara said, at certain levels of being telepathy is very easy. That doesn’t make me exempt from basic rules, however. You have free will. You are entitled to privacy. No positive energy will invade your privacy and read your thoughts against your will.

If you send out a thought as a question to your guide, it’s not necessary to phrase it in language, because we are telepathic, but we request that you ask. The asking is part of the process. To ask denotes your willingness to hear and receive an answer. You see this with school children all the time. Teachers sometimes teach at children and the words just go past, but when a child is ready to learn and asks, then they’re ready for an answer. That is all.