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

Day One continued (Section 7)

Question: (In Spanish) On what plane does Aaron exist? Is the difference on the “quantum level” or the “energy information level”?

Barbara: That’s one I have to give Aaron.

Aaron: I am Aaron. I understand your question, but the terms do not quite fit themselves together. You exist on what I would call the causal plane, that is, you are still subject to the laws of karma. I exist, let us simply say beyond the causal plane. In essence I am energy. All of you are that same energy. The pure energy that you are becomes distorted by the various filters of ego, of mental thought and emotions. My energy is not influenced by those distortions although clearly, I do offer thought.

What I would like to ask you to do is visualize a very clear and open energy stream. You could see it as a clear, cold waterfall. If you subjected that waterfall to some kind of pressure, perhaps a strong air force of wind blowing against it, it would contract. You can visualize this simply as a cluster of string hanging down. It hangs straight, but if you grab it there’s a contraction in it, a pinch. That energy contraction comes only on the causal plane. It is the foundation of the distortion I speak of. Because I have no emotional body, my energy flows very straight and uncontracted.

When you talk of quantum level, I don’t think the difference is there at all. It’s all energy, my energy directed into thought patterns moves through without distortion. Your energy of thought pattern becomes distorted by the various emotions and images of self which compress upon those thought patterns. I do not know if I have answered your question. If not, I would be glad to attempt it again if you would rephrase it. I pause.

Question: (In Spanish) Don’t you call your experience “energy information”?

Aaron: I am Aaron. I prefer to call it pure awareness, which expresses itself as information. There is a subtle, but distinct difference. Do you understand? I pause.

Question: (In Spanish) Can you talk about the resurrection?

Barbara: Aaron is asking, are you talking specifically about the Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus or are you talking more about the redemption of all beings in whatever form that redemption takes?

Question: The latter.

Aaron: I am Aaron. This is a helpful question. It leads us back into the question, “Why are we doing this spiritual work?” Different religions have their own way of expressing the same truth. In the Christian idiom, one may die and find oneself in a hell or purgatory state. The belief is that through the Christ one is redeemed and eventually finds its way to paradise. Some Christians would take this quite literally, that through this specific being’s energy, which they believe to be a direct manifestation of divine energy, this happens. It comes through the effort of the Christ. A looser interpretation is that there is that which we would call Christ consciousness. Buddhists call this same thing Buddha nature. It is the place that, when you are there, you’re totally within God and God within you. It is the highest level of your being. When you rest in that highest, purest level of being, you are instantly free from the hell realms. Their solidity shatters. This is also through the Christ or Buddha, but not necessarily through the being who bore that name.

Whether we are speaking of death and afterlife, or simply the moment to moment redemption and freedom, this is your birthright, this redemption, this freedom. Freedom to experience the highest divine level of being comes when you access this Christ consciousness, Buddha nature, pure awareness, however you want to name it. Through this experience of the divine, you manifest your own divinity. It’s not, then, that Christ doesn’t save you, it’s simply a different way of interpreting salvation.

I will not get into a religious or philosophical debate here. I find what I teach really is consistent with most religious philosophies, but not if you take them absolutely literally. If you prefer to take it literally, and my words are inconsistent, then put my words aside and follow your own heart.

This sense of redemption through Christ, then, can loosely be translated as redemption through resting in the divine in the self. One can reasonably argue that one is introduced to that divine through one’s love of Jesus or with one’s love of the Buddha or any other great master.

There is something interesting that Barbara recently read in a book which I’d like to share with you. I believe she has the book with her. I pause.

Barbara: One moment please, while I find out what Aaron wants me to read. Okay, this is a book I’d like to recommend to you, anyhow. It’s called, The Ground We Share. It’s a dialogue between a zen master, Robert Aitken and a Jesuit priest, Brother David Steindl-Rast. It’s a very beautiful dialogue in which they’re exploring similarities between their religions. They’re not saying differences don’t exist, only exploring similarities. Let me see if I can find what Aaron wants me to read.

This is from Brother David. They’ve been discussing the relationship between the historic Christ and, what Brother David was calling, the cosmic Christ. Brother David says, “The relationship between the historic Christ and the cosmic Christ is very subtle. You could say that the historic thesis was totally alive with the cosmic Christ reality, but did not exhaust that reality.

Each one of us, when we find our fulfillment is totally filled with the Christ reality, but none of us exhausts the Christ reality because that is the spirit or life of the totality. Robert Aitken goes on to talk about how that compares with Buddhist teaching and the same idea that we cannot exhaust the Buddha nature, that these are very comparable terms.

I am paraphrasing Aaron here. He is saying that what he considers our redemption comes when we become fully awake to the deepest truth of our being, however we name that truth. As long as we believe in the myth of our brokenness and limitation, we enact that in the world. When we discover our divinity we may choose to enact that divinity. Then the small self becomes transparent and eventually falls away.

Question: (In Spanish) Can you meditate anywhere?

Barbara: Absolutely. One practice that Aaron has taught me and that I have worked with for many years is when I first wake up in the morning he’s asked me, first, to be aware “Am I breathing in or breathing out?” with my first awareness. Then, he requested I not change my position, but lie there in the position in which I woke up and simply note, “comfortable, pleasant” or “uncomfortable, unpleasant.” He’s asked me to really be there, lie there and meditate, lying right there in bed, for five or ten minutes, letting awareness come into my body. Then, if I get myself up out of bed, I can go and meditate elsewhere.

If you wake up in the middle of the night, you can meditate there. If you’re stopped in your car, not at a traffic light, but in a traffic jam that’s clearly going to be ten or fifteen minutes, that’s a wonderful place to meditate. It doesn’t matter what you’re sitting on. It doesn’t matter where you are.

A student who’s a nurse, who works a night shift from seven at night to seven in the morning in an intensive care ward where people are very, very sick, so the work is very intense, finds that she needs time to meditate and the nurses’ lounge is too busy. So, she goes into the women’s restroom and the only place to sit is on the toilet seat with the lid closed. She goes in there and meditates, and it’s very quiet and she sits there for ten or fifteen minutes. You can meditate anywhere.

Question: (In Spanish) Is it better to meditate sitting straight and in a formal meditation position?

Barbara: I never want to give hard and fast rules. People who are sick may need to do it differently, for example. A friend who was dying of cancer couldn’t sit, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t meditate. If your body is healthy, there’s a benefit to sitting up straight, being self-supporting. Part of what we’re learning is that we do not need to lean on things; we can fully support ourselves. It’s part of learning our wholeness.

On the other hand, if the situation is such, like driving … Hal and I were in Taxco for the weekend, before we came here, and drove back in a crowded bus. The seat I was sitting on leaned back and the seat in front of me was in my face. There was no way to sit up and I wanted to meditate. Of course, I can meditate leaning back like that. So, we have an ideal. But in certain circumstances we do what we can with what we’ve got.

Question: (In Spanish) (Inaudible)

Barbara: Are you talking about these chairs here in this room? Okay. Because of the slope of the seat and back, it may cause back pain if you try to sit up, so if you need to lean against the back of the chair, that’s fine. If you’re going to meditate at home, put books or wood blocks under the rear legs of the chair, so that the seat is slightly sloped with the rear higher. Then, you don’t have to lean back. You don’t want your back to hurt. We have enough pain in our lives. We don’t have to create artificial rules and generate more pain. Generally speaking, if you have a choice and can sit in a chair that allows you to sit without leaning back, that’s to be preferred.

If you can’t, if there’s no choice and there’s some irritation that there’s no choice, that mind state is a perfect place to practice. What’s creating your dissatisfaction, your suffering even? Is it the chair itself or is it your quarrels with the situation? We have such a lot of opinions about how things should be, but conditions are seldom ideal. Where is peace to be found in those situations where we can’t change the conditions?

Question: (In Spanish) Can I meditate at night in bed?

Barbara: I don’t want to be facetious, but it depends on whether you’re awake or asleep. Meditation is awake, present. When you close your eyes and you’re falling asleep, everything is shutting down and often you’re not very present. I recommend to people that they meditate before they go to sleep, but not lying down in bed, because that just puts you to sleep. Sit on a chair or cushion and meditate. Then, you’ll be in a very quiet but alert state, very present, very quiet. Then, go to sleep. You’ll sleep more soundly. If you find yourself falling asleep while sitting on the chair, you have a number of choices. I’ll talk later about working with sleepiness.

This is the last question and then we’ll meditate for a bit.

Question: (Inaudible) (About sleepiness.)

Barbara: When we lie down and close our eyes, we’re used to thinking of it as sleep time. It’s just conditioning. So, when we close our eyes we need to recondition ourselves to be present, that it’s awake time. Another reason we get sleepy is that meditation opens us, so that much of what we’ve repressed starts to come up. There’s resistance to experiencing some of it, so much of our sleepiness is simply a statement of our resistance. We can learn to work with that. It’s very workable. I’ll talk more about it this afternoon.