February 11, 2020 Tuesday Evening, Dharma Path Class
Who and What Is ‘Love’?; Love Speaks: What Does It Mean to Be Love? Our Yo-Yo Connection to Love
Year 2; Session 2; Class 3
Barbara: We had some wonderful discussions in Brazil and with spirit. I have the transcripts back, actually, 2 of them, but I have not had time to review them yet and will do that this week. I want to share them with all of you because we were all very moved by it.
I didn’t really know what spirit had planned for Brazil. The first day, an entity came in, and when asked his name, simply said, “I am Love.” This sparked some wonderful discussion: who or what is Love? Love shared himself, itself, with us in such a way to really help us feel the enormity of love in its energy.
The question came up, how do we open our hearts to love? How do we offer love to others? I’m going to start this by turning my back on you here so I can read the transcript (off the screen). I’m going to read several paragraphs of it to you, Love’s introduction of itself. Then Aaron and Love have something planned for you tonight; I don’t know what. They were going to tell me—late this afternoon I climbed in bed to meditate and hear from them what they were going to do tonight, but I fell asleep. So, they’re running the show. I’m going to turn around and read this…
***
(An entity calling itself Love incorporates)
Love: What a beautiful place! (looking around) I am Love. Do you need to know more specifically? (pointing to each) You are love. You are love. You are love. You are love. You are love. You are love… Suffice it to say, I am the voice of love. What does it mean to be love?
For me, it means that there is never any negative or contracting thought that moves through me, because I am what you might think of as the heart of love. I am. I am Love. And you, who are my dear expressions, each of you has expressed out into the world, pouring yourself out of my heart with the intention to enhance love. If I am love with a wall around me I can only go out this far. But each of you that pours yourself out from me, you extend out into the world, each of you giving more love, and those you have taught love expanding it outward, and outward, and outward.
You are so radiant and beautiful, so courageous, allowing yourselves to know that to be love means that your heart will be broken over and over again, because the more you know that you are love, the more you experience pain with the distortions. Then you have the choice to enact that pain in some way, even by trying to fix it, or to embrace the pain with a loving heart, to know that there has never been anything but love and these distortions of love.
In the beginning, the beginning of all things, there had to be something. Nothing can ever express from nothing. And yet there was no beginning, because if there was not already something it could not come into being. So, in the beginning—we go back to the beginning of the universe—there was love. And before the beginning of the universe, love.
What is love? It is that which nurtures everything, cherishes everything—yes, everything—so that even when it sees a distortion—well, it does not nurture the distortion to enhance the distortion but it cherishes and helps the distortion to clarify itself by giving it supportive energy to come back out of the distorted, and to re-open this heart of love that is the essence of everything.
Nothing is ever born unto this Earth from a place of hatred. It can grow into that hatred very quickly, but it never begins with that. So, in the beginning, let us simply say there was love and the intention to co-create—let me phrase it differently. Aaron is helping me here with the words… in a sense he is hearing me just before you are hearing me, and if I am unclear he is helping to correct my not too fluent English language.
There was a universe of neither positive nor negative vibration, open to everything, able to become everything and anything. And there was this, you may call it love. For lack of another name, when Barbara first asked who I was, I said, “God.” But that’s too narrow a term, and I think it might disturb you. I don’t want to claim “I am God” in any way other than saying you are God, each of you; everything is God. But there was consciousness within me, creative consciousness and a deep desire to see what would happen in this universe if a conscious intention existed to bring forth a higher vibration, to bring forth an ever-growing love.
So this intention was manifest in many corners of the universe, with various results. Then we enter into the Earth plane, now moved far beyond the original intention of the creation of love. We come to this planet Earth.
***
And he goes on to discuss the founding of the Earth, and so forth. That’s enough. I have not yet reviewed the transcript. I will review the transcript in the next day or two and send it out to you. You’ll enjoy reading it. My purpose here was simply to acquaint you with this being called Love. I don’t want to call it a being or an entity—I don’t know what to call him, her, it; just Love. I think what was so powerful to all of us was the extraordinary energy Love carried. It just was, I don’t have a word for it—just a huge and beautiful energy. Not pushing, not a forceful energy, just an all-encompassing light so that everybody was in tears, moved by Love.
So, that’s a beginning, and I’m not quite sure where Aaron and Love plan to go with this. I’m going to just let Aaron incorporate and talk, and he’ll introduce Love when he’s ready… I’m looking to see of the folks at the pousada are on. I don’t see them… Oh—yes, they are! Somebody’s waving. You’re in the dark; I can’t see you. Okay. Is what I said clear to your experience? You’re in the dark so we can’t see you. We’re getting a thumbs up from you… Was the energy of Love the thing that was most powerful? (Yes.) Okay… So, here we go from there. Thank you for confirming that for me, because obviously I wasn’t there; they were incorporated. But that’s what it seemed to me.
(pause)
I have a request… (requests the largest Lemurian crystal off the table) They’re asking for that to help hold the energy… the high energy of Love. Tell me if this distorts the sound in any way. I’m going to put it on the table…
They’ve had me turn the crystal… The big Lemurian crystal. This was given to me by D, who used to sit as a medium in the entities’ Current room. She gave it to me as a gift 4 or 5 years ago. Very beautiful energy. They said to point it toward me to serve as an amplifier. So, Love is out there and coming in, and Love is everywhere, but pointing its energy toward me.
(Aaron incorporates)
Aaron: My blessings and love to you all. I am Aaron. Thank you all for being with me tonight.
(recording interrupted)
I lost some. For some reason the recording went off. This is the problem with this recorder. I promise you that in the coming months, when Barbara has the money, she will replace this recorder. It’s not just the recording program, it’s the recorder. It’s just old and not quite capable anymore, beyond fixing. I won’t repeat it….
(as a footnote from Barbara, thank you to the generous class member who gave me money for a new iPad and to Nicholas who spent 4 hours this week repairing my old one. I will hold the money for an iPad if needed; first we’ll see if this old one now works okay.)
There is no duality, ever. There is only love, and then the distortions of love. Through the days at the pousada, in between the Casa days, we had a wonderful workshop of sorts. One day we spent some time doing a “pushing” exercise that many of you have done with me—. What happens when you push or are pushed; feeling the contraction. Then we zero in on the experience of openness right there with the contraction.
The contraction is a relative reality; it arises out of conditions. The openness is always there but sometimes you can’t see it. The dark square, there on the zoom screen—our friends from the pousada, sitting in the dark in the room, I imagine. You are there! We can’t see you because the room is dark. Nonetheless, you are there. Love is always there. Sometimes we can feel or experience love, and sometimes we can’t.
We attend to the contractions, as you have been learning these two years; coming back home again and again. Then we addressed the other question, about the path of sacred darkness. People keep asking me, “Aaron, I don’t have the courage to go into the darkness. At a certain point I falter. I need to step back. It becomes too frightening.” I think what happens is you are telling yourself, “I should go on,” and that ‘should’ is a contracted energy. When you tell yourself, “Yes, there is fear, but right here with fear there is love. And love invites me to go on, to be here with this particular darkness,” then you are able to do that. Not that it’s easy, but you can do it. You keep becoming more skillful at it.
Understanding the direct experience of love is extremely helpful. All of you have experience of love, different kinds of love. Love of the parent for the child, of the one spouse to another, one friend to another. Love for the parent. Even love for God/Goddess/Divinity. You allow yourself briefly to be touched by that love until it becomes frightening and the heart closes. And then you back away and say, “I really don’t know what love is.”
I have enjoyed getting to know that which calls itself Love—this last month, really, because we had numerous discussions, conversations before arriving in Brazil. Of course, I have known Love for a long, long time, but we have become more intimate with one another in these weeks. And I have profound love and respect for that which calls itself Love.
You notice I am phrasing this in a roundabout way. I am not saying “the entity Love,” because Love is not an entity; Love is simply love. I am not calling Love a God; that puts it in a less accessible framework for you. What is God? God is Love. Very simple. Let’s just call this, that calls itself Love, to be the divine heart of all things. And I am delighted that it chooses to come and speak with us and share some of its vision, and just its energy. Don’t get too focused on Love’s words intellectually, but simply feel the beautiful energy of Love. Love says it will speak for a bit, but also would be happy to hear your questions. Love tells me it is not fluent in English; I will help.
All of that said, I am simply going to turn you over to Love. Barbara will need a moment for Love to incorporate…
(Love incorporates)
Love: I am Love. Aaron asks me to make sure it’s recording; how do I tell? The dancing green line; it is dancing.
I am Love. I was briefly inserting myself into Barbara’s consciousness as we switched from Aaron to me, just telling her thank you for this opportunity to use her body and come in to speak to all of you. I am Love.
What does it mean to be love? It means there is an understanding of non-duality. As soon as you divide things into love and hate, love and fear, you create a duality.
In the beginning there was only Love. Love looked out and said, literally, “Let there be love”; to express itself in all forms—without duality. “Let there be love.”
Perhaps we could liken this phase to that Garden of Eden, everything existing within the heart of Love. Never yet shifting into a distortion. No concept of anything but Love. But my deepest desire was to express myself out into everything. To invite such expression, the idea of distortion must be considered and permitted as non-dual with the ever-perfetc.
I am infinite. And yet even the Infinite needs help sometimes to allow love to move out, and out, and out, and out! And each expression will be unique while never leaving the heart of Love.
And so, I nudged you out of your nest, out of that Eden. No force; just saying, “You are of my heart. Now go forth and shine everywhere, into the furthest reaches of the universe. Furthermore, you have free will. You do not yet recognize that free will because everything in you still in this Eden feels like you are part of me. You have never yet recognized a sense of separation, no self and other. And until you experience the idea of separation you cannot break through that dualistic fixation and know there never was separation. So, you must experience separation and then resolve the separation to know the truth of what you are.
Lemuria. Many of you came through Lemuria. That’s why these Lemurian crystals are so powerful for you; they remind you of that stopping place, that resting place between Eden and more heavy density being. Because in Eden, of course, there was no density. In Lemuria, just the highest vibration.
I cannot go through the history of the world; we only have an hour. At Aaron’s invitation I am happy to return another night. But let me keep this directed, for now.
First, let me ask those in the room: I am trying very hard to keep my energy down. Is it okay for you, or is it too high? It’s okay. (smiling) I don’t want to blast you out into the snow! Snow is also not separate from love, but it’s cold!
Aaron has explained so succinctly to you how you have been invited through eons of time, to use the experience of the self to experience the illusion of duality in order to resolve the idea of duality and come home. You are bit like the yo-yo, coming up in the heart of love, and then whoosh! Where did love go? And then up it comes again; whoosh! (imitating with the hand, up and down) Back and forth. But that yo-yo is always connected by the string to the finger of the Divine, swinging it up and down. Sometimes home, and sometimes there is the, what do they call that when they move the yo-yo around in a circle? Around the world? Aaron is saying “around the world,” when the yo-yo goes out and then swings around and comes back home again. The yo-yo is never separated from home. It only thinks it is.
Are you ready to enjoy bouncing up and down, to enjoy swinging around the world because you know the connection, and no matter how far out, even if that string is 10,000 miles long it’s still connected to the heart of Love. You can never leave my heart, never. How could I ever let you go? You are part of me. We have never been separate. So why do you feel that I would cut the string?
And yet, the yo-yo has its own specific expression: the red one, the yellow one, the blue one, the green one, the big one, the small one. The one that glitters and flashes. Each is so beautiful.
Imagine the hand where there is not just one yo-yo attached, not just one cord but billions of cords, all flying out in different directions. Some strings shorter and some strings a thousand miles long. Can you see how that Love hand extends itself out through each of you and your beauty, out into the universe? And also included—not excluded from but included in the beauty—your fear and your pain, because fear and pain are part of the teacher. If there is no fear or pain, you’re back in Eden with no delusion of separation but also no free will. As soon as you extend yourself out into the unknown with your humanness, there is going to be fear. Fear of the unknown. How far out can the yo-yo spin? Looking back at the hand, can you say, “I’m still connected. I’m still connected… Whoops, I’m losing sight of the hand. I’m untethered now.” But you’re never untethered, you just think you are
So, the question is how to know this heart of love that exists within you. That you are always connected, each of you, with such a magnificent string, stretching out as far as you will go. Not only choosing experience but choosing to transmute fear. To use the experience to transmute fear so that you may stretch even further out to the places of darkness in the universe that so deeply long for love. You are the missionaries of Love, and you can only do that because you have the courage to live these human lives with free will, and to go forth.
Aaron and I have talked much about his teaching of path of sacred darkness. This is the point where the yo-yo swings out over the horizon so that you can no longer see the hand of Love from which it came. First, it’s straightforward. You can look back and say, “Ah, Love is still there. Love is still there. ” And then you disappear over the horizon, and you look back and say, “Oh! Love is gone!” Where would I go? You are part of me; how could I lose you?
I will never cut the cord. And you do not have the capacity to cut the cord. I want to say that clearly. Those beings that deem themselves to be the most hateful, that have done terrible things in the world, and say, “I have cut the cord. I am no longer connected to Love,” this is delusion. They are always connected, but they have gone so far out that they cannot even touch that connection. But it’s still there. And it will take perhaps eons of time and hard work for them to come back from where they lost themselves over the horizon and remember, “Love is there!” and come back. And then they’ll bounce out again. They’ll keep doing it. You all will, each going as far as you can, noting fear, breathing in space, and saying, “Right there with fear,” as Aaron says it so beautifully, “right there with fear is love.” Aaron, how do you say it? “That which is aware of fear is not afraid.” What is it that is not afraid? Love. Love is not afraid. Yet for the relative being, fear arises.
You must work through the illusion of separation, of darkness, through the negative self-beliefs. (burps) (smiling) Excuse me; I’m not so used to being in a human (body) as it has various movements. That is what they call a burp—interesting phenomenon!
Each time that you come to an edge where when you look back, you think, “I have lost love. Now I am lost in the darkness,” this is the time, as Aaron has so aptly taught you, to stop and say, ‘Thank you, fear. Thank you, pain. Thank you, confusion. Thank you, sadness. Thank you, whatever is closing the heart so I can no longer feel the energy of love. Thank you, teacher.”
Now, you don’t have to say, “Oh, I want more of you!” It’s fine to say, “That’s enough!” But can you feel how “thank you” opens the heart? Whatever is frightening, “Thank you. Thank you. This stretches me further. Thank you.”
Today, Hal was home with Barbara most of the day, about 8 hours, with the—what is it called, Aaron?—PCA, personal care attendant, who drove him home. He had his physical therapy here. He took a nap. They talked and visited for lunch. Several of the very loving PCAs have been urging the idea it’s time to bring Hal home to live. Barbara would love this. But first of all, there are the technical realities to bring him home to live. There has to be a bathroom built for him; not yet done in the original construction, knowing that that would be put off until it was needed and until there was money. But also, it’s like having a baby in the house. You love the baby, but it takes a lot of care, 24/7, to take care of the baby. It brings up fear for Barbara. Feeling she is too old, too tired. She doesn’t have the energy. She can’t do this 24/7.
So, while Hal was sleeping, Hal’s PCA and Barbara had a talk over lunch. He was simply sharing his and his fiancee’s idea of what it would be like and how they could help support it. Just at the idea of it, Barbara could feel herself closing. Aaron came to her, not incorporating, just talking to her, and said, imagine not the worst-case scenario of your being alone with him constantly, exhausted and having to care for him constantly, but imagine the best case scenario. A bedroom and bath arranged for him. Always a care person there for him. You, simply being able to relax and enjoy his company when you want his company and then, just like before his stroke, to be able to say, “I’m going to take a nap,” or, “I’m going to read a book,” or, “I’m going to work at my desk for a while,” or meditate, or take a walk. Just imagine it that way.
And Barbara could see how the fear was preventing her from imagining that. She said, “But that’s not realistic.” Why not? You can create what you wish to create. Why do you live with limiting beliefs? Now, Barbara has a way to go with this. She’s going to have to work on this. She sees the part of her that dreams of this and the trust: yes, if this is for the highest good, the money will come in to build a bathroom. The money will come in. It would have to be a whole new room, perhaps 8 feet square. Just a small bathroom but big enough that he has access, a shower and so forth.
Envision, create! But with fear you close down the energy channels. We spent one day at the pousada working with chakras—part of several days, actually, working with the chakras, looking at— I don’t know if you can see the chakra chart, here—looking at the chakras in the body. What chakra works with what area of the body.
So Aaron asked Barbara today when she was feeling that fear, “Oh, I can’t do this,” what chakra is closed when you believe “I can’t do it”? The solar plexus, the spleen—power. Reconnect to love. Reconnect to your true power, which is not YOUR power but THE power, Love.
Now look at me and connect to me. I’d like each of you to think of something that is frightening for you. See if you can see which chakra the fear closes most. The throat, maybe, or the heart, the third eye, maybe the base. What closes when you think of this frightening thing? This is going into the (sacred) darkness. What closes? Can you feel it? Okay. If you can’t feel it, that’s okay; just assume something is closed and note “closed”, not knowing exactly where.
Now here is where Aaron’s practice of going into the sacred darkness is vital. Say to yourself, with your hand over that chakra if there’s a distinct chakra, otherwise just holding the heart, perhaps: “I am willing to go into that which appears closed to find the way through, to find that which is always open. Right now, in this moment, where is love?”
I know that every one of you can find love in this moment. If you’re having trouble finding it within you, look into my eyes. I’m looking right into the camera. Look at me, feel my energy. Feel me including you, enclosing you. I am Love and you are part of me. How could you ever lose me?
There may not be a vast opening; it may still be a bit closed. But let’s sit with it for 2 or 3 minutes and see if you can begin to feel the opening into the darkness. Light going into the darkness. The power of love, our love, the love, lighting up the darkness.
(long pause; sitting)
So Aaron asked Barbara to envision not the problems, because there are not really problems, just (as Aaron puts it beautifully) situations that ask your loving attention. Opening to the perfection. This home that they have shared for 50 years, how could it not include Hal? To imagine waking up in the morning and walking into his bedroom, giving him a hug and then leaving him to the care attendant, who would get him up and dressed, bathed, out of bed, that they might sit and have breakfast together. Might go for a walk, if it was a beautiful day. And then she might excuse herself to do whatever she chose to do. Just normal life. Not having to constantly be there to take care of him. He is not a baby. To envision the radiance of this scene, and the love in it. You cannot manifest that which your heart does not fully invite. If the heart closes and is afraid, that limits the possibility of manifestation.
(blowing the nose) Actually, imagining all this through Barbara’s mind, I get teary!
Whatever your life is about, whatever your dreams are, you cannot manifest that which you cannot imagine. And if fear limits the imagination, “I can’t do that,” then how can you manifest it?
But in order to invite, you have to want it with all your heart. You have so much courage to come into the incarnation and create and co-create, and I am always right there with you. And yes, fear will be there with you too, because this is the power of using your free will to say, “No, I will not enact that fear. But I will hold space for it.” Aaron’s image of serve it tea and tell it, “Shh! No dialogue. Just be quiet.” But yes, the body is trembling with fear.
To be a hero does not mean to feel no fear but to have the courage and love to face that fear and keep walking forward. With that, there is never a limitation. And my beloved ones, when you extend the yo-yo cord way out there without limitation, it helps me, Love, and us as Love, to be unlimited, to touch the places of darkness in the universe that so desperately cry out for light and love. As Aaron reminds you, that is why you, angels that you are, have come: to be light, to be love. Not an easy job, and it takes practice.
You can never lose me, only, you can turn your back to me and ignore me to the degree that you believe you have lost me. If you want to do that, you have a right to do that. When you are ready to return—the yo-yo cord having gone out a thousand miles and become terribly tangled, frayed—when it finally untangles and comes back, I bring you back to my heart. And if it’s frayed we add a new cord and then you can go back out again.
How could you ever leave me? One of you is thinking, what if the cord tears? I will reach out and catch you! How could I let you go? Of course, if you have made the free will decision that you wish to go, wish to explore the furthest reaches of negativity and darkness, we’ll still put on the new cord, because you are always attached to the heart of love. But then you can dangle out there as far as you want, and explore darkness to your heart’s content, until you are ready to come back home.
One of you is thinking, “That sounds like I don’t have free will.” You do have free will in that you can stay out there in the darkness for as long as you wish. However, since you are born of Love and of the essence of Love, you cannot of free will choose not to be love because there is no duality. There is only love and that distortion of love, which is called fear, and separation, and its faces of hate, greed, and so forth. But love is always there. That was never the choice. Free will is the choice to enact the love that you are or to play around a bit with the negative distortions to see how that feels.
You could only choose not to be love if you lived in a dualistic universe. And since love is the heart of the universe, that is not the choice; not in this universe. One of you is asking, are there alternate universes that are grounded in fear, grounded in negativity? This is a hard question to answer. There are alternate universes that began with Love but so totally lost touch with that love that it is a very long, long way back. It seems there is only darkness there, depravity, and hatred. But even those spaces of seemingly ultimate negativity must eventually find their way back to the beginning, to love.
(Aaron asks Love to start a new recording at the 1-hour mark)
I will give you a break…
(break)
Reviewed only to here
Barbara: I asked last week why Love has never incorporated before and was told, down there at the Casa with the very high energy I was able to raise my own vibrational frequency high enough for Love to be able to incorporate in my body without blowing up my body, essentially. And having learned that by his—its—“its” seems disrespectful, Aaron…just use the word Love—after Love’s incorporating a number of times through the week and getting more used to Love’s energy, then they were going to see how it would do here. He’s asking me, how do I feel? I feel like I’m sort of floating up there somewhere. I’m very ungrounded, but I feel okay.
I also brought this back from the Casa. I don’t usually buy myself much in the way of jewelry or things, but they are struggling down there, the townsfolk, because of so many fewer people coming. And so I felt like I wanted to try to shop. What a terrible thing— I had to shop! (laughter) Actually, I’m not much of a shopper. But it wasn’t hard to find a beautiful crystal, a beautiful pendant.
So, let’s start with questions and we’ll see… yes, Aaron, I think I can have Love incorporate again. He says, if you do you will not sleep until 4 in the morning… —Okay. He says, they may not sleep, either… (inaudible, lost to laughter)
Can you feel the difference in the energy? Some yes, some no…
Q: I was crying.
Barbara: Can you feel the energy out there (those on Zoom)? Yes and no… Well, all I can say is Love…
Q: Love was tuning the energy very well.
Barbara: We asked somewhere during the week, what is the relation to the Mother, with whom people often cry, and Love? Love is one very beautiful expression; the Mother is one very beautiful expression of Love. Love is the essence, here.
I have not fully read the transcripts; I’ve just read the first couple of pages of the first one. But I found the transcript needed far less cleaning up or review than any transcript. Aaron is so clear, but Love is just—Love has got it nailed down, is really clear. I don’t know how Love was tonight but I suspect equally clear.
So, opening here to questions…
(question not recorded)
Q: It’s not so much a question as just an appreciation. It was an experience, and I don’t want to muddle it up with a question, so I’m just going to leave it there. That’s it.
Barbara: I understand. I think at the pousada this kind of experience is what people experienced much more than any intellectual content, which is really no different than anything Aaron has told us. But Love’s energy is so profound. And when people ask, “What is love?” it seems to give people a sense of, “Yeah… I forgot—this is love. Oh, I remember now—this is love.” For me, I can’t get it from your viewpoint because I’m channeling it. But something in me still resonates to that which is channeling through and incorporated, and his energy just, my heart wants to laugh and cry. It’s so powerful, and such a sense of of coming home, to resting in this experience of love. I really appreciate that Love does not say something like, “I am God,” putting itself on a pedestal, but, “You are God. You are God. You are God. You are all expressions.” We’re all part of the same thing. And we need that reminder: We are That.
Q: What I sense is the love teachings from Love are an addition or a balance to the wisdom teachings of Aaron. Do you sense that?
Barbara: I agree, and it’s the same thing as Remembering Wholeness and the Mother. That that is the love teaching, not the wisdom teaching, so much. And it just touches and opens our hearts. We need both.
Q: I felt like, as I was listening to him, her, he, it… (Barbara: to Love) I felt like I understood what has been going on in my life that seemed like such a mystery, but also seemed to be okay. I understood as I listened that I have been having this experience that is really okay, and what I was supposed to experience so that I would better understand. Which sounds like I’m talking in circles, but it was just right.
Barbara: I’ve been hanging out with Love since the week before going to Brazil, two weeks, when I started to ask about the content of the workshop. Spirit had been telling me don’t worry, Spirit is planning the workshop. But then finally about 2 weeks before the trip, I started to ask, “I’d like a little idea of what you’re planning, please!” And during meditation, Love came in. That’s the first direct contact I had with Love.
There was nothing that Love said that was anything different intellectually than what Aaron said, but it’s like Love’s presence drew me into its vibration and helped me to remember, not intellectually but my heart to remember who and what I am, that’s been laid aside with all the intellectual stuff and the relative reality stuff. It was just like coming home, wrapped so deeply in this embrace. Very both comforting and energizing, and a sort of, “Oh yea, how could I have forgotten that?” But it’s not a “that” as facts; it’s more a feeling. Just a vibration, a color, a light—home.
And I found at the Casa, when I was moving through anything difficult in meditation, looking at places that were frightening or uncomfortable, as soon as I remembered, “Come back to love”—it was just a statement that I made, putting my hands on my heart, “Come back to love,” allowing myself to feel that energy and that high vibration—that it became a pathway, like a bright light leading through the darkness of whatever I was looking at.
I’ve been having a lot of, the word consternation comes to mind; I’m not even sure what consternation means! For two years (not last year but the two years before) they did a lot of surgery on my back to repair damage to my back. I was finally moving without pain, and they said it was healed at the end of 2017. Then I came back, and Hal had the stroke at the beginning of 2018. And when I went back to the Casa, I guess in 2019, they didn’t do that much on me except working with the emotional body and the grief and so forth.
This past year my back has been much more painful again, and it’s been harder to walk. Part of it was that bad fall I had in April, and the torn hip tendon. So the hip tendon was healing but not really healed. It was painful to walk, and I was limping so my back was painful, and I was putting too much weight on the walker so my shoulders were painful. I was feeling, is this the end of being able to live in a reasonably comfortable body? And looking at the fear, I guess basically it’s not fear of mortality, I’m not at all afraid of death, it’s fear of… losing control? Becoming old, aging. Not knowing what will happen, fear of the unknown. Yet death, the death part will be easy. What leads up to it these next 10, 20 years is the tough stuff.
I came back to the Casa asking for help with my back. I had been told by my doctor that the cartilage between the vertebrae in my back was shrinking more and more. I had gone from 5’ 11” to 5’ 6”. I’ve shrunk that many inches because my back is shrinking. And because my back is shrinking, all my organs are compressed, because my body is so much shorter because the back has shrunk. So my digestive system is not functioning as well, my lungs, my heart, not any of it.
So I went back, saying, first, what’s going to happen? How do I fix this? And then let go of, “How do I fix it?” Aaron said, just think of yourself as being 5’ 11” again. Open the body. Give them room in the back to inflate the cartilage between the vertebrae.
After the first surgery I was lying in bed and feeling fear: did it work? What if it didn’t work? What if it did work? Going through all these crazy ups and downs. And Love, who as I said, had been visiting me for 3 weeks and talking about it said, “This is exactly what we’re talking about. Just stop and remember you are love. What does it mean to be love in this moment, to really know yourself as complete and perfect and loving? Perfect in your imperfections. Not perfect perfect; perfect in your imperfections, but just as you need to be. And imagine that anything in your body that is presently distorted and limiting you has the potential to heal.”
So, I lay there through the 24 hour period after surgery just reflecting on the power of love to heal, is the only way I can say it. Just resting in that light. Well, I got up out of bed and I was wiped out. Those of you who have been to the Casa will know that feeling. Just because it’s 24 hours post-surgery doesn’t mean you’re ready to dance! I staggered out of my room.
Then we did the workshop all weekend and I was feeling more energized. But my back still hurt. Then the second surgery, and another 24 hours, more relaxed into the experience of Love. Just post-surgery, lying there in bed and saying, “Thank you, Love. Thank you.” There’s that song, we’ve sung it at retreats and at the Casa:
I am one with the heart of the Mother
I am one with the heart of Love
I am one with the heart of the Father
I am one with God… (repeating)
I was just chanting that to myself. Well, eureka! I got out of bed that first morning after the 24 hours. I was still kind of staggering, but within a few hours I was, I don’t know if I can do this (stands up)— can you see how much straighter I’m standing? (Group: Yes) And there’s no pain.
So, just awakening, remembering we are love. I have found that energy so powerful. It’s just like coming home. I can vaguely remember being 4 or 5 years old and skinning my knee and crying and climbing in my mother’s arms, and being held in love.
Okay, I pass this back to you…
Q: While Love was talking with us, I had a real kind of heartfelt connection, an awareness of my brotherhood, if you will, with beings who are very much in the darkness. And my question, and that’s to the whole group, is, what is a more light-filled or enlightened way to relate to those beings than we’ve previously had, than I’ve previously had? How do you relate in a light-filled way to beings who are expressing darkness?
Barbara: So he is tossing that out to the whole group, thank you. We would be happy to hear thoughts about it…
(sharing not transcribed)
Barbara: I find for myself that just offering that commitment every morning before I get out of bed, and every night when I get back in bed, just, “I ask for help to keep my heart open in love, to be able to be of service in this world. To be able to alleviate suffering in this world. To bring love in.” It becomes such a deeply grounded commitment that it goes beyond the intellectual, “I will do this, I will do that.” It’s just like the heartbeat, it’s there. When we make that kind of commitment, something much deeper in us than everyday thought knows what to do, and we start to trust it. And of course I make mistakes; we all do. But then we can forgive ourselves more easily for those mistakes, too, and know, okay, next time I’ll try to catch it a bit sooner, see where I’ve gone off the track.
(sharing not transcribed)
(upcoming schedule, request for manager for Oakwood retreat, continuing Dharma Path Post-Grad Year in the fall)
Barbara: That’s all. Much love to everybody, and good night…