Aaron: A Channeled Introduction
(Excerpted from the book Aaron )
Greetings to you all. I am Aaron. Some of you may feel skepticism or discomfort at the idea of being addressed by a spirit. I ask you to look more deeply here. What and who am I? What and who are you? Understanding the emptiness of all form, what is the difference between us, or is there none?
I have taught that we are all beings of light.
What does that mean? Some of you may be familiar with the meditative experience of the dissolution of ego and body. Those who have experienced this have ascertained that what they are left with is light. That’s all; just light. There is no ego in this space. There is no sense of self or other. There is no permanence of form, no individual thought, no selfish will, no personal consciousness. Beyond all these attributes or “skandhas” there is pure awareness that the essence that was erroneously considered self is simply light and energy. This is what you are. This is what I am.
As we each evolve, we choose to materialize in whatever form is best suited to our growth and to our present learning needs. This earth is a schoolroom. You are here in material form because it is here that you will find the next lessons that you need. I have evolved beyond the need for material form so I have none. Nevertheless, I am still learning and am in the form best suited to those lessons I now must learn.
Do not take my evolution beyond form to imply that I am better than you. All souls have equal worth. All! I do have a different perspective. I can call on the knowledge and wisdom of all of my past lives, as well as the wisdom I’ve gained in these 450 of your earth years since I passed from your plane. But what I teach you must be filtered through your own processes. I can only guide you. The real learning must come from your own experiences. If what I say is of help and provides guidance, that is fine. Use it. If it doesn’t help, what matter where it comes from. Put it aside and follow your own inner wisdom.
On your earth plane, the greatest lessons for most of you are faith and love.
On my plane, the most important lessons are wisdom and compassion, and beyond that, a deeper moving into Love and Light. Here we have passed beyond any illusion of the separate, small ego self. We communicate telepathically, one spirit with another or many others. As there is no ego, there is no need to protect the self from embarrassment or to cover up unskillful choices. Thus our sharing is complete and honest. Wisdom accrues rapidly, for each spirit shares its own wisdom and experiences completely and I can learn from another’s experiences just as well as from my own. Thus there is no longer the need to “live” it all myself.
I also learn deeper compassion and it is partially for this learning that I choose to teach. You remind me of the pains of being human, remind me not to judge another, but to keep my heart open in love. A great teacher has said “never put anyone out of your heart” but it is so easy to fall into that judgment on any plane. My contact with you reminds me that what I work toward is unconditional love.
I’ve said I have the advantage of the perspective of many lifetimes. My final lifetime on your human plane was as a Theravadin monk in Thailand, a Meditation Master. The wisdom and understandings of many lifetimes came together then, enabling me to find freedom for myself and also to help many beings to discover that path. Yet I do not teach you only as that Thai Master. I have been a monk in many, many lifetimes. I have wandered forests, dwelled in caves, and lived in magnificent temples. Through these lives, I’ve practiced most forms of Buddhism. That is only a small part of it. I have been Christian monks in just as many lifetimes, priests, and positions that are higher in the hierarchy of that church.
I have been Muslim, Jew, Sufi, Taoist, and so many more.
I have lived in all colors of skin, in male and female form, in many and diverse cultures. I have prayed in hovels and palaces. I have starved and lived in luxury while those around me starved. I have been a nobleman and a murderer. I have loved and hated, killed and cherished, in short, done just about everything in the realm of human experience.
So have all of you!
What does it mean to have compassion for another? Can you see that the tyrant or the torturer is also you and move from judgment of him to compassion for his pain and situation? This does NOT mean condoning his acts. It means simple compassion, acceptance, unconditional love.
Remember that this learning is a process. If you were already arrived at that space of unconditional love and perfect compassion and acceptance you would not need to be here learning in a human body. Remember that I too am still learning this. Do not judge yourself here but be increasingly aware of your desire to judge another, that you may continue to learn and grow.
Let me return to my perspective that I’ve mentioned. I teach you as all of these beings that I was, the murderer and his learning so painfully gained as well as the beloved meditation master and his. Beyond that, I teach from my present perspective that knows the illusion of all form, that sees clearly that all any of us are is light and energy, slowly evolving to a brilliance and clarity as all self and ego are dissolved.
As such I do not teach Buddhism or any “ism” separate from the Truth. I know of only two truths here with a capital “T”, God and Love. All formal religions are merely paths to the understanding of these two Truths.
Some of you may squirm at my use of the word God here. I do not imply a deity with a long white beard. Call it the Eternal or Absolute. If you are a follower of Buddhism, call it the ‘Unborn, undying, unchanging and uncreated” of the Udana Scripture. These are labels. You find it so difficult to remember that this body is not your essence, but merely the borrowed form of this lifetime. As “Aaron” or your own name are merely labels applied for convenience, so “God” is a label. We need some common way to discuss this Force which is the Source of all Light. Call it God, Goddess, Ram, Krishna, All that is, The Absolute, as you prefer.
This Essence, this Force, is beyond all attempts to label.
It is truly Eternal and labels can only limit. This is why Buddhism attempts to label only in the negatives of what it’s not – unborn, undying. This Absolute is the source of all love and all light. For simplicity’s sake I prefer to use the label God. If that makes you uncomfortable, call it what you will. Be assured that your label is irrelevant. Can you build a fence around infinity?
Much of what I teach falls under the label “Buddhism.” I had my greatest understandings as a Buddhist. I am not attached to this form, but do find it a useful tradition to use as a teaching tool. No pride is implied when I state that I was a wise teacher in that lifetime and my understanding of the tools of meditation helped many beings find their way. So it is natural that I again draw on that wisdom as I teach.
But I am not a Buddhist. I have a great love for that being who was known as the Buddha; also for he who was known as the Christ, and for many other great saints and teachers. I do not choose to label myself here.
I do stress the use of vipassana, not as an end in itself but as a teaching tool. The practice of this meditation will lead you to a clarity of understanding of the three characteristics of impermanence, suffering and anatta or impersonality of all things. This as an intellectual understanding is also not an end in itself. You are not here just to understand these three truths but to learn from this understanding, to grow in love and faith, in compassion and wisdom.
The Buddha taught that there is no soul, and I speak about a soul. Here I believe we have what we’d call a semantic difficulty. There is no word in your language that is suitable for what I describe. I borrow the word soul as the closest. By soul you imply an individual. By soul, I mean that essence of energy which is totally impersonal, even devoid of memory and certainly devoid of self, but which is unique to you and is of the same material, the same essence, as the Divine.
You have many aspects. One of these is the personal that you now experience.
This aspect has form, thought, and so on, but of course it is impermanent. This is the conscious self. Then there is what might be termed the higher self or superconscious mind. This aspect retains the memories of all the forms in which you have manifested and the wisdom attained by all those forms. Within the same memory pattern, misunderstandings may also be retained until they are resolved through the physical life experience. Notice that I have called this aspect “higher self” It is still a self.
Beyond that is what I would term the soul. This aspect is pure light and energy. Some of you have had glimpses of this aspect through meditative experience. Thus, you can come to know that this is your true nature. There is no self here, and no possibility of such delusion. There is only energy, manifested as light. Thus we are all, in essence, beings of light.
This is our true essence. We begin as sparks of that perfect Light. Choosing material form as your way of evolution, that spark is increasing in its brilliance and clarity, losing all shadow, so it will shine as a small sun. If you were to take my essence at this phase of my evolution, and place it in front of that perfect Light, you would see the barest edges of human form and a gray shadow cast against that brilliance. If you were to take the essence of a perfectly evolved being such as the Buddha or the Christ and put them in front of that perfect Light, they would be invisible! That is what each of you is evolving to: Perfect Invisibility. Immaculate Emptiness. Oneness with God.
Your meditation practice is the way to come to know your true nature by experience.
It takes you past the delusion of a separate self. It leads you toward compassion and away from judgment. I cannot over stress the importance of these paths of learning. From my many lifetimes of experience I’ve found that the most valuable forms of meditation to those beings who were in a place of readiness for greater responsibility on their path were a mixture of vipassana and devotional meditation. Vipassana is hard work and requires courage and faith. Devotional meditation inspires you, reminds you of the reason for this work, of the path of your evolution to unity with that perfect Light which I have called God.
I thank you for this opportunity to speak with you. I hope I have left you with more questions than answers. Perhaps one day we will meet and I can speak to some of those questions, but please remember that the answers are all already there, within your own hearts. Practice well and find them for yourselves.