Halloween Stories: Forgiveness and Compassion; Guides/Guidance

October 30, 2002 Wednesday Evening with Aaron

Halloween Stories: Forgiveness and Compassion; Guides/Guidance

Aaron: Good evening and my love to you all. I am Aaron. I’m happy to welcome you, new friends and old. I won’t go into any lengthy introductions for new friends; simply to remind you: take what is useful to you here and leave the rest. If you find yourself wondering am I real, don’t give into that intellectual question. Please know it doesn’t really matter. Words are being spoken. They convey an idea. Whether there actually is a discarnate sharing this idea or whether this is pure fantasy, is irrelevant. If the idea itself is useful to you, use it. If not, put it aside.

Aaron: I rarely speak at length about my own past lives. You’ve heard me speak of that lifetime when the man I was, was a shepherd during Jesus’ lifetime and how that great Master taught me so much, but beyond that lifetime I have spoken little of my extended past.

Love teaches love by its nature. Love models love. Love is in everything, although perhaps not always immediately apparent, and one can learn about love and compassion in many different kinds of settings.

I’m going to begin with this Halloween story, which touches on a very different past life. The being that I was, lived in a small village. We hunted. We raised small crops and gathered wild food. Animal skins were our clothing. There was a very deep reverence for the natural world around us. We did not feel that we plundered from that world, but rather, that the universe co-created the forests, the lakes, the animals and ourselves, and we were all part of this great dance of existence.

My village and the neighboring villages lived in peace. We lived as if we were all brothers, even with those in a village a day’s walk from us. We supported each other. If a man or woman had a certain skill, it was shared freely for the good of all.

Thus it was very strange when one night I was awakened from a sound sleep by a blood-curdling scream. The whole village turned out, racing toward the hut at the furthest edge of our village from which that cry had come. There we found the dear friend who lived there, with his throat cut.

Some small tools were missing, some food seemed to have been pulled from its storage place. That is, meat that was drying was pulled down from the ceiling. But we had no gold or silver; we had no jewels and would have had no use for such. There was really nothing to steal.

In the morning we attempted to follow the tracks that led from that house into the forest. They ended at the river. Perhaps our marauder had come by boat. Several of us took our boats and went a day or two up and down the river. In another village quite a ways down the river, we heard a similar story: a sudden death in the night. Food stolen, nothing else. Who would kill for food, food that would be given freely if requested?

We had never set a night guard in our village but we began to do so, a changing shift of men walking the perimeter of the village, alert for any movement. A fortnight later, we heard a tale of another identical death from a village 10 miles south of us. Again, food was the only thing that had been taken.

In each case, there seemed to have been signs of struggle, as if the murderer snuck in to steal and killed only when the family awoke. Several months passed with no more such tragedies. Then one terrible night, I awakened to see a faint shadow through my own home! My wife was in bed beside me; I knew it was not her. Our only child was a baby.

Remember, we had no electric lights or battery torches. The last coals of the fire cast a very soft light. Beyond that light I could hear movement. In retrospect, perhaps it would have been wisdom to just remain silent as that figure approached the place where we lay. I’m not sure what prompted me to speak. I said, “Friend, take what you need to eat. We mean you no harm.”

At that, the figure turned around and I could see the knife he carried. As he turned toward us, my wife screamed.

She was closer to him than I was and he grabbed at her, dragged her from the bed. So I leaped up to try to protect her. But his knife was faster than I was. He dropped her; she fell in a heap on the floor. And he ran out.

Miraculously she was not dead. Her sudden movement had pushed his knife aside enough that while she was wounded, she still lived.

Neighbors came, torches were lit. The village healer attended to her wound. We did not know for awhile if she would live or die. It was a very long night but toward morning her breathing began to be stronger, and it seemed that she would live. I was filled with rage and hatred.

At dawn several men joined me to track this stranger with the intention to capture and kill him, to put an end to his rein of terror. We tracked him for 3 days, going ever further into the wilderness. One by one my comrades turned aside. They were uneasy to go so far from their home and their families. As I said, we were a peaceful people, never seeking trouble, although willing to address it if it came to us. But this was my wife, and the first one attacked and murdered in the village had been my dear friend, and I was outraged.

My wife and child were safe in the home of a friend. Others would see to my crops, to any need in my home, so I determined to keep going. The days turned into a week and then a second week, far away from any known territory into very rugged mountainous country covered with dark forest.

I was an able hunter. I had no trouble feeding myself. I could tell as I tracked that I was getting closer and closer. I wasn’t sure what I would do if I finally caught this, what I saw as a villain. Like all in our village, I was skilled in the use of a knife and spear. I had never used these to protect myself, though, only reverently to bring down game to feed us. The idea to kill a man in cold blood was repugnant to me, and yet my hatred fed my searching him out. Now I was pushed by a very different emotion, one I had never known before: a seeking of revenge.

Then the rain started. For 2 days it poured, thunder and lightning filled the sky, and still I tracked the stranger and could see that I came closer. I was now almost 3 weeks’ walk from my home in a very unknown country.

One morning I was moved to rise before dawn. The sky was heavy with rain; there was scant light. But something drew me on. Then I smelled the fire. My sense of smell was very keen. I approached cautiously, knife drawn. And then in a clearing in the distance, just in front of a steep hill, I saw the man and his fire. I was perhaps 50 yards distant when he looked up suddenly. He must have heard me approaching. I knew my step was soft and to his ears I could have been an animal, but he was alert. I’m sure he knew he was being followed.

He looked around. He quenched the fire, stomped it out. In that very dim pre-dawn light, he suddenly disappeared – just like that, he was gone. I approached cautiously to where he had been and saw that behind a large rock there was a small cave opening. Perhaps he waited just inside, ready to kill me. At first I thought to simply sit there, but I knew that I would fall asleep at some point. I could not sit day and night. And he could sleep at leisure and then wait, hidden in the dark, until he saw me asleep, and kill me. So it seemed that I needed to go after him.

I made a small torch; that is, I took some small bits of animal skin and wrapped them around a stick, covered it with some grease that I carried, and lit it with the remaining coal from his fire. It was a smoky light and dim, but enough to offer both some vision and also some protection.

Thrusting the torch in front of me, I entered the cave. The door was low so I had to squat to come through. The small doorway made me think of a small space so I was astonished as I came inside and held up my small torch, to find that I could not see the walls of the large cavern in which I stood, only space and small sounds. There was no idea which direction to go. Instead of walking straight ahead, I chose to stay close to one wall following it to see where it would lead me.

And then I heard a sound in front of me. Perhaps an animal. Perhaps a human. I had no other lead so I followed it. Hearing what seemed like a dragging step: step, draaaag, step, draaaag.

I followed it. Always the step, draaag, leading me on. Whatever was there remained out of my visual field. I walked that way for perhaps half an hour. It was black except for the small light my torch gave so I knew the one in front of me was going in darkness. Perhaps he knew this cave. Even so, to walk in a black cave is a treacherous undertaking. I paused frequently and made scratches on the rock floor so that I should be able to find my way back, for there was no way to know how many side passages there might be.

Ahead of me was the step, draaag, step, draaag. I dared not quicken my pace, and knew I must continue to mark the floor of the cave well or I would die in there. As I squatted, scratching another mark on the floor, suddenly the sound changed. There was the sound of sliding and a scream, and silence.

I approached cautiously, the torch and knife held in front of me, watchful for any movement to the sides, any deviousness on the part of the one I followed. I walked perhaps 50 more steps and came to a narrow passageway. It appeared almost a dead end but I could see by the light of my torch that the passageway curved to the left. As I stepped into that curved area, I heard a low moan, not coming from ahead but below me. Perhaps that sound is what saved me; had I taken another step I would have followed him down a steep slide, a hole into a cavern below. There by the light of the torch I could just barely see his body. Certainly he was injured. How injured I could not tell from where I stood.

I held my torch down into the hole, lay on my belly, and then I could see by the way he lay that his leg was broken. A very strong voice within me said, “That’s it. He will die there, you can leave.” I began to withdraw my torch, to withdraw myself, to follow my scratches, walk back out of the cave and go home, knowing we were safe from this killer. Just as I began to pull back, pulling the torch, lifting myself from my belly, he rolled over and I saw his eyes, his desperate plea, and I knew in that moment I could not leave him to die such a terrible death, that I either had to climb down there and kill him or I had to save him.

The vision of my friend’s slit throat, the vision of my terror-stricken wife, came to me strongly and filled me again with rage and hatred, and as balance to that there was the look in his eyes, his terror, his pain and silent plea.

I carried a pack on my back – not your modern kind of pack but one very well-made of skins, in which I had some dry food, a rolled skin that served as a blanket, some kinds of tools for the wilderness, and a rope. This is not your modern rope but the kind of rope we made in those days from vines and fibers. I anchored the rope around a large rock, tied the other end around my waist, and lowered myself down the chute to where he lay. As I approached I could see by the look in his eyes that he expected no mercy.

He was in agony. Part of his shinbone protruded the skin. As with all my people, I had some knowledge of healing. One could not call an ambulance in those days. One’s survival in the wilderness depended on one’s own and one’s comrades’ knowledge. First, I looked at him to make sure he had no weapon. I saw his knife – a sharpened stone, razor sharp. It had fallen quite a ways away from him as he fell, and he had no other weapon on him. I put the torch between 2 rocks that would hold it and indicated to him what I intended to do. He nodded but did not seem to comprehend.

There is a technique here I won’t describe in detail. Using rope, I literally tied his body to a rock and then grabbed hold of the lower leg and pulled, pulling the bones straight. Of course, he screamed and fainted. That allowed me to finish my work, to use some water I carried to wash the wound, to loosely bind it.

Leaving him there unconscious, I went back up with my rope. I knew he could not move from that spot. I followed my path out. I found herbs to make a poultice for the wound. I found sticks to splint the leg.

I knew he thought I had abandoned him and that he was to die alone in this dark cavern. When he saw me coming down the rope, I could see the disbelief in his face. Again I grounded the torch, looked at the leg. I applied poultice to it, splinted it and wrapped it firmly. I had also carried some wood with me in my pack. Cautiously I built a small fire-cautious to make sure our small chamber would not fill with smoke, but the smoke easily rose up through the opening. And so we sat there silent through the day. He fell asleep. I was watching and wondering at myself – what had driven me to make this decision? And now it was made, what would I do? For certainly it would be many weeks before he could walk on this leg.

And once he could walk, what would I do with him? Bring him back to me to my village where they would kill him?

He awoke in a fever, delirious. I made some broth and fed it to him. I offered him water. I washed his face, which was broken out in sweat. I did not feel safe to sleep down there with him. I climbed up my rope and pulled it after me and slept above. He was awake when I came down in the morning. Again weeping, this time silently, in pain and in fear.

Again I went out, gathered food and fresh water and then returned. Mostly he slept. When I tried to talk to him, he looked at me, confused. He had a very wild look about him. His clothes were entirely of animal skins. Mine were too but his were very crude where mine were more carefully sewed and even beaded with some small ornament. While I was used to eating with a container to hold my food, when I handed him food on a small flat rock that might serve as a plate, the concept seemed alien to him. He just grabbed the food and put it in his mouth. He looked with some awe at the beadwork on my shirt and my jacket. He did not seem to be able to speak except in grunting noises.

Slowly the days passed. They were not easy days. I would go out and hunt, and come back. He began to trust that I would return. We tried to talk. I tried to talk. He could only answer in strange grunts, and yet it was clear to me that he could hear, in fact his hearing was keener than mine. He was the first to hear the snake slithering across the floor and warn me. When I took the torch and went to look, there was a poisonous snake that dwelt in our parts.

Another day, the air was suddenly filled with a very strange noise and I became afraid, but his face expressed no fear. He raised his hand as if to say, “It’s OK.” Then for a brief moment the air was filled with the passage of bats moving through that small room where we sat. So he could hear but he couldn’t speak. I realized that it was not that he spoke another language but he had no language other than his grunts.

One day I drew a picture on the floor – myself, my wife, just a simple picture drawn on the dirt floor of a man, a woman and a baby. He looked at it. He drew crudely with his finger, a hut like our huts and I nodded yes. He pointed to me, pointed to the baby. I thought he was asking me if this was my baby, and I said yes. Then he drew some pictures, a baby held by its mother. A toddler. A pre-adolescent, and so forth, indicating the phases of growth, and he connected those to the parents and he pointed to me. And I realized he was asking me, is this what my life had been? Had I grown up in that way? And I said yes. And tears came to his eyes. He wept until he fell asleep.

We had been here for perhaps 10 days now and something strange was happening. These last 2 or 3 days as there had been more communication between us. I found that it was hard to maintain my hate of him. Constantly in the quiet times as he slept, I had asked myself, what will I do with him? Can I heal him and then kill him? And then the thought of my wife and my friend came back. There were many times while he slept when I stood over him with my knife thinking I should just slit his throat and go. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

When he next awoke, he pointed again to these pictures, the boy-child growing into a man in the village, simple pictures in the dirt. And then he pointed to himself. Baby, and he drew a picture that looked like a wolf. Through his pictures it seemed that he was telling me that the wolf pack had attacked and killed his mother, and some wolf had carried him, an infant, off in her teeth.

He had grown up with the wolves, been part of the pack. This has been heard of in your day but to me it was unheard of. And yet everything in his demeanor seemed to say that this was true. He had no human speech. His body was filthy, his hair matted. He ate the meat I cooked but seemed very happy to eat raw meat, even to prefer it.

The days passed. While his eyes tracked me, followed me, he did not seem to depend on his vision so much as his hearing. The weeks passed. The wound healed. The swelling diminished. At last came the day when he was ready to put weight on this leg. I tied the rope around his waist. I had brought in some long sticks and fashioned some crutches for him. I climbed up the steep slope and then half-dragged him up behind me. We made very slow progress through the passage that was familiar to me by now, and out into the daylight.

As we came out into the morning, he let out a sound that was much more like a wolf’s howl than a human voice, held his hands up to the heavens and howled! Smiled at me, and I could see the joy in his face. What was I to do with him?

I had not been able to find to the means to ask him why he had killed my friend, and those in other villages, and attacked my wife. Now I felt I must do so. And so we sat with our sticks and dirt, and I attempted to communicate with him. I drew a hut. I drew a man sleeping. I pointed at him and indicated how he had come in and slit the man’s throat. To my astonishment he merely nodded. I pointed to his mouth, eat? Eat?

I realized then that he had never known another human being, that he had never had a friend, that he did not know the nature of human relationship. Out of curiosity, I drew a wolf family sleeping in a safe place, adult wolves and cubs. Then I pointed to him and used the sign and word we had established between us for hunger. If you were hungry, drew him there, with a knife, a picture of him, and asked him, would you kill the cubs? He was horrifed! No! My family! And so I saw he truly did not understand what he had done.

I pointed to the picture of the hut and the wife and baby, and said, My family. He was intelligent and suddenly he understood and began to weep. He suddenly understood these were not animals he had killed, these were beings like himself. He looked at me, he looked at himself. I offered him the word human: me, you, human, again he wept.

Then he reached toward me, quickly, suddenly; I was surprised and did not react quickly and he snatched me knife. I had a moment of fear and then I saw him hold the knife, not toward me but toward himself, ready to slit his own throat, so deep was his shame and horror when he understood what he had done. No! No, you must not do that! Stop!

I looked at him. Stop! And I held out my hand for the knife. He handed it to me and pointed to himself – you kill me! You! And I realized I had come to love this man, truly to love him. As I had tended to him for all those weeks, he had ceased to be a monster and become a brother.

I put the knife down and held out my arms to him, he who had never known a human embrace. I invited him into my arms and we wept together. This murderer, then, taught me compassion and forgiveness, which are so difficult to learn. He taught me that there can be rage, fear, and even hatred, and that the power of human kindness can soften these emotions. Love and forgiveness can come if one allows the heart to open.

Then I made a decision to invite him home with me. Our way was very slow, he using a crutch and leaning on me. With each day his leg got a bit stronger. I had tracked him to the cave for over 2 weeks but by a roundabout path, so our path home was less than a week with strong legs, perhaps 10 days for us. What would happen when I brought him into my village?

People saw me coming and that I did not have a tied captive with me but rather, walked supporting another man. At first they didn’t know. They thought perhaps he was someone else who was a victim of this murderer. I had to tell them, this was the one. He did not know what he did. Although this was before Jesus’ time, I can only remember that master’s words here, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”

I was proud of my fellow villagers, then, that although there was some muttering and dissension, most people embraced this man and were truly ready to forgive him. As for the man he had killed, that man had had a wife and children. This man dedicated himself to their welfare, hunted and brought them back food, made sure they were well-cared-for. Of course he kept his distance from them, respectfully, realizing he was the one that had brought them such pain.

It was very beautiful to see his delight in human companionship. As he learned our language, the stories he shared of his childhood were fascinating. And thus he became a brother. I was older than he. As I aged, he took care of me as a brother would. He taught my sons to hunt, for he was even more skilled at that than I was. I think how easily I could have lost these riches if I had given in to that first expression of hatred and left him lying to die alone in agony in the dark cave. This heart of compassion will open if you will only give it a chance. No matter how terrible the circumstances, this heart of compassion will open.

This has been a long story. I thank you for your attention. No ghosts or ghouls or monsters, just the monster of human hatred and the power of compassion. That is all.

(break)

Q: Do we all have guides? Do people have more than one guide?

Aaron: I am Aaron. You all have both primary and secondary guides. Each being will have at least one primary guide, that is, a being who remains available to you throughout your entire lifetime. You will also have secondary guides; these are beings who are available through some portion of your lifetime. For example, Barbara’s grandfather has been a guide to her. He was alive for the first 20 years of her life, and then in later years she became aware of him as one of her guides. He is not committed to remain on the astral plane and may take a new incarnation during her lifetime, so he is a secondary guide. I pause.

Q (many different questioners here): How do you learn where your guide is? How do you make yourself receptive to your guide?

Aaron: I am Aaron. You have to ask. The asking carries the intention, a willingness to hear what the guide has to say, which is not always easy to hear. Your guides will be honest with you. They will strive to help you be comfortable with your own truth. Often people need to look at places in themselves that are painful to look at. While we say we want to see the truth, we also don’t want to see it. Your asking is a statement of intention, “I am ready to see these deeper truths.”

As a small example related to my talk tonight, one might say, “Well, I want to forgive people who have been difficult in my life,” and yet at some level you really don’t want to let go of that anger. There may be a sense of strength in the anger, a sense of power that makes you feel safe. Your guide is not going to help you hold onto that illusion of safety, if your highest intention is for healing. So we both want to hear the guide and we don’t want to. When you see how painful it is to hold on to the separation, hatred, and illusion of safety through power, you become more ready to hear the guide, and then discover the guide is accessible. We are very accessible; there is no wall from our side, only from yours. It is up to you to take down the wall.

Meditation is important. Taking down the wall means creating space. I give the illustration here of a cup. If it were full of water, we could not pour anything else into it. In order for it to have space to take in something new, you’ve got to empty it. Your meditation essentially empties the cup of ego, the cup of opinions and beliefs, so that you are more ready to hear. I pause.

Q: I wanted to ask him how to channel my higher self.

Aaron: I am Aaron. This is the technique we teach, not specifically to channel your higher self but either to open to your higher self or guide or whatever teacher is present and available.

One sits first with a statement of intention. It’s very important to state your own deepest values. If you are going to ask a question out to spirit, it’s like opening a door and saying, “Anybody may come in.” You want to qualify that: anybody based in kindness may come in, for example. So you state your own highest values, maybe service to all beings, to help to resolve suffering for sentient beings, to bring forth that which is good for beings, and that nobody may speak to you that is not resonant with those values.

Then you sit and allow the mind to quiet for a few minutes. Pay attention to the breath. Have a pad and a pencil handy. When you feel ready, ask a question for which you do not know the answer. It might be a question about a relationship with a difficult person and how to resolve that pain. It might be a question about anything that confuses you. It is best that it not be a question that predicts the future-in other words, it’s not a useful question to ask, “What will happen to my baby as she grows up? Will she be healthy? Will she be happy?” There are many possible futures. Positively polarized spirit will not come forth with a precise prediction, so if you ask such questions you are asking for mischievous spirits to come.

So ask a question that can be known and understood. Sit with your pencil. Ask your question and then be quiet. Normally when you write, you think about each sentence as you write it, you plan it. Here you are asking for spirit to speak; there is no planning. When you feel an energy and an impulse to begin to write, do so. Try not to think about the words as they come through; just get them down. It may be only a few words; it may be a few sentences, or even several paragraphs. Then you’ll feel this energy stop. At that time, go back and read what you’ve written. If it makes sense and is helpful, reflect on it. And if it leads you to a further question, ask that question. If it does not make sense, say so. “I don’t understand this. Please rephrase it in a clearer way.” Go through the process again and again.

If you start to consistently find an answer coming through that is helpful to you, that does feel resonant with your highest values, you’ll start to recognize that energy when it comes, that it’s a similar being, or the same being. Then you can ask, “Who are you? Is there a more direct way I can get in touch with you?”

After you have a firm contact, you can put the pencil aside and go on to using a tape recorder or something, the spoken word. But this is much easier in the beginning. We’ve taught many people to work with this process who have found it both helpful and fruitful. Do you have questions? I pause.

Q: How do I know I’ve reached my highest guide or highest self?

Aaron: I am Aaron. At first you may not reach your highest self or highest guides. You have a certain frequency vibration, as do the various guides who may come to you. It’s like tuning a radio. You’ve got to tune it to the right station. Your highest guide’s vibrational frequency may be above that which you can stably attain. Often the first guidance people reach gives them suggestions on how to raise the vibrational frequency through different kinds of meditation practice, working with the body energy, working with light and color, working with reflection on a moral awareness. Also, purifying the physical body. As the various physical, emotional and mental bodies come into a higher vibration, you’ll reach a higher guide. The guidance you reach will be what you need. You must always challenge it in the way I have suggested because if you come to your meditation at a time when you’re very angry and restless or something has been very painful, and you’re seeking guidance, your anger itself can invite in negative energy. And that of course is not what you wish.

So, if you’re feeling a lot of turmoil it’s important to calm yourself down. You don’t have to get rid of the turmoil, only to come to that place within the self that has space for the turmoil, and then to make the statement of commitment, a readiness to hear what is sometimes difficult to hear, and to let go of blame. I think my story touches on this, how to let the heart open. Then you will connect with positive energy. If something sounds either directly or subtly negative, it’s important to say no. There are mischievous spirits out there. If something comes along and says, “Well you should be angry. You should seek some kind of revenge immediately,” you understand this is not helpful. Part of you wants to hear it and is inviting it. Another part of you says no, this is not what I’m seeking. And then state your intentions again. Thus a negative response can be a reminder that you are still attached to your anger.

As for coming to know that higher energy, I would ask you, if you walked into a dark room and there were several children there, do you think you might know where your baby was in that dark room by her energy? Her energy field is familiar to you, and when we feel the energy field of the beloved, we feel loved. I think you’ll feel this sense of deep love flowing both ways with your guides. That it feels deeply comforting and joyful. I pause.

Q: Thank you.

Q: I know my mission in this lifetime. Is it okay to ask how to achieve it? About the future.

Aaron: I am Aaron. Certainly it is okay to ask. And yet, you must understand that nobody has just one mission in this lifetime, and that the work that you come to do is like an interwoven tapestry. Perhaps more fruitful than asking how to achieve your mission is asking what the next step is. Just one step. I pause.

Barbara: I’m paraphrasing him; he says, don’t be goal-oriented. The practice is the goal, the life lived with love and attention is the goal, and each day unfolds with wonder.

Coming from me, there’s a book called Channeling Handbook by Carla Rueckert that I would highly recommend to anyone interested in channeling their guides.

Q: I’m looking for books to help my grief about loss of loved ones. Could you or Aaron recommend books?

Barbara: Two very different things come to mind. There are several books by Stephen Levine. Healing Into Life and Death, has meditations on grief and loss. It’s directed toward oneself, loss of one’s own body and the process of dying, but it’s also relevant for the ones who lose loved ones. He also has a book called Gradual Awakening, that also is beautiful, but I think I would choose Healing Into Life and Death.

Also, there’s a very beautiful book called American Book of the Dead. It’s a very Westernized version of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Very accessible in ways that the Tibetan Book of the Dead is not for most people…. It offers a series of prayers to be offered on a daily basis for loved ones who have passed on. They’re very beautiful prayers talking about the whole process of the bardo or between-state as people make this transition.

Q: I had another question. I’ve read a lot of channeled work by Kryon. Noone else seems to have read this. I was curious if Aaron knew of this entity.

Barbara: I’ve heard the name but have never read anything. Aaron says, not intimately.

Q: Am I to assume that when someone speaks with their guide, that’s channeling?

Barbara: Yes. All channeling is, is telepathic communication from any intelligence, even from a flower. There’s an immense amount of energy out there. Some has never been in a physical body; some has been in material form at some point and is no longer. Some is wise; some not so wise. So, we want to know who we’re connecting with. It’s all channeling. One can channel negativity, positivity, or what Aaron calls mischievous spirits, which are not particularly negative or positive, they’re just immature, looking for some kind of action. So it’s very important to start by clarifying your intention in opening to spirit. You ask yourself, “What am I trying to bring to earth?” You offer the stated intention to connect with as positive and clear an energy as is possible.

It’s all channeling. There’s vocal channeling that I’m doing. There’s written channeling. There’s just hearing it, it may not come in words so much as images. In the Findhorn material, they channel the devas of plants, which tell them what they need for health and growth.

Q: Rosemary Altea can see spirits around people, usually departed loved ones, so is she visually channeling?

Barbara: It’s hard for me to say because I don’t know her, but many people see auras. That’s not channeling so much as just seeing energy. If one sees spirits, just seeing the spirit is not channeling, the communication is channeling. As you work with this kind of energy you may see it visually but what is seen may not communicate a lot. Other times it will. When I’m meeting with people privately I usually see energy around them and often see their guides, but I don’t specifically channel their guides.

Q: So guides can reincarnate into another human being, who you will come into contact with later on in your life?

Barbara: The secondary guides can. Your primary guide will not move into a new incarnation while you’re alive because there’s a commitment on the part of that being to stay available to you during your lifetime. So that being will not have been incarnate when you took birth and will not incarnate during your life.

We have different levels of guides and we find the level we need. Aaron has compared it to the university system, where there may be a teaching assistant who works a lot with the students, and is just a grad student, not that far beyond the undergraduate students and yet really knows what the students are experiencing and sometimes understands the questions better than the full professor who’s off in some lofty place. As you evolve and become clearer, then that higher level of guidance becomes appropriate. As the student progresses, then he needs the higher assistant professor and full professor.

For each of us, there’s a chain so that there’s a direct guide, but if that guide can’t answer our questions, there’s one a further step up the ladder to whom we’re passed. So as we connect with guidance, we keep moving up to whatever we need. And it’s not that one is better or worse than the other, it’s just that what we need is offered. Just as for us when we teach others we learn, our guides grow too as they work with us. So sometimes our guides are beings just like ourselves, between human lifetimes. But the difference is, it’s as if you’re driving a car but you can’t see out. You’ve got somebody on the roof saying, “Go right. Go left. There’s a stop sign ahead.” They’re up top; they’ve got a good view. Here within the human framework, sometimes we can’t really see clearly. So these guides who are between human lifetimes can be deeply loving human beings and very wise, and offer a lot of guidance. Then there are beings who have no need to further incarnate in a human body, they’ve moved past that. Those would be the higher levels of guides. They’re available when you need them.

Q: My question’s not really formed. Right now I’m reading Gelek Rinpoche’s book, Good Life Good Death. He’s talking a lot about incarnates, people who have reincarnated several times. I guess my question is, it seems like every belief system looks at these things a little bit differently. And it seems like I get it figured out, but then I pick up another book and they talk about it a little bit differently. I get confused.

Aaron: I am Aaron. I understand the problem. I think the important thing here is to put the books aside at a certain point and begin to meditate more deeply, and trust your own experience. I would remind you it doesn’t really matter whether you have been in incarnation before and will be again. What matters is how you are living this moment. Each moment creates a rebirth into the next moment.

In the story that I told, based on the karma of that being that I was – about his fear, his love, his hatred – in the moment when he looked down that slope at the body at the bottom, there was a choice, to move on with the fear and hatred in his heart or to say no to it. In saying at least a brief and tentative no, he created the next moment. In his willingness to open his heart compassionately to that man’s pain, he created the next moment. It’s almost as if a new being was formed repeatedly through that whole story, each moment creating the next rebirth. When you go more into fear or more into opening this determines the next moment. Can we have the awareness to break free of conditioning? To open the heart does not mean to heal the negative emotions but to develop a wisdom about these emotions, that they are conditioned objects, arisen from conditions and passing away, and that you don’t have to self-identify with the negative emotions. This helps you move out of the place of deep self-identity with the body, with the emotions, with thoughts. Only when you stop taking those aspects of being as self can you begin to know who you truly are. Once you know who you truly are, you’ll discover the truth for yourself about whether you have had prior births and whether you’ll have future births. So your meditation practice is the most important tool here. I pause.

Q: Why do different teachers describe this so differently, with such strong statement, “this is how it is”?

Barbara: Paraphrasing Aaron, he says if we all looked at the same scene, we would all describe it in different ways. This is what happens in books. They’re all trying to describe the same thing but it’s in their own language. And so it gets confusing because each articulates it differently. If nobody here had ever tasted honey, and 4 people each tasted it and described it, they would each describe it a little bit differently. And then we’d be confused. Well, is it a flowery taste? Is it a very sweet taste? Is it a cloyingly sweet taste? What kind of taste exactly is it? But then when you taste it, you know. And then you see that each of them was right, they just described a different aspect of it.

We need to come to a close; it’s 9:55.

Aaron: I am Aaron. I usually don’t answer unasked questions but it feels important to me to state this. There are many kinds of meditation. Beings have a deep aspiration to purify their energy, they want to connect with their guides, they want to grow and learn. Your guides can be an important source of support for you. But you are the one who must do this work.

Please consider working with several different kinds of meditation. In one you seek out your guides, talk things over. But also it’s very valuable just to sit in silence and be present with the movements of the body and the mind. Great wisdom is developed here as we see that the nature of the whole body and mind is, that when conditions are present for something to arise, it will arise, and then it will pass away. You can only look at such arising and passing away for so long before some of the self-identity with the body, emotions, thoughts, and even consciousness, dissolves a bit.

And as I said, you can’t find out who you truly are until you let go of all the old concepts of who you think you are. Don’t try to be a good person. Don’t try to be a meditator. Don’t try to be a person following a spiritual path. These are all self-identities. Beneath all these concepts there is a radiance and beauty that you can only find when you let go of all the other ideas of who you are. Like layers they fall away, and this innate radiance shines out. Then you cease trying to be the worthy one or not to be the unworthy one. You cease trying to be the kind one, the generous one; you find your innate kindness and generosity and goodness. So allow yourself to experience also this form of silent meditation that leads you deeper into your heart.

It has been a joy to have this opportunity to speak with you. Thank you for coming and allowing me to share my thoughts with you. I repeat my beginning guidance: please take what is useful and simply leave the rest.

My love to you, and my respect for each of you as you walk what is sometimes a very difficult path toward realization of the truth of your being. That is all.