October 3, 2017 Tuesday Evening, Path of Clear Light Class
Exercise on the Simultaneity of Contraction and Spaciousness; Discussion on Love
Aaron: My blessings and love to you all. I am Aaron. I can overcome most temporary distortions in Barbara’s body, such as if there’s pain or sleepiness, but there’s not too much I can do about a hoarse throat.
I was going to start with a guided meditation, but since we’re missing for 4 people, we’ll see if they’re here by 7pm; we will start instead with vipassana sitting. But I’d like you to give a specific focus to the sitting.
Raise your hand this way, and contract it. Where do you feel the contraction? Can you feel it deep into the body? Rest your hand on your lap. Now open it. Can you feel it opening deep into the body?
Today I was speaking on the phone with a friend who has some limitation of movement. He was speaking to me of the frustration he feels when he can’t do certain things, and that he is feeling weaker because of the exhaustion of trying to do things that his body is not completely willing to do. We talked about the balance, part of it being what the body truly can or cannot do at this stage of his life, and part of it being what the body temporarily cannot do because of tension and stress.
I invited him to try a practice, sitting or lying down. We settled, for him, on lying down, completely pain-free, and that’s why the cushions tonight, complete relaxation. I asked him to just move one finger. In the quiet of meditation, especially lying down on the cushions, you will just move one finger. As you gently move a finger now, how high does the muscle movement, tendon movement go on your arm? Is it just in the hand or does it go up the arm? Can you feel it in your wrist? In your forearm? How about near the elbow? In your shoulder?
So I invited him to explore moving one finger perhaps only that much (demonstrating), just that much, and to recognize resistance. When there is resistance, to stop. And this is part of what we’ll do in the guided meditation, so I won’t go into detail, but the instruction is to pause and hold space for this place of resistance. To hold the hand with so much love. To hold the “I should” or “I can’t”, fear, frustration, and so forth, with so much kindness. To begin to feel in the body where that “I should” or “I can’t” or “I won’t” or “I must”… (a class participant arrives, who is deaf)
(Aaron signs to him) Good evening. Barbara knows more signs than I do. I am making an effort to learn.
Q: But you are already an entity. That should not take too long!
Aaron: We are all entities!
I have learned the alphabet because that’s what Barbara uses, but not signs, like “Good evening”, because she doesn’t use them.
Q: Okay!
Aaron: So we are talking about contraction, and the contraction that comes with “I must”, “I should”, “I can’t”. I asked people to just move one finger and feel how the contraction of that movement runs all the way up the arm. And to note resistance.
Right there with resistance is spaciousness. So, we read a bit from my book. “One must know the Unconditioned if one aspires to live from that ground of all things.” …”A skillful way to live is to be in both spaces at once and develop the awareness of the expressions of the Unconditioned.” W note that spaciousness is one of them.
So let us just begin by playing with this now. Move your chairs back. Take one or two cushions, as is needed, and lie down. You can take a zafu from the closet if you need something on which to rest your head.
Breathing in, and breathing out. Breathing in, and breathing out. Feel the body as relaxed as possible, free of contraction. I am going to say some words. When I say the word, notice how the body responds. Does it open or does it close? If it opens, relax into that openness. You may say thank you or feel the gratitude in your heart. Feel the experience of spaciousness.
Soft breeze…. how does your body respond to “soft breeze”? (pause)
The scent of roses… (pause)
A radiant sunset… (pause)
I trust that you can feel the spaciousness with these words.
A dear friend entering the door…(pause)
Immersing yourself in a cool stream on a hot day…(pause)
The scent of delicious food…(pause)
Beautiful music played softly…(pause)
Young children dancing…(pause)
The scent of bread baking…(pause)
If there is any place in your body that is held rigid and uncomfortable, bring gentle attention to it. Shift your position a little bit if necessary. The body fully relaxed. Ahhh… Surrounded with love, free of tension. If your body feels mostly free of tension, please just briefly raise one hand up so I can see where people are. Not all of you; some of you still experiencing tension. (pause) I’ll make that request again. If mostly free of tension, please just raise one hand for a moment so I can see where you are. Most of you.
Okay, the places where there is tension, for those who are not raising their hand. If it’s due to discomfort in your position, change your position. There’s one more zabuton here, if somebody needs that to be more comfortable. We are not attempting to get rid of all contraction but to help you rest in a place that is mostly free of contraction. Just as in the book I said one has to at least slightly understand the experience of the Unconditioned, we need to understand the experience of spaciousness.
Last class, the question was raised, what is the experience of love? I cannot give you the experience of love directly. But love is uncontracted. So we may know love by one of the signs, spaciousness.
Now I’m going to offer some other, probably challenging words, very gradually, one word at a time with space between. Your mind and body will not react to all the words. But if a word does lead to contraction, I ask you to use your vipassana to note, “contracting, contracting”. Then note the unpleasant feeling in that contraction. Which is predominant, the contraction in your body or any unpleasant feeling about the contraction? They may come and go, but only one will be predominant in any moment, so just note that. Hearing, hearing a word that’s unpleasant. Body contracting. Unpleasant feeling with the contraction. Aversion to the unpleasant feeling. Grasping, which carries its own contraction.
I hope with a little practice here you can see this whole flow like ripples over the top of the water when the wind blows. The deep, still water has not gone anywhere. And yet if you are in a very small boat on the water, you do need to be aware of and attentive to the way the waves are rocking the boat. You cannot hide out in the depths, nor do you want to lose presence with the stillness and sweetness of those depths. So now I’m going to say just one word. Hear it mindfully, hearing, hearing, and note what happens in the mind and in the body with that word. What supports resting in spaciousness rather than becoming caught up in all the story of that word, the physical, emotional, and mental stories?
(shouting) BAD!… Just watch what happens. I’ll be quiet for a minute.
As your body releases the reverberations from that word, can you let it go? Can you just bring your hands together, if needed, and say, “No, thank you,” and release it? “No, thank you.”
As the body settles, begin to note, right there with contraction, where is spaciousness? Please don’t try to find it, but simply open to it. Spacious, spacious. Breathe deeply. Is there any specific place in the body where that word went and stored itself as heavy contraction? If so, place a hand on that part of the body. Where is the word “bad” stored? In the throat, the neck, the chest, the belly, the shoulders? If it is still there, put a hand on that place, if you can put a hand there easily without strain.
I’m going to toss out another word. Do the same thing with it.
Helpless! … Go through the same process…
Allow the body to come back to a place of rest and spaciousness. If it takes a little time for the reverberations that were held in the body to dissolve, just let them be. Here I offer the old image of a bowl filled to the top with water. The table shakes, and water sloshes over the side onto the beautiful tablecloth. Is your first reaction to put a hand on top of the water surface to stop it from sloshing over? But of course, that only makes it spill more.
Contraction and spaciousness. Movement and stillness. I hope to help you to experience the stillness and spaciousness that are always there, even when there is contraction and movement.
Irresponsible… (pause)
Stupid… (pause)
Unloveable… (pause)
Not good enough…
Hatred…
Fear…
Gunshots…
I went fast, there, on purpose. The point is not to see which words cause contraction for you but simply to begin to discern the patterns. Does the body contract in the same place, each time it contracts? If so, let us go back to the beautiful sunset, the scent of bread baking, the loving friend walking in the door. Invite whatever image helps you to bring you back to un-contractedness. No force; you are not trying to get to un-contractedness but to uncover un-contractedness. Right there with contraction, the infinite and eternal spaciousness of the Divine. Can you give yourself permission to rest there? Nothing to fix. Nothing to do. Observe how contraction arises when the conditions are present for it to arise. When the conditions cease, the body relaxes back into spaciousness. Just rest in that spaciousness. Nothing to do, nothing to fix.
For the next 10 minutes or so I will be quiet. With mindfulness just observe anything that gives rise to contraction, where in the body that contraction centers itself, and what happens to it when you pay kind attention— not fix-it attention but loving, gentle attention. The kind of attention you would give to a sleeping baby who is suddenly startled by a sound, comes half awake, almost begins to cry, and the body is rigid. How do you hold that baby? You don’t shake it to make it quiet; you hold it with gentleness and help it remember its own stillness and peacefulness.
I’m going to be quiet now for about 15 minutes. Use some mixture of vipassana, mindfulness, awareness specific to the interplay of contraction and spaciousness. What helps you return to spaciousness, and trust spaciousness as your ground of being. If contraction lingers somewhere in the body, hold it with gentle attention. Right there with the contraction, can you find that which is not contracted? Don’t look too hard for it. Just relax and allow it to appear. What relationship does this state of spacious awareness have to love?
(tape paused)
Barbara: This is Barbara: If one of these objects— frustration, sadness, fear, pain, if the contraction related to it is always stored somewhere in the body, what allows you to move through it, and for it to release, and what enhances that contraction?
We were talking about love, and how we can come to understand love. Aaron has spoken of one quality of love being not contracted but spacious and open. So, in a sense, when there’s body pain, sadness, frustration, fear, and the body contracts with that experience, we can change everything by just mindfully offering gentle, kind spaciousness to wherever in the body that contraction is held. Not to make it uncontract; to find the innate spaciousness. Resting in spaciousness we observe contraction. There may be a shift. We begin to experience lovingkindness toward ourselves rather than condemnation. This is not something to do but an ongoing exploration.
(tape paused)
Barbara: I’ve talked about watching the Viet Nam special. Watching, listening, knowing what’s happening in the world— Viet Nam; my heart has been going out to the people in Puerto Rico, whose people are dying. A student out of Michigan emailed that his uncle lives in Puerto Rico. His uncle told him, in the intensive care wing in the hospital, everybody survived the hurricane in the first 24 hours, but in the next 2 or 3 days, everybody died. The generators had failed, there was no power. They couldn’t keep these people alive. Hearing that, reading those words from him, again, everything contracted.
One more step, here. I’ve been very focused on the question, where is spaciousness. When I feel helpless, am I really helpless? What happens energetically when, instead of being contracted and afraid and angry, I allow myself to re-enter the loving heart, to rest in the loving heart? Really to hold all this tragedy and terror and pain with love.
I remember a quote that I don’t think I can quote exactly, but I will find it and email it all to you when I send the class notes. It’s goes something like, you are entrusted by the Mother of the world to hold all of the pain in the world in your heart. And when you are able to love that much and hold that pain, it changes everything.
Sufi quote: Overcome any bitterness that may have come because you were not up to the magnitude of the pain that was entrusted to you. Like the Mother of the world who carries the pain of the world in her heart, each of us is part of her heart and is therefore endowed with a certain measure of cosmic pain. You are sharing in the totality of that pain. You are called upon to meet it in joy instead of self-pity. The secret: offer your heart as a vehicle to transform cosmic suffering into joy.
The question obviously is, how do we do that? What helps? For me, these nights watching this Viet Nam special, what has helped is just breathing. Often shifting, still watching, not diverting my attention, but just saying phrases of metta. Or very quietly chanting metta, karuna, mudita… as I watched it, chanting those words. I really don’t know anything else that helps.
Coming back to the question, how do those who have not known love start to know love? I think we start to open to this essential power of love in ourselves. It’s always been there. We start to trust that power and really surrender the ego that wants to do and fix to just resting in the power of love. Just something shared from me; not as teacher, part of the circle.
The question that was raised is, the question J raised, about, for those who have not deeply experienced love in their loves, have experienced a lot of pain and negativity, how do we begin to know and trust what love is? So, this was part of our homework, and I’d like to hear what people experienced or thought about that question.
(sharing not transcribed)
Aaron talks a lot about negative polarity being contracted, and positive polarity being spacious. When we hold ourselves this way (demonstrating contraction) it’s very hard to feel the flow of energy and light and joy. It’s almost impossible to feel joy when you’re closed up like that. Openness. So, spaciousness is not love; it is just a way we can get to know what love is. But I think, much like the Unconditioned, we can’t say, “Love is this.” We can’t say the Unconditioned is this. I’m not saying love and the Unconditioned are the same. Just, for each of them— we can have a direct experience of the Unconditioned. We can have a direct experience of love. But it’s almost impossible to articulate, “This is what it is.”
Other comments or thoughts? Maybe just the question, how do you experience love? What is the experience like for you?
Dan: I think it’s much easier to talk about the expressions. That’s why it’s difficult to understand what love is unless you’ve already been loved, because the main way that I experience or apprehend love is through feeling. I feel it in my body. I feel it in my mind. I feel it in my heart. And if I’m not feeling that, I don’t know what it is. So, it’s very difficult to give out whatever love is if you haven’t felt it coming from without. So, to me it’s a very valid question. I’m not sure that you can learn how to love without first being loved.
The good news is that we ARE loved, and we’re always loved. It doesn’t necessarily need to come from without, it doesn’t need to come from another person or another thing.
(discussion)
Barbara: I think it can be as simple as experiencing the love of a pet, that unconditional love. Something that helps us to see the possibility of receiving and giving love in a way that is not dangerous or threatening. Having a dog or cat that climbs up on your lap and cuddles and clearly adores you really can open your heart to the possibility of how it feels to love.
Taking it a step further, though— Aaron do you want to say this? It’s your thought.
Aaron: I am Aaron… I cherish this being but it’s easier to speak for myself. You are love. You were created in love. Your essence is love. So yes, something has to kindle the wakening of love, the knowing of that experience. But it’s like a very small spark lighting a very small bit of kindling. You take care of it until it bursts into a big fire. The heart opens! It comes gradually. But you don’t have to be loved as a child in order to understand the experience of love. And some of you actually moved into an incarnation in which you knew that human love would be short in the beginning, because your deepest intention was to learn how to love yourself, to hold that unconditional love for yourself.
For some of you, if your parents had kept telling you how wonderful you were, but somehow karmically you felt, “I am not wonderful because I have angry thoughts, because I have done things that hurt people. I am not wonderful,” you would not be able to accept it, no matter how often you were told, “You are wonderful. You are loved.” It has to happen in your own heart. But many of you came into the incarnation to learn just that.
You are love. You are of the essence of love. You are divine beings, sparks of God, and God is Love.
Many of you have had darshan with the Mother. Have you felt her unconditional love? (yes) So, has this been helpful to you in starting to feel what love is? You trust her because you don’t have the kind of relationship with her where you think she’s trying to get anything from you. She loves you just because you are. She’s not trying to make you different than you are. She’s not trying to fix you. The energy of her love is just there, so unconditional.
(to Q) Have you experienced this with the Mother?
Q: Yes. I did feel love from her when she used the hand signs, “I love you”. And yet I did feel a hug, which closed (inaudible). I didn’t know exactly what love felt, but I did know that she loved me, and that she was guiding me at what I can do next to feel love.
Aaron: We have Remembering Wholeness again on Sunday. Some of you I know will be there. When you are there, not just in the personal darshan, you and the Mother, but just sitting in the room, see if you can feel both the anxious energy in the room and the loving energy, like waves on the surface and deep stillness. During your own darshan, observe— I don’t want you to think about it, but rather, just mindfulness of the body, and that sense of opening. The Mother is very good and pausing and inviting you, not pushing at you but just patiently holding the space until there’s some opening. And then asking you, did you feel the opening? Helping you to know what it feels like.
The reason this is so important. We have a world where so many painful things are happening. A man on a balcony killing over 50 people and injuring over 500? What kind of hatred, fear, confusion must a begin carry to do such an act? How do we respond?
Many people respond with outrage. Does that negative energy help? Yes, I agree, there need to be changes in the gun laws, but even if there are such changes, a truly mentally ill individual will find some way to get guns. That doesn’t negate the need for change, but somebody who wants to get a gun to kill somebody or kill a hundred people will find a way to do that. We need to go much deeper. We take care of the gun laws on the surface, yes, but how do we create a world that is truly grounded in love? This is what your generation in the world has undertaken, this shift in consciousness from groundedness in a fear-based and negative consciousness to groundedness in spaciousness. To knowing, “I am love. You are love. And we can choose to hold that space together.” And the more people that come together to do that, the more the world will shift into a higher vibration in consciousness.
Does everybody know the story of the Hundredth Monkey? This is a tale, not an historical fact. It’s not specifically a hundred; it could be 10, or 1000 or 10,000, but there’s a certain critical point when suddenly this is the way it’s done, this is the way it’s held in people’s hearts.
A very simple example, for some of you who are a little bit more advanced in years. When you were children, did you ever throw trash out a car window? That was the norm. Then people began to talk about recycling and not throwing trash out. It picked up impetus. Now nobody— I won’t say nobody; most people in this country do not throw trash out car windows.
It was interesting to see the progression of this in Brazil. When Barbara first went there in 2004 there were no public trash cans in town. Everybody just threw trash in the street. The water bottles, nobody recycled them. Several visitors to the Casa asked— they paid, they bought trash cans. They put them out first at the Casa. They began to invite people not to throw trash on the ground. If you saw somebody about to throw a sandwich wrapper on the ground, you might point to the trash can, or say, “I’ll take it.” and put it in the trash can. In just 10 years the thing has changed completely. Nobody throws trash on the ground anymore, at least not in Abadiania; I’m sure in other parts of Brazil, because it hasn’t yet spread. But it will.
It’s about energy. So, when you look at something like this, truly sick individual who shot and killed so many, instead of returning anger to his mental illness and anger, what happens if you hold it in love? We talk about 9-11, truly deranged people crashing planes into buildings. How do we hold such acts in love? Yes, you do have to know what love is before you can do that. Love is never contracted or forced, and that’s why I started with this exercise today, to help you feel the simultaneity of contraction and spaciousness. And to begin to, what I hope you will practice through the coming 2 weeks, is watching when something startles you, or upsets and frightens you, how the body contracts. How you move into an armor. To stop and feel, where is spaciousness right here? Even not knowing for certain what love is— where is love?
(recording ends with technical difficulties)
Dan Muir’s class notes:
Aaron started with a reading from Pages 19 through 21 from Out of the Shadows. He talked about the direct expressions of the unconditioned. At the end of the class I tried to talk about it as well.
Aaron then had a guided meditation. We laid down and it was about non-contraction. I was very non-contracted because I fell asleep.
Barbara talked about “where his spaciousness?” when faced with tragedy. Where is love? The Las Vegas shooting just happened.
Our homework for last time was the question how do we love if we haven’t been loved or came into the world with a deficit?
Barbara – what is love? You know by its expressions. Spaciousness and non-contraction. A lack of tension.
Aaron — you ARE love.
Dan — hard to manifest if you don’t already know.
Aaron — It is like lighting a fire with a match. A small flame under the right conditions becomes a much larger flame.
Hundredth monkey story. Not meant as factual. One monkey learns a behavior, washing fruit to get the sand off. Other monkeys learn the behavior also. At some point, the behavior becomes the norm. It’s no longer unusual. Then the behavior propagates energetically. Other monkeys who never saw the behavior demonstrated start to do the same thing.
Can we hold horrific acts in love? We need to know what love is to do that.
Homework – work with the startle reflex and pain. Where are love and spaciousness?
Deepen a regular Vipassana practice. Mindfully watch contraction.
Begin to work with one of those light exercises in the back of Path of Clear Light.
Experience contraction from the perspective of non-duality. Without getting rid of confusion, where is clarity, for example? Without getting rid of contraction, where is spaciousness.
AHHH breath practice for next time?
First, act in a loving manner (doing love). Then be love.