Overview of the Class Year; Guided Akashic Field Meditation: On the Bridge, Arms Extending into Light and Darkness

October 27, 2020 Tuesday Evening, Dharma Path III Class

Overview of the Class Year; Guided Akashic Field Meditation: On the Bridge, Arms Extending into Light and Darkness

Aaron: … (first few sentences were missed) We’re talking about this year’s intentions and how we get there. That we have to know where we want to go, before we start.

With that in mind, before the semester began over the summer, Barbara and I put together a program drawing on different supports, readings and practices. It came from both of us. I listened to Barbara’s suggestions; she listened to mine. We came up with what I think is a good plan. It will require practice from you and dedication. It will not be easy. Okay?

To walk this path—let me ask before I speak; I don’t know whether to ask how many did or how many did not read the message that went out yesterday. How many read that message?… So, most of you have read that. I’m going to be brief on this part of it, then.

Let’s start at the end, what you hope to bring forth this year: To learn how to co-create with love. To co-create in your own body, mind, spirit. To co-create in the world. To do this work can only happen from less of the ego self and more of the awakened heart/mind, as I like to call it. You cannot co-create for the highest good of all beings and still be centered in the ego. It doesn’t mean there will be no ego, but there will be ways of bypassing that ego, not getting caught up in the ego’s stories.

To that end, we have a number of practices. One, of course, is just your vipassana practice. Also, pure awareness practices and the heart practices, the Brahma Viharas. All those practices that help you to stay centered and bring you into remembering the part of you that is awake. We can stimulate this remembering both through meditation practice and through reading and discussion.

I love Ajahn Chah’s Key to Liberation. It’s very useful that you deeply understand this basic Theravada path, that you understand Dependent Origination, that you understand the power of presence. Key to Liberation will not suit everybody—none of our reading will—but it’s a valuable piece of reading to bring to your attention, for those of you who can benefit by it, and for those for whom it’s not useful, let it go; that’s fine. Reading will never replace practice but reading can support practice.

The same is true of Flight of the Garuda and the pure awareness practices. Flight of the Garuda is a beautiful, poetic reminder of non-duality. Another book, not quite so poetic but useful to many people, is Rami Shapiro’s Open Secrets. You would need to go to Amazon and find that. It’s a short book, a beautiful text on non-duality.

The emphasis here is twofold. One, to be present in the mundane mind on a path to awakening, to deepen in the experiences that gradually reveal the true self. The other half of it is simply to rest, with effortless effort, in that awakened self and truly come to know that the path is not linear, that you are already awake. You just have to remember it. When I say “just have to,” I don’t mean to minimize that work, but basically there is truly nothing to attain.

So we begin with the deep commitment to non-harm, and the holding of intentions; deepening in the various aspects of vipassana practice until there is an absolute certainty: everything in the conditioned realm is arising out of conditions and is not of the nature of a separate self. It is still real in terms of relative reality, and it needs your loving attention. You can’t ignore it. Neither must you get sucked into it with a belief, “Why is this happening to me? What did I do wrong? How do I fix it?” Only, in this moment, how can presence best attend to this situation for the highest good of all beings and harm to none? This is where we practice best from the middle of the bridge.

The pure awareness practice takes us off to the Dharmakaya end of the bridge, resting in spacious awareness. Remember the distinction between these words: consciousness and awareness. When I use the word consciousness I have a specific meaning in mind; consciousness relates to mundane consciousness. Of course, in different languages the words are used differently. There are specific words for mundane or supramundane consciousness or kuttara or lokuttara citta in the Pali language. But not getting into that, it simplifies mundane consciousness to just say “consciousness.” Eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind consciousness. I like to use the word “awareness” in place of supramundane consciousness. It’s just simpler and cleaner.

Every consciousness takes an object. Mundane consciousness takes a mundane object. Supramundane consciousness takes a supramundane object.

To live in the world awake you need to be in touch with the Dharmakaya and the nirmanakaya, (supramundane and mundane) from that sambhogakaya bridge. You are each learning where on the bridge is most helpful to be, depending on what your intentions are. Where do you want to be when you’re cleaning the toilet? What helps? If you are deeply in the Dharmakaya, will you be able to scrub that gunk off the toilet? You have to pay attention and know what’s there. But it’s helpful to have a taste of Dharmakaya to know—if I can phrase it this way—the glistening, pure clean toilet. To bring yourself back to that, the ever-perfect is here, and yet I cannot grasp at the ever-perfect. I hold tight to that which is for the highest good, to the best that can be done in this moment.

Barbara mentioned that Hal was very aggravated this morning—crying out, experiencing physical pain, frustrated because he could not express where the pain was coming from. It is very unusual for him to be this way. But he was trying to climb out of his chair. Barbara took his hands and looked into his eyes and said, “Stop and breathe with me.” He’s enough of a meditator to know what she was asking and to hear her, and he could get two or three breaths in, and then he started tossing and turning and yelling again. It would have done no good for Barbara to insist that he just sit there and breathe; she had to get in there with him in the nirmanakaya level— the pain, frustration, anger, anguish level—and try to find out what would help.

How do you do this without losing touch with the Dharmakaya? This is why we practice in both vipassana and pure awareness and how to balance in the places they come together. I think both of these readings will support your practice. That’s why we assigned them. But if they do not speak to you, let them go. It’s perfectly okay.

A number of you who were with us way back when we did the Venture Fourth program, and first met Flight of the Garuda there, said then, over 10 years ago, it just didn’t mean anything to you. You were resistant to reading it. But you report now, “when I started reading it, it’s beautiful!” Well, you’re a bit more mature now. You’re ready for it. It wasn’t wasted before; it planted the seeds. Reading it now may plant seeds for what may come 5 years from now.

So, don’t be concerned to understand it perfectly, just read. Read through one Song and then meditate and ask yourself, what does this song say to me? Not what do all the specific words mean, but what does this song say to me? That’s all.

We’re going to ask you to read a Song, just one Song, in a day, then read it again the next day. Then maybe go on to the next Song, or not. The next week, go back and read the first Song again. Gradually, let it unfold in your heart. It must be a seed that is planted and then cultivated in practice without really thinking about it. More like the warm sun shining on the soil and so the seed begins to sprout. Effortless effort. You don’t have to do anything to make it sprout, only take it in, let the seed take root deep into the heart, and then just see what develops, what kind of seed is this going to be.

We’ve assigned you to read from the akashic field transcripts. These are a different form of seed. For some of you they may not take root for several years. Be patient with these seeds. They will grow in their own time.

Tonight, we’re going to do a guided meditation about the akashic field that I hope may clarify the experience of akasha and akashic field for you. Meanwhile, just pick any of those transcripts. Just stop and ask, which one do I need to read? Okay, this one. Don’t just read the first page and say, “No, I don’t get it. I’ll go to another one.” Read the one you chose. Trust that you chose it for a reason. Then, if you really don’t get it, the next day read a different one. They will support you. They will come together.

Part of the support comes from connecting with your guidance. When we practice within the akashic field, co-creating, that does not come from the small ego self but from that which is awake. The one who is awake, as Ajahn Chah describes it. The one who is awake in each of you. I love each of you. I love the small ego selves and the wonderful varied presentations of those selves. And I cherish the one who is awake, at the essence of each ego self. The ego self is the outer clothing. We don’t say, “Barbara is a blue vest.” It’s just something she’s wearing today. The ego, the thoughts, the body, all of these attributes of the self are precious, but they are not your essence.

So we come full circle. In vipassana practice there will be times when you experience the dissolution of the body, the dissolution of the ego, and there’s a moment of “Oh!”. It may be a second, it may be a minute, it may be an hour of full presence in the essence of your being. And then you come out of the meditation and say, “What was that?” But there’s a change in you. Each time you have these kinds of experience there’s less self-identification with the heavier physical body, the mental body, and the emotional body. There’s more sense of, “This has arisen out of conditions. It’s impermanent and not self.” And there’s more of a readiness to go into the immensity that you are, the truth that you are.

It’s a gradual process. Barbara had a delightful experience this week. Somebody is putting a new roof on her storage shed. As part of that they took everything out of the storage shed. They got a dumpster, both for the torn, broken old roof material and for a lot of the junk that had accumulated there.

This room was Barbara’s sculpture studio for a long time. Then, around 1991 when they outgrew the living room for this DSC work, Barbara and Hal said, “You may take Barbara’s studio if we (Barbara and Hal) buy the materials and people will volunteer to put together a storage shed, one end of which will become Barbara’s new studio.”

So they did this, and we ended up with this magnificent room for classes. Can you see the ceiling at all? Somebody with a wood lot up north cut all the wood that you see everywhere around the room, had it planed into boards and brought it down here on a truck. There were people in here on scaffolds, hammering and putting it together. And there were people out there building a new shed. So, this is a long time ago. Barbara used the shed regularly for sculpture then until that wave accident in 2004; that’s 16 years ago. She really has not been in there since.

Everything changes. Impermanence. Now the roof had holes in it. Water coming in rotted things that were within the room. There was even a dead skunk on the floor that had to be picked up with a snow shovel and carried back behind the orchard and buried there.

Part of what she unearthed there was her old sculpture. So excuse me, I’ve been long-winded; coming around to where I was headed. She has not worked on sculpture for 16 years. She found a piece of sculpture that I’d say was 95% finished at the time of that accident. It’s copper and bronze. It was covered with dirt, crusted with mud. She went out there and began to polish it this week. There was so much joy for her to get out there, first just with a scrub brush and soap and water, hosing it off. Then, because it was highly tarnished, she worked a bit with fine steel wool and begin to polish it. And slowly it began to glow, all the life coming into it. She looked at it and said, “Oh, I can’t wait to finish this!”

Then she looked at it, put into the base, a big base 4 or 5 feet across. Each piece has a pin in the middle and turns around. She looked at it from all sides. She kept going back to, “There’s dirt here; there’s dirt there.” I finally said to her, “You’re never going to get all the tarnish off, all the dirt off, because by the time you finish here there’s going to be some there. Can you just let it be?” And she saw how hard that was for her. She wanted to get all the tarnish off, to have the whole thing glistening.

My dear friends, as humans you are not meant to 100% glitter. You would burn each other’s eyes out! You need to have a bit of dimness, it’s okay. You teach each other patience, compassion, generosity of spirit. You teach each other so much when you revealed the tarnished spots. Can you see the ways that you are practicing trying to get rid of all the tarnish, rather than just saying, what tarnish is most important to polish off? And what tarnish truly is okay to remain, just a reminder, “I’m human. I am not always patient. I’m not always loving.”

This morning Barbara finally had to just get up and walk out of the room for 10 minutes; she could not stay in there with Hal anymore. She was angry with herself. “I should be able to stay with him.” And I said, why should you? Can you be openhearted with yourself? Can you be patient with yourself? He’s having a hard day. Give yourself space.

So, as we work with these practices, remember that you are not trying for any kind of perfection. Rather, you are releasing what is not useful and then coming back around and looking again and releasing again. Increasingly able to rest in the true self and to speak and act from the true self; to be ever so tender with yourself when the small ego self pops up and says, “Hey, what about me?” It’s okay.

I know all of you, and I know there is not one of you who is not learning how to live from a place of increasing wisdom and compassion. Please give yourselves credit for that.

Once there is some degree of balance and steadiness in living from the pure heart-mind, the awakened mind, then we come back to our intentions, connect with our guidance, and begin to see increasingly skillful ways to co-create what we seek: a world of peace, of loving kindness. A world in which beings are compassionate and respectful, each to each, and to the earth, to the environment, in which there is no longer a soil in which hate can grow, no longer a soil in which fear can thrive.

This is all we’re doing this year. Second semester we’re going to work much deeper with the “path of sacred darkness” practices, which I’ve just begun to explain. Basically, these practices invite you to find the non-duality between the Dharmakaya and nirmanakaya, between the light and the darkness, between love and fear. The only way you can open fully into that non-duality is the willingness to go into the darkness until it reveals the light.

Much as with Barbara’s sculpture this week. She only spent an hour or two total on it, not a lot of time. But as she polished away the tarnish and washed off the mud and so forth, she saw the radiance and beauty just in the form, even though the copper and the bronze were not yet glistening with light. They were not highly polished. She had to look at it and remind herself, “For some of this I’m going to need to use an acid bath to remove some of the darkness.”

What’s the equivalent of a meditation acid bath? That sounds a little harsh. I think the equivalent acid bath is whatever cleanses. What cleanses for you? For some of you, it may be forgiveness. For some of you, it may be deep wisdom. For some of you, it may be patience or generosity or gratitude. What cleanses to reveal the radiance, even when it’s hard to see that radiance from the mundane perspective? Where is love within you? Are you in touch with it? When it seems distant, how do you invite it back? It is in this way that we are going to come to the non-duality of light and darkness and fulfill this path of sacred darkness.

Here I’m going to have to ask you to trust us—John, Barbara, and myself—that we have walked this path at least enough to be capable to guide you along it. And that you would not be here in the class if you were not capable and ready for it. Be patient.

Taking it one more step, here. It’s very useful to be able to recognize when you are deeply stuck in the small self and just say, “Right now, in this moment, where is my awakened heart? Without pushing away the small self, I choose to re-open and remember the awakened heart.”

You all have loving guides supporting you. You also have many not so loving entities all looking over your shoulder and saying, “Hmm, how can I throw him or her off track?” I don’t mean to scare you here; I’m just stating a fact. You’ve lived with this fact all your lives. You’ve done pretty well with it, so don’t get upset. But increasingly, you are learning to say no to negative polarity within yourself and in the world.

Carla’s channeling book is a classic on guidance, of how to deal with those negatively polarized beings that knock on the door and say, “I want in!” “No, no. Go sit by my fire and have tea. You are not welcome here.” Re-grounding yourself into that place of deepest love and commitment to non-harm.

So, this is why we have you reading this book. It will help you. With all of the reading (this one too), if it doesn’t resonate, let it go. There are many ways to learn whatever you need to learn.

Carla’s book speaks of the chakras and the importance of the vehicle of each chakra, and that’s useful to remember for yourselves. Most of you have done work with the chakras before.

And then we come to the elements. The mundane elements of earth, air, fire, and water, and the fifth element of akasha. The first four elements are material, form elements, heavier elements. Akasha is more an energetic element.

There are two levels of akasha, as there are for any element. Given the fire element, there is the mundane level of fire, literal fire, and there is the supramundane level of the fire element, the intense radiance that’s within you and everything—light, fire. There is the water element, the material water element that’s the fluidity of your body, the fluidity of the seas. But at a supramundane level, the water element is about movement. The tides moving back and forth; fluidity.

We familiarize ourselves with each element from a mundane and a supramundane level. Akasha mostly presents at the supramundane level. So, we have the four heavier elements plus akasha. Everything in the mundane world expresses out of conditions. There has to be something out of which these elements express. Earth, air, fire, water, akasha, arising out of what conditions.

We come back to material we sent back in the summer, what we call the All Ground and the Primordial Purity. Don’t get too caught up in these words; just listen and see what comes up for you.

This also gets us into, “Which comes first, chicken or egg?” question. Which comes first, the All Ground or the primordial purity. The Buddha is known for saying he will not speak of any ‘first cause’, and I think that’s very wise. We don’t need to know, only to experience that there is that primordial purity that is radiant and brilliant and pure beyond measure, and that there is a ground. Whichever one is within the other: from the All Ground, the primordial purity and the distortions; from the primordial purity, the All Ground and distortions. You don’t need to know which comes first. But it’s helpful to understand that there is a ground.

Now in terms of practicing and co-creating within the akashic field, this field out of which everything is expressing—everything—mundane and supramundane, clear and distorted, everything expressing from this field.

Most of you are going to come to a place in meditation this year, if you have not already done so—and many have already experienced it—experiencing the akashic field. This is not exactly parallel, but in access concentration—fully resting, objects arising and passing away, maybe pleasant, maybe unpleasant, but no reaction to them, no going out to them, awareness is strong, no stories from a small self— you are resting in the akashic field. We can talk more about the subtle distinctions here. For now, I’m just trying to give you ways of knowing what the experience of resting in the akashic field feels like.

Resting in awareness—not access concentration but profound resting in awareness. This is subtly different. You are connected to the akashic field but awareness can only observe the—let me find the precise phrasing—resting in pure awareness, awareness can only observe the supramundane expressions. It cannot really observe and be interactive with the mundane expressions.

So, resting in awareness, you are present with the akashic field but there is not consciousness to know how to work in this akashic field.

We begin to bring these practices together so that there is a steadiness and balance between awareness and consciousness, not just resting in the middle of the bridge but intuitively knowing how much “movement” one way or the other to do what needs to be done, to support what needs to be done. Gradually, you begin to work more skillfully from the akashic field. And added to that, as you develop the ability to invite support and guidance, you’ll find that your guides help you. You don’t have to do it all yourself. Where did you get that idea? You don’t have to do it all yourself—you have help.

So we invite this guidance. Increasingly, you’re going to understand experientially how it feels to be co-creating from the akashic field. I don’t have any shortcuts to tell you how to do this, although I’m going to lead a guided meditation that may help a bit. You’re just going to need to keep practicing. How does a musician know when this note is going to be a little bit sharper, a little bit flat? They have to keep practicing until the fingers know where to go, until the strings are tuned just right, until the bow has the ideal amount of resin, so everything comes together.

Please have patience and bear with this. I promise you, if you just take this step by step, not so much mentally trying to absorb it as practicing with it, these pieces are going to fit together.

Barbara has a beautiful jigsaw puzzle that a friend gave her probably 50 years ago. It’s a wooden puzzle with thick pieces. Pieces are carved with a literal jigsaw into wonderful shapes—elephants and butterflies and trees, and some of the more mundane shapes, too. It’s a 1000-piece puzzle, and there was no picture on the cover. The friend gave it to her and said, “I’ve finished this, and I know you love jigsaw puzzles—here!” “Well, what is it?” she said. “It’s a picture—here!”

She and at that point her young children spread it out on the dining table, and I think it took them much of a year. They found matching-colored pieces. Slowly the pieces came together from single pieces into patches that size—this and this and this. These larger pieces started to hook together. It didn’t even have a square frame; it had an irregular frame. It was a beautiful picture, a scene with vibrant flowers and deer grazing in a meadow, mountains in the background, a creek flowing down the mountainside—an exquisite picture. Step by step by step.

Would you trust us and do this puzzle with us? I think you’re going to be delighted by the final picture.

(5 minute break)

Barbara: Last Tuesday I had the last two physical surgeries at the hospital, and I’m happy to say that the labs have now come back showing all the surgery sites are clean, cancer is gone, no radiation is needed, cancer-free—hurray!

So I spent considerable time Tuesday morning when I came back from the hospital just lying in bed most of the rest of that day. Friday, the Casa entities did one of their 24-hour interventions.

I had the fascination experience while I was lying there, half-asleep, half-awake, of a lot of tutorials on the akashic field, Aaron taking me into a couple of guided meditations. I think the best way to do this is just to let Aaron do one of these guided meditations with you. I don’t have the words for it. I was in a place beyond the use of words and just experiencing. I hope some of you will get at least a deep taste of some of these experiences. If you don’t, don’t worry about it. It’s okay.

So, that said, I’m going to get out of the way and let Aaron come in…

(Reviewed to here)

Aaron: I am Aaron. Close your eyes, please, and relax…

Imagine yourself free of any form—no boundaries. You are just energy and light. There is no mental body with a thought, “I am this or that.” There’s no physical body.

Imagine yourself in free fall in space, a space that precedes stars and any solar bodies, before anything. And yet, there is awareness. It’s not an awareness that is capable of questioning who or what am I, there’s just awareness. That awareness is aware of the ease of feeling itself surrounded by loving energy. It has no label for it. It doesn’t say, “Ah, loving energy.” It has nothing with which to compare it. But there is no contraction of any sort. There is no sense of anything other than the self, so there’s nothing against with to defend oneself, no need for armoring or pulling away.

That which is, which fills you, is you, embraces you, is neither light nor dark, neither hard nor soft, open nor closed.

It is so easy to rest here. It feel so safe and joyful. As you rest, become aware over the furthest horizon of something a bit different. You don’t have a word for it yet.

But while you have been in what we will call darkness, gradually the darkness softens from deep black into gray and shades of yellow, pink, purple, red—very soft, lightening, lightening. Let us not call it the glow of a sunrise but simply the emergence of light. The light has always been there, but you could not perceive it because your eyes were dimmed by the darkness.

Now, as you look around you, you cannot really say, “That is dark and this is light”; it’s all pervasive and everywhere.

Again, no sense of any threat in this light and dark experience. No preference of one over the other.

Just resting, eyes open, taking it all in. Feeling that which you are begin to resonate with the increasing high vibration around you.

In the distance now, you begin to perceive a darker circle in this vast space. As you look, you observe what looks like an unlimited sea. And out of that sea, mountains emerging, island mountains, continents emerging, land and water, and the light intensifying to fire. Experiencing a soft breeze.

There is still not a strong sense of an experiencer, only awareness taking it all in. Nothing that is you and separate from what is experienced. You are the light, you are the darkness, you are the seas and them mountains, the breeze.

The awareness that you are makes a conscious choice to move closer to perceive this phenomena. Moving in, and moving in, and moving in…

Slowly this awareness that you are also forms attributes, a sense of the sea and the mountains and the fire and the air that are the outer body, outer expression of this awareness. So just as it is out there, it is also within. And the knowledge comes up: I am that. I am everything, connected, elemental, connected to everything. And I am spirit. I am love. And your heart breaks open with love for what you see coming closer to you: an earth, a heavy density realm.

And the inner question: Do you choose to come closer?

If not, that’s fine, you can back away. If the answer is yes, allow yourself to take on increasing form and allow the world emerging beneath you to take on increasing form.

Still gently dropping down, as if you had a huge parachute, an invisible parachute. Just gently allowing your energy, your being, to come closer to this earth.

There is as yet no thought of self. The “I am that” is not a separate self but an acknowledgment that you are part of everything, and everything is a part of you. But beginning to recognize yourself as made up also of these heavier elements, of earth, air, fire, water, and energy. And also of intelligence and intention—the birth of the mental body.

I invite. I allow. I allow myself to come closer to this earth, that I may support the increasing radiance and high vibration of this—as yet, you don’t have the word “Earth”—but of this that I perceive. This that I perceive as part of me, and me as part of it.

Gradually coming closer…

As you draw near to it, details are showing. You can see and hear. You hear explosions and cries. You hear singing and praise and joy. You see beings—you don’t call them people yet—beings of diverse sorts regarding each other with great tenderness and generosity of spirit, and you see beings regarding each other with contempt and separation.

Coming closer, you see in the land a great rift, a deep, deep canyon. And to one side it seems there is great light, joy, and high energy, and to the other side it seems there is more darkness, explosions and cries of pain.

And over the center, a bridge going from one side to the other. And your body floating down onto the bridge. When I say your body, this newly aware essence of yourself, floating down onto the bridge.

You are so deeply drawn to the light and the loving energy, at that end of the bridge. Behind you, you hear the screams and cries of agony, mostly hidden in darkness but with fires of explosions.

You remember your intention to alleviate suffering, to help co-create a higher consciousness in this place where you have landed.

Allow yourself to spend as much time on this bridge as you need to, just resting and taking it all in.

If a “self” and its stories come up, just nod to it. You don’t have to get caught up in it. If any grasping toward the joyous light side comes, or any aversion to the heavier side comes, just note it. Just rest there in the middle of the bridge, giving yourself permission to take the time you need.

Now, looking at yourself, a semi-visible heavier body has formed out of the elements, but it doesn’t have hard edges yet. In your meditation, eyes still closed, but look at your hand, imagine that, and then reaching the hand and arm out toward the light. It can go for miles, it’s unlimited. So you can stay in the middle of the bridge and reach out until you are firmly anchored into the light and absorbing that high vibration, feeling the joy of it. Let’s just do that for a minute…

But the shrill cries still reach you, the sounds of explosion, the sounds of fear. Without moving from where you are on the bridge, extend the other arm out into that darkness, that place of fear and terror, and allow the high energy that’s coming in from one side to run through your heart and out the other side, almost like the tonglen practice. Releasing the loving energy into this place of fear and darkness. Just being a conveyor of it, letting it move through you. Offering, not sending but offering.

Then, in this hand that’s extended into the side of darkness, inviting that darkness to come into your hand, through your hand into your body and heart, letting it move up through the throat and third eye and releasing it out of the crown. Just releasing it back into that void…

Attention back into the side of loving energy and light, drawing it into your heart, filling yourself with it…

And then, attention called to the cries of anguish. Reaching that hand out and releasing some of this light, letting as much as is possible flow through you into the world of pain and darkness. A few breaths..

And then, allowing your hand to take into it some of that pain and darkness, drawing it back into the heart, and letting it go up through the upper chakras and releasing.

If we had more time, I’d do this process for 15 or 20 minutes but I want to leave time for discussion. Let’s do it once more…

Love, that which you are, the essence of love, reaching into the world of love, into the Dharmakaya, into the light, and receiving as much of that love and light as you are able to hold. Breathing in and drawing it into your heart. Feeling the intense joy and beauty of it with gratitude. And then, called back by the cries in the darkness, reaching your hand out into the darkness and letting that light flow into the darkness on the exhale. And then inhaling, drawing that darkness in through the heart and releasing it up through the crown chakra.

When you listen to this as recording, I invite you to pause here and spend 10 minutes or so just doing it, continuing it.

Let us take it one step further, here.

The field in which you hold presence is the akashic field, the All Ground. The possibilities of light and darkness, the realities of light and darkness, and the All Ground coming together.

You do not need to get this mentally or with some specific names or words. Just the experience of holding yourself in this space of light and darkness, knowing yourself as spirit and yet gradually taking on the body, the five elements, and the mental body. The ability to hold intention within that mental body, and then choosing to co-create by drawing in light and releasing darkness.

Invite your guides to help you, if that’s useful to you. You do not have to move back and forth on the bridge; your arms can stretch as far as you need. So just rest where you have come to alight on the bridge.

To one side, light, high vibration and love; to the other, the absence of light, increasing into what seems like total darkness, the low vibration, the pain. And beneath you, this field that pulls them both together and allows you as a sentient being with loving intention to choose to manifest within this field toward an end of suffering, toward awakening and love.

I spoke at the beginning of how from the darkness there was increasing light, what might be thought of as a sunrise, except there was no sun, just the blossoming of light. If it’s helpful to look up and see the vastness, the power of that light and invite it in—a bit different from the heavier energy than the light that you’re reaching out to, which is more finite, but the light above you, infinite, the sense of divine energy and love—if it’s helpful to imagine that and invite that as a part of the meditation, do so. If it’s not helpful, let it go.

If it’s helpful, imagine yourself not only with arms that stretch everywhere but a tail that comes from the crown down through the body, down through the base chakra, and down, down, and out, and out, anchoring you into that All Ground. But if it’s not helpful, let it go.

Let me give you just two or three minutes of silence to continue to work with this, and then we’ll end. I hope you will all try this at home in your own more leisurely time period.

(sitting; bell, bell, bell)

I’m going to release the body to Barbara and can speak through her if there are questions to me… or just sharing of your experience. I thank you. My love to you all…

Barbara: This is Barbara. We’d like to hear whatever you’d like to share.

Let me say something here first. When he did this with me, at first the experience was that of not light or darkness. It’s hard to describe. It didn’t feel heavy like darkness, but there was no light. It was just nothingness. And gradually, there became a distinction between arising light as contrasted to increasing darkness. So in the beginning it was neither. That was my experience of it, when he first led me through this. Would others like to reply?

(silently reading Zoom chat)

I can only speak for myself. For me, when I’m in a deep meditation, there’s usually a lot of light. And my experience is that light is. That there is light, and darkness is absence of light rather than light being absence of darkness. That light is the essence of the Unconditioned. That it is all-pervasive unless something blocks it. And then, because it’s blocked there’s increasing darkness. So that negative polarity is more the expression of that blocked light. And when I’m not caught in negative polarity, I experience a lot of light. I don’t know if that clarifies it. I’d love to hear other people’s take on this.

(reading silently)

This is essentially one form of tonglen practice. But when I do tonglen practice there’s usually more of a somebody doing it. I found this meditation got the somebody out of it and allowed me to rest more firmly in what I started to get to know as the akashic field. Not a self but this container that was able to just draw in light and release it, draw in darkness and release it, very much absent of self.

Other questions or things you want to share?

(Zoom sharing not recorded)

(responding to a comment) Aaron was offering you a way to do basic work in akashic field, yes.

Anybody else? We have time for one more question.

(Zoom sharing not recorded)

I think that could happen in a lot of ways. One, if you just started with vipassana practice, and at a point where there’s access concentration, to have held the intention in the beginning with access concentration to experience yourself on this bridge. No self; just to experience that presence of access concentration on the bridge, and allow whatever comes up, reaching out to it. Or, you could start with pure awareness practice where you could just listen to the recording when it’s available. Just start at the beginning of Aaron’s guided meditation and then at the end, move into vipassana practice. So it can come from either end of it.

I actually haven’t tried it the second way, and I think I will—the end of this very non-dual awareness, taking that into vipassana practice could be very powerful.

Okay, it’s 9 o’clock. So good night to all. We’ll see you for groups next week. That’s all. Good night and love to everybody.