January 17, 2023 Tuesday Evening, Living Awake Class
What is the Ox?
Barbara: I’ve had some wonderful discussions with Aaron the past month, looking ahead into semester two, what he’s going to be talking about, and where we’re going. He has challenged me often.
I don’t know if you heard this, but I spent a lot of time, almost two weeks between Christmas until after New Year’s, mostly lying in bed sleeping and recovering from strong energetic work that the entities were doing with me. I slept a lot, but I also was meditating. Aaron had me working pretty hard.
I’m excited about his ideas, and I think you will be, too. That’s all the introduction from me. It’s good to see all of your smiling faces on the screen again. I’ve missed you. I hope you all had a good holiday period.
Aaron is going to come in…
Aaron: My blessings and love to you all. I am Aaron. As Barbara said, it’s good to see all of your faces here. Welcome.
We’ve been following this ox for a while. Is he real? What is he? Where is he? How do we catch him? What do we do with him when we catch him? Is he really separate from us or not?
Let’s start with just a few minutes of hearing from you. At this point in the year, do you have any thoughts: what is this ox? What is it to you? I don’t want to hear whether you’ve caught it or not, whether he’s tame yet or not. Just, what is it?
Q: When I first understood the ox pictures and so forth and the concept of catching the ox, for me it was to control myself. To get ahold of the ox, get ahold of my inner spirit, and tame it. That was at the beginning of the first semester.
Toward the end of the first semester, I began to perceive it differently, and this sort of goes along with these non-duality teachings we’ve had. It’s to be open to the ox and befriend the ox—befriend myself. That’s what it has meant for me.
Aaron: Thank you. There is no right or wrong answer here. I welcome all of your thoughts. We’ll just be quiet a minute and see if anybody feels moved to share…
Q: I understood it to be representing the awakened mind. That at first, we may just catch a glimpse, and then you come into more of a sense of stabilizing the awakened mind. That was my understanding.
Aaron: Thank you, a very apt answer. Others?
Q: Since I have not been able to join online, and I’ve only been listening to some of the tapes through last semester, I still don’t get it. I don’t understand. I understood what Q just said. But in my practice, I understand spaciousness. I understand being with whatever is arising and spaciousness. I understand awareness being of that spaciousness and whatever arises is coming from this, I don’t know exactly, the awakened mind was where the thoughts are arising from. Every object was arising from the ox… I don’t understand, I’m not sure.
Aaron: Thank you.
John: I would say that the ox is the “one who knows.” So, I’m not relating to the ox as though I’m the one who knows and therefore, I have to in some way tame the ox, but the ox is the one who already knows. So, the ox is, as has been said, the awakened mind. Essentially, I am coming into alignment with the one who knows within myself. So, the ox is within me, it is the one who knows, and I am coming into an ever-deepening awareness within myself of this one who knows, this one who is awakened.
Aaron: Thank you, John, and that is when the ox and the self merge. Nothing separate.
The human is a very special kind of being. There are throughout the universe many types of very awakened consciousness. But they have been rarely, very rarely merged with matter in any way.
Heavy matter is only gradually beginning to carry consciousness. We won’t talk here about how the human came into being. It doesn’t matter whether it was a zap! or very gradually. But here you are, heavy vibrational matter and ever-ascending consciousness.
Perhaps the oldest question for the human have been, “Who am I? What is life about? Why am I here?” These questions; they’re very powerful.
Why are we here? Who are we? I include myself in that “we”, although I’m now more awake and the question no longer presses at me. But through so many lifetimes as a human it was pivotal. Who am I, and why am I here? Why is there so much hatred, fear, and destruction? What is the nature of love? What is the nature of the awakened mind? Can a high vibrational awakened consciousness be part of this heavier density material body?
So, we have this little boy (from the OxHerding Pictures), having heard somewhere there is, let’s just call it something beyond the ego. Through so many incarnations, each being has thought of the ego as the one who rules. Who am I? I’m me, the ego. But of course, you’re not the ego.
You’ve each had some profound meditations in which, at least to some degree, you saw through the ego and the material body, through all of the aggregates, and saw something beyond them—the awakened mind. But what is this awakened mind?
As long as I am chasing the awakened mind, there’s duality. But there has never been duality. Your ego self is not much different than your hands and eyes and ears, external aggregates extended from of the essence of your being.
That ego self is first involved in taking care of itself, as it must be. It is a mammal. It’s determined to live.
Then the ego self may begin to consider deeper values beyond personal life. The human will come up with different glimpses of a deeper reality, and perhaps of a dream that plays itself out as a grand symphony, or an amazing and life-saving medical discovery. It may play itself out, for instance, with Dr. King, his “I have a dream…”. There has to be a dream, a vision, something beyond the self, so that you can move from the small ego to the greater Self.
Each of you has had glimpses of this. If I were to ask each of you, “Who are you?”, first you would say I am this name, of this male or female kind of body, this age, this appearance. Who are you? Who are you?
And a second question. Going beyond the self, beyond all the aggregates, the form, the thoughts, the preferences, what truly holds you together?
You begin to have a glimpse of this ox, something greater than the ego self. It starts to wake you up. Different of you have experienced it, it in different ways.
I had this discussion at length with Barbara, in those weeks while she was not quite sleeping but not really awake.
She told me a story of being a young child at summer camp. They brought the children to a park where they had treehouses, three or four girls with their sleeping bags to a big wood box filled with straw up in a tree. The girls climbed up, and there was a litter of tiny, baby mice. A girl screamed, “Mice!” The counselor climbed up and smashed them with her boot.
That was a wake-up moment for Barbara. When I asked her if it had not been mice but spiders, perhaps, could you have seen yourself smashing them? Yes. For another of you, it might have been snakes.
Where and why do we move into this illusion of separation? In order to recognize this illusion of separation, we must have at some level some sense of non-separation. That and I are one. If I destroy that, I destroy myself.
That sent nine-year-old Barbara off on a path of exploration and discovery. What is the impulse in me that separates me from everything else? And how do I really get to the connection, the knowing of the connection with everything else? The experience really lay the path for a lifetime!
That connection must be there. You remember it from the time before birth, when you were not so much caught in the small self. Maybe not concretely remember, but there is in each of you a dim memory of connection and also of the pain of separation.
Searching for the ox, not quite understanding what it is. Seeing the footprints and becoming more certain somewhere there is something beyond the small self. Catching it, getting to know it. Being a bit terrified of it.
But then comes the readiness to live this new knowledge. How do we do it? This is where we begin to train the ox or tame the ox. To reunite with the ox.
Now, going back to this ancient history. Before there were sentient material beings, there certainly were sentient beings, not yet material, some more positively, some more negatively polarized, dwelling in a realm of pure thought. Thought is energy; they had energy. But there was a strong schism between the material realm and the, let’s call it the mind realm.
But as you know in your world, the trees, the birds, the rocks, the soil, they all possess consciousness. When you ask what the purpose is, a primary function that I see of the Earth is to end the duality of matter and mind, matter and spirit. I’m not equating mind with spirit, there. Ending the duality between matter and the rest of it. That which is heavier and more solid, which has form; that which is formless.
It is only there that love can blossom. It is only there that there is radiant light. It is only there that there’s a possibility to shake off the old beliefs of negativity, fear, and hatred born from eons of heavy material incarnation into the belief of separate self. .
In a lifetime long past, as part of my youthful training I was brought with a number of other young life forms of that time and place to sit by a patch of ground about 15″ square. Our teachers said, “Just observe. What do you see?”
We sat there hour after hour, day after day. At first, I saw just a patch of, if it had been Earth, I would put it in terms, a patch of ground. I saw some plant life like grass—some live, some dead. Some ants, soil. What did I see? My teacher kept asking me, “Go deeper. What do you see?”
At first, I was bored and angry. And then I finally began to learn how to see. I’m putting this in Earth terms so that you can better understand it. I saw a drop of moisture soak into the arid soil. I saw seed dropped from a plant break through the soil and sprout, a little blade of grass begin to form. I saw it extend its roots into the soil, drawing energy and life from the soil. I saw the ant climb up in the sprout and begin to eat, to feed itself. I saw the blade of grass eventually die and decay into the earth, become the earth.
Many weeks I sat there for endless hours each day, just looking at this square of earth, until I finally understood that everything, I saw was an extension of me and I was an extension of everything I saw. Nothing was separate.
In that moment I saw the ox. But the ego within me was in denial. “I want to be separate,” some part of me cried out. “Otherwise, how can I control anything?” And the ego wants to control. “I want to be safe. I want to be the strongest.”
My teacher, my very wise and loving teacher, said, “Just watch.” It took me months to understand that the ant was coming out of the soil, feeding on the grass, dying back into and feeding the soil, out of which the grass was growing and finding its sustenance. That nothing was separate, and therefore nothing had power except when it knew its interconnection with all else..
My ego didn’t really like that. Taming the ox was a matter of dealing with the ego that wanted to be the strong one, wanted to be separate, until finally that boy that I was understood the great blessing of interconnection, of love. And that only when I knew myself to be part of everything could I express that innate love that was my essence. Only then could I end the war with everything around me and live in true peace.
You might say at that point I “had a dream” that it was possible for us to live in peace, without hatred, without all the incessant chatter of the ego, or at least without believing in the stories of the ego. Let it chatter—no problem. Not caught in the stories.
So now we have been looking at what this ox is, and some of you have, let’s say touched the ox, hugged it. Started to make peace with the truth that you are the ox and you are this human expression, with all its different thoughts and ideas and ego and body and so forth.
There’s a beautiful Buddhist teaching story of the Buddha in a prior lifetime, in which an animal is hungry. Her children are starving. He arrives and says, “You may eat me.”
What does it take to come to that point where you see something starving and say, “You may eat me?” Either it takes a kind of foolhardy bravery that just says, “Sure, eat me,” or it takes a profound knowing that no matter if you eat this body, the essence does not cease to exist. That doesn’t mean I continue to live in this present sense, but I now live through you. And then I live through your offspring. I live through the plants that you eat and digest. I live everywhere. I AM! Not the small me, but we start to touch in on the truth of our being, the awakened essence. I AM. I AM.
It is only at this point that this human consciousness can touch in deeply to this heavy density material Earth and begin to transform the consciousness of the Earth itself.
Your body, buried at death or burned and the remains scattered on the earth, that essence doesn’t disappear, it mingles with the earth. It mingles with the seas. You become part of everything.
And as we stabilize this Earth vibration in the immensity of your love and your light, the whole Earth is able to change its vibration, to move into a higher, clearer vibration that’s capable to hold the energy of love.
So now on Earth there are many loving people but there’s not yet the Earth itself able to hold that love, because everybody still sees me and earth, me and seas, me and sky. How could people pollute this Earth as they do, if they knew they were the Earth? When is it going to stop?
I have a dream that every sentient being can know both the beauty of the small self and the power and radiance of the larger self in which it touches and co-creates with everything. Because it is only here that we will truly have peace and suffering will end.
Those of you pulled to this class from a traditional Buddhist viewpoint, a commitment to end suffering. How are you going to end it? You will wake up to the deepest truth of your being and know yourself as part of everything.
Sitting by that 15″ square inch patch of soil and watching the tiniest insects and the larger ones eating the smaller ones. Some of them eating the plant. Everything decaying into the soil and growing again and again and again. Nothing is separate.
It’s at that point where boy and ox finally disappear, dissolve into each other. No less than this is what we are after.
My work is helping you to touch on this experience of non-separation in whatever ways you are ready. It will be a different path for each. But it is leading you to this place of knowing, “I am that. I am this whole magnificent universe. I am the stars. I am the rain. I am the oceans. And I do not choose to destroy myself, because I am capable of love.”
This is the special gift of the human, that it is learning to be capable of love in the greatest sense of that word.
Who are you?
If we were here live right now, I would pair you up, two people looking in each other’s eyes. Lacking that ability, right now I’m going to ask you to look deeply into my eyes. We’ll spend just a few minutes simply being here together. Let yourself melt into my eyes. Thaw into my eyes. Open into my eyes and my heart.
Watch each little bit of “I want to be ‘separate'” that comes up, each resistance, and just hold it in love. Become one with me. I love you very much. I will never harm you in any way. You are safe to melt into me, as I am safe to melt into you.
(eye gazing)
Thank you. Thank you for connecting with me so deeply.
So, as we move into the second semester, we’ll be pulling together practices that lead us out of duality. Resting on that bridge. We’ll work with the Brahma Viharas, the beautiful states of joy and compassion, gratitude and so forth. We’ll work with the wisdom mind. We’ll look further at the path of clear light and the path of sacred darkness, always asking how do I never destroy the small self but embrace the small self and allow it to trust enough to find its true home? To open and connect. To live in love.
I look forward to this semester with you. I am Aaron. Thank you. I love you. I love you all very much, my very courageous explorers.
I’ll release the body to Barbara…
Barbara: Aaron is saying in the small groups, especially to look at the two questions. What is the ox to me? And it will change, it’s not one thing. What prevents me from really being connected, knowing my connection with this ox? And the ox can be many things. He is saying it can come in the form of music or dance or painting, of a cherished idea, of connection, generosity to others, so many different expressions of that ox. And it will change for each.
He says please think of King’s “I have a dream…” What is your dream? he says, because that is one of your best connections to the ox and to taming the ox. In other words, to not pulling the ego as separate from the ox.
That’s all. Thank you.