Knowing Power of Love, and Giving Love in Difficult Situations

February 8, 2023 Wednesday Evening with Aaron

Knowing Power of Love, and Giving Love in Difficult Situations

(This talk posted without review by Barbara and Aaron by request.)

Barbara: Welcome and good evening. It’s good to see you all. I really enjoy looking into your faces every month. Some of you I only see here once a month, but others I have seen for years here. Some of you I have never met live; some of you I have spent many hours with through many years. But I feel that we are all one family. I feel so much love for all of you. Thanks for being with us tonight… I’m going to get out of the way and allow Aaron to come in.

Aaron: My blessings and love to you. I am Aaron. And, as Barbara just said, it is a great joy to see your faces, to feel your energy, and to be here with you tonight. Many long-time familiar faces of twenty and more years, and our new friends, all of you very precious to my heart.

People often ask me, “Aaron, is there any other way to learn what we must learn in order to grow and awaken, other than this human path?”

Yes, you can learn it all in many different ways. “But,” I ask them, “have you come here just to learn, or is there more that your heart desires?” Not just to receive as learning but to give, and in giving, to grow beyond the small self and to find who you truly are. That giving, that opening out of yourselves is perhaps the essence of the gift of your humanness.

You are each really a radiant light—so brilliant. A brilliant star filled with love, and also filled with bewilderment at times. “Why are we here? How do I live this life with love?”

Imagine for yourselves if you were a resident in a lovely home in that area of Turkey where there was just such devastation. Everywhere around you, buildings have collapsed. Screams and pain fill the air. Your own home—you are safely out, but the whole building has collapsed. Perhaps some of your neighbors are dead in the rubble. Why would this happen? And what is asked of me when something like this happens? How is it tolerable?

The question there is not “How is it tolerable?” but “What can I give? How can I help? Can I allow my heart to break open with the grief of this moment and still trust my ability to grow and to give?” I know almost all of you on the screen, and I know what your answer would be if I asked this question.

So there you are. You don’t even have on your clothes or coat, just the clothing that you had slept in and the shoes you had quickly pulled on. You’re out on the street, looking at the devastation, hearing screams around you.

Some large trucks have pulled up. They are laden with blankets and water. They say, “Everybody who wants to go, get in the truck and we’re going to take you. The highway is passable and we’re going to drive quite a distance for a few hours to safety. Anybody who wishes to stay and help, we have need. You don’t need any special skills.”

And this person turns to you holding an eighteen-month-old baby who is crying—not injured, but crying, maybe scratched and bruised. The tag says “No Identity”. Will you get on the truck, or will you take this baby? “We need people to hold the children. If you feel strong, we need people to dig. If nothing else, we need people to just sit on the side and pray.” Now, quick, make your decision. Will you stay or will you go?

It’s fine to go. Some of you will need to choose that. Someone like Barbara, for example, would probably be more in the way than helpful if she stayed. She could hold some children, yes. But because she cannot walk without her walker, which she would not have, because she was old, it might be for the highest good for her to depart and find ways to help from a distance. So it’s not wrong to say, “I will leave.”

But I want you to look deep into your own hearts and ask yourself, would I stay? And if so, why would I stay? Is there some story that says I should be a good one and stay, that it’s better to stay than to go?

What leads you to stay? It’s the same thing that led you to come into human existence in the first place.

Why did any of us—and I include myself, for I have been human—why did any of us come into human existence? What do I have to offer, even just my witnessing or my loving heart? What do I have to offer?

Perhaps the light that you are, the light of compassion and mercy that you are, that is willing to witness what seems to be intolerable on this earth and to say no to it just by your presence and love.

Let’s change the scene a bit. Here you are a year ago at a train station just outside of the border of Ukraine. You have heard that people are fleeing for their lives and help is needed. You had baked bread earlier that day, a dozen loaves of bread, and so you were moved to go to the train station with the feeling, “Yes, this is something I can give. I’m a good baker. People will be hungry.” You get there and see people pouring off the trains—people in tears; people injured; people afraid; people bereft, not knowing where their loved ones are; people homeless.

Now imagine that you live in a simple home, perhaps a living room, bathroom and three bedrooms, and it houses your family of five or six. But you have water and heat. You look at these people and ask yourself, could I invite someone home with me? It is not that you should do that, but what is the movement of your heart that says, “I choose to do this.”? It’s not that this is right or wrong, one way or the other, but finding the spaciousness and love in your heart that allows you to be not only inconvenienced out of a dozen loaves of bread, but perhaps inconvenienced for weeks by a stranger, or more than one, living in your home.

Again, I ask you to reflect, what would invite me to make such an offer? Not because I should; not because it’s better to offer space than to give bread or blankets; not to prove anything to myself or anyone else. But can you feel the deep love in offering, whether it’s bread, or the living space, or perhaps the commitment to come back day after day with bread. No living space to offer, but each night I can go home and make bread and bring it back the next day. Or I can scour my neighborhood for blankets and bring them back. What can I do? How can I truly be of the greatest help?

Barbara had in the past an opportunity to hear from a few people who escaped from Nazi Germany from terrible persecution. They perhaps were in prison camps and escaped. So often, when asked, “How did you survive?”, the answer is, “Because of the love and generosity of others. Because of the gifts others made not to hold themselves separate from the world of suffering, but to do everything they could to see that no being is left alone, unseen and unheard, unloved.”

So, can you awaken through a different path? Of course! There are many different ways of growth, and coming into the earth plane as a human is just one.

But what a powerful way of awakening it is to truly see your non-separation from any beings. To truly know your unity with all that is, and to find the light and love in yourselves that you can plant into the Earth and offer to people. Just the love and light of compassion.

The human path is a hard one and a wondrous one. Obviously I had many human lifetimes before my final awakening. Some of them were more lives of great pain; really of torment. But even where there was torment, they were also lives of joy and wonder.

In my younger lifetimes I was often filled with anger and greed, held myself separate. It was such a wondrous thing to learn that I was never separate, that I was part of everything and everything was part of me. To learn how much I had to give in my connection and love.

It was often in those moments bearing a resemblance to the one who is watching in the downtown square in that earthquaked city, “Shall I go, or shall I stay?” And the heart that makes the decision—not the brain, but the heart that makes the decision not necessarily to stay but to do what is for the highest good.

I come back to Barbara again. Barbara would need to note for herself, “It would not be for the highest good for me to stay. But if I am transported out—not for my own safety but so that I am not a burden to others—and go to a refugee center, there I can prepare food and hold babies and do all of these things without burdening others who cannot take care of me.” So it’s not a simple question. You have to know what you have to give and what needs you have, so as not to burden others.

Many of you have heard me talk about a lifetime in which my village suffered an earthquake and mudslides. The homes were not big buildings but small and simple buildings, but everything was destroyed. Mud poured down the mountain and buried everything. The one well for the village was buried in mud; my family, all of my loved ones. I was up in the hills where the farm land was and not down in the valley with the village. When I came back, I found that every person of my family who I knew and loved was buried under many feet of mud.

I was bereft. Similar to my question for you: there were those who wanted to take those of us who were now homeless and had lost our families, and create a caravan and move us safely away, several days’ walk to another village where there would be food, shelter and water. But many of us were still alive. I was a young, strong, healthy man, and I knew exactly where the well was. I was deeply aware, even under all the mud.

People said, “We must leave. There is no water.” But there were still many who were there trying to dig out their homes, trying to reach those who were crying and caught under destroyed buildings. We needed the water, so I had something to give because I knew exactly where the well was. I had been one of those who had dug that well.

We dug. We carted huge loads of mud away, and more mud. Think six feet down, not thirty feet down, but we dug down into the well and dug into the well itself, which came from a pure spring. Imagine the joy of the villagers when we pulled the last of the mud out of the structure that held the well and fresh water bubbled out.

There were those who digging and trying to rescue people. There was water. And then there was hope that we could rebuild. I stayed because I knew I had something to give, and because I knew that I would not be a burden on others. I was not staying for my own ego or pride.

Why did you come to Earth? It was not for your ego or pride. It was not to be a strong one, a good one, to have others look up to you. It was because you knew from your own experience of the depth of suffering on this Earth and also of the radiance of the human spirit, and you believed in that radiance. You believed in this place we call Earth, that it had the potential to shine out as a place of love. You believed it.

So the question was not, “What can I get, if I go to Earth?” but “What can I give?” For so many, the heart of that question was that you had begun to truly understand the power of love and knew that you could give love, even in very difficult situations. How do we do that when we feel so overwhelmed by various kinds of circumstances?

About twenty years ago, I’m not sure quite when, I channeled a book through Barbara called Human. Many of you are familiar with that book. I love that book.

Barbara had moved out to her lake cabin for the summer. She was looking forward to time to meditate and write, and asked me, “Do you have anything special in mind?” And I said, “Yes, I do. I ask you to commit to sit, perhaps in the morning after your breakfast, to sit at your computer and let me simply type in through you. I ask you not to read ahead, not to try to edit what I write, but just to give me half an hour or so each morning.”

And each day I typed a page or two. The book unfolded beautifully. I want to read a little of it to you because it speaks to many of the questions that I’m so often asked. First, the opening:

My friend, you are human and yet you are also spirit.

To be spirit is to rest in the core of being that is birthless and deathless.

To be human is to contemplate the cessation of your conscious existence.

To be spirit is to live fully in the heart of love.

To be human is to know fear. To be spirit is to offer everything.

To be human is to experience the fear expressions of greed and clinging.

To be spirit is to know divine compassion.

To be human is to know the fear expressions of judgment and anger.

To be spirit is to know your completion.

To be human is to hunger for it.

Yet, to be human and to be spirit are not at all incompatible,

for you are not incarnate to abolish fear and its expressions

but to learn to draw them into the heart of love.

Walk by my side for a while and I will teach you

The first instruction is simply to remember that you are divine.

Always and everywhere, in every regard, you are manifestation of divinity.

The second instruction is to remember that all else is also divine.

Everything emanates from the pure heart – everything!

With this in mind, begin to see how fear divides reality into sacred and profane.

“Profane” is merely the mind’s distortion of the Divine, seen through the lens of fear.

With “profane” comes “other-than,” the concept that phenomena exist which are other than God, other than Self.

Then you feel that you have lost the Divine Self, or lost God.

Thus begins the frantic search for the ever-perfect.

Why do you seek elsewhere for yourself?

You are not out there but right here, here in the pure heart.

(I’m skipping a bit here within the book, certainly not reading you the whole book.)

Look deeply into what arises and see the many faces it offers.

You will find beauty and ugliness, joy and sorrow, courage and cowardice,

generosity and clinging, compassion and hatred, even life and death.

None of these are dual in any way. They are the myriad faces of Self.

They are the faces of God.

Since all of these expressions of being will arise, the work of the incarnation is

not to eradicate that which seems negative but to learn from it.

In this learning the heart opens.

That which was experienced as negative is disempowered.

When the war with it ceases, it dies its own natural death.

***

And I go on in the book to talk about how this works with heavy emotions, difficult body states and so forth. So I want to branch off now from this bit of the book.

Once there is deep understanding that everything that arises is an expression of the Divine, what do we do then with all the lives that are lost worldwide in war, with all those people buried by an earthquake? We certainly can’t say, “Oh this is good.” We do not wish war, earthquakes, death and suffering upon others. Yet each time that you experience this either directly or through your television screens, you have the opportunity to remember the depth of compassion and love that you brought into the incarnation and to place this in service to all beings.

This power that you hold, this is your true gift: the gift of loving kindness, of compassion, brought in by this physical body. As spirit, we can hold much compassion, but we cannot ground that compassion into the Earth. I cannot change the Earth in the ways you can. I cannot hold the crying baby. I cannot make the loving choice to put my own needs back a little bit and really hear the cries of humanity around the world. I cannot give this Earth the power of love that you as humans can give.

It doesn’t have to be a big thing. Some of you may save a life or feed people, others can bring a moment of joy. It’s not even the living human that does this but everything.

One of Hal’s caregivers built a snowman a few weeks ago, a delightful snowman. Finishing him, he clothed him with a winter cap and scarf, lumps of coal for eyes and buttons, a carrot nose and an M&M mouth. He was a very delightful fellow.

Then the weather began to warm up. The eyes and mouth popped off and the carrot landed on the deck. The cap slid down as the head melted. The head tilted to one side. And finally Barbara took a series of photos. She sent them out to her sons, three or four photos. This building, then the snowman, then the slow melting, and then the pile of snow on the deck. Impermanence. She just shared the photos. One of her sons wrote, “A wise teacher and mother has often reminded me of impermanence. He’ll be back. May his memory be a blessing.”

And truly it is. The joy that so many people had from that snowman—the people who saw him and the people who saw his pictures, and the young man who built him.

You give blessings throughout your life each time you smile at another, each time you call a sick friend, each time you go dancing, each time you sing a song, each time you bake bread or plant a seed in your garden. May this be a blessing.

This is the gift that you all came into the incarnation able to give. I’m going to back to reading again for a moment.

As long as there is a war with fear or any ego-based emotion,

you give control to negativity and make it solid.

The attempt to destroy fear can come from no other source but fear!

Therein, you practice your fear.

When you acknowledge the presence of fear and its siblings,

and allow them much space, then the loving heart can reassert its authority.

To acknowledge that presence is to not become lost in fear’s stories.

It is merely to greet fear and its companions as conditioned objects,

allow the experience of them and rest in spaciousness.

That which is aware of fear is not afraid. Rest in that awareness!

***

So, gradually as humans you are developing the ability to watch fear and pain, strong aversion, confusion, grief and sorrow. To watch how these arise and to hold the power of the huge gift that the human comes with—the gift of the heart that is capable of compassion and love. The gift that is not afraid to be with the darkness but knows that it carries the light that is absent to the darkness.

The human experience is conditioned. Beings come in arising out of conditions and they pass away. Ease and comfort arises and passes away. You cannot hold on to any of it.

The love in your heart is not conditioned but is the essence of the Unconditioned. You do not hold onto it, because it can never be destroyed. You come to know its power and to be able to say, in the face of strong adversity, “I am light. I am love. And I hold this out to all throughout this Earth who are suffering as a reminder that we all are light and love.” Just to bear witness.

It doesn’t take an act of great selflessness to express that light and love; although, to be present is an act of selflessness. Perhaps to be present is the greatest act of selflessness, to be truly present. But you don’t need to do anything special but witness, to be there.

Barbara is a member of what is called the Society of Friends, the Quakers. That is her formal religious affiliation. What drew her to this as a teenager was what they call ‘witnessing’—just to stand and be present.

When she participated in movements for human rights and peace, back in the 1960s and throughout her life, there was not so much a doing as a willingness to witness. And sometimes to witness is almost unbearable; to witness some beings’ cruelty to other beings. Just to stand there and look people in the eye. You don’t have to say, “I won’t let you do that.” You can’t stop them. But when people know they are witnessed, it makes them pull back.

What does it mean to be a witness to the suffering on this Earth without trying to fix it, but just holding it in your heart? In some ways trying to act is a way of trying to fix.

Now, I have nothing against fixing something that’s broken. If you break your leg, you want to have that leg set to repair it. But right now your Earth is exhibiting so many signs of being broken—in that raw hatred that we see around the globe, in the devolving environmental conditions, in the areas of selfishness and greed.

Think of it as a vast darkness and you have just this one candle. But a million of you stand there with your candles as a way of saying, “I am witnessing the darkness from the place of light because I know myself to be light. I give light to the darkness—not to change the darkness; it’s up to the darkness to accept that light or diminish it, extinguish it. But I keep giving light to the darkness again and yet again because I believe in, I trust, and I know that light is the ultimate, and darkness is simply conditioned; it is simply relative absence of light.”

This is why you came. You did not come to fix the Earth. You came to find the love and courage in yourself to grow within your own being so that you would trust your capacity, even when the darkness does arise in you, to be a bearer of light. To hold forth the light. To hold forth love, no matter what happens to you. To center yourself and remember, “I am love. I am light.”

And this whole Earth has the ability to ground itself into that light, to be light, to be that burning light for the whole Universe. To bring forth light and love not in a personal sense, “I’m going to do that,” but we, we who have dared to come into this earth plane again and yet again, into pain and darkness, bringing the light, trusting the power of the light.

When you remember that, that this is what you are, and that this is all you need to be, you don’t need to be fearless. You don’t need to be intelligent or super-intelligent. You don’t need to have special skills. You have been born as human, and this is such an enormous gift, because within the essence of the human is the essence of light. And you have the power to bring that light forth wherever there is darkness.

As you gradually master your own mind and emotions and the old stories that pull you away—Ah, I’m going to read something. It seems like a fitting end to my talk. So, with thanks to the poet, Hafiz (Shams-ud-din-Muhammad Hafiz, Persian poet, c.1310 – 1389):

Cast All Your Votes for Dancing

I know the voice of depression
Still calls to you.

I know those habits that can ruin your life
Still send their invitations.

But you are with the Friend now
And look so much stronger.

You can stay that way
And even bloom!

Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions’ beautiful laughter.

Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From the sacred hands and glance of your Beloved
And, my dear,
From the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.

Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel.

You are with the Friend now.
Learn what actions of yours delight Him,
What actions of yours bring freedom
And Love.

Whenever you say God’s name, dear pilgrim,
My ears wish my head was missing
So they could finally kiss each other
And applaud all your nourishing wisdom!

O keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions’ beautiful laughter

And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.

Now, sweet one,
Be wise.
Cast all your votes for Dancing!

~ Hafiz ~

Thus ends my talk. Thank you.

(break)

Barbara: Welcome back. I don’t know exactly what Aaron said, of course. He gave me some clues of what he intended to speak about. So I was looking personally at the devastation, the earthquake, and asking him, what can we do?

One of the important things he said to me is there are earthquakes because the earth is going through so much disruption right now. And that we have the power to anchor our own light and love into the earth. That each time something happens that pushes at us in a painful way or in a way that brings up fear and anger, let’s say, we can be present with that fear and anger and not reactive to it, instead holding the commitment to love. And we ground that love into the earth.

This is one way we have of preventing future earthquakes. Maybe there’s nothing we can do for the victims right now. Are we taking care of the earth by grounding light and love into the earth? How can we do that more fully? Just respecting the earth—not littering, not wasting water and other precious resources.

There is a lot to this. He also pointed out to me that we each do what we can. I was saying how much I respected the people who were staying in Ukraine, people who were there with this earthquake and helping. He said that was not always the right course for people, though, that it can be selfish to do that. Why am I staying? And that evolved around to the discussion of why did I come into incarnation in the first place. I think that’s something that we all have to work out for ourselves.

So I’m just sharing here a few of the discussions that Aaron and I had today. now I want to open the floor here to questions and answers. Aaron will incorporate again when appropriate. We’re happy to hear anything that you want to share, whether it’s a question or just something of your own experience with any of this. We welcome your sharing.

John: Hello to everyone. Thank you, Aaron, for a very beautiful talk. It was deeply touching and meaningful, especially with the circumstances with the earthquake in Turkey and Syria.

But also for me it was a guiding light in terms of allowing me to look at my present life situation in the home that I’m living in now, and certain dynamics within the family that at times can be very challenging.

However, when Aaron said that we all have the ability to give love in difficult situations, I realized that’s one of the reasons why I’m in this present situation—to learn more about unconditional love and also to give that unconditional love and compassion to others.

So Aaron speaking about why are we here and what’s our purpose, in looking at my own situation I see that that is one of the primary purposes in my life right now, to really open my heart to the loving kindness and compassion within myself. And the power of that is to be able to offer that to darkness or to more challenging situations.

So I’d just like to thank both of you, Barbara and Aaron, for offering this talk this evening, because of my purpose right now on this earth. So, thank you.

Barbara: You’re welcome, John. What I faced today was really not anything very hard at all. But Aaron and I had spent an hour while I was meditating this morning looking at some sense of what he was going to talk about. And then Hal had what was supposed to be two very simple doctor appointments, one to the podiatrist to get his nails cut, and one in the same building a little ways down the hall to his primary care doctor. They had to physically see his broken wheelchair before they would order another one.

So, off we went down there. The whole thing was to take maybe an hour and a half door to door, and I ended up spending five hours because everyone was late and this and that. I was exhausted, and I knew I had to get back here to teach, and I wasn’t going to have time to nap or eat or anything. I was getting upset.

Aaron said, “We’ve been talking about what is my purpose. What is your purpose in this moment?” Seeing all the movement and franticness—because I guess there were too many people and maybe an overwhelmed schedule or whatever—can I sit here in this pretty comfortable medical room (the place where they’re taking his wheelchair and checking his feet) and hold light and offer energy out to everyone? I was watching my own agenda: “I want to get out of here. I want to get home.”

What is your purpose? Why are you here? You’re not just here because they’re over-busy and it took too long. You’re here for a different reason. Why are you here? Coming back to that again and again, as the hours went by, was very grounding and helpful. Okay! I’m safe. I’m not cold. I’m hungry, yeah, and tired, but big deal! Why am I here? And I started to really feel so much gratitude for the medical staff around me doing the various things they were doing—not for Hal, but as they walked by going here, going there. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

John: I just wanted to add, Barbara, that we have a not quite one-year-old and a not quite four-year-old living here now. And their joy and their love reminds me of the joy and the love inside of myself. Their joy and love touches the joy and love inside of myself and is an invitation to offer that joy and love out. So it’s almost like a feed-back system, where their love and joy touches the love and joy in me, and then I want to offer that back to them. Then they give more back to me, and I give more back to them. And it’s pretty wonderful. Challenging at times, but wonderful.

Barbara: That’s beautiful, John. And there’s also nothing quite so exhausting as a one and four-year-old. John, you’ve also had a challenge of your basement flooding and the mess of carrying out carpets and washing things and scrubbing. I know—I’ve been through that.. We’ve lived in this house fifty years and we’ve probably had maybe three major floods here in those fifty years.

And whew! I can remember once being down in the basement with Hal. It had gotten to be about 4 a.m. or 5 a.m.. We could not vacuum up with a shop vac and dump it into the sink because the plumbing line was blocked up out to the sewer in the street. So we had to carry buckets of water up the stairs and out into the backyard, trying to get this water out of the basement, and it was 4:00 a.m. Hal and I had been groaning and complaining, and finally we looked at each other—I reminded that Aaron read “Cast All Your Votes For Dancing”—Hal and I looked at each other, and we were still in ankle deep water, and we just started dancing! Sloshing around. It wasn’t sewage, in this case; it was water coming in through the foundation wall that had a crack in it. So it was not dirty water; it was muddy, but not dirty. But we had boots on, and we were young, and we started dancing! I remember how much joy there was in that.

I can see now that we were changing the house, giving the house a really wonderful joyful energy. I think that was the last time that that kind of flooding happened. And because we gave that house that energy, we then somehow found both the money and the intention to dig down and waterproof this foundation wall, so that now we’ve lived over ten years without any flooding. But part of it is because we put that joyful energy into the house, so it supported us by allowing itself to be repaired. Love all around.

Are there other questions? Are there things you would like to share?

Q: I read somewhere long ago that Aaron made a suggestion to Barbara to read the Diamond Sutra, for some reason. Maybe my memory is wrong, but I have a vague memory of this. I’m just wondering, how does <service/this> work? I also have the habit of praying or reading the Diamond Sutra… at the time of the Ukrainian war… or when some family members have illness. But I’m wondering, how does this exactly work? Thank you.

Barbara: I’m not sure what you mean when you say, “How does this exactly work?” How does the Diamond Sutra itself work…? Please expand on your question, Q.

Q: Okay. There are very beautiful messages in the Diamond Sutra or in the Bible. So, I’m just wondering, because I have a very rational mind. The reading of sutra wishing something good to happen in the world—for example, for the war in Ukraine to stop—it’s like a prayer. But what happens? I’m just trying to figure out how does a prayer or reading some sutra help the situations? It’s not like you want a cup of tea and then you reach out your hand, you get the cup of tea and you can drink. So, intuitively…

Barbara: Let’s let Aaron come in…

Aaron: I am Aaron. Thank you for your question, Q. One special gift of the human race is the ability to think in terms of non-verbal patterns—with music, with art and color, with movement—to express thoughts and feelings that often cannot be spoken easily but somehow come through in poetry or in the genius of something like the Diamond or Heart Sutras or the Bible.

The Psalms come to mind. These beautiful created works bring through an essence of human experience so it can be shared. So that someone reading that, or seeing the painting, or hearing the music, is moved into a direct experience—not just intellectual, but a direct experience. Within that direct experience there will be movement in the heart. Love—the heart opens and there is love. There is joy.

It’s a way of shared humanity, and within that shared humanity, truly sharing your power, because you are one expression of the Divine. So it’s allowing your own centeredness in that particular expression of the Divine to move out as energy and touch others.

When people are suffering, the sharing of beautiful music, or poetry, or words like a sutra or from a psalm, or whatever—when people are suffering, hearing these can bring them back into their own heart essence.

So, you are not just hearing it or seeing it but remembering your own movement into that heart of the Divine, being able to rest there. Instead of flying out there on the fringes—ahh, coming into that beautiful center and resting there, and knowing, “Yes, this is possible. Yes, this is beautiful. Yes, this is my reason for being here right now, the love that this expresses—or even the pain that this expresses, which is our shared pain. And within our shared pain, the shared heart, the sacred heart.”

I don’t know if that answers your question. I’d be happy to speak further on it. I pause.

Are there more questions or things people would like to share?

Each of you is a spark of God, a spark of divinity. Because there are so many billions of you and you are lost and have forgotten who you are, when someone comes along and reminds you through their own spark of divinity of your spark of divinity, they can come together to light up the world, to change the world.

If there is an earthquake, you cannot stop people from dying. But even those who die, if they’re held in that light, the progression through the death experience is lightened. They emerge from the pain of the—it’s not painful once they’ve made the transition—but from the pain of being buried under mounds of concrete, passing through into the transition, and your prayers help support them. Your light supports them, your love. It truly has power.

Thoughts have some power, but thoughts are much more mundane. The experience in your heart of joy, of gratitude, of appreciation of beauty, of tenderness, of compassion, these energies are real. They are tangible; they cannot be lost. They can be shared. Thank you.

It must be so, or the beautiful art of so many millennia would not be so cherished in the world. The great music, the beautiful poems, why are they so cherished? They must convey something so deep that truly is the essence of your being.

John: Aaron, in his talk, spoke of the value of grounding our light and love into the earth. Can Aaron give some suggestions about how to ground our light into the earth itself?

Aaron: Yes, I can give some very concrete suggestions. When we’re finished talking, if it’s not zero degrees and sleeting or snowing, walk outside for just two or three minutes and hug a tree. Thank the tree and ask it to ground that love deep into the earth and to convey that love all the way across the world to Turkey and Syria.

Love knows no boundaries in the earth. The earth is one. If you can’t go outside because it’s too cold, find an apple in your kitchen or a stalk of asparagus. Hold it and thank it, and feel through that vegetable the energy that it brought up through the earth, and send that love back into the earth, so that where the ground became so disrupted through the earthquake there can be healing because so much love is coming into the earth. Not people yelling, “How could this happen?!” and hating the earth, but cherishing the earth. Apologizing to the earth for any ways that humans have brought imbalance in and created the potential for earthquakes. Asking forgiveness of the earth.

So this is a very direct way, just through gratitude, opening the heart, and also asking forgiveness for any ways that you have not cherished the earth. I pause. Are there any other questions or sharing?

Q: I just want to say something. It may sound selfish, but for the last year and a half, probably, I’ve had a lot of trouble with my old computer. So I’ve saved my money so that I could get a new computer. In the meantime, everything had to be done on my old one, and sometimes it didn’t work, and sometimes I couldn’t get where I needed to go, and sometimes I couldn’t respond to people about something. But I have this new computer. And recently it ran out to me sort of how to use it, but I’ve been sitting here today inside with this computer and just feeling joy and being so happy, and thought, “How did I get so lucky?” It’s just like something wonderful happened and I can send emails again without the computer messing up. It’s just …I’m sitting and smiling about having an inanimate object and I’m just so appreciative. It makes me happy just to sit in front of it and work with it. And I just want to express that to everybody. Who knew? Thank you.

Aaron: And we rejoice with you, Q. You know that you co-created this; it didn’t just happen out of the blue for no reason. It’s born of the love in your heart. That doesn’t mean that everyone who has love in their heart is going to get a new computer or a new furnace, or whatever it may be. But we’ve spent a lot of time in the “Healing and the Ever-Healed” workshop talking about co-creation and how we can participate in the co-creation of what is for the highest good for ourselves and for others.

Energy is. Energy circles everywhere and we’re all part of that field of energy—you as humans, me as spirit plane entity. Still, we’re all part of the energy not only of the earth but of everything. But living here on Earth, we’re part of the energy of Earth.

When we hold each other in our hearts with love and are able to be patient with each other’s needs and our own needs, to respond with grace to the giving and the receiving with joy, we do change everything.

And this is part of the essence of why you are here. So many of you came literally to transform the earth with your love. To transform the earth by letting yourselves be touched by the light and the love and the pain of the earth without armoring your heart. To be touched by the beauty of the world around you and the pain of the world around you, and to feel that energy of love come forth through you. Offering it—no difference between giving and receiving, a constant flow of giving and receiving. This is how we transform the earth, and this is why so many of you took incarnation—literally to support and invite this to happen. I pause.

Enjoy this new computer of yours… Much gratitude to your helper for the work he did to help this happen for you.

This little lad (Lester, the cat who has interacted in this session)—actually, if a cat can be owned by anyone, which I don’t believe is true—cats are not owned—but this little lad was found by Hal’s caregiver, who lives in one of the sons’ bedrooms downstairs. He found Lester as perhaps a six-week-old kitten. He was very sick and very skinny, with mucous coming out of his eyes and nose, shaking. He found him in his father’s garage. So of course he picked him up and carried him off to a vet. He fed him nourishing food. He gave him medicines. He did not bring him here to this house until the vet said it was safe, that he would not have any contagion to the dog. He took care of him. I think this cat perhaps only knew his mother as a very tiny kitten and so now everyone is his mother, he is very attached. (Aaron shows pictures of Lester.) Lester is supervising everything. He was right in the middle of a gathering playing with Hal.

It’s fun to just hang out with you all for a bit when there are no big questions. And I know you all do have the big question: how do I live with love?

I’ve tried to address that question in many ways in the book Human. I want to refer you to the book. It’s still available on the Deep Spring website and, I believe, on Amazon. If you’re not allergic to cats, living with a cat is a nice way of living with love.

Q: (in Chat) I find it hard to believe I’m here to transform the earth with love. Sometimes I succumb to fear. How do I develop faith in this?

Aaron: My friend, there are a few ideas. I know you practice with the Brahma Viharas. Where you see pain or suffering in the world, just hold that person with suffering in your heart and offer these words of metta or of karuna, the wishes, the well wishes. Ask yourself, what blocks me from deeply wishing this to others?

Work with metta not only with those who are easy but with the difficult person. Ask yourself, in this moment what blocks my opening my heart to this person? And an even more significant question: in this moment, when my heart is closed to this person, can I also find the portion of my heart that is open to this person? The simultaneity, so that you start to trust that there is true compassion for others and loving kindness for others, and the outpouring of this energy from your heart, even in the situations where that person or situation is hard to love.

Let’s look at the site of this earthquake. It would be easy to hate the earth there. “How could you do this? How could you kill so many thousands of people? How could you do this?”

But remember that the earth also is suffering. Look at this place of disruption of the earth as an outburst of that suffering and offer metta to the earth right there where the earthquake is. Hold in your heart with compassion this suffering earth, the places of so many environmental disasters. Hold it in your heart and feel the power of the love in your heart.

So, perhaps that will be a start for you, based on what I know is already present in your practice. I pause.

Anyone else? We’ll wrap up here, then.

Please, when you get off tonight, go and hug a tree. Or, if it’s zero degrees, be kind to yourself and hug a carrot. That will do it. Offer love into the earth. Send that love right through to the places in the earth where the suffering is most intense. Instead of hating the earth for having an earthquake, offer your sympathy to the earth for the stresses upon it and hold it in your heart. Instead of hating those people who, through their own need for power, or fear, or hatred have disrupted the lives of so many other people through making war, see those people who made war, see their suffering.

That doesn’t mean that you give permission for them to harm others, but truly open your heart to their suffering and do some compassion or loving kindness practice with them, holding them. “May you be happy. May you have peace. May you be free of suffering. May you come to know your interconnection with all beings so that you learn that you cannot bomb and kill others. May we support you in this learning.”

This is what you came for. You came to learn, to heal your personal karma and grow. But all of you are old souls who came with a commitment to bring more light and high energy into this earth and into all the sentient beings on this earth, to help transform the earth into the place of light and love that it was created to be.

It’s a constant, ongoing practice because the earth pushes at you and you want to fight back. And then you relax and realize, “This push can <cause> suffering. I will hold space for this suffering, and simultaneously I will say, ‘No, you cannot use your suffering to harm others.'”

You will set limits and learn how to say no from a place of compassion. And as you grow, you transform the suffering of the earth through your compassion and your wisdom and your love. Thank you.

I love you all and very much enjoyed this evening with you. I’ll see you again in a month.