[This session was preceded by a period of tuning and meditation.]
Aaron
My greetings and love to you all. I am Aaron. I would like to continue where we left off last night, to ask you to consider service in still newer ways. Service is a manifestation of love. We spoke last night about being service rather than doing service and of the ways that doing creates a distortion of self and other, of server and served. Being service is simply opening yourself and moving away from any duality.
Something I find very interesting is that those of you who aspire to serve, grasp so hard at something that is innate to you. It is not that you must work in order to serve. That is natural to you. When you are not “being service” there is a distortion. Your energy is being distorted into some misconception of separation. Therefore, the ideal is not to aspire to serve but simply to pay attention to where that pure “being service” is blocked by fear.
I spoke last night of intention, of moving away from the limiting concept of service to self and service to others—which is quite disorienting because service to others is service to self and vice versa—and to begin to see with clarity the ways that service to others springs from a ground of love and service to self springs from a ground of fear.
When you begin to see the intention to offer love or to react to fear, to allow fear to direct your choices, then you can move away from the concept of service to self or other-self and towards the pure experience of “being service” or the pure experience of reactivity to fear.
Once you move away from the concept and into the experience, those of you with strong positive polarity will find the experience of “being fear” is an ample check in itself. As soon as you allow the reality of that experience to arise in you, something within you stops and pays attention and says, “No, this is not the way I choose to express my energy.” You then allow yourself both to be aware of the fear and non-reactive to it, so that the aspect of “being love” and expressing service through the being of love can manifest itself.
The most important point to remember here is that expressing service through being service in love is natural to you. And when you do that, you are not doing anything; you are not creating anything. You are simply expressing your own true nature. When that nature is in full harmony with the external positive energy which may move through you, your energy to serve is magnified. At that point, you do not need to ask, “How can I best serve?” You simply choose the paths that lie right at your feet, whatever they are.
I shared a story at Christmastime of the one whose name was known to you as Jesus. I told how, at that time, I was part of a group that was with this being. This is a being known for his service. I want to use this story as an example of what service may really mean.
We came to a place where there were followers of his who welcomed him and prepared a meal—an elaborate meal by their standards; simple by yours. They gave the best of what they had.
It was a poor village. There were those who despised and feared him and they also were part of this village, but not within the group that sat to eat. He was served first; offered a bowl of food. As he sat there with that bowl in his hands, ready to begin, he saw children on the edge of our circle. An elder of the village got up to shoo the children away. He said, “This child is the son of one who disdains your teachings,” and went on to say, “Get out of here! Go!”
That one child hung back. He was a young boy of nine or ten years; emaciated and with sores on his body. This being that was known as Jesus simply got up and walked toward the boy. The boy was frightened because he had been told to leave and here was this stranger walking toward him. And Jesus said gently to him, “Do not be afraid, I will not hurt you. Do you want food?” And he offered him that bowl. And while the boy ate, he asked for cloth and water and washed his sores. And then he came back very simply to his seat and took another bowl.
There was no lecture about service. There were no words, like “You should love your enemy.” There was no verbal teaching. He simply served. He was service. He was love. He took, not the universe, but one child that needed to be fed at that moment, and fed him and washed his sores. Just that. There is no teaching in my many, many lives that I have received on service that has touched me as deeply as that one.
Think, then, about what service, being service versus serving another, really means. When you move into that distortion of seeking to serve another, begin to recognize it as a distortion. See that your serving makes them the one who is served; makes you separate and unequal. See that this is a violence to another.
Is that the course you really choose? How can you learn to express being service in ways that do not create separation? We will speak further on this. I wish to pass the microphone, as it were, to Q’uo. That is all.
Q’uo
We are those of Q’uo. We greet you in the love and in the light of the one infinite Creator.
The one known as Aaron asks, “Do you wish this dichotomy betwixt self and other-self, betwixt servant and served?” Each would, as a beginning servant, say, “Yes, I must have someone who needs my service so I may be a servant.” Outwardly there seems no falsity in this reasoning. We, ourselves, have often thanked you for the opportunity to serve you, merely noting that your allowing us to serve is your service to us. Service by this chain of reasoning seems an endless loop. Yet how does the one desiring to serve enter this loop and become part of the infinite, upward, spiraling light and love of all serving all in love and for love’s sake?
Many are the seekers who feel guilty because they must take time to work within their own consciousnesses. Many also are those seekers who pridefully state that mate, family, and all the mundane aspects of life must take second place to the self’s work in inner enlightenment. Whether one feels guilty for taking this time for one’s own purification, or arrogant and elite for taking time for this purification in an impure world, so they assume, still the concept of taking time to work within the self always is suggested and encouraged by any spiritual teacher.
Now, is this time taken for the self, by the self, in doing work in consciousness service to self or service to others? You may perhaps see by this question itself that the tendency towards dichotomy when thinking of service arises here, at the beginning of a student’s preparing to start the journey of seeking to know how to serve. The immediate thought is, “I must do this work. Am I selfish? Should I take this time? What good am I to others?” And of course, the prideful will become absorbed in this inner process and neglect outward-gazing compassion.
The story of the one known as Jesus, told by the teacher, Aaron, shows an entity who has awakened to his own inner love. This entity has done his work in consciousness. The personality is disciplined. The emotions are purified and the response lacks either prideful humility or prideful arrogance and seems natural. We suggest that in our opinion it is part of a life lived in service to others to spend time as if it were the most precious coin or money, always budgeting a portion of this exchequer of finite time for work within one’s own consciousness.
At this moment, do you love yourself without reservation? How can you know this? Examine your thoughts for the last hour. Were you nervous? Were you irritated? Were you impatient? Did you have any negative emotions? We speak not only within one’s inner dialogue but also of mental responses to the actions of others, for those responses are your material, reflected to you by the mirrors provided by the presence of other selves.
That which you think of another, you think also of the self. If there is judgment, turn it upon yourself and analyze the root cause within the self. Here is material for this day’s budget of work in inner consciousness: nervousness, irritation, impatience, anger, resentment, disappointment.
Make an appointment. Let all of them see the doctor within. Analyze and examine these responses. Let them sink into the self and find their root and their home. Then touch that home with your compassion, your love and your redeeming forgiveness of self by self.
Do you feel that the infinite One keeps a score, has tidy books and forgives not? We do not believe you think so, else you would not try to serve. Therefore, we ask you to do this work with the same fervor, intensity and respect as with the work you do for others, those whom you call other-selves, for work upon the self and work upon the other-self is all work on behalf of the infinite One whose name is Love.
To serve the raising of one’s own consciousness is to worship the infinite Creator. To extend the beingness and consciousness of love to perceived other-selves is to be the clear and transparent extensions through which the Creator’s hands may actually touch another human spirit in manifestation. Simply do not separate these two activities within the mind, but do both as two sides of one coin. That coin is serving.
We would at this time return this circle’s energy to the one known as Aaron. We leave this instrument in love and in light. We are known to you as those of Q’uo.
Aaron
I am Aaron. There is another area of duality and misunderstanding of which I would like to speak. You identify those who bring love to others as those who serve others. The attributes of those who “are service” are gentleness, patience and generosity. And you identify those who cause others pain in some way; those who affront others and are greedy or arrogant, as those who do not serve others. I would like to explore this a bit further.
Most of you have heard me say that we are all beings of light, even those who manifest very little of that light; even those who are very negatively polarized and in the conscious levels of self would affirm their desire to serve negativity. Even those who feed off the fear and pain of others, at some level, are servants of the light. It is well to move past the duality of seeing them in such sharp contrast as good and evil; servants of love or ones against love.
Some of you have heard me tell a brief story about the spiritual teacher Gurdjieff, that in his community there was a man who was very unpleasant to others. He did not do his share of the work. He spoke in a harsh way to others. He was arrogant and prideful. He even smelled foul and did not take care of his physical body. Nobody wanted his presence. The others in the community were in great accord with each other and everything ran smoothly except for this one unpleasant being.
He got tired of the way people were treating him and one day he packed up and left. Gurdjieff went after him and asked him to come back. The man, of course, refused. Gurdjieff then offered to pay him to come back. Those of the community were aghast at this: “How could you pay him to come back? We were well rid of him.”
Gurdjieff said, “He is the yeast for the bread. How would you learn compassion without a catalyst for that compassion? How would you learn non-judgment without a catalyst for that non-judgment?”
Granted, there are negatively-polarized entities. There are those who thrive on the fear and pain of others. There are beings that are mired in deep misunderstanding, and yet, even their negative polarity and misunderstanding is a service. How would you learn without such catalysts?
When you can begin to view such misunderstanding and negativity as another way of service to the light, you begin to view such individuals differently. For most of them, it is not their intention to serve the light, although for some that may be true. No being whose intention is to serve the light will willingly do so through causing harm and pain to others. So it is not their intention; but nevertheless, they do serve the light by offering you the catalyst that you need for your own learning.
When you can begin to find welcome for such beings, to move beyond your judgment of them and open your heart to them, to the very real pain that their misunderstanding causes for them, and to thank them for the ways in which they offer you the catalyst that you need, then you can begin to do the same for yourself in those moments when fear and other negative emotions arise in you. I have spoken often of the reverse of this, of coming to a place of non-judgment of yourself as a way of learning non-judgment of others. I am just offering the opposite side of the coin.
When you see yourself in a position of possible service to others and fear or any type of negativity arises, if you can remind yourself of something such as the story I just shared and allow that this fear in you is also a catalyst which may be transformed from darkness to light by your clear observation of it, by your awareness and acceptance, then you find that even the so-called negative emotions in you can give rise to purity of action, speech and thought. Fear becomes a catalyst for compassion. Hatred and the fear behind hatred can be clearly seen for what they are: not as an intrinsic part of you, but as a reaction due to certain conditions that have arisen and led to that fear. And the knowing that there is fear within you, in itself, becomes a path to clarify your energy so that your response to this being that is feeling fear, to this aspect of yourself, becomes even more loving, more clear and pure than it was before.
To do this takes deep awareness, a constant awareness of the ways that patterns of connection and separation, love and fear, move through you; noticing the conditions that give rise to each; beginning to break it down into small parts to see that you do not just suddenly become afraid; you do not just suddenly become jealous; it is a process that you have moved through, conditioned by old mind-patterns. You can break into that process at any time you choose with awareness and love and make the choice to move into a new pattern.
This is the crux of it: choice, responsibility. The being who acts in reactivity to fear, and thus acts in what we have called service to self and with the intention of harm of others, has either denied his responsibility and his ability to make a choice or is frightened of that responsibility and choice.
The being experiencing deep fear who watches the patterns of the arising of that fear and then makes a choice for love is acting with freedom from conditioned patterns and thus is able to make skillful choices. The more you see this in yourself without judgment, the deeper awareness you are able to have of that moment of choice: “Here I can act with conditioned mind and the old patterns of fear,” or, “Here I can act with awareness of the patterns in which conditioned mind pushes me and choose to say no to that, to trust and move in a new direction.”
I would like to take this thought around now to a very real, practical application. You are all beings who aspire to serve. You are all beings who aspire to offer love and non-harm to all else, and yet you constantly find arising within you old patterns of conditioned mind leading to fear, self-hatred, negativity, greed, jealousy and anger.
Each arising of such discomfiting emotions that have the possibility to harm another is a gift; a chance to observe the old patterns in yourself and a chance to practice. It is practice that you need over and over and over again. That is why you are offered it over and over and over again. As you work with these patterns in yourself and are aware that some of the response has been prompted by the negative energy of others, it gives you a chance to transcend the duality of negativity and positivity, and to begin to see the gift even of that negative energy in others and the gift of negative energy in yourself as a catalyst to learning; to moving deeper into non-judgment, compassion and love.
This is the wonder of being human. You are here with this emotional body for a reason. Even those emotions that you deem negative are not to be gotten rid of, but to be used as part of a transmutation process by which hatred and fear become the catalysts for love, greed becomes the catalyst for generosity and so on. When you really begin to know that, in a deep way within yourself, you will not have so much fear of the negativity in yourself. When you make peace with that, then you really can give an answer to Q’uo’s question: “Yes, in the past hour I have not found anything I disliked in myself. I truly have loved myself, as my friend Carla is fond of saying, warts and all.”
I would like to pass the microphone to Q’uo if my brother/sister wishes to add anything here. If not, we wonder if there are specific questions we may answer. That is all.
Q’uo
I am Q’uo, and greet each again in love and in light.
Our one addition to this examination of the service-to-others efforts and lessons of third density is a simple suggestion which may be summarized in two words, first heard by this instrument from the entity known as R: Go higher! Go higher!
Aaron and we have long discussed the painstaking, careful and subtle work of removing the perceptions of duality and thereby balancing negative and positive impressions and opinions. As a balance for this careful, analytical approach, we would suggest the concept of experience as a game sphere, a ball. This instrument has called such earthly balls “trouble bubbles.” When a trouble bubble flies at you, to lose the game is to catch it and fall under its weight. To win the game is to leap towards it in joy, praise and thanksgiving. And as the bubble meets this sea of joy, praise and thanksgiving, it simply pops.
There will always be another trouble bubble, another conundrum to solve, another bump in the road. Leap towards them with affection and joy. If it be another self which is a decided irritant, instantaneously be that entity, and as that entity, experience all its sorrows. Then, as that entity, leap for joy in praise and thanksgiving. You are not infringing upon free will, for you are playing a game; but in this game you allow your mind to become that which you fear, and then give thanksgiving and praise for the joy of it.
Go higher! This is work best done when one is, as this instrument would say and as we trust you soon shall be, “full of beans,” and not for those days when, like the cloudy, pearly skies, you feel muted and reflective. However, this technique makes a welcome and energizing change to the endless repetitions of analysis, understanding and acceptance of experience. It is a leap of blind, pure faith from immediate experience to immediate acceptance. Only choose this option when it is honestly within your abilities.
We feel the energy waning, and therefore would take our leave of all of you. May we say with the one known as Aaron how utterly delightful your company is and how very, very much we have been thrilled to blend our energies with yours as we all move from moment to moment in ceaseless and abiding love.
We thank you for allowing us to share our opinions and, as always, remind each that we are not final authorities. We leave each of you in the blessing and peace of the love and the light of the one infinite Creator. Adonai. We are those known to you as the principle of Q’uo.
Aaron
I would like to make only one brief remark, as I asked if there were questions, and as the principle Q’uo made its last statement there was a bit of a wrenching cry from somewhere inside Barbara saying, “Yes, all of these thoughts are fine, but how do I do this?” A moment of deep pain—this is the gift of being human. It is not going to go away. It is the catalyst which challenges you constantly to purify that energy that you are, knowing that it will never become perfect; that while in human incarnation you will never become pure service, constantly and without error.
And yet, each moment given with mindful attention and love brings you closer to that beautiful ideal of “being service.”
And each moment of attention to the arising of fear in you brings you closer to the purity of non-judgmental acceptance of everything within the experience of mind and body, not mine or yours, but all of ours. It is this unconditional love that you are here to learn and practice and express in whatever ways you are able.
I do thank you for the opportunity to share with you today. My love to you all. That is all.