[This session was preceded by a period of tuning and meditation.]

I am Aaron. I wish you could see this room as I see it. Through these three days, more and more light has radiated out. From my perspective, this room is a small sun situated here in the middle of the landscape.

When Q’uo and I speak to you as we have done these past two days, there is only so much you can process. Obviously, we could talk about this endlessly. As we have spoken, questions have arisen in each of your thoughts. For some of you there was a sense, “I have a question but perhaps I am not quite ready to ask it; I cannot phrase it clearly enough,” or, “If I had been listening more carefully, I would know the answer,” or even, “At some level I already do know the answer; I do not need to ask.”

This is all fine. But perhaps it would be most useful to begin today not by hearing your one group question so much as hearing the extended questions or thoughts that have grown out of these past two days of work. Your questioning is a way of clarifying your thoughts, and also most clearly expresses to Q’uo and to me what it is that you most need to hear.

Some of you have some distress with what has been suggested these past two days, some vague discomfort which may be hard to articulate. I urge you to try. It is through expression of both that which is comfortable and that which is uncomfortable that the real questions may emerge. That is all.

[A period of group sharing and discussion followed.]

I am Aaron. Would it be acceptable to you for us to focus more on compassion today than on codependence? I think we have pretty well covered codependence. How do you deepen compassion for this being that you are, who does move back into fear? Is that acceptable to you as a focus? I wonder if my brother/sister of Q’uo has anything to add to this. That is all.

I am Q’uo. Greetings once again in the love and the light of the one infinite Source and Ending of all that is.

Indeed, we do feel that the one known as Aaron and we have covered a good deal of material. It is more than sufficient for much consideration. Words are most helpful, yet insofar as there are words, there is the distance or lack of immediate sensation of being in union with the Creator, Whose very name is Love. This Love is a name which has created power. Its nature has descended throughout all levels of manifestation and constitutes your pith, your very core; Love which has been turned, shaped, or, if you look with jaundiced eye, twisted and bent into each portion of thought and feeling which each of you experiences.

As you listen to our words, realize that we, as you, have no way to tell or to perform the act of pure centering. Somehow the failure after failure after failure which each perceives in spiritual journeying adds up to a miracle of learning to love; and in spite of every feeling of failure, and perhaps because of it as well, you find yourselves where you were not before then: more capable, more sensitive to seeing your own vulnerability and imperfection.

As we come to the end of this session and speak of compassion, we ask each of you to stop thinking, to accept the mystery that is in front of us as well as you, and then we ask you to join us in turning to face this mystery. Gaze at it. Feel the stunning glory and majesty of the infinite Mystery. There, in that awareness, lies the protection that embraces vulnerability. There, in the shadow of the Mystery, lies the infinite wealth of love which feeds even the you that suffers most, even at the darkest hour.

The compassion comes not from the words. It simply takes many words for the Logos, the Love that is without words, to be approached by the incarnational self. So use all our words that have aided and clarified your situations, your progress, and have helped to define the process of becoming independent within the symbiosis with the one infinite Creator. But then to find the compassion, let us turn to the tabernacle of the Most High, as this instrument would say, and invite the awareness of the union that already exists.

We would pass the microphone to the one known as Aaron at this time. We are those of Q’uo.

I am Aaron. Yesterday we defined compassion—a rather cold and clinical definition. As Q’uo has pointed out, words offer only concepts and not the experience itself. To speak of compassion, to probe it with the intellect, is not to experience compassion.

My dear ones, do you understand my meaning when I say that full compassion, full connection and undefendedness, are your true nature? Of course, you do not always experience that. You are human, and to be human is also part of your nature. But you are divine. How could it be otherwise?

I have described you as angels in earthsuits. These earthsuits are necessary to the incarnative experience just as a space traveler needs that which protects him from an otherwise alien environment, offers him safety from pressure, air to breathe or protection from temperature extremes. So these bodies of yours offer the spirit a situation in which it can move through those situations it needs in a semi-protected way. The Pure Spirit Body cannot dwell on this earth. The physical body that is home to the spirit bleeds when it is cut. The emotional body feels pain when it is attacked with hostile words.

Truly, we come back to faith here, to your faith in the experience of the incarnation, to the deepening of verified faith, “I am just where I need to be,” working within the illusion with awareness that it is illusion and simultaneous awareness, “I must treat this illusion with respect.” Perhaps respect is a key word. As you respect the physical, emotional and mental bodies, you become less judgmental of the retreat those bodies offer when confronted with pain.

You have heard me say repeatedly that you are here to learn love, unconditional love, which cannot be learned perfectly in human form, but to which you may move as close as is possible for the human. You, as an integrated whole, are learning; but also the Higher Self/spiritual body is learning. It is easy for the spiritual body to know its perfection. If it never sees imperfection, what opportunity does it have to practice non-judgment and unconditional love? Thus, the spiritual body moves into this house of the physical, joins together with the emotional and mental bodies that it may practice non-judgment, practice unconditional love toward that which was previously judged and found wanting.

One of the illusions in which you dwell, and which you rarely see, is that all of your reactivity against another is truly reactivity against the self. This is an unqualified statement: All of your judgment against another is judgment against those faults perceived or manifest in yourself. You may judge another’s impatience while you do not portray the quality of impatience; but somewhere in your heart you feel the arising of that impatience, and so another’s impatience is judged and found disturbing to you.

Is there anyone in this circle who has never felt hatred? Who has never felt greed? Can you see what a gift all of these discomforting emotions are? They are the constant catalyst which reminds you: Have mercy. This does not imply condoning unskillful and harmful acts and words which are reaction to emotion, but you can only find unconditional love and non-judgment through the repeated experience of working with the arising of that which has been judged in yourselves.

Yesterday Q’uo spoke of the value of the ego self. Its value is not only to remind you to watch for cars as you cross a street. The illusion of self is vital to your growth, as is the reality of no self. They are part of each other and there is no contradiction between them. If you would attend school, there must be a school and a being to attend and teachers. This is what your incarnation hands you.

As you enter repeatedly into those situations which lead to the arising of fear, the pulling in of the armor, the desire to defend, you do not move past that fear and those unwholesome responses by trying to get rid of them, but by reminding yourself, “Can I have compassion for this being that I am?”

There is a wonderful story about a Tibetan saint, Milarepa. He sat at the mouth of his cave meditating and, as the story goes, the demons of anger, of rage, of fear, of greed, appeared. They were hideous creatures. They exuded a foul smell. They dangled bloody knives and swords. Their bodies were made of decaying flesh and bones that rattled with a hideous sound. Milarepa took one look at them and said, “Come in. Come sit by my fire.” They said, “Aren’t you afraid of us?” “No,” he replied. “Your hideous appearance only reminds me to be aware, to have mercy. Come, sit by my fire.”

This instrument has asked the question, how can she retain this openness she is feeling? How can she stay undefended? One does not stay undefended, one simply notes the arising of defense each time it appears, the arising of fear, and says, “Oh, you again. Here is fear. Come, sit by my fire.” Your relationships will continue to inspire fear and a desire to defend. You do not move away from that need to defend by denying it nor by wishing it away, not by judging it and saying, “I should not feel this. I should know better by now.” You transcend that need to defend by embracing the ego self, comforting it, noticing the fear and inviting it to sit by the fire. You cannot transcend what you do not accept. To transcend ego, you must accept ego.

It is only then that the true manifestation of what you are can emerge. You are divine. The divinity strives to express itself constantly, but is often suppressed by your fear-based reactions. As you learn to look fear in the eye and that you need not be afraid of fear, you find you do not have to create that undefended stance. It simply emerges as natural to you. You do not have to search for connection. You experience your true connection because the blockages to that experience have been, I will not say removed, but laid aside. Like a throng of people that blocks the road before you, if you stamp your feet and say, “Get out of my way!” they taunt you. But perhaps when you smile at them and say, “Please, may I pass through?” they may step aside.

It is in this way that you learn, as a process, to keep your heart open. Keeping the heart open is not an event, but a process. Each time you do it, you become a bit more skilled at it, a bit more skilled at seeing where you have invited fear in and then challenged fear’s right to be present and wanted only to be rid of it again. You become a bit more skilled at saying simply, “Here is fear. Sit by my fire, but I will not be reactive to you. I need not be reactive to you.”

There is a vast difference between the experience of fear and the need to separate or defend, which is reactivity to fear. Watch that process in yourselves and you will learn how to experience it, invite it to sit by the fire and not need to be reactive to it. Your compassion for yourself deepens as you see this human submerged in a constant turmoil. One situation is no sooner resolved and comfortable, but a new one emerges creating new discomfort. How can you not embrace the courageous you that willingly moves into this incarnational turmoil to serve, to learn, to grow? Thus, your fear ceases to be a reminder for reactivity and defensiveness; and instead, when you see the arising of fear, through your skillful work with that arising, you create a new pattern, a new habit. Seeing the arising of fear becomes a reminder for compassion.

That compassion is the key to being undefended, allowing full connection between yourself and the people in situations of your life. As that level of compassion manifests itself in your own relationship to the self, it is easily transferred to others. Then, and only then, does the small ego self begin to dissolve. Then, another’s fear is seen as no different from your own. There is nothing to protect because there is nothing that is not part of you, nothing that can really threaten you. Slowly, you learn to open your heart in that way to another: our fear, our pain, our compassion. At this point, the brain has stopped directing your choices, and the heart, with its deep wisdom and innate compassion, does the choosing with wisdom and with love. It is a most wonderful process, a process of which I stand in some awe.

I would like to pass the microphone here to our brother/sister of Q’uo. That is all.

We are with this instrument once again. We are those of Q’uo.

A visualization often makes clearer that which we would say. We would like you to imagine with us the house of your spiritual self in manifestation. You dwell in a culture which has a high regard for freedom. This is the highest worldly ethic: the respect for freedom of will. And so you begin by putting above the door to your house, “I have free will,” or, “I have my rights.” However, this house has a higher floor. The upper story of this house has a different legend over the doorway. It says, “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” 1

This upper story houses that you that knows it is in the infinite Creator and the infinite Creator in it. It knows that all things are the Creator’s. Spend the time with this awareness. Climb the stairs to this second story and sit upon your own mercy seat, if you only enter for a moment, and open to the consciousness of all. When you climb down the stairs to your ground floor of everyday experience, you will find the sign above your front door changed to read, “I am worthy.”

You, my friends, are worthy to receive all good things; yet if you do not receive a good thing you are still worthy. It is only your feelings and emotions bruised and battered by rude experience that communicate unworthiness. This is a false communication. Do not accept this communication, but rather, know your worthiness, your loveliness, and feel compassion rising naturally within the portion of you that remains in the second story.

We can only thank and bless each soul within this circle. It has been such a privilege for us. We bid each farewell in the love and in the light of the one infinite Creator, and turn the microphone back to the one known as Aaron that this wise teacher may also make his farewells. We are of the principle known to you as Q’uo. Adonai. Adonai.

I am Aaron. May I offer you a bit of homework with which to practice until we meet again? Watch the arising of fear. See the process as clearly as you can. First, there is sense consciousness of that perceived threat. You may feel it in the physical body as tension in the belly, the throat or elsewhere. Note it as “tension, tension … “ If it is a seen or heard perceived threat, know there is seeing or hearing. From that perceived threat, a sense of fear arises. Then comes need to defend. See that the need to defend is not the same as the fear itself. Watch it very carefully. The need to defend is reaction to the fear. Fear is so uncomfortable. There is the desire to get rid of fear, and out of that aversion arises either need to defend or need to fling the fear on another … anger, resentment, blame. Bring this wise teacher, Milarepa, into your heart. When you see fear arise, take his hand quite literally and say, “Fear, come in and sit by my fire.” Just that. Begin to observe what difference awareness makes, that it is not fear, but fear of fear that leads to your defending and thereby being pulled into this unwholesome codependence. Watch it very carefully, even take notes if you wish. Do it as an experiment in consciousness.

As a second step, notice that there is sometimes reluctance to do this work; that even when you have proved to yourself that you can let go of fear and stay open, at some level, sometimes there is a desire not to do so, a part of you that feels, “I am not ready to be that responsible. While I want to love and feel connection, I am not sure I am ready to do it this time. A part of me wants to blame, wants to continue this unskillful codependency rather than moving into that living and loving symbiosis.”

What voice is this that wants to continue the old, unwholesome patterns? Can you see that small ego self kicking and screaming? Can you smile at it? The more you fear the small ego self and strive to get rid of it with judgment, the more solidity you allow it to assume. When you smile at it with that same, “Oh, you again. Come and sit by my fire,” then it allows you to reopen to the spirit that you are.

I suggest and hope that you will practice with this, and hope you will share your findings with me when we next come together. May I also ask you to keep in your minds the image that I offered yesterday? You are all spiritual warriors; and with every step that you take, every small step of growth upon this magnificent path, there are a great many loving beings on all planes that bow to your courage and strew flowers on your path. That is not said to inflate ego or make you feel that you, as an individual, are special. All beings are special, and there is nothing more valued in the entire universe than the increased opening into love of the individual spirit.

I thank you again for allowing me to share my thoughts with you. Please remember to take what is useful and discard the rest. My love is with you. That is all.

  1. Holy Bible, Psalm 24:1 ↩