May 21, 2014 Wednesday, Aaron talk and practice within the akashic field

(This talk not yet reviewed by Barbara and Aaron)

Vision is mind, Mind is Emptiness, Emptiness is Clear Light, Clear Light is Union, Union is Great Bliss

Aaron: Good evening. My blessings and love to you all. I am Aaron. I asked Barbara and Dan for a chance to tie loose ends together, as we have just one more class after tonight. Of course it's been impossible to put all the plans and intentions together into these few short weeks.

One thing we've dropped out on is The Dalai Lama's Cat, which to some extent is self-explanatory. We included that book at the beginning of the semester as a way to help keep these teaching genuine to your everyday experience. We did not have any specific reading for tonight, but next class I hope we can insert something specific from that book.

We started out with Vision is Mind practice and an introduction to the akashic field. Within the Vision is Mind practice, I think you all really understand that first pieces, Vision is Mind and Mind is Empty. After that it starts to get a little conceptual for some of you. Tonight I want to go into Emptiness is Pure Light and beyond.

Emptiness is Clear Light, Clear Light is Union. What does that mean? You live in a world of presumed dualities. When you see that everything that arises is in your mind, just a reflection of the mind, and that the mind itself is empty—that clear glass window, a bit of dirt on it, but the nature of the glass is clear, the mind is clear, awareness is clear  - we begin to have a clarity: that the mind is always this clear essence.

There's an implicit duality that can arise here between light and darkness. If we say Mind is Empty, Emptiness is Clear Light, then is non-emptiness dark? Is it negative in some way? Do we use darkness as a synonym for negativity? So often you swing between, “this is good, that's bad; this is pleasant, that's unpleasant.” Even your sacred scriptures talk about light and bringing in the light. But how would you know light if you never experienced darkness?

Our practice is not an attempt to keep the darkness at bay by holding onto and expand the light. You cannot expand the light, it simply is. It is everything! Our practice is an attempt to know the simultaneity of light and darkness. I say it in many ways, such as that which is aware of fear is not afraid. There's no denial of the fear, but there is also opening to that clear mind, that clear light. Knowing that which is not afraid. That which is aware of anger is not angry. Knowing that which is not anger right there with the anger.

I see this spectrum-- we've talked about this before—conditioned everyday consciousness, and supramundane consciousness. You create a duality if you think the mundane consciousness is out here and the supramundane consciousness is out there ion a horizontal line. Instead I see tem as this pole. At first we only see the mundane top of the pole, but as we go deeper and deeper we begin to access that deep still place, the Unconditioned, accessed through pure awareness. This is where instruction in pure awareness practice is helpful along with your vipassana practice.

Again, not to create a duality of pure awareness versus vipassana; simply, there is consciousness, citta. Every citta takes an object. Mundane citta takes a mundane object. Supramundane citta takes a supramundane object, including the Unconditioned itself. But mundane citta and supramundane citta are not dual. This is the practice-- I believe we did this in this class with the people tossed in small boats on the surface. There you are in conditioned everyday consciousness saying, “How can I help? All these people, their boats are tipping, the waves are big.” Sink down, down, down, until you come to a stable place. Down is perhaps not the best reference point—in, into the heart. Then when you are stable in that reference point you reach up and support the boats, help lift the people to safety. There's no you doing it anymore, it's coming from pure awareness.

I know this is still conceptual for many of you, and unfortunately in 2 hours that we have here, it's hard to convey the fullness of this. I hope that many of you will be coming to the June retreat. We'll have an opportunity to practice both vipassana and pure awareness, to dialogue together about it while sitting under that beautiful catalpa tree, blossoms drifting down upon us,  to really get the feeling of the akashic field, the experience of it: how you sink down into that deep still place and then move in the world from that place.

Basically that still place is not much different than the akashic field. I would not call it synonymous. But it's close enough for me to call it the same, for now. As you deepen in your experience, you'll understand the difference.

A question came in about the akashic field (reading):

Q: I'm confused about our use of the akashic records in real-time dilemmas. Last class, just at the end, Dan spoke of his trouble with his eye, and how he was using the akashic records to find a solution to his problem, suffering with real pain for several hours, and he ignored the help <> of his wife, who was an ER nurse. This story left me with the feeling that one can get pretty off-base with all this invisible help when real practical assistance is available. Maybe others in the circle were as confused as I was.

Aaron: First, akashic record and akashic field are two very different terms. Dan did not use the term akashic record but akashic field. The akashic records, what are they? They are the record of all of your experience, written in the akasha. The common word is akasha, but the akashic records are simply an expression of your experience. The akashic field is the container. I have talked about how the elements of earth, air, fire, and water, are expressing out, and the place of akasha, or ether. The akashic field and the akasha are not synonymous. The akasha is a thing, this energy or substance within the akashic field. The akashic field is the container.

When we sink down into the akashic field, stabilize ourselves there, and then act, we are thusly able to act appropriately to both bring in the allopathic medical care that is appropriate and the energetic movement as is appropriate. We are not choosing one over the other.

What happens when we work from the akashic field-- coming back to our swimmer who has sunk down and grounded himself. There's not a self trying to fix. Dan was aware of the pain in his eye. --We have not seen the transcript. Barbara's and my apologies for that. We kept the tape going. It ended up being almost 2 hours and was too big to send to the transcriber, too big to do anything with. We are trying to understand how to send a portion of it to the transcriber. She has gotten the last portion. Now we have to figure out how to get her the first portion.

So I have not seen or read what Dan said, precisely. But as I understood it when he was speaking, there was aversion to the pain and awareness that if he acted from that place of aversion, he might heal the eye but he was not releasing the karma. He was in fact creating new karma based on aversion and fix-it. But if he sank down into the akashic field, grounded himself there, released karma, then there would be the opportunity for whatever options are appropriate to attend to the pain in the eye. It was not a life threatening suituation; he had the leisure to explore. Am I correct?

Dan: So far, so good.

Aaron: If it's an emergency, you're cut and you're in danger of bleeding to death, yes, you're going to say yes to the tourniquet, even if there's fear and a self coming through. You don't have time to mess around! If it's a pain in the eye, you can wait for a bit until mind is centered enough to attend to the pain in the eye from the akashic field and from that centered place. And as you do that, you may well choose medical intervention, or whatever is appropriate.

So, akashic field, not akashic records. And, when we work from the akashic field we are always using all the skillful means of which we are knowledgeable. But we are doing it from a place of no self, from emptiness.

Coming back to this tying up of loose ends. Mind is Empty. Emptiness is Clear Light. Inherent in that clear light is clear darkness, or jumbled darkness. It's all there together. We cannot go into the next step until we know that the clear light contains darkness as well as light.

This is how we come to the step Clear Light is Union. As long as there is a distinguishing between light and darkness, clear light cannot be union. Then you're simply digging yourself deeper into this samsaric cycle, into your karma, choosing this and pushing away that. Clear Light is Union.

And the next step, Union is Great Bliss. To come to the end of the dualistic mind is great bliss. It's as simple as that. The mind stops creating “other-than” and settles down into the truth that it's all there together. And still, some of what is expressing out, some of what you're experiencing is wholesome and some is unwholesome. Some is pleasant and some is unpleasant. There's the ability to make a clear choice. Self, ego, is not choosing. Love is choosing. I would be tempted to say light is choosing, but that leaves out darkness. The union of light and darkness is choosing.

There are teachings you might look up called Mahamudra. Google it only if it interests you to read more about it. Mahamudra is about transcending this distinction between this and that, light and other, light and darkness. Union is Great Bliss.

So the akashic field teachings give us an opportunity to practice coming to this place of unity, experiencing the space before things go off into good or bad, light or dark, pleasant or unpleasant, I want or I don't want. To rest in that deep space.

As you become more stable resting in that deep space, the whole mind that's creating differences begins,... I would not so much say it begins to dissolve as it becomes transparent. We know Vision is Mind. All of these distinctions are simply in the mind. They're not real. Now, when I say that, if we think of a place where there's terrible genocide going on in the world, we can't say, “Oh, this is wonderful. This is just another expression of the divine.” Well, it is, but it's hard to embrace it and we do want to do what we can to release that horror, end the genocide.

Here is another place where the depth of your practice reveals itself. Can you look at something terrible like terrorism or genocide, note, “I will do everything in my power to combat this in the world, to release this in the world, but I will not hate it,” which is just more hate. “I will not even try to fix it. I will attend to the causes of it.” We're back to causes and conditions. “I will attend to the variety of conditions that give rise to this terrible situation, and also see the causes of it in myself; because if it's happening out there, it's happening in me. If there is terrorism happening out there in the world, I can see all the conditions out there, but have I attended to the conditions in myself? To any old prejudice, any unresolved fear, any separation?

This is where we come back to the importance of the non-duality of light and darkness. As long as you believe you have to get rid of that which is “dark” in the self, that which is filled with fear, hatred or anger, you're still creating separation, and you're not, as we put it in an earlier class, putting your head in the demon's mouth. The demon is still out there.

Your practice asks so much love and courage of you, to be willing to see deeply into those negative distortions in the self, to attend to them with love. It requires total honesty. The akashic field becomes a safe place to do the work.

In teacher training class today we reviewed the Path as delineated in Visuddhi Magga, (title translated as Path of Purification), which is a commentary on the sutras, the whole Path of Insights and Knowledges. It's a beautiful path. As you practice vipassana you are following that path to a large extent. Yet it is still a subtly dualistic path based on the idea that you are not yet awakened, and that if only you follow all the steps in the path correctly then someday you will be awakened. It doesn't consider the already-awakened true nature.

So we do work with that path with your vipassana practice. But this pure awareness meditation and the akashic field practice serve as balances from the linearity of the traditional Theravada path and help you to know the already-awakened, the already-radiant, right here in this moment. To sink down into the akashic field, if necessary, to stabilize in that already-awake, and then come out and heal the eye, attend to the terrorism, whatever it is.

I do not intend this to be so much an instructional talk as inspirational. I hope I've given you some clarity about why we're practicing in the ways we're practicing, why we're learning about the akashic field. Certainly it has much wider ramifications. It's very useful to look at a skinned knee, to go into the akashic field and see the knee that is not skinned, that is whole, and invite the skin to heal itself. But you're not practicing to do seemingly miraculous healing. You're practicing to truly know the non-distorted in this moment. That means when you're faced with somebody who's very angry, you truly can see the non-angry person there without denying the anger. You can respond appropriately to the anger without creating a separation. That angry person is you as well as the other. No separation.

It's only through this kind of response that your Earth is going to survive. I truly feel that. And you who are willing to practice it, to practice this non-duality of self and other, non-duality of pleasant and unpleasant, you are truly able to take it a step further in the world. Otherwise you're just balancing dualities, throwing them back and forth against each other.

The traditional Theravada path does lead to liberation, to awakening. It's a profound path. But unfortunately many people who come through that path to a deep realization experience still are a bit of a mess in the world. They really don't know how to live their lives. They've had a profound experience of the Unconditioned but they don't know how to bring it back into everyday life. So we're talking about use of the akashic field and of pure awareness as a way to keep connected, conditioned and Unconditioned, knowing the simultaneity of them.

I'd like to hear any questions. We'd like to do a little bit of talking and then we're going to play some games, our intention being to help you experience that balance. Up here on the pole, down here, up here again, down here. Feeling when you are grounded, or when you are up at the surface and losing your grounding. Feeling when you are holding the space, grounded and touching the surface. We have some balls here and we're going to play games.

First I'd like to hear any questions about what I've said. And remember I've said this is not an informational talk so much as I hope an inspirational one.

Q: Sometimes I think I'm getting really good at relaxing. Then I wonder if I'm just on the verge of falling asleep.

Aaron: Could be! I can't answer that for you, but when you note yourself feeling this way, is the state drowsy or is it relaxed? Body relaxed but mind clear, or mind sleepy? Are you present in the moment? Observe the mind's focusing ability and how your body feels.

Q: Heavy.

Aaron: It sounds like this is what we call sinking mind. There's a lack of energy. Heavy. What wakes it up is to simply note “drowsy, heavy.” Is it pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral? How does it feel in the body? Watch it, note it. When you call up the attention to note it, does the heaviness abate a bit? (yes) And then does it come back? (Sometimes). Maybe it's just you've woken it up from sleeping. But if it comes back, note it again.

If you go through this a third or fourth time, begin to ask yourself, what am I getting out of this heaviness? Is there something I'm avoiding? Is there some resistance to being present here? If I were not drowsy or feeling so heavy in my energy, what might I be experiencing? Sadness, alienation, confusion, some heavy emotion? Just watch it. And the watching it brings up energy.

There's so much we could talk about here. If we had two hours a night, five days a week, for twelve weeks, we still could not cover it all. Are you familiar with the Factors of Enlightenment and the hindrances? Factors of Enlightenment, not inclusive, but including energy and effort. Hindrances of anger, grasping, drowsiness, agitation, and so forth. They're given the classical title “hindrances” but really they're just reminders to be present. They're not blocking the way; your reaction to them is blocking the way. But each hindrance has an accompanying balance to it. The balance to drowsiness and low energy is attention, energy, and effort. So when we remember that and find ourselves falling asleep, we just remember, ahh, time to sit up a little, maybe open the eyes. Note more precisely. Bring in a bit more energy and effort. You're not doing it to fix the drowsiness. You're doing it because your intention is to hold balance, and to awaken.

We could spend several classes simply talking about these hindrances and factors of enlightenment. That is not our intention this semester. But it's a very valuable pursuit.

Other questions?

(Q has signed up for her first weekend of retreat and is concerned about whether she can manage the amount of sitting.)

Aaron: I am delighted you're coming. We do follow a sitting and walking schedule, but except for the instruction periods and group meetings, it's all optional. If you feel you need to get up and go for a walk in the woods, or even walk down to the lake and have a swim, you can do that. It's fine to do what you need to do. You can sit under a tree and write in a journal. You can just meditate under a tree or in the meadow. One year there was a litter of baby kittens in the meadow under a log, and many people spent several days just sitting out there with the kittens. They were very tiny, very sweet, but with a fiercely protective mother so one could not get too close. People did a lot of metta with them.

The retreat is held in silence. You can't sit there with the kittens and talk to your neighbor, “Oh, aren't they cute!” It's silent. We're doing a meditation practice. But it is not just formal sitting and walking from dawn to dusk.

For the people staying all week there are small group meetings, perhaps not for the weekenders. There is one weekend meeting. But for those staying all week, there is opportunity to come together several times with your small group and share in depth, to hear from each other, and a bond is formed...

(retreat details not transcribed)

Are there other questions?

Q: I want to reference what Q has said. I don't want to beat this issue into the ground. But there are times when I know I sleep, and there are times when I zone out and come back extremely energized, refreshed. But I'm zoned out, I don't know what's going on around me.

Aaron: It could possibly be that you're tired and falling asleep, have a nap, and come back energized.

Q: There's an emotion I feel—sadness, grief, or whatever. Usually it's a heavy emotion.

Aaron: Perhaps you're processing that emotion, going into it, feeling the heaviness of it, and releasing it without really being fully conscious of it. But at some level it releases.

The question for me is not that you're moving into that state, but whether it seems productive or unproductive. And if it feels productive, then don't worry about it. Don't make problems where none exist! Just continue to be aware of the mind and body experiences.

Any others?

Q: Often if I meditate in a group, I feel extreme heat in my body for a while. I start sweating. Then it goes away.

Aaron: Note it. Just note, hot, hot. If it's pleasant, note it as pleasant. If it's unpleasant, note it as unpleasant. Don't try to figure it out, just know the direct experience. Whatever arises is the ground for insight, for wisdom, for compassion. So, note it. If you see that it's unpleasant and then aversion arises, watch that.

You don't have to know why there's heat. If it became a problem, if you started running a 105 degree fever, we might want to inquire what's going on. But in normal circumstances you're probably bringing up a lot of energy in relationship to the group. There may be friction, the self rubbing against all the other selves at some level. The self trying to diminish itself, or trying a little too hard. The self at some level asking, “Am I doing it right? What are other people thinking? Are they looking at me?” It may not be a conscious thought but there's some movement between the self and the others in the room creating friction, energy, and bringing up heat. There's nothing to fix, just note it. As you attend to it, gradually that symptom will diminish.


Q: I find it very difficult to experience the mundane and the supramundane at the same time. In my daily life I find that those experiences happen on the cushion, and I wonder if my life is just too busy.

Aaron: This is why people come to retreats. In a retreat you have the opportunity to just sit in the meditation hall and do your vipassana practice, watching how mundane objects arise into your experience and pass away, are impermanent, are not the basis of a separate self. Then you have the opportunity to wipe tables in the dining room, and ask yourself, is there a self wiping the table? Who's wiping the table? You have the opportunity to sit outdoors under this flowering tree dropping blossoms on you and feel your complete non-separation from the tree, from the sky, from the breeze. Finally, as the days pass it starts to come together.

We can't put it together conceptually, so it's very hard to do these practices just 20 minutes a day, 4 or 5 days a week, and gain the depth that you would like to gain. So I invite you to the retreat!

This is why since the very beginning we have had these retreats and expanded them as quickly as possible into, now it's not a full week but 6 days, but that's enough time for people really to get it. Even a weekend retreat is not really enough time because you get there, you have one day, and then you're starting to think, “Oh, I'm going home tomorrow.” And the mind starts racing again. But when you settle in, even for one additional day, so that you're there part of Saturday settling in, all day Sunday, all day Monday, and you're not thinking about going home, you gain a lot more depth...

(retreat details and further comments about retreats not transcribed)

(continuing with two group akashic/pole exercises using balls: balancing on large balls, playing lightweight dodgeball with rolling balls; exploring high energy and grounding and how they come together, instructions not transcribed)

Barbara: Dan was just talking about equanimity, that the more you experience it, the more the old habit can go because you can look at it without reaction.

Q: What's the difference between equanimity and resignation?

Dan: Is resignation the near enemy of equanimity? Resignation comes from avoidance, from fear, from grasping after what you want and running away from what you don't want. Equanimity is in the center, being able to be there without reacting at all. Resignation is a reaction. It's, “Oh, I have to do this again?” So one's a reaction and one is a conscious non-reaction.

Barbara: You might want to look at Dalai Lama's Cat and how it comes to equanimity with the situation of being left sometimes, with the dog coming, and the many things that happen to him. There are some very clear examples of the difference between resignation and equanimity.

(sharing of experiences during exercise; Barbara describes “new games,” competition without self/ego, passion with equanimity; Barbara describes playing volleyball at Plum Village)

Barbara: A few words summing up. Please work with what Aaron talked about in the beginning, the whole series of Vision is Mind, Mind is Empty, Emptiness is Pure Light, etc. Begin to see that with non-duality, if Emptiness is Pure Light then it's also darkness. Go to the place where the mind creates dualities. I would like you to start labeling that as it comes up in your thinking, in these next two weeks. “Ah, creating a duality.” Just notice it.

What prompts creation of a duality? Does it give you more sense of safety or control? Is it just habit? Where does the dualistic thinking come from? What happens to that dualistic thought when you note it? I'd like you to come prepared to share about that. Vision is Mind, Mind is Empty, Emptiness is Clear Light, Clear Light is Union, Union is Great Bliss. When we drop away that idea of a duality, can we come to the union of good and bad, like and don't like, pleasant and unpleasant? Can we see the place where it comes together and the self drops out of it? Use your experience balancing on the ball to help you get to that.

Emptiness is Clear Light, Clear Light is Union, and for those who get to it, Union is Great Bliss. -“Finally! I don't have to create a world of dualities anymore! What could be more blissful?”

I want this to be connected to your everyday life, so watch the real-life occurences, like being cut off by a driver talking on the cell-phone. Anger comes up. Mind is Empty. Just go through it. See how you're creating a duality between yourself and that driver. Anger coming up. Where did all that anger come from? Coming back into this place of clear light.

Keep working with it in ways that are literally practical in your life, that are touching the real things that are happening in your real life. It's not a theoretical practice. And keep coming back to the akashic field experience as you may have experienced it sitting on the ball: balanced, feet down, gravity, holding balanced, putting the hands up. Being grounded in the akashic field and reaching out into the world.

(sharing of an experience where something happened, the inconvenience was handled with equanimity, and there was no blame among the three participants)

Barbara: And we don't have to judge others. We don't have to judge ourselves. What a relief! Bliss!

Dan: Let me say one more thing about union. Union to me, the big non-duality, the big dark/light, is between whatever I'm experiencing in my mind and the “I” that perceives it. That to me is the union. So Clear Light is Union. It's the merging where the perceiver becomes one with the perceived. Whatever I'm looking at, the “I” drops away. It's just there. Just looking. That's another way you can look at light vs. dark, big vs. small, all of that duality. That would be the Cliff Notes version for me.

(additional comment; how to bring it into the world)

Dan: When you're sitting, you're very safe. You're still, you're quiet, and you can see that duality easily. Walking meditation would be the next step for me. You're still silent, but you're moving, and you can see that duality in movement. It becomes a heck of a lot more difficult when you're talking to another person. Once you get to the point where you can do walking meditation or cleaning, cleaning the kitchen meditation, where you're just alone with whatever's going on and the reality in front of you, and you can make the subject and object not be relevant anymore, just doing, then you can move on into conversation.

A little baby step into conversation is—I think, I don't know, but I think what we're talking about, I've done that before, where the person you're talking to, you're both trying to do the same thing, and you're both in a meditative state, you're both mindful, you're both mostly quiet, but you are interactive. And then that helps you go to the next step, which is talking normally like we are now. Then, getting into something more contentious or difficult. Going straight from sitting meditation to trying to talk to somebody is like learning how to dribble and then going to the NBA, as far as I'm concerned. It's a big jump. But if you can take those smaller steps, it makes it easier.

(recording ends)