http://www.deepspring.org/

Part of the teaching we offer within “spiritual inquiry” comes from a discarnate energy which calls itself Aaron, channeled by Barbara. In many previous lifetimes, Aaron has been a practitioner of many religions, including lifetimes spent as a Buddhist monk and scholar. In his final lifetime he was a Vipassana meditation master in the Theravadin tradition. His present teaching draws from this background, but he also reminds us that, like all of us, he has lived in many bodies, had many shades of skin, and followed many spiritual paths. Aaron is a being of great love, compassion, wisdom and gentle humor. His work is toward the alleviation of suffering. Those who have worked with him find him to be a very wise, compassionate and skillful teacher. We realize the presence of a discarnate teacher may raise questions for some of you. We ask you only to approach Aaron’s teaching with an open mind and see if it speaks to your heart.Christmas Stories

Wednesday Night Open Group
December 21, 2005
Aaron

Aaron: Good evening and my love to you all. I am Aaron. Special blessings to my young friends. (There are numerous young children here tonight.) I?m very happy to have you with us.

A question was raised last year. For many years I said I was a simple shepherd, and this is true. In most of that lifetime, my time was spent in the hills as a shepherd, and yet I did have an education in the Essene school at Mt. Carmel. I knew Jesus both as a child and as an adult. People asked me, why did I never speak of this? Because it?s His story I want to tell, not mine. It doesn?t matter who I was or what I did; what matters is what He taught, what He lived and expressed. So I have tried to keep myself in the background. Now many of you have asked me to tell a little more about myself, and I will tell just a little of that story as background.

The earth at that time was full of fear and anger. For many humans, the predominant consciousness was one of what persons could see and hear and feel from their own senses. There was little trust of any experience beyond the physical senses. Without touching the heart in the ways He taught, there was not yet ability for compassion, for forgiveness, for that which opens the heart and knows the interconnection with all that is.

Can you see your interconnection, sitting here, literally looking around you? Can you see it? You seem as separate beings, but of course you?re all connected. Think of two twins who are joined at the back and side so that they have two heads but they have just one body connecting between them. If you put up a wall so that all you can see are their heads, you would say, ?Ah, certainly there are two people.? But perhaps they share one heart. You all share one heart! Not knowing this, it?s easier to kill others for your own need, to take from others for your own need. But when you understand, ?Your heart is my heart,? how can you kill, how can you take from yourself?

The highest intention at the time of His coming was the opening of the earth plane to higher consciousness. For so many millennia, the earth plane had lain in very heavy mundane consciousness, which sees separation and not connection. His coming was meant to open the door to higher consciousness, to help people begin to know their interconnectedness with each other and with the earth, because only through that knowing can there truly be love. There can be an imitation of love but it?s the ego saying, ?I?ll be loving,? and acting out a part. It doesn?t come from the heart. He came to connect us to that innate love in our hearts.

Through decades before His coming, there was a lot of work to prepare the way. The one who was my earthly father in that lifetime asked me to come into incarnation to be his son. He was a shepherd in the hills. He was also trained in the Essene school, knew some of these deep practices to hold that centered space of love. He believed that those who lived the simple life as shepherds had more ease to learn how to open their hearts than those who lived in the cities, in a more greed-filled environment. Thus, this was his mission, to prepare the way for higher consciousness. So he asked me to come into incarnation as his son to carry the same training he had, to be a shepherd. That was my life. So I had training in those schools, but most of my life was as a shepherd living and teaching other shepherds, in an oral way as a teacher, but more, teaching through being.

It was known that He was coming; it was not a surprise. We had been rejoicing and awaiting His birth through that year, those of us who were part of that school at Mt. Carmel. I was a young boy, younger, I think, than most of these children, but I knew something special was going to happen.

That night of His birth, the sky was filled with stars. There was a deep clarity. It was not December; it was early spring, April, though that detail doesn?t matter. There was that one star of which the legends tell. The whole earth seemed to reverberate with a heavenly music, not music your ears could hear but an inner music, a powerful energy. Many shepherds went to the town. My father stayed in the hills with his sheep. We walked a little ways, but I was young, not able to walk so far, and we knew the reason for this rejoicing of spirit.

But the next day I had the opportunity to walk with my father to the place where He was. We brought him an orphaned sheep as a gift. It was a great blessing to see Him, and I was given the opportunity to hold Him, to hold this blessed infant, so that was my first connection with Him. And then His family took him away for safety and I did not see Him again for a number of years.

When they returned, again I had the opportunity to spend some time with him, so I knew him as a boy. The first stories I want to tell you are some of those boyhood stories. I think you children would like to know what He was like as a boy. Did He ever get angry? Did He ever do mean things? What was He like?

I was five years His elder. We had become closer friends during that portion of the year that I spent in school at Mt. Carmel. Then during the time of year I spent in the hills with the sheep, He was occasionally permitted to come with me for a few weeks. There was a young boy my age, 11 or 12, who lived in the village and who had a hunched back. He walked with a limp and his mind was not clear. He had the understanding of a three-year old. He could be told what to do and could follow simple directions. He sometimes drooled a bit, and children teased him.

I remember the first time that young Jesus, just seven years old, met this boy. We had been at my father?s house in the village and were going up in the hills where the sheep were, to stay there for ten days. As we walked down the street, this boy came out of his house and waved at us. There was a gang of bullies, as there often are within groups of children. They saw him waving and they began to mock him, imitating him in a cruel way. The little boy Jesus walked up to the hunchbacked one and took his hand. He asked me, ?May he come with us?? and I said yes. Sometimes this boy came with me into the hills for a few hours. I knew if he came with me I would need to bring him back, as he could not be left alone, but his parents trusted me with him. His mother was there and nodded her assent.

So Jesus, meeting him for the first time, simply took his hand and brought him along with us. This boy did not have much understanding and during that afternoon, as we walked we came upon an injured small animal. The boy moved to kick it, and Jesus just put his hand on the boy?s arm. Remember, we?re talking about a seven-year old Jesus here. He put his hand on the boy?s arm. The boy was much taller, big for his age even with his humped back. ?No,? Jesus said, and He reached out to pick up this small creature. He put it into the boy?s arms, helped him hold it and pat it. He held this injured creature through the whole afternoon, tending to it, loving it. Jesus occasionally took it to stroke, then returned it to the boy.

The boy was changed after that. When he had come with me before, I had seen a streak of cruelty in him; I think he was mirroring the cruelty that he received from other children. But watching this young Jesus holding the injured animal, holding it himself and offering it love, suddenly he became radiant. He learned how to express that loving heart in himself. No matter that he was feeble minded, no matter that his body carried distortion, he found that deep healing in himself to know he was capable of love, that he was love. And this is what Jesus came to teach.

Did I ever see him angry as a child? Yes, sometimes he was very angry. He had to work hard to learn how to be present with His anger, not to condemn himself for His anger, but He learned it. This was one of the basic teachings of the Essene schools, not to cut off feelings but to learn how to be present with feelings. I?ve spoken of this at great length in a presentation of trainings from that Mt. Carmel mystery school. (See January 24, 2004 Trainings transcript.) I will not repeat it in depth here.

It was vital that He had to learn to be present with fear, present with anger, present with confusion. He had to learn to express this human side of Himself and not to use it for harm in the world or to be controlled by it, because His life asked of Him that He be present in situations in which there would be much catalyst for anger, fear, and confusion. So He learned to hold space for them.

Another memory, of perhaps a year later. Many of the shepherd boys in the hills would kill snakes because snakes could injure the sheep, and also could injure some of the small animals of their families? farms, kill chickens and so forth. Snakes were thus thought to be bad. We were in the hills together again and came upon some boys with knives striking at a snake. ?What are you doing?? said little Jesus. ?Killing the snake.? He said, ?Why would you kill a snake?? And they said, ?Because it?s evil.? He wasn?t afraid to speak up. These were young teenagers twice His size. He said, ?Nothing is evil.? And He pushed them aside, reached in and picked up the snake, held it to him, and He carried it around for a week, taking care of it until its wounds healed; then He set it free. Even then He knew non-duality. He couldn?t articulate it yet but He knew it in His heart. This is what He came to teach.

I knew Him during His early teenage years and then He grew up and went away. There were ten years that I did not see Him. When He came back, He was not yet the teacher that He was growing to be, but was moving into readiness for that role.

The story that comes to mind ? as we walked we came upon a young boy with a very overloaded donkey. When I say young boy, a teenage boy. The poor beast was staggering under a heavy load. It was emaciated, and the more it staggered, the more the boy beat it. My first impulse was to yell at the boy and grab the stick away. Jesus, now a young man, stepped forth and just said, ?You seem to be having trouble. Where are you going with all your packages?? The boy replied, ?To the city to sell these things. But this (using words that I will not repeat) beast won?t work for me.? And Jesus said, ?I see your urgency to get to the city. Perhaps we can help you. Let us carry some of these things for you.? The boy was suspicious. ?Are you going to steal my things?? ?Oh no, no, but we?re going that way and I want to help you. We can carry these things for you.?

So He quickly took everything off of the donkey and handed it off to us. Then He put His arm around the donkey, just holding it and supporting it as we walked. And while we walked, He talked to this young man. He asked him about his life. He expressed an interest in him. Where did he get these things, mostly food stuff that his family had grown? How did his family live? How many siblings were there? Learning that he was the oldest and that he felt responsible to take care of his siblings. So He saw beyond this negative face of the boy and into the heart of love, and He helped the boy to see that heart of love in himself simply by loving him.

When we got to the city, we returned the boy?s burdens and Jesus saw that the donkey was fed and stabled. And He invited the boy to eat with us, so that the boy also was fed. He didn?t teach by lecture. To lecture is to say, ?No, this is negative, let?s get rid of it. We only want what?s good.? He didn?t do that. He just went right through the negative and saw that which was beautiful and offered it loving nurturance.

Every being has the capacity to open into that love which is their true nature. So His self-perceived work was to take us beyond our own duality of that which is good and that which is evil in ourselves, to not enact the negative but not to self-identify with it either. We go deeper into the loving heart and begin to learn how strongly we are that love, and that we can bring that forth when we wish to.

There are so many stories, and yet there are not that many stories. Through the years I?ve told you many of them. What I particularly wish to focus on tonight are these stories in which He looked through that which was negative and focused on that which was good. This is what you are all asked to do, both for yourselves and for those around you. And yet when we look through that which is negative, we cannot simply cast aside the negative; it must be attended to.

There was another time—I think I?m repeating myself in some of my stories but I don?t think you?ll mind hearing them again. There were young boys who had hold of a small cat and were torturing it, killing it. Rarely have I heard such a strong, shouted ?NO!? but it was not to shame them, just to strongly stop them. No, you may not harm the small being.

He took the cat and it was dying. I have no doubt He could have saved it but it was badly mutilated. He held it lovingly in its arms, and I?m sure it felt that peace and ease at His holding. He asked the boys to consider that this was a living creature. How would they feel if somebody much bigger than them beat and cut them and hurt them in this way?

These were children, children your ages. He did not tell them they were bad, He awakened in them the awareness of the love that they had. He said, ?You have taken a life. Now can you give life?? In the village we found a young goat that was orphaned and was very weak. Its owner said, ?It?s going to die. It needs constant care.? So He said to these boys, ?It?s up to you to keep it alive. This is the service you can do to balance what you have done to this cat.?

The boys did keep the goat alive and it thrived. They fed it. They stayed up through nights with it, to care for it. They learned not that they were bad and should be ashamed of killing the cat, but to move through that negativity in themselves and find that which was capable of loving and nurturing, and to rejoice in that aspect of themselves and bring it forth.
I never saw Him shame anybody, but He was not afraid to say a strong no when it was appropriate. No matter what a person?s character, He seemed to be able to see through to that which was beautiful in them and to bring it forth.

Again, a painful situation, when a man joined our party, asked if he could walk with us. When we awoke in the morning our food and our heavy cloaks were gone. He didn?t get angry. He just said, ?Let us walk on. We?ll find food.? And we were cold but it was okay. The sun came up and warmed the day.

Two days later we came upon this man on the road. He saw us coming. He had not expected us to follow in this way; he thought we would have to find food and clothing for ourselves. So he was quite alarmed to see us.
The man started to run and Jesus stopped him, physically stopped him, and said, ?No.? The man became defensive and Jesus said to him, ?My brother, when you stayed with us two nights ago, you did not tell us you were cold and hungry. Is there anything else that we have that you need?? The man looked very startled. He expected to be beaten, and certainly not to be offered something. Jesus said, ?Please come and sit by our fire. We have more food tonight and perhaps you used up that which we had two days ago. Please join us for dinner.?

I think the man sat with us because he could not pass up a free dinner! He was still thinking, ?What can I get? What can I get?? The night passed and the next morning, of course the man was gone again with our food, with our robes. Again we walked on, a few more days. And there he was again. This time he certainly expected we would beat him, and again Jesus said, ?My brother, you don?t trust me. You run off in the night instead of asking for what you need. We?re happy to give you what you need. Please sit with us.? And He fed him.

The man had an injury. The reason we were able to catch up with him so easily was that he had an injured leg and bad limp. There were wounds and infection on the leg. So this night Jesus said, ?Let me look at the leg, it looks very sore.? He offered to wash it. He put some ointments on it. And He said, ?Please don?t rush off tonight. Stay with us so we can help you take care of the leg and let it heal.? The man was there in the morning; he breakfasted with us and he walked with us.

It took about a week for the leg to heal. Each day Jesus was careful to include the man, to talk with him, to see that his needs were met. Something wonderful happened during those days. We came upon another man who was injured, a man who could barely walk. Perhaps a long-term injury where the leg had not healed properly so the man leaned on homemade crutches and hobbled. This man with the infection in his leg was healing, so Jesus said to him, ?Can you help my brother here? It would be wonderful for him if he could put his arm around somebody?s shoulder. If he could walk that way, it would help him walk.?

So He gave the man something positive to do, a way really to give of himself. The days passed. Of course the man with the crutches could not walk quickly, but now he had support. He wanted to walk with us; he wanted to hear Jesus. Jesus made it possible for him, but in doing so, he gave this brother who had been a thief an opportunity to find that part of himself that found real joy in being of service to another, and it was wonderful to see this man blossom.

We came at last to the city to which we were headed. The, I don?t want to call him the thief, the reformed thief had planned to stay in the city and Jesus asked him, ?What are you going to do? What will you do here?? I think his original intention was that the city was a good place for thievery. He said, ?I am going to see who I can help in this city.? The man found others of a like mind and created a mission of sorts, a place where people who were homeless or without food could come and find goods. He went out and literally begged of those who were more wealthy to give him their food, their blankets, and so forth, and created a place where those who were in need could come. Months later when we came through that city, he was working as such a helper to others. His life was completely reformed. You can imagine what would have happened if instead of this course of action, we?d beaten him with sticks. He would have simply moved deeper into the negativity that had been conditioned in him.

All of you humans have negativity conditioned in you by the pain in your lives. Only love will heal it. Your own negativity to yourselves will not heal it, and your own negativity to others will not heal it in them. But when you see the divine, each in the other, and the divine in yourself, you come to know that you can live that divinity.

We were walking through hills that were steep and dry, just a few of us. Jesus, myself, my son Mark, who was at that point perhaps 11 years old, and two other people. There were lepers in those hills. The process was for them to ring a bell and call in their Aramaic language, ?Unclean! Unclean!? to warn people to stay away from them because the leprosy was contagious, or so it was thought. So people would hear the bell and they would avoid the lepers.

All my life I had avoided lepers. Much as He had taught me love, it had not seemed loving to me to put myself in a situation where I could catch this disease and no longer be available to my family and so forth. But when Jesus heard the bell ringing, He immediately headed up a small path into the hills. There we came upon a colony of lepers, and one in particular was in great distress, crying and in pain.

I was hanging back and I had sent my son Mark even further back, very nervous about his being exposed in this way. I know that Jesus would not have thought less of me if I had said, ?I?m going back down the path; I can?t stay.? He looked at me and He said, ?We need rags and hot water.? The woman was giving birth but the baby was in a difficult presentation. He certainly could have resolved that presentation himself, but He also knew that I was a shepherd and that I knew how to do this with the sheep, that I was quite skilled in this.

Clean water was brought; I took off the robe I was wearing and shredded it. He looked me in the eyes and said, ?Can you help?? I knew that if I said, ?No, I cannot,? he would not have judged me. But through His eyes I saw that in myself which could help. Right there with my fear, I saw that which was unafraid and able to come forth to help.

I knew how to work with sheep. I had never helped a woman deliver a child before, but I could see how awkward the presentation was, and washing my hands, was able to insert my hand and shift the baby in such a way that it could emerge. Jesus called Mark to him and again fear came up in me because Mark had been back away from the people. He said, ?Mark! Come! Come!? and as the baby came out, He took it in a cloth and He handed it to Mark.

I trusted that he would not do something that would harm my son. Not on the ultimate level, at least. Now, of course, harm has different meanings. Would it have harmed Mark in the ultimate way if he had become a leper? Not in the ultimate sense, no. Certainly in the relative sense it would have brought great pain and discomfort. But through Him I began to trust the ultimate meaning of our lives, to change my sense of what was safe, not to be so afraid for my own immediate safety but to think instead of the bigger picture. I still have that image of Mark holding this perfect baby from a very deformed mother.

He continued to attend to the mother for a few minutes and then took the baby back to hand him to her. In some places such a baby would have been whisked away from its mother because the mother was ?unclean.? But He would have none of that. This was the baby?s mother; of course she would suckle her baby. So He gave her the baby.

We spent the day there with Him tending to various people. I knew He could perform miracles and yet His practice was to keep it as simple as possible. If He had performed some kind of miracle where the mother?s distortions suddenly healed instantly, she would have revered him, put him on a pedestal.

His intention was to awaken us to our own divinity because only by knowing our own divinity could we know the divinity of everything. He didn?t want to be put on a pedestal; He didn?t want to create a duality of mortal and god. He wanted us to know our divinity. So He worked that day doing what healing He could, washing wounds, offering food, offering kindness. Looking in periodically on this mother and baby. And then we went on our way.

We had reason to return via that route a month hence. We came to the place where the bells and voices had announced, ?Unclean! Unclean!? and it was quiet. What was going on? Had they all left, I wondered? We saw the path and He said, ?Let us go and see.?

As we walked up that quarter mile path, we began to hear voices. We opened into a very different scene. Not one of agony, sorrow, and fear but one of joy and lightness. The raw wounds of the leprosy were healed in everybody. Missing fingers had not grown back, but there was no progressive sign of the disease any more. People had more energy. There was laughter; there was music. This mother and her baby came out to meet us. The baby was radiant and the mother was also radiant. At the time of the baby?s birth, it was questionable whether she would survive, but so many of her raw wounds were healing. She was healing.

They asked him, ?Did you do this? Did you bring forth this miracle for us?? He did not say no and He did not say yes. He neither denied nor confirmed. What He simply said was, ?Your love has brought it forth.? So He didn?t say, ?No, I didn?t have a part in this,? and He didn?t say, ?Yes, I did this,? He said simply, ?Your love has brought this forth. And your love will continue to bring it forth, to bring forth your healing.? We spent a lovely day with them. I never returned there but I imagine that there was a continuation of that healing.

What empowers us, each of us? What dis-empowers? In what way does the fear in each of us want to be powerful and use that fear and need for power to dis-empower another? If you address that fear in yourselves not with shame and anger at it but with lovingkindness, aware of the fear but with the intention not to build a self-identity with the fear, you can see the need to control others in order to become powerful and you can say no to that need. Then each of you has the ability to empower others through your love, through your trust. You empower others most by seeing their divinity clearly; you cannot see their divinity unless you see your own divinity.

My final story for the evening. My wife, my beloved wife, had died in childbirth and I was grief-stricken. I knew that Jesus was in the vicinity and I had gone with my son Mark to seek him. In walking through a rainy night, I fell off a small cliff and broke my leg. Mark brought help. They carried me up the cliff path. They splinted the leg. Somebody with a wheeled cart offered me a ride, and thus in pain and with my grieving heart, I came to where He was.

He greeted me with loving arms and began to work on the leg, to rebind it, to make sure that I had a comfortable place to sleep and food to eat. I knew that He had the ability to heal and though He seldom would use that as instant healing, I knew He could do that. So I said, ?Heal my leg.? And He said, ?Well, it will heal. It will take a month or so.? And I said (shouting), ?No! Now!? I said, ?I have my sheep, I must go back to my sheep, and my children.? He said, ?Mark is a big boy now, He can go and take care of the sheep. Your children are safe with family. You just stay here with me. The leg will heal.?

Every day He came and made sure I was comfortable and had food, looked at the leg and talked to me. He talked to me about my wife. He talked to me about my grief, which at first I did not want to talk about. Through the month of His presence I was able to open to that grief, to release her, to find that within me that knew I was safe without her and that she was also safe, to wish her well on her continued journey and to let go. So of course this was the greater healing. If He had healed the leg and sent me off, He would have sent me off with that grief unhealed, and He knew that.

It?s important that there was not a sense that He healed either my grief or my leg, He simply held me in love while I found that capacity in myself to heal and brought that forth. By the time the leg was healed and I was ready to leave, I was ready to thank him for not fixing the leg but for allowing this full healing to develop.

Some of you are in a hurry to fix what is uncomfortable in your lives, and I would challenge you to ask yourselves, ?What is the fullest healing which is possible here, not just of this particular ailment, mental or physical, but what is the greater healing?? Be for yourselves as He was for me, for you are no less divine than He was. Open your hearts to your divinity and bring forth unconditional love that allows that which has felt ashamed and broken in you to know its wholeness. In this way He is with you as He was with me.