December 19, 2007

Aaron: Barbara said this is one of her favorite annual events. I think it’s my favorite. I especially love the many young people joining us here. Thank you for coming.

For those who have not heard me before and are sitting there wonder am I real, are you real (looking at one new guest)?

Q: I’m real.

Aaron: Okay! Maybe I’m real too, maybe I’m not, but there’s a voice here, is there not? It’s coming from somewhere. If what it says is useful then listen and use it. If what it says is not useful, throw it away. It’s as simple as that. If you find a book on the street with it’s cover torn off and you begin to read it, and it’s filled with wisdom and delight, will you throw it away because it has no cover and no known author? If you pick up that book on the street, there’s a famous author’s name written on the front page, you begin to read it, and it just does not resonate with your own truth, will you hold on to it because the author was famous? You throw it away. It’s not useful to you. So release concern of whether I’m real and who I am and simply let me share some stories with you.

I suppose I’m always a teacher, I can’t avoid being a teacher! But on this Christmas stories evening, I try to entertain as much as to elucidate. If I get too far off on the wisdom end, I will lose the younger of my audience and I don’t want that to happen.

Think of a vast reservoir of water. The water travels in conduits underground and comes into each home, and up into your sink. You turn the faucet and water comes out. How would it be if you forgot that your sink was connected to this vast source of water and you believed that you had to carry water in, had some kind of pump outside your house and went out in the winter to pump it and carry it within, in buckets? I come to visit you and I say, “Why don’t you just turn on the faucet?” A light dawns in your eyes. “I forgot! I’m connected to the reservoir. I don’t have to do it this arduous way. Just turn on the faucet.”

You are all connected to source. How many of you have forgotten that and live your life in that forgetfulness?

For those who are new here tonight, in that lifetime in which our brother Jeshua, or Jesus as some of you call Him, walked the earth, about 2000 years ago, in that lifetime I had the great fortune to know him. So these stories come out of that friendship and what I learned from him.

I first knew Him when He was a small boy, as my father and I were part of the Essene school that made a space for His birth, and welcomed Him. He was taken away soon after that birth for His own safety. But when He returned, I had the great fortune to be able to spend time with him. I was 5 years older than Jeshua but we had a lot of love for one another.

Most children express their desires when they play. They are already forgetting that there’s a faucet, so if they want something, they grasp after it. Most children forget very early who they are and where they have come from. Perhaps some of these children here tonight have not quite forgotten their true home and the love that surrounds them.

I remember once when we were in the gardens of the Essene community and many of the children were chasing butterflies. Everybody wanted, not to catch a butterfly to harm it but simply to hold it, to have butterflies land on them. So when a butterfly flew close, they would reach out for it.

If you were a butterfly and somebody grabbed at you, would you land? No? (children saying no) No, they flew away. The more they flew away, the more the children grabbed. But Jeshua, perhaps aged 4 or 5, simply sat himself down on the grass and invited the butterflies. He just sat there and the light shined out of him. I would imagine He had a sweet scent like the flowers have, because within a short while He was coated in butterflies in every color, dancing and walking over his skin. He was radiant and they were radiant. They were of different sizes and colors. The other children watched in awe. “How did you do that?” He said, “I’m not doing anything.”

And that’s the trick. How hard it is to do nothing, not to grasp, not to reach out and actively try to draw to you, what will come to you if you simply sit and invite it with your heart. This doesn’t mean you make no effort. He had to go out to the garden. If He had locked himself in a room, the butterflies would not have had access. But once you put yourself in the place in which that which you are inviting can come freely to you, then all you have to do is invite. I want to talk more about this principle with you tonight, and the ways that He demonstrated it so beautifully.

How do we manifest anything in our lives, whether it is spiritual or material? In the Essene school, children were taught from a young age, how to work with their heavy emotions. Sometimes there would be anger or fear or greed, this is normal for the human. Every human feels these emotions.