The first part of this session can be read in the September issue here.

Q: What is my next step in helping others to prepare for 2012?

Aaron: To more deeply resolve the emotional body, as I have been talking about. By this I do not mean to stop the emotions but to find greater equanimity with emotions. The reason that this is the next step is twofold. First, that you then serve as a model to others and many look to you to be that model. And second, as long as there is still even subtle self-judgment that is identified with, you’re holding onto this self-identity on a personal level, not allowing the deeper level of your being to be predominant.

That pure heart, that’s what has to lead. The mind and the emotions, they follow. This really relates to manifestation. As long as you are reacting from any place of contraction, even the contraction of trying to combat the judging mind, there’s still contraction. But when you make friends with the judging mind, it becomes like a parrot squawking in the background. You don’t really have to pay much heed to it. And eventually it will get bored and fly away. Do you understand?

Q: Yes, thank you.

Q: I have depression. I would like to know how to live with it better.

Aaron: Do you meditate? (Q: Yes.) What form of meditation do you use? (Q: Buddhist.) What school? Vipassana? Zen? (Q: Some Zen, some to do with the Twelve Step Program.)

There are many paths. The path with which I’m most familiar and I find a very viable path is that of vipassana. I’m certain that there are vipassana groups found in this area. With this form of meditation, we watch how different object arise and pass away. Some are pleasant, some are unpleasant. We watch the whole chain whereby when an object is pleasant, there’s grasping after it and when it’s unpleasant, there’s aversion to it.

Depression is generally a closing-in of the self and one’s energy, and it often relates to trying to suppress certain kinds of feelings. The more you suppress, the more it closes in. The whole energy field gets locked in, the energy isn’t moving along all the chakras and meridians. This state is frequently diagnosed as depression. It has an organic outflow in the emotional and physical. But it can be turned around as you begin to see the experience of depression, just as Barbara spoke of seeing the experience of not-hearing. In not-hearing, just not hearing.

Depression is an uncomfortable feeling. Imagine yourself visiting the beach and being buried up to your neck in sand. Tight, confined. Can you visualize how you might first feel, sitting in that hole up to here in sand, locked in, tense, and how you could breathe and relax and just be there, just somebody sitting in a pile of sand? It still might not be pleasant, it would be cold and damp, or hot, gritty, trapped, but it’s just sitting in sand.

As you relax around it, you don’t need to push against the situation. The vipassana practice starts not with something major like depression but just a twinge on the little toe. Unpleasant. Itch, wanting to scratch. You watch these different sensations and thoughts come and go and begin to see how you monitor and judge and try to control, and just gently to let go.

When you are ready, you begin to work with the experience of depression itself, but not until the practice is stable. Two things are likely to happen. First, what you request, that you start to be more comfortable with depression. It’s just depression. And second, you begin to see the factors that are creating the depression. You begin to allow yourself to go deeper and see the fear, pain, sorrow, whatever might be there, with that same fearless, open heart. Be willing to say, “Okay, this is here, this is here;” you don’t have to condemn the self for any of it. At that point there’s nothing to hold the depression in place anymore.

There are some of my books in there and there are a number of chapters on dealing with depression. I think you’ll find some help from those.

Can you regard fear with kindness? Can you avoid being captured by the stories of fear?

Q: Is my contribution in this incarnation having to do with my new book?

Aaron: There are many levels of contribution and work. There is the outer work in the world and there is the inner work in the heart. I would say that it has less to do with the book itself, although that is a contribution, than it has to do with you using the book as a catalyst to you asking yourself, how do I feel about it? Do people endorse the book? Are they pulling back from it? What are my hopes and fears? What comes up for me as I offer this child out into the world? Because this is a place where you are able to look at the personality self and the stories, the most deeply embedded habitual stories, and release some of it. So the book is a gift out into the world but it’s also a catalyst for the personal work.