Marina's Background

How I Got Started as a Channeler

Contents

• Introduction: I never asked for this!
• The usual suspects: Who can be channeled?
• My Sources and how I met them
• Jesus announces himself unexpectedly
• A Digression: How I moved from handwritten channeling to public channeling
• I channel myself
• Name-dropping: Seth, Buddha, others drop in to visit
• An unwanted visitor teaches me a lesson in discernment
• Working up to the big guys: The Council comes calling
• God, YHWH, the Supreme Being, the Creator of All Universes, the Big Cheese (I call him Joe)
• The Mother of Everything
• Other entities: The Green Man and the Green Lady, and Athena
• The Niagara Falls of entities: Metatron shows up
• The dearly departed
• In retrospect, maybe I did ask for this
• References

I never asked for this!

For a long time after I began to channel, I used to maintain that I had never asked for this talent. It came to me spontaneously, in answer to a pressing need I had at the time for some deep answers to a long-term bad situation, but not in answer to any direct query I was making. I had received channeled information through most of my adult life, but had not received anything that was impressive enough to encourage me to actively pursue or practice the skill.

And for a long time after I started to actively practice channeling, I held many doubts, because in some ways it seemed as though the entire channeling gig could be something I was making up in a very creative way. Though I have come to think that, even if it is, it is a fun way to live life, as long as I don't do anything permanent and terminal because of the information I receive. As a psychic friend of mine once said, with some amusement (and I paraphrase her somewhat), "Yes to the big dream, and yes to the magic—but I still contribute to my 401K."

Very briefly, the situation I was in when I started to channel was that I was working for a woman who was the Toxic Boss poster girl. I cannot describe how horribly she was behaving toward me (and others) without straining your credulity. In the past, when I have tried to describe what she did to me, I have often encountered strained disbelief: "Nobody could be that bad!" Not only could someone be that bad, but she was being that bad toward me. The nerve.

I had a huge question mark in my mind: "Why? Why was I experiencing this situation?"

I decided to try a left-hand/right-hand exercise. I had read that it is possible to get in touch with one's own deeper, inner wisdom by writing out a question with one's dominant hand, and then writing the "answer" that comes with the other hand. In this case, although I was ambidextrous as a child, I am now mainly right-handed (due to ill-advised teachers who trained me to use only the "right" hand).

So I wrote out a series of questions and received a series of answers to them. Toward the end of the session (which was fairly brief), I became aware that the information was coming from a presence that felt "other" than me. With some trepidation (not sure what the answer would be), I asked who it was, and got back the answer that it was Jesus of Nazareth. Life is strange, and then you wake up. :-)

Since then I have walked a far path and have seen, done, and experienced things that at that time I didn't imagine I would. It has been glorious.

As for the Toxic Wonderwoman, I was able to walk away from the situation very shortly afterward, and have never looked back.

Before I dive into speaking directly of the entities I channel, I would like to provide some background on the kinds of entities that can be channeled. I call them "the usual suspects," in reference of course to the famous movie, Casablanca.

The usual suspects: Who can be channeled?

I have moved the content of this section into its own Web page: The Usual Suspects: Who Can Be Channeled?, in which I discuss the usual types of entities that can be channeled.

I also give some background on the nature of channeling itself in What is channeling?. In that article, I discuss to some degree the vast variability of it all, such that it isn't possible without writing a book to convey the scope of what channeling is. In the end, it can leave a non-psychic or non-channeler feeling a bit mystified. It is, as I state elsewhere, somewhat like trying to describe colors to someone who cannot see them.

As for how many entities can be channeled, that varies. I am about to coin a new word: A polychannel. That's me. It means someone who channels a lot of different entities. (The other types would be a monochannel and a di-, tri-, or quadchannel; after quad- I'd say polychannel covers it.)

I've never reached any limit on how many different entities I can channel, or on how many different entities I can channel at once. (One time, they had fun with me and switched off on every single word. Smart alecks.) I've channeled any level of being from people's parents and grandparents to God and Goddess themselves. And although I haven't channeled The King (Elvis)—yet—I think I even could channel him. One weekend at my brother's house I kept joking about doing it, and Elvis stuff kept coming on the TV, radio, and even on magazines in the types of bookstores where you wouldn't normally expect to see The King. I was never sure if my joking just brought my attention to it, or if I was being tapped on the shoulder to talk with The King. In any case, I felt that channeling Elvis would throw whatever scraps of credibility I might retain (after even claiming to channel at all) right out the window, so I have refrained.

My Sources and how I met them

"My" Sources are a rich and varied group. Starting with Jesus, who was the first entity to contact me, I have been gently and lovingly introduced to a range of entities who have jollied me along a path that, had I been told what lay on it beforehand, I would have strongly resisted. But they led me by gentle degrees, and so I went along with them. Some people claim if you place a frog in a pan of cold water and heat it up gently enough, the frog will never notice the rising temperature and will boil alive. I don't quite believe it. But somehow the analogy seems to apply. :-)

Before proceeding, I would like to say a word about "big name" entities. There is an unfortunate trend in New Age/channeling circles to strive to channel or communicate with the "highest" entity possible; preferably, an entity that is "higher" or somehow "better" than anyone else's. ("Come On In! Celebrity Entities!") Whenever I encounter this, I can hear in my mind the faint strains of a song from a very ancient dog food commercial, the refrain of which goes something like this (sung by some very snooty sounding kids):

My dog's faster than your dog.
My dog's bigger than yours.
My dog's better 'cause he gets Ken-L Ration
My dog's better than yours.

(The smooth voice of a commercial announcer extols the virtues of Ken-L Ration, then the kids chime back in with)

My dog's prettier! Smarter! Taller!
My dog's better than yours!

And then I laugh. I know it might seem hypocritical of me to say this, in light of the fact that I, too, claim to be talking with some Pretty Big Stuff. But I will say that there are some differences:

• First, I don't claim that I am the only one to talk with these guys. That right there is pretty important.
• Secondly, I have no agenda about the "greatness" of "my" Sources versus anyone else's, which shows in my tone of voice when I talk about how I communicate with these guys. Though tone of voice is harder to get in print, it is still possible, and I think that, in reading my accounts, you'll find that I am not trying to make outrageous claims to boost my ego. In fact, I am quite diffident about the whole thing, and even now, after having had these experiences for so long, I still question myself and my role in all this. I mean, why me? Why those particular entities? Who is this, really? Am I really doing anyone any good by sharing this information?
  
  I also question anything that seems to come through as praise for me from the Guys, since I allow for the possibility that I could be inserting messages that aren't there. Anyone could. All of us who communicate this way must take responsibility for being as clear and honest as possible.
• Thirdly, I can laugh at myself. Were I ever to be tempted by New Age "celebrity-itis," I would only need to hear the strains of "My dog's better than yours," and I would be cured right on the spot (no pun intended). As further evidence, I don't use high-falutin' language. (Good God, no!) Some of the New Age language used nowadays makes me want to check my blood sugar. I promise that you will never hear me refer to any of the Sources I speak with as "Lord This" or "Lord High Commissioner TheOther." I simply refuse to take myself that seriously. The energy my Sources's communications possess and the information they are communicating are passport ahd credentials enough.

I am saying this because one correspondent wrote to say that he almost skipped my Web site because, when he saw the names I had on my home page, he thought my site was just another set of big claims and no substance. His intuition told him to give it another chance. He was writing to say he was glad he had stopped and taken a deeper look, because what he found was not the usual New Age fare, but instead information that touched something deep within him. I was flattered and pleased that he found the site of use; I was also alerted to the possiblity that perhaps some people might not stop by because of the Big Names. Hence this small caveat before I proceed to make some admittedly pretty outrageous claims about who I talk with.

Jesus announces himself unexpectedly

My first channeling experience (as described above) was brief, and was accomplished using a left-hand/right-hand technique, as mentioned. When Jesus announced himself, it was to a mixed reaction from me: Skepticism, combined with a deep intuitive sense that this was a true communication. I spent several years doubting that this was he, though at the same time the energy I felt when channeling him (which energy I call an energy signature) felt loving, encompassing, compassionate, and full of intelligence and humor. So I thought, if it isn't him, it is certainly an entity I enjoy.

I noticed early on that when channeling/translating the messages I receive, I sometimes "hear" the Source I am speaking with using "we," while other times I "hear" the singular "I." I once asked Jesus why he and the others fluctuated between "we" and "I" so often; here's his answer (the [material in brackets] adds non-verbal communication from Jesus):

A good question, and I am glad you asked it. Next? [soft laughter] No, more seriously, it is something you have already intuited: we do so because our identity is more fluid than your earth perspective. You have had an experience with this kind of identification, where it is hard to speak in terms of "I" and not "we." Also, sometimes I am speaking for myself, Jesus, and sometimes I am speaking for the group of spirits as a whole. In fact, when I speak for the group, I am in a sense channeling also, so you are a channel channeling a channel. [laughter] Other times, the group beings are "here" and "present", but again only one of us to speak at a time, though we are all in consensus; hence the "we" again. [smile] It was not so simple an answer as you expected, but it does, as you are thinking, make sense. There is of course more to it than that; there always is when speaking of our reality from the perspective of yours! But we have satisfied your curiosity and now you must go. So a fond farewell...

Several years down the path, at my first public channeling, a psychic who was present (a psychic for whom I hold a great deal of respect—she is very good) told me that it was indeed Jesus I was channeling. Though she also told me that I channeled in a way that she had never seen before. In fact, she got quite a thoughtful look in her eyes. Other psychics have since also confirmed for me that the energy they feel is that of Jesus, so I don't question this aspect of my channeling as much as I used to.

A Digression: How I moved from handwritten channeling to public channeling

But how did I get from the handwritten channeling to channeling in public? The early stages of my channeling experiences went something like this:

1. I quickly moved from hand-writing everything to entering my questions using a word processing program (rather appropriately, Microsoft Word). I then waited while answers arrived. (I felt them in my heart.) Then I would type out those answers. The answers were very short. Jesus and the other entities I was channeling urged me to move to using my voice, though I resisted that for several years.
2. At some point during the initial "writing it down" stage, I felt a dramatic shift and started to get longer treatises from the entities. At that time, I was participating in a psychic group I had helped found that I had named The Lighthouse Group. The Lighthouse Group had an online symbol designed by one of the group members that represented a lighthouse: /*\. Our self-assigned practice included choosing a topic, channeling separately on the topic, and then getting together and comparing our channeled information. The results were usually fairly similar. I still have some of those sessions and may post them to this Web site someday.
3. The Lighthouse Group came to an end. Shortly after that, I decided to try an "open mike" night—that is, to try channeling using my voice, though without any assigned topic. The results were that once again, the channeling deepened. At first, the voices were accented, but I decided this was just because I needed some kind of physical way of determining that there was "someone else" and of determining who that someone else was. Not comfortable with the accent, I told the guys (the entities; I call them "the guys") to cut it out and talk normal. So they did. Though they still use some unique terms of phrase, and some of them still come through talking weirdly, much to my embarrassment. For example, one entity is fond of using the word "indeed" in a particular way. Another who came later uses a particular phrase when he "arrives." Several of them use "if you will," which is their shorthand for, "What I am saying is an analogy or a translation from our terminology to yours; take it as such." I call these phrases "signatures." These signature phrases go along with a certain distinct feeling I get with each entity; each entity has his or her own "energy signature" that is as irrevocable and uniquely their own as our fingerprints are our own.
4. Somehow, I fell into channeling publicly. I like it. It always goes well, though I always have severe doubts beforehand (things like, "What if I hold a public channeling and no entities show up?"). I think the doubt is healthy. It keeps me honest.

The remaining parts of this article expand upon more specific aspects of my channeling, including who I channel, how they came to be one of "my" entities (regulars or occasional guest speakers), and a few thoughts on spirit ownership.

I channel myself

Perhaps one of the weirdest experiences I encounter is that occasionally, I find myself channeling myself from another time. Most often, it is in the form of encouragement. This is possible because spirits are not bound by space and time.

Name-dropping: Seth, Buddha, others drop in to visit

Within a few months of the initial contact with Jesus, I started to make contact with other entities as well. Buddha came through once, to which I reacted with a mixture of awe and further embarrassment, because I knew that if I ever claimed to have spoken with Buddha—well, skeptics would have a field day. (He called me "Bright Light, Bright Jewel.") But then, I thought, if I claim to talk with Jesus, what's so different about Budhha? Not much, but I haven't continued that contact as much for some very personal reasons.

One of the other entities that came through, and who still comes through regularly, was Seth. Again, I experienced the usual doubts and anxieties over channeling someone "famous," but his energy was unmistakable—a big, booming presence much of the time, with a touch of jolliness and a relaxed, comfortable feeling. The first time Seth came through, I had been communicating with a famous science fiction writer. Here is how that conversation had started (remember this is some of my very early channeling):

I sense the presence of (writer's name) and I am wondering if he'd like to have a few words with me.

Certainly, my dear Marina. Thank you for the invitation. I don't know if we will take you up on it as some things are still in the air [amusement here].

That was a joke, huh? Want to explain it?

Enticingly. You are in flux and I am in urunu [no translation?]. That is to say, in a form of school here.

More?

Yes, I am excited by it and want to tell more. Say hi to [writer's wife's name] yes hi.

Tell me more of the school. I really can't see myself waltzing up to her... (I was referring to the writer's wife.)

Then you won't. [A sense of a smile here]. A school without walls. [a sensation of intense longing and the name of his wife —like a pressure against my chest longing to get out but finding a wall. This lasted a while, then retreated, faded, became a cooler and more intellectual communication.] [Writer's name] that is is dead. [Writer's name] that will be is alive.

Who am I hearing now?

[Writer's name/not writer's name]. The next incarnation in your terms. A pale shadow of the man. A new being. Contradictions are in your terms only. I am he.

After some more interchange, I said, "I feel like crying all of a sudden."

It is me—a reaction to my emotions. I am sorry for letting them through like that. I miss her.

I thought there weren't supposed to be emotions there [in the afterlife, I meant, or anywhere in the spirit world].

A misunderstanding indeed [an amused interjection—Seth!!].

Say, how many beings are here tonight, anyway?

[a chorus of voices reponds] I am here, beloved sister, to guard over you in your infancy em>[Jesus, where "infancy" refers to my initial channeling efforts]. I am here [Seth]. I am here too! Hey, move aside, guys, it's getting crowded in here [The writer, with amusement>]. We're here in the background/distance [Tom, who called himself "the Trappist monk," a spirit guide who had helped me during a very difficult time in my life, and whom I later came to believe may have been Thomas Merton (who, I found out, was a Trappist monk), plus two other spirit guides who came to me in 1986]. Yes, I am here too [Saint Germaine; very formal guy; I seldome channel him].

As you might imagine, that particular session continued for a while. It was actually quite amusing to me, in a frustrating sort of way, how many entities chose to drop in that night. Seth was, as I said, one of those, as were a number of others. The gist of that evening was that there was a shift happening in my consciousness, and I was opening up to a wider experience of channeling.

An unwanted visitor teaches me a lesson in discernment

Not long after the contact with the writer, I was channeling one evening and started to receive an entity with a Scottish accent. His words sounded fine, but I definitely did not like his energy. I felt slimed, somehow, and just didn't feel comfortable. After a few exchanges, I said (internally), "Unless you have something of importance to say that relates to my life and my life goals, and in particular to my life right now, I ask you to leave so that my teacher can return. Jesus, if this—man—is not supposed to be here, I ask you to boot him out and protect me now and always from unwanted intrusions." This request was immediately followed by impressions of the contact suddenly turning into a pirate, but still with a Scottish accent, being hustled away forcibly, protesting aall the way, held between two strong angels. So then I asked, "What was that all about? Some kind of test?", to which the response was, "Just a learning experience. You need to be focused and specific."

What was meant by that was something I was to come to understand more fully as I moved from typing my channeling (which I was still doing at the time) to voicing it. Channeling is much like walking a tightrope, blindfolded. The thing that helps you stay on the rope is a kind of focus in which you listen and feel with your heart to the what is coming through. It must not only feel right in the sense of being positive, but it must also feel right in the sense of being the entity that one is contacting, and not some other entity.

Working up to the big guys: The Councils come calling

Shortly after I moved from typing my channeling to voicing it, I was contacted by a group that called itself The Council. It later turned out that there are several Councils, two or three of which I contacted. One has nine members and the other has 12 members. Seth is on the Council of 9. Supposedly, I am an incarnation of one of the members of the Council of 12, though since I channeled that information myself, of course I hold that as not necessarily true. (Any channel should always question personal material that comes through.) Each member of the Council of 12 can have a male and a female incarnation, making 24 total, but I was told that at the time I was the only one with a current incarnation.

Intrigued though I was by the Councils and what they had to say, I rather shied away from channeling them because there is a sport in New Age/psychic circles that I prefer not to be involved with. I call it the "better than" sport, because it has to do with competition and jockeying for position. People who engage in this particular sport like to claim that "their" entities are "higher" in some hierarchy than someone else's, and such people get quite good at putting others down in subtle or not-so-subtle ways. Since I have heard others claim to communicate with the Council of 12, and since those same people claim that this is a Very High Council indeed, whom only a select few of the very highest vibrations can communicate with, I rather wish to avoid being associated with people playing the "better than" sport. Of course, I channel God, so that could leave me open to criticism too, but God specifically says he wants everyone to be able to talk with Him, so I figure I am all right there. Which leads us to how I came to talk with God.

God, YHWH, the Supreme Being, the Creator of All Universes, the Big Cheese (I call him Joe)

One day, after having been channeling for a number of years, I was riding in the back of the car (my brother was driving), musing silently to myself about God. I knew others claimed to talk with him, and I confessed to myself a longing to do so as well. So I moved into what I call my channeling space and said internally, in my heart, "God, if you are there, if you exists, and if you are listening, I would like to speak with you. But I am not comfortable with calling you God or the Supreme Being. Is there something else I can call you?" I immediately received a response—a vast sensation, light (as in feeling light, not heavy) and amused, and very, very personal: "You can call me Joe."

This was not some vague mental entity with no heart and no personal awareness that some religions teach. Nor was it some entity on a throne somewhere, detached from reality. It—he—was, in some ways, Reality itself. I later realized that I had channeled him and the Mother Goddess before without knowing who they were. In retrospect, I realize that, in addition to my immediate startled laugh of amusement, I also felt a deep sense of relaxation and relief. God did exist after all, and he wanted to talk with me. With me!

God's response ("You can call me Joe") was a private source of humor for many years after, though I did find it was easier to talk with him and about him as Joe. (More recently, I have grown more comfortable with the God term.) After channeling Joe for a few years, I was about flattened by laughter when, in 1996, I picked up a book in a bookstore titled something like "God Rides A Harley," and in it the author has God (on a Harley) saying, "My friends call me Joe." I guess I know where I stand.

Joe, by the way, likes beer (I don't) and is more comfortable with my body than I am. He makes sure the beer he drinks when I am channeling him doesn't affect me, which is big of him. In earlier channelings, when he took a swig of beer, he would beat his chest, proclaiming, "I am Thor!", and would laugh, though in recent years he has not done this, in part because not everyone can handle a joking, beer-swigging God. (It also caused some people to become confused and think that I wasn't channeling God after all.) Joe also likes to sit back and hear what people have to say to him, but he's very extroverted and does like to talk. He calls me White Star and says that is the closest to my true name that he can get through to me, given my deep resistance to the idea that I am channeling The Big Cheeses themselves anyway, let alone any spiritual identity that may or may not be mine. He says I am still not ready to know my true full spiritual identity, but that I am working up to it. Any time now.

The Mother of Everything

After talking with Joe for a while, I decided to see if there was a female aspect to God. There was. However, the version I contacted at the time was very low key. When I first channeled her, it was interesting to note that she seems to be left-handed; at any rate, I felt like using my left hand mainly to make gestures with when speaking for her. It is almost as though she is an inverse version of Joe: introverted where he is extroverted, left-handed where he is right-handed, quiet where he is boisterous. Yet she is truly the Mother of Everything, including Joe. I didn't channel her much mostly because I felt a stronger connection with Joe, Metatron, and Jesus, but partly because I knew there was something more to her that was hugely powerful and vast that I was not quite ready to channel on a regular basis.

That has started to change, though. In July 2002, many years after that initial experience with the Mother of Everything, I was on my way to a small private group channeling session for whom the channeled entity and even the topic had been left open. Just before I arrived at the location, I asked who I would be channeling, and the answer was Mary, mother of Jesus. I have to admit I was taken aback, as I had never channeled her, and to be asked to channel her for the first time in front of a group—! Well, I was nervous, I can tell you.

When I arrived, my host, who teaches classes in psychic awareness, was interested but not surprised, as he said that Mary has a close connection with him and his work. And despite my nervousness, the channeling went very well. One of the things that came out of it was that Mary and the Mother of Everything are the same entity. In other words, Mary was an incarnation or avatar of the Creator who made us all, whose energy is, from my earthly perpsective, primarily female. Mary, however, isn't so introverted as the Mother that I had channeled many years before. This is due in part I believe to something that Jesus once said, which is that in my channeling, as I become more capable, I am more capable of channeling a wider expression of each entity, and even of channeling a blended version of two or more entities (which I have done many times now). When channeling a wider form of a specific entity, each entity can have both male and female aspects that blend in a natural and wholesome fashion and that come through in the channeling.

As for the Mary channeling, as I call it, I enjoyed it very much and consider it in some ways some of my best work. The host, who has invited me to channel privately for his students before, and who had also seen some of my public channeling, commented on how this session felt different from others he had seen me do.

Other entities: The Green Man and the Green Lady, and Athena

Going back to many years ago, as my channeling adventures progressed, I would sometimes have entities drop in. After my initial experience with the Scottish pirate, I had stated that only entities of the very highest spiritual development and intentions were to be allowed in my energetic space, and that seems to have remained the case except for some unfortunate psychic but non-channeling experiences with a former friend who had "friends" on the spirit level that were Not Nice. Once that friend was out of my life, those experiences stopped too.

Some of the entities who dropped in visited regularly for a while afterwards; others have only shown up once or twice. Some of the longer-term entities included the Green Man and his Lady, both of whom were originally humans living in Britain (Wales, I think). They taught what we might call mystery schools based in part on the teachings of Pythagoras and Jesus, and in part on their own native knowledge and abilities. The timing, as close as I can get it, is during and shortly after the life of Jesus. (Jesus, by the way, has told me a great deal about his life and death, much of it contrary to what most of us have been taught.)

These mystery schools focused on learning what we would call magical abilities and on living closely and in harmony with the earth. Communication with animals was considered a matter of course, as were the abilities to lift large objects (either by making them lighter or by using some kind of sound-related force)—hence Stonehenge and the like. Water was considered absolutely vital, and they had techniques for not only cleansing water, but vitalizing it in such a way that it could revitalize injured or ill humans or animals. Entire streams were vitalized in this manner, starting with their sources, so that any living thing that partook of those waters was renewed and strengthened. Many of the sacred springs and streams that are still visited today were vitalized by these early students of the earth.

When the Green Man and his Lady came close to the end of their natural lifespans, they asked for and were granted the ability to move onto the spirit plane that is quite close to the earth, so that they are still alive and still able to communicate with animals, plants, and those humans who are receptive.

The Green Man and I had a particularly good affinity, and since our initial contact, I have learned that he will send me a deer if he wishes to give me a message. (That is, I will see one or more deer, even in quite unexpected places.) A warning to me is encompassed in deer who have been killed in some way, usually on the highway—when I see that, I drive very carefully. He is also close to one of my brothers.

Note that, although some people think that the Green Man and Pan are the same entities, they are not. This is one of the problems I see in the psychic/New Age/channeling community: There is a tendency to try to link and merge entities from different cultures and different lands together as though they are one and the same entity. They are not. Sananda is not Jesus. Thoth is not Metatron. Pan is not the Green Man. Each entity has his or her own unique gifts and messages, and even though some work closely together, or even may be similar, they are not the same, any more than I am the same as my daughter just because we are similar.

When Athena first came through, I was pretty much resigned to the kind of embarrassment "name" entities have been inflicting on me. I personally did not believe in the Greek pantheon as anything other than myth, but Athena is a real and interesting entity. She explained to me that those entities recorded as "gods" in the Greek mythology are beings who existed both in this dimension and in another at the same time. Many of them left both planes of existence to go somewhere else long ago, but Athena works with Jesus, and so she stayed.

Athena has a lot of information on the earth and on crystals in particular. She is very much like a university professor; she likes to lecture, and she likes to stand and move about while she does. (In contrast, Jesus, Joe, and Metatron don't mind my sitting while I channel them.) She also can access other lifetime information, and is good at creating meditations for changing one's energetic structure. I still talk with her now and then, though I haven't channeled her in a while. She likes to speak to groups, and I haven't done a lot of group channelings (by choice) for a few years.

The Niagara Falls of entities: Metatron shows up

In November, 1996, I sat down with my brother and a psychic friend to do some usual private channeling at home. Immediately, my feet grew numb, and the numbness spread up my legs to above my knees. My brother later told me that I was gripping the arms of my rocking chair until my knuckles went white, though I wasn't aware of that. All I knew was that something big was coming.

The first entity to come through is one who is normally channeled by someone somewhat more famous than me; I can't mention any names as I have been informed rather sternly by a lawyer representing the channeler of that entity that (A) the entity's name is copyrighted and (B) that the particular entity whereof I speak is only channeled by the person most known for channeling him. Since the "authentication" for this fact is the entity speaking through the channeler, and since there is no such thing as a "pure" channeling in which the channeler has no say in what comes through (see my article on Mediumship and the Modern Age, especially the part titled There Can Be Only One?), I find this rather an amusing circular "proof." But I digress. I ceased and desisted.

I have since figured out that this particular entity (whose name I cannot mention) is a gatekeeper—he speaks to people at a certain level of development, to show them the way to a wider world. For me, he usually shows up before some new entity arrives, or before I make a major expansion in my channeling. He keeps things going while the entities adjust my energies so I can bring in the new entity or material. Basically, he keeps up a light patter to keep me from getting nervous, I think.

After what seemed like a very long time, I felt an energy like Niagara Falls flowing (crashing) down into my energy field, and then a booming voice (it felt that way, anyway) announced that he was Metatron, and that He was Here.

At the time, I thought the name Metatron was pretty weird, and I have to confess I still find it an odd name. I had also never heard of him. Since then, though I have researched the name, I have found little about him. He is called the Voice of God, for example, and is considered to be pretty much God's right-hand man. Being. Angel. Entity. Whatever.

Here is a quote about Metatron:

"Metatron was considered by the Kabbalists to be at the crown of the Kabbalah, or Tree of Existence, as the Angel of the Lord. In this role he was said to have given the Kabbalah to humankind. He was considered to be closest to the throne of God. Metatron is also known as the first and last of the Archangels and is variously called that Chancellor of Heaven, the Angel of the Covenant and the King of Angels. ... In ancient lore there were few Angelic functions that Metatron did not cover. The Jewish books talk of his carrying Jewish prayer through 900 heavens till it reached God. He is mentioned in the Kabbalah (the Zohar), the Talmud and in various writings in the Pseudepigapha. Metatron is said in Jewish lore to be the Angel that led the tribes through the wilderness (as Shekinah), and may have been the dark Angel who wrestled with Jacob. Others talk of him as the Angel that stayed the hand of Abraham as he was about to sacrifice his son, and also as the Angel that gave warning of the Flood. In some Jewish literature his name is taken to another form of God, and over 100 synonyms have been found for his name - whose origin itself is very obscure. In some books he is even called the 'lesser Yahweh' ..." ¹

In addition, it is said of Metatron that "In the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, Metatron is considered mightier than either Michael or Gabriel,"² and that he is somehow related to Shekinah, the female principle of God. From the hints that Metatron has given me, I would say that there is some great truth hidden in that statement, though I am not sure what as yet. What I guess from those hints is that Metatron is an aspect of the Mother of Everything—the aspect that was before everything, and that will follow everything. And in the sense that the Mother is the Will and therfore is the only way through which the Father can move, this seems very true. There are some who say that the prophet Enoch became Metatron, but that doesn't seem to match the information I have gotten directly from Metatron himself. It is possible that Enoch was an avatar of Metatron, though even that doesn't feel quite right to me.

Metatron is also associated with a construct called Metatron's Cube³, which, when represented two dimensionally, is also called the Flower of Life. There has been a great deal written about the flower of life⁴, so I won't belabor the topic here, especially as this is a description of my experiences with channeling, and not a general treatise on the state of New Age philosophy today.

The day after channeling Metatron, I was sick as a dog. (My fingers kept wanting to type "sick as a god" here—I had to try five times before I could get them to type it correctly.) Thinking it was food poisoning, I called my brother and my psychic friend to see if they had gotten sick as well, and they had not. My psychic friend said I had just taken in too much energy all at once. Metatron hasn't done that to me again, though he also explained that each time I channel, I expand my capacity to bring through energy and information (which he sees as pretty much the same thing), so that the next time I can bring in even more. And each time, he gives me just a little more than I would normally handle, thus increasing my abilities with each channeling session.

Despite the intense start, Metatron's and my energies are very compatible—so much so that, since that time, he has been my primary entity to channel, even taking precedence over Joe and Jesus. Though Jesus had once told me that another entity/teacher was coming, and that together he and I would learn from that one, and I believe he meant Metatron.

One of the things I have noticed about channeling Metatron (and sometimes Jesus, and always a third entity I channel sometimes, whose identity I have not been given to know yet) is that each of these entities use certain hand gestures when I am deeply into the channeling. Although I was aware of the term "mudras" (meaning hand positions taken by Buddhists while praying and so on), and although I also knew intuitively that these were what I was being led to perform, I didn't look up the meanings until July 2002, when completing this article. I was rather surprised by the results.

The three most common mudras that I take when channeling certain entities are

• The Gesture of Teaching (Dharmacakra Mudra)
• The Gesture of Fearlessness, also called the Gesture of Renunciation (Abhaya Mudra)
• The Gesture of Debate, which is taken when explaining the Buddha’s teachings (Vitaka Mudra) ⁵

Modesty and a very healthy sense of proportion forbid me from speaking at this point about the significance I find in this information.

Metatron and spiritual healing energies

Metatron is highly interested in and skilled at healing. When I perform spiritual healings with Metatron, they seem to "stick." Metatron will choose one significant lifetime that has one or more "core" issues relating to this lifetime, and while conversationally discussing that lifetime, will be working very deeply within a person's spirit to help heal and align lost or weakened energies. It is all done so naturally and gently that many times the people I am working with have no idea that anything happened, beyond noticing a general light sense of well-being. It is only later, as changes unfold in their lives, that they realize the profound depths of the work done on them. I do not consider myself the spiritual healer, but the instrument through which spiritually healing energies come. I do give myself credit for being a good, or possibly even a great, instrument.

A few years ago, Metatron expanded the spiritual healing work we do together to include the use of crystals of various sorts, with some pretty impressive results. These must be done in person, though, since they involve the physical use of crystals on the person.

In 1999, I was part of a year-long public channeling program in Montara, just north of Half Moon Bay on the California coast. I have participated in some online channeling experiments, including The Lighthouse Group on CompuServe in the early 1990s, and have been interviewed as a psychic a few times. Since the end of 1999, my channelings have been mostly for private readings or for private groups, though I may set up a regular public channeling schedule in the North Bay area. Someday.

The dearly departed

One type of entity I hesitate to mention is the group I collectively call The Dearly Departed. This refers, of course, to those who have passed on from this plane of existence, who have joined The Choir Invisible, who have, in a word, died.⁶

Though of course they are not dead. Only the physical seeming of their existence, and even then, not their entire physicality. We each have an energetic body that stays with us throughout all incarnations. It even causes us to (mostly, anyway) look very much like ourselves from one incarnation to another, allowing for variations in gender and race. I have accummulated a great deal of information about the afterlife, and someday plan to write it up and post it here.

The reason I hesitate to mention this is that this particular kind of communication is called mediumship. Not all psychics are mediums, just as not all psychics are channelers. Because the way I experience communications with the dearly departed is very similar to how I communicate with the other beings I've just discussed, I don't think of myself as a medium. Also, although I have gotten some good information on people's beloved friends and family who have gone on, it is not where I want to concentrate my energies, and I don't want to be flooded with requests to contact someone in the afterlife. I am not sure I am the best person for those kinds of contacts anyway, and there are others who are quite willing to do that kind of work.

However, it may be comforting to some to know that those who have died, no matter how "wicked" they may have been, are all treated with love after death. They may experience restrictions, and many have to go to a kind of "school" (sometimes quite a remedial school), but there is no hell, no matter how ernestly some might wish others to go to it.

One very important thing to know is that your thoughts and beliefs about yourself and any possible afterlife will influence what you experience. In some extreme cases, for those who adamantly did not believe in an afterlife or feared the worst for themselves, those spirits stay here on earth and may even attempt to possess the bodies of others. Beware such. A book by Edith Fiore called The Unquiet Dead: A Psychologist Treats Spirit Possession is an excellent overview of such entities and, more importantly, how to deal with them.

In retrospect, maybe I did ask for this

In retrospect, I realized long ago that I probably did, indeed ask to be a channeler. How it happened was like this.

In the early 1980s, I studied astrology with a great deal of skepticism. It was my belief that there was nothing to it, yet in all scientific honesty I felt that I needed to understand it before I could definitely say it was bunk.

Whoo, boy, was I led down the garden path by someone! I think some entity, possibly my larger spiritual self, possibly another, snuck that idea into my mind so I would take a look in greater depth at the phenomenon.

To make a very long story very short, what happened was that I found that I could tell people intimate details of their lives just by looking at their astrological chart, without even having met them in person. And I don't mean general details; I mean things like, "Your father was an alcoholic," and "You have problems with boundaries in your relationships, in that you want to completely possess whoever you are with, and yet you don't want to give anything to them."

So I had to take a long look at my beliefs. I decided that there must be some sort of psychic thing going on (I did believe in psychic abilities), and that somehow the astrological teachings provided a tool that my orderly mind was comfortable with, and that therefore I allowed myself to access my psychic abilities (which I didn't acknowledge very well then) to get this kind of information. Therefore, I reasoned, if that was so, then there must be some more direct way to get that information. I didn't know what it was, but I decided that I wanted to develop it.

In other words, I wanted to develop what I call my "desert island" abilities: If I were to be washed ashore, naked and with no possessions, on a desert island, I wanted to still be able to access this information. So I stopped studying and using astrology so intensively, and returned to reading and thinking about the nature of reality.

Shortly after that decision, I was told by an excellent psychic that I was a natural channel, that I had "an extremely powerful presence" protecting me, and that Jesus wanted me to channel him. All of which I rather scoffed at, I am embarrassed to say.

Eventually, I did start to channel, as described above, and in retrospect, I realized that channeling is a desert island ability par excellence. I still had to deal with skepticism, "why me?" questions, and doubt, just as I had with astrology, but the rewards in terms of how I feel about myself are much greater, because I feel more that this is "me," rather than a tool I am using. And it continues as an adventure to this day.

References

1. Brown, Phillip and Louise Tincombe Brown. "Metatron." Doors of Peace. http://www.belinus.co.uk/doorsofpeace/AngelsMetatron.htm. July 23, 2002. Return to location in text.
2. "Metatron." Angelic Artistry. 1999. http://www.angelicartistry.com/metatron.htm. Return to location in text.
3. Allocca, Rev. John A. "Metatron's Cube." Starlight Spiritual Connection. http://www.starlightspiritual.com/metatron.htm. July 23, 2002. Return to location in text.
4. Flower of Life Research. http://www.floweroflife.org/. November 19, 2002. Return to location in text.
5. Buddha Dharma Education Association Inc. "Buddhist Art and Architecture: Hand Mudras." http://www.buddhanet.net/mudras.htm. July 24, 2002. Return to location in text.
6. Here, I am making reference to the (in)famous Monty Python Parrot Sketch, which goes something like this: A man comes into a pet shop to complain that he's been sold a dead parrot. The proprietor insists that the parrot is in a variety of not-dead states. Finally, the parrot purchaser lets loose: "It's not pinin,' it's passed on. This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late parrot. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn't nailed him to the perch he would be pushing up the daisies. Its metabolical processes are of interest only to historians. It's hopped the twig. It's shuffled off this mortal coil. It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This.... is an EX-PARROT!" The sketch is really quite funny.
   
   To which I might add that the reference to the "choir invisible" comes at least in part from an 1874 poem by George Eliot (Marian Evans) titled "The Choir Invisible," which starts out like this:

   Oh, may I join the choir invisible
   Of those immortal dead who live again
   In minds made better by their presence; ...
   

   Return to location in text.