So why bother channeling? What's the point?

You may be thinking, "this is all very interesting, but so what? Why bother? What's the use in channeling anyway?" Aside from the idea that much of the information coming through is pretty interesting, the tendency is to think that it is information we can live without, especially since there doesn't seem to be any way to test or confirm the information.

But what if that information is useful after all, perhaps in ways that aren't obvious?

Here's another analogy: Let's say that your bed is analogous to the first dimension, your bedroom is the second dimension, your house the third dimension, your neighborhood the fourth, and so on. When you wake in the morning, you exist in the first dimension. While you are there, you only know what is taking place in bed. (Pretending that you can't see your room--perhaps you have a canopy bed with curtains.) As soon as you draw your bed curtains aside and step out of bed into the second dimension (your bedroom), you have a wider and different perspective on your bed (the first dimension). The bed is still in your scope of experience, yet you are experiencing it from a different vantage point, and you now see the context within which it lies (the second dimension, aka your bedroom).

You can see, for example, that your bed rests upon a floor, of whose existence you had no clue. This raises a large number of questions in itself. What is a floor? Who built it? How is it holding your bed up? And so on. You can also see that your bed is contained within a greater reality, yet that reality has walls and a ceiling (as well as the floor). More questions result. Who made all of this? Did anyone make it? Is this all there is? Is there something greater within which this room is contained, just as my bed is contained within this room? What is a wall? What is the nature of a wall? Are there other walls? Are all walls made the same? And so on.

When you step out into the hallway and realize that your room is contained within an even greater context, you get some answers but more questions. You now see that there are different kinds of walls, for example, and floors, too, yet the ceiling seems to be the same. Is there only one kind of ceiling but many walls? If there are many walls, how many are there?

When you get outside, your reality really opens up, and again you have more answers yet many more questions. You will also have grown in ability in that you had to stretch yourself to reach into these greater realities, and you had to learn new skills in dealing with these new realities. Although many of the skills are based in what you learned within your bed, you have also learned new skills as well.

For example, while lying in your bed, you didn't need to use your legs much, and when you did, it wasn't for walking. You may even have wondered what legs were good for. As soon as you stepped outside the bed's protective coverings, you quickly found out what legs were good for, yet you had had no conception of walking before. And once you got outside and discovered, for instance, that legs are very useful for driving (though not essential), you found you were very far beyond what you had ever imagined you would be doing with your body.

Now imagine trying to talk with someone who is still sitting in their bed. How would you explain what you are experiencing to them? How do you tell them that you are walking, or what pleasure it brings to you to walk? How do you describe the world you are in to someone who has never been outside?

Generally, what you would try to do is use analogies, such as comparing the sky to the canopy over the bed, and the good green earth you are walking on to the bed's mattress. Many times, however, you would find yourself unable to completely convey the reality of what you are experiencing, though if you are good at what you do, you may be able to convey enough that the person in his or her bed is willing to at least take a peek out into their room, and so start their own journey into a greater reality.

And ask yourself this: What apparent relevance would information about what a car is, let alone how to drive it, hold for someone who is still in that bed? You may try to tell them that their legs will be used in ways they have never imagined, but the greater reality is still so far removed from the reality of existence in the bed that you find it impossible at times to convey even a taste of what the greater reality is like.

You know your friend in that bed is going to think that much, if not all, of what you are saying is irrelevant and possibly even crazy. Yet you know from your greater perspective that when they come out into the greater, more expanded reality that you exist within, this information will be useful in many ways. When in a world that has cars, you need to know how to avoid the dangers they pose as well as to take advantage of their benefits they offer. If you come forth into the world that contains cars completely naive of any information on that topic, you will be at a disadvantage. Granted, it is easier to come up to speed on cars than on, say, other things, but the analogy is a pretty good one.

The point here is that much of the information coming through in a channeling session (at least, in the kinds of channeling sessions I hold) has global significance and is preparing those who are present (or who get to read the transcripts) for a greater reality. Not even I, the channeler, am always able to grasp the significance of what is coming through, and sometimes it seems that the information is arbitrarily simple or irrelevant. Yet many times I have later gasped at the stunningly perfect complexity and interrelatedness of something I received while channeling, where a piece falls into place and what formerly seemed chaos is now a perfect design. Other times I have had to continue to take information on faith, hoping that someday it will make sense.

Which I don't always do. I talk back to the entities I channel, I argue with them, I get stubborn and insist on getting something that is of apparent value today. I always get what I ask for, though sometimes not in the form or in the time frame I asked to receive it within.

(The communication flow is easier from the channeler to the entity being channeled, because the entity is within a matrix that encompasses the matrix within which the channeler exists. Someone who has already lived in that bed and has now moved on will understand the experiences of the person still living in the bed; the reverse is not necessarily true, unless the person living in the bed has actually returned to the bed from a greater reality and has retained that information to a greater degree than most of us have. But that is getting way beyond the scope of this essay; I'll address it another time.)

So if you believe in a greater reality or even in a reality that makes sense, has meaning, has interrelatedness; if, (as Jung and his followers are fond of saying), you believe there is no such thing as a coincidence, then channeling can hold a lot of charm and value. Myself, I have an immense amount of sheer curiosity, so even if the information isn't necessarily or obviously applicable in a practical way, I enjoy receiving it.

It also just plain feels good to channel, and seems to do no harm but instead accomplishes much good in my life and in the lives of those I channel for, all of which seem as good reasons to do it as any of the others.

So, you're saying you talk with dead guys?

Since I believe it is impossible to destroy a spirit, it is a contradiction in terms to refer to those spirits as "dead guys," though I have been known to do so both out of my own sense of humor and to make things easier for those around me. However, not all the entities I channel have inhabited bodies from which they could have died out of, so this term is loose at best. But yes, in the loosest sense, a channeler speaks with dead guys.

This isn't to say that those dead guys are any more enlightened or able to speak to the human condition than I am. If you aren't careful, the "dead guy" you are channeling could be Fred, the Garage mechanic, who just died and is having you on for a lark. Watch for those automotive analogies. :-)

To be more specific about who you can speak with if you are a channeler, I'd have to say that the field is wide open--with some caveats. From my own experiences and deductions and information from my own channeled sources (the "dead guys"), who you are has a great deal to do with who you channel.