6 - After Channelling: The Way Ahead

Channels Reaching To These Realms
Are Opening Doorways All Over The Planet.

(Ortan)

Well, you've done it - you've channelled a guide! How are you feeling? At this point it is quite normal for doubts to arise. People often say, 'Is this real? ... I'm not sure if I was really channelling. ... I'm making it all up - it's really only me.'

Doubts

All these doubts are part of the channelling process. When you are in the channelling space with your guide, the answers to questions look so obvious that it can be difficult to believe that it is not you just pretending to channel. But remember that doubts are your friends - they show that you have a questioning mind. You are not just going to accept everything that you are told - you ask questions, you wonder, you test. Your guide will not be offended that you are doing this; quite the reverse. Ortan always stresses that those who doubt often make the very best channels. It is a sign of intelligence and, above all, of an ability to discern what is high and good and what is not.

It is also helpful when working with doubts to think about how the guide accesses your brain and all the things you know. Guides are always very efficient in the way they bring information to you, so if the answer to a question can be found easily on the earth plane they may just tell you to read a book, attend a class or talk to a certain person. But they may not do so directly.

For instance, if you have read a particular book and you suddenly remember a passage from it when you ask the guide a question, why do you think that happened? The answer is that it is a form of matching - the guide's transmissions are matching that information in your brain, and you then access that information as the correct answer to the question you have asked. Similarly, people often say that their guide's answers utilize their own past experiences and learning. Of course they do! The answer is already there and the guide is merely pointing it out to you.

Many channels look for confirmation that the information they have received is indeed from a guide and not just from their own mind, but it can be very difficult to provide confirmation easily and in a way that a doubting person will accept if they don't want to. However, confirmation will be given. Stay open, and don't expect it necessarily to come in the way that you expect.

Over the years that I have worked with Ortan he has often given me confirmation, which I have greatly appreciated. Ask your guide to help - guides are very clever at providing confirmation in a way that is special to you and that you will understand.

Sometimes, during a reading, Ortan will use a term that is known only to the person asking the questions. For instance, when one woman came for a reading he referred to her friend as 'that lovely lady', which is her private pet name. Often he pinpoints a physical symptom that the client is currently experiencing. Another woman had a problem with her knee which she had not mentioned and which was not obvious in any way, yet Ortan spoke about it. He frequently does this kind of thing at the beginning of a reading, presumably to reassure people and put them at ease.

Assessing Channels

You may also be interested in assessing whether someone else is really channelling. Many of our students have asked how they can tell if someone else is channelling a high-level guide, or if the things that they themselves are being told through their own thoughts are actually from a high-level guide. Here are some ways to do so.

High-Level Guides Don't Flatter You

True high-level guides don't flatter you; astral entities do. Astral-level entities will build up your ego whenever they can. High-level guides will certainly congratulate you on your successes, but that is all.

David Furlong, a very respected healer and teacher, made some interesting comments in a piece published in the spring 1998 issue of Kindred Spirit magazine:

Another subtle hook is that of ego inflation. We all like to think that we are serving a 'higher cause'. Over the years I have heard many exaggerated claims made by individuals in certain groups that they were very special, an elite organization, working for the salvation of the planet in a way that only they could fulfil.

Let me emphatically state that anyone who has the love of God in their heart that is expressed openly and freely is a special person with an important mission to fulfil. ... Take care not to be taken in by such enticements, for curbing the ego is one of the first steps of spiritual development.

Into this category I would also place those teachers, whether incarnate or in channelled form, who claim that they were a great named person from the past ('In my former life as King Solomon ...'). Underlying all these statements is fear, for if the teaching or message is right it will stand on its own merit.

It should not require the prop of some past association, however seemingly significant. As the Buddha stated, we should accept things, not just because they come from a sage or a famous person, but when they accord with what lies within our own heart.

High-Level Guides Don't Try To Control You

High-level guides make suggestions about things you might do and offer alternatives, maybe even giving a perspective you hadn't thought of. But they don't order you to do things or seek to control you. Guides always let you know that it is a free-will universe and all the choices are ultimately your own.

High-Level Guides Encourage You To Do What Strengthens And Empowers You

Guides try to encourage you to be independent, not dependent. Above all else they are oriented to your growth. Sometimes you need to make mistakes in order to learn, but guides will not criticize you for that. Instead, they will encourage you to learn the lesson and move on.

High-Level Guides Don't Try To Make You Feel Guilty

Guides don't try to make you feel bad about your actions; instead they will point out in the kindest and gentlest possible way where you could do better. They certainly will not take a position of suggesting that they are 'better' than you or more important than you. They don't claim to be the ultimate authority - they know that they are not.

High-Level Guides Are Loving And Kind And Don't Try To Frighten You

Be concerned if a guide's messages appear frightening. Fear is a tool of lower-level entities and not of high-level guides.

Practise Makes Perfect

Once you have made a connection with your guide, the most important thing is to practise channelling. Whether you are channelling verbally, or writing or healing or painting, does not matter - the connection will be strengthened and enhanced by being made repeatedly.

The more you channel, the easier it becomes. It is rather like learning a new form of exercise: the more you use the muscles, the stronger and better developed they become and the easier it is to do the exercises.
When people ask how often they should channel, I always tell them to do so as frequently as they can remember to do it. Talk to your guide in your mind and ask for help in your life. Your guide is always there, waiting to assist you and to make the connection with you.

Grounding

Sometimes when you come back from meditation or from the channelling space you might feel less able than usual to handle the physical world. For example, you may be slightly more clumsy than normal or unable to concentrate. If this is the case, you probably need to pay more attention to grounding.

Grounding centres and realigns your energy, connecting you back to base. Here are a number of techniques to choose from.

1. Have a cup of tea or other hot drink and a biscuit or something sweet. Hot food is an excellent way to ground yourself.

2. Take some form of physical exercise, like walking or jogging-

3. Hug a tree or connect with nature in your own way. Try placing the palms of your hands flat on the ground and feeling your energy merging with that of the earth.

4. Visualize a ray of light going down into the earth from your base chakra at the bottom of your spine. Feel the connection being made. It can help if you visualize a crystal in the centre of the planet into which you are connecting. Feel the light going into the crystal and back out again to you.

5. Hold a grounding crystal, like obsidian or haematite, in your hand and ask for assistance from it.

6. If you have your hands palm upwards during meditation, reverse the position so that your palms are resting on your legs, facing down. When the palms are facing upwards you are more open to energy; when they face down you are closing down your receptiveness and thus orienting yourself back to the everyday world. Try different ways of positioning your hands -it makes a difference.

7. Stamp your feet and walk about the room, breathing deeply.

Making Changes In Your Life

As you develop as a channel it brings changes to you and to your life. As Ortan has pointed out, this is not always a welcome development. Channelling opens you up to compassion and love and, of course, to changes at the most basic level. If you decide to become a channel as part of your spiritual growth, you need to be ready to make changes at all levels in your life.

These changes may happen in spite of yourself. When you channel you become open to a much wider view: your guide's energy connection will expand your ability to be conscious at an increasing number of levels - physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Like all energy work, channelling is a form of surrender to growth. Some people find this too much and close down again. The changes needed in their lives are too challenging or too frightening, or they feel that they aren't ready.

Channelling can be part of your spiritual growth if you choose it. One student wrote this to let me know about the changes that were taking place for him after taking an Opening to Channel class: 'The course I took with you almost a year ago has certainly changed my life, and my path of growth is racing towards me at full speed and taking no prisoners. Various events have led to me losing my job and I've been plunged into a survival crisis, which is quite scary but somehow feels right for me. The same compelling forces that brought me to your Opening to Channel class are busy rearranging a new life for me, and where there was once restriction there are now unlimited opportunities.'

This is a very typical experience when you decide to channel: at one level there is fear and at another tremendous excitement at taking this opportunity for growth. By connecting with the higher realms consciously you move towards tremendous changes, especially in the area of the ego. Our egos try so hard to be in control, but channelling well requires complete abnegation of the ego. This is why very egotistical people don't make good channels - they just can't stay out of the way enough to be a clear channel.

But when you channel you are able to find out who you really are and why you are here - you constantly discover more about your higher purpose, your soul and your own unique path of growth. As you channel and open to love and light in your life, you create a wonderful flowing energy within you. This flow is the natural state for all healthy beings.

It is this inflow of energy and light that brings about the changes you encounter when you become a channel. You can stop the process by closing down - by just stopping all contact with guides and their energy - and gradually things will go back to the way they were. It is difficult to see why you would want to do that, though, once you have experienced the way in which higher beings operate and once you realize that you too have the possibility of being, like them, clear and happy, kind and fulfilled.