What Is Channeling?

Channeling is the practice of receiving communication from a level of consciousness beyond the everyday self, and giving it form in words, sound or image. It is how the transmissions in this library were received. It is also a natural human ability, and one that can be learned.

What Channeling Is

Every person has had the experience of a thought that did not seem to be their own: a sudden knowing, a line of a poem arriving whole, a calm voice in an emergency saying exactly what to do. Channeling is the deliberate cultivation of that experience. The channel quiets the surface mind, raises their frequency, invites a particular source to communicate, and then allows what comes to pass through without interference.

The essential skill is a shift from doing to being. In ordinary life the mind is busy producing thoughts. In channeling it becomes still and receptive, like a pool that can reflect the sky only when the wind drops. Many channels describe the feeling as allowance, or surrender. Nothing is forced. Something is permitted.

What comes through is shaped by the one receiving it. A transmission arrives as a current of meaning and feeling, and the channel's own mind supplies the vocabulary. For this reason no channel is a perfect instrument, and every transmission should be weighed by the reader. We say more about this under Discernment and Protection.

Forms of Channeling

• Conscious channeling. The channel remains fully aware and simply speaks or writes what they receive. This is the most common form, the safest, and the one used in our circle.
• Inspired writing. The channel writes rapidly, without planning, and reads afterward what has been written. Many people begin here.
• Inner dialogue. A silent conversation in meditation, question and answer, recorded afterward.
• The language of light. Spontaneous sound, song or movement that carries feeling and frequency without ordinary words.
• Channeled art and music. Images and melodies received and set down. The Venusian Council communicates readily in this way.
• Deep trance. The channel's awareness withdraws and another speaks through them. This is rare, it is demanding, and it is not something we practice or recommend.

Who Is Being Channeled?

The first and most important source is your own Higher Self, the part of you that has never forgotten who you are. All genuine channeling passes through it. A person who has learned to hear their Higher Self clearly has learned the whole of the art, and what follows is a widening of acquaintance.

Beyond the Higher Self are the helpers described throughout this library: personal guides, the Archangels, the Ascended Masters, and councils such as the Venusian Council of Light. Each has a recognizable quality. Archangel Michael is brief and strong. Kuthumi is gentle and often amused. The Council speaks as we, in long and courteous sentences. With practice these differences become as plain as the voices of friends on the telephone.

Can Anyone Learn to Channel?

Yes. Channeling is a capacity of the human being, like singing. Not everyone will perform in public, and there are great natural differences of aptitude. But everyone has a voice, and everyone can learn to carry a tune.

The beings of light say that they are speaking to all of us, all of the time. What varies is our ability to be quiet enough to hear. That ability responds to practice. A step-by-step method is given in Learning to Channel.

Five Misunderstandings

• That you must be born with a gift. Some people begin with more natural sensitivity. Steady practice counts for far more.
• That you lose control. In conscious channeling you are present throughout and can stop at any moment. You are a participant, never a puppet.
• That a channeled message is infallible. It is not. It has passed through a human mind. The beings themselves insist that nothing they say be accepted without testing.
• That the beings will run your life. They will not tell you whom to marry or where to invest. They illuminate, and they leave the choosing to you.
• That channeling is for predicting the future. Its purpose is to help you live the present more wisely and more lovingly. A source that deals in predictions should be treated with caution.

How Transmissions Are Received in Our Circle

It may be useful to describe exactly how the material on this site comes about. Our circle meets each Thursday evening. We begin by calling on Archangel Michael for protection, and then sit for fifteen minutes in the silence of the heart. We state aloud the being we are inviting. One of our three channels then speaks what they receive, in full waking awareness, while a scribe records it.

Afterward the recording is transcribed and read back to the whole circle. We ask three questions of it. Is it loving? Is it free of fear, flattery and command? Does it agree in spirit with what the same being has said before? Only what passes all three is published, and it is published as received, with corrections limited to punctuation. Over the years a good deal has been set aside.

Questions People Ask