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This article is provided by kind permission
of Bob Makransky. This article MAY NOT BE REPRODUCED without the
permission of the author.
Channeling Spirit Guides
By Bob Makransky
page 1 of 3 | page 2
Glendower: “I can call spirits from the vasty deep.”
Hotspur: “Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?”
– Henry IV, Part I
Like that character from Moliere who was delighted to learn that
he’d been speaking prose all along and never knew it, each
and every one of us is channeling all the time; and the only difference
between ”professional” psychics and mediums and the
rest of us is that the psychics are aware of what they’re
doing – they make a special point of (call special attention
to) a completely natural process that everybody already knows how
to do. Everyone has spirit guides who talk to them constantly; however,
most people don’t listen to these messages, any more than
they listen to what other people, such as their parents, spouse,
or children, are trying to tell them. When a thought or feeling
prompted by a spirit guide pops up in their consciousness, they
just pass over it or reject it. In this essay we will discuss thought
forms, spirit guides, and other beings which can be channeled, together
with a simple technique for consciously channeling them.
In order to get an idea of what spirits are, it is first necessary
to get a handle on what we are. Contrary to popular opinion, we
are not solid, abiding objects that have individual self-existence.
Although it certainly appears that the world is “real”
and consists of solid, discrete objects, in fact our world is more
like a movie screen, hooked up to other people’s movie screens,
on which we’re all projecting what we’re feeling inside
outwards as symbols – solid objects in a physical world.
To ask Heidegger’s question, “Why are there things
rather than nothing?” is like asking, “Why can’t
soccer players use their hands? Why did God so construct the universe
that soccer players can’t use their hands?” In the same
way, our perception of the universe as a world of solid, discrete
objects is a wholly man-made restriction on our senses. Plants and
animals don’t perceive the world in this fashion, and neither,
for that matter, do infants and lunatics. They still use their “hands”
(their feelings rather than their minds) to play the game of perception.
As a result, they don’t “play soccer” very well,
but they still have the free use of their hands –their intuition
– which most people have learned to repress. The belief that
we are discrete entities in a world of solid objects is just that
– a belief – that makes the world of concepts, of thinking,
possible.
Admittedly, the belief that we are discrete, abiding entities in
a world of solid objects certainly seems to be true most of the
time we are awake – it’s a pretty convincing belief.
But that’s only because we have the door tightly shut on any
evidence that contradicts this belief. That door is called “fear
of going crazy or of being thought crazy.” Keeping our sanity
is equivalent to screening out lots of information about ourselves
and the world around us which would be available if we could just
loosen up a bit and drop the pretense that we exist as solid objects.
In fact, our existence is multidimensional. We not only exist
in an infinite number of past and future lives, but we are also
infinitely ramified in all the probable realities which branch off
from this present lifetime. Every time we make a decision –
big or little – we create a probable reality in which that
decision was made, and another or other probable realities in which
that decision wasn’t made. For example, that person whom you
wistfully smiled at from afar once but never spoke to nor saw again,
is your spouse in another probable reality in which you did go over
and strike up a conversation.
Thus, not only does the totality of who “we” are encompass
infinite lifetimes in other worlds and realities, it also encompasses
infinite probable realities within this present lifetime as well
as all those others. Not only that, but within the confines of a
single probable reality of a single lifetime, which is all we normally
pay attention to or consider to be “ourselves”, we are
still multiple personalities. That is to say, we are not the same
person from moment to moment, but in fact shift from one to another
subpersonalities or thought forms in response to this or that changing
stimulus. The only difference between an Eve, Sybil, or Truddi and
the rest of us is that their slips are showing: they’re acting
out the multiple personality role openly, whereas the rest of us
are marching around with our dress uniforms – our fear of
going crazy – buttoned down tight.
Most of what we consider to be “ourselves” –
that is, the thoughts, feelings and perceptions which occupy our
conscious minds most of the time we are awake; our sense that there
is a continuing “us” there – is just a collection
of habits and predilections learned from our parents and society.
Each of our habitual thoughts, moods, beliefs, etc. is a thought
form – a learned behavior which is a being in its own right.
Most of what we think we think, believe, or perceive is actually
just what our parents and society think, believe, or perceive; and
these thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions have an awareness, a sense
of selfhood, and a will to live all their own. We create them with
our decisions and we breathe the breath of life into them with our
attention.
Basically, every time we think a thought we are channeling a thought
form. However, this is an unskillful way of channeling because it’s
mindless. Thought forms grab our attention and say, “Think
this! Think that! Think the other! In response to this, do that!
Remember this! Desire that! Blah blah blah!” all day long
every day. Thought forms are our automatic pilot – although
we ourselves create them, we are subject to their control thereafter.
We go along and just think whatever our thought forms want us to
think. It rarely occurs to us to stop and ask, “Why? Why am
I thinking this thought? Is entertaining this thought going to benefit
me? From whence does this thought arise? At what point in my life
did I first begin entertaining this thought? When did I make it
a part of my inventory of habitual thoughts? Etc.”
To ask these sorts of questions (and pay attention to the answers)
is called Active Imagination, and it is a more functional form of
channeling thought forms than is normal thinking. In Active Imagination
we interact with our thought forms, whereas in normal thinking we
just snap to and salute whenever a thought form barks a command
at us. Active Imagination is facilitated by automatic writing (which
we shall learn how to do presently); i.e. automatic writing is a
refinement of the technique of Active Imagination, but it’s
by no means the only way to do it. Thoughtful, introspective people
are doing Active Imagination all the time without calling it that
or giving any special attention to it; but, in fact, Active Imagination
is a wholly different form of channeling thought forms than is normal
thinking.
So thought forms – habitual patterns of thought picked up
from our parents and society – account for most of what we
consider “our” thoughts and feelings; and spirits –
both good and evil – account for most of what’s left.
The chief difference between thought forms and spirits is that thought
forms are within us, created by us, a part of us; whereas spirits
are outside of us. When we channel (e.g. by automatic writing) we
run across a whole menagerie of entities – both thought forms
and different kinds of spirits – so it’s helpful to
know the differences between these various kinds of beings.
Next
(excerpted from Bob Makransky’s
book Magical Living)
More of Bob Makransky’s
articles are posted at: www.dearbrutus.com
To subscribe to Bob Makransky’s free monthly Astro-Magical
e-zine, send an e-mail to:
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