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Channeling Spirit Guides

By Bob Makransky

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Choose a time when you are relaxed, alert, calm, and will not be interrupted. If you are into astrology, you can use a lunar planetary hour; however this is merely a help, not a necessity. Lie down or sit, as you prefer, with a pen and notebook in hand (although channeling can also be done on a typewriter or word processor). Writing down both your questions and the replies as they come in the form of a dialogue, ask your guides to please talk to you. For example, you might start this way:

Me: “My spirit guides, could you please come and talk to me? I am really trying to be open right now, and I want to hear what you have to say to me. I have this problem that I need an answer to; won’t you please come and talk to me about it. Etc. etc.”

This is just an example – you should ask your guides to talk to you using your own words and sentiments. Keep writing, keep on coaxing them, until you begin to feel an answer forming in your mind, and then write it down. The trick to making this work is to not stop writing. That’s the purpose of the writing – to focus your attention on the act of writing, like when you’re taking notes in a classroom, so that there’s less room for doubt, hesitation, fear, etc. Keep on writing, even if you’re just writing the same plea over and over again. Do make it heartfelt – not just done mechanically – and eventually you’ll start getting an answer. It really is so simple and straightforward you won’t believe it – “Look, ma, I’m channeling!”.

Note that when a person channels for the first time, the answers tend to come out sort of inchoate and constipated. Don’t worry – just push it right on out and don’t worry about whether it makes sense or not. Usually in automatic writing a few words or phrases spring into your mind at a time, a little faster than you can write them down, though sometimes you might get whole blocks or paragraphs at once. You might also see memory pictures pop up before your mind’s eye, or get flashes of dream-like scenes as you write. Record all of this because it’s all relevant. Something might not make sense at the moment, but it will eventually if you keep a written record of it.

If nothing comes to mind in response to your entreaties; or if all that comes to mind is gibberish; then you are blocking. Your conscious mind might say, “This isn’t working. I’m not doing it right.” or “There must be some trick to this!” in its effort to subvert the process. Don’t fall for that ploy! Keep trying, keep on writing, even if all you get is gibberish. Only trust can open you enough to write automatically; otherwise you tangle yourself with doubt. Doubt is the enemy of all magic, and it can completely tear down automatic writing at the outset. Faith is the key to success here, as elsewhere, and a strong curiosity is a valuable asset as well. Bear in mind that your spirit guides will be thrilled to open this channel of communication with you, and they will do everything they can, from their side, to assist you. . If you find yourself blocking, try switching to your non-dominant hand. Keep on writing, and at some moment your conscious mind will relax its grip and you’ll start writing automatically. Then, simply write down what your spirit guides tell you, asking any questions you like along the way.

Ask your guides what their names are, and if they have specific messages for you. Some people “see” their spirit guides in their mind’s eye; though I’ve never seen my guides in this manner, I have met them in dreams. In automatic writing (as opposed to trance channeling) there is a lot of medium thrown in with the message. One of my spirit guides is also channeled by several other people, and while you can tell that it’s the same entity coming through, she sounds different through each of us. For one thing, she speaks in English to those whose native language is English, and in Spanish to those of Spanish tongue. Beyond that, her diction, outlook, interests, etc. mirror those of the person channeling her. What is invariant from channel to channel is her feeling – the sense of her presence – and the tenor and direction of her thinking. But her relationships with her various channels are as diverse as the channels are.

It’s difficult to generalize about spirit guides – each is different, as people are different. They will speak to us in a manner we are capable of understanding: they address us according to where we are coming from, in terms we are capable of receiving. If there’s something we just don’t want to hear, it’s easy enough to block it, just as we tend to block out what we don’t want to hear from other people. Sometimes my own guides have had to wait until I was in a particularly relaxed or unguarded frame of mind to sock something to me that I didn’t want to hear. And at times I’ve remonstrated, “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”; to which their usual rejoinder is, “We were telling you all along, but you refused to listen!”

Once you’ve got the technique of automatic writing down pat, you can use it to channel any spirits, not just your personal guides. This means nature spirits, recently deceased people, even Jesus, Mary, Krishna, Buddha, saints, etc. God can’t be channeled this way, however, because God doesn’t “talk”. If you get a message purporting to come from God, it’s some wise-guy spirit putting you on. Automatic writing can also be used as part of Active Imagination (a technique devised by Carl Jung for conversing with your own thought forms – see my book Thought Forms for details).

You may wonder how you can tell if you’re channeling evil spirits. All I can say is that all of the evil spirits which I’ve run across in my channeling made no bones about who they were or what they were up to. Evil spirits seek willing accomplices – they need a decision on your part to commit evil, they can’t trick you against your will. However, they can come up with some pretty tempting offers sometimes. I would say, though, that if the messages you are channeling are full of fulsome praise at how marvelous you are, and pity at how misunderstood you are, and how much you have to suffer, then probably you’re channeling demons. Real spirit guides will buck you up when you are feeling low; but they’ll also kick you in the butt if you indulge in self-pity. Their actual goal is to get you to a place where you have your own true feelings working, so that you don’t need them anymore.

Okay, now you’re a professional, dyed-in-the-wool spirit channel, ready to hang out your shingle and charge for readings. Now what?

Generally speaking, spirit guides are useless for calling horse races, lottery numbers, or even for predicting the outcome of specific events. If prediction is what you want, it’s better to use horary astrology, tarot, etc. than to ask of your guides. My experience is that spirit guides can predict the outcome of certain events when they volunteer the information; but they can’t or won’t predict outcomes merely at our behest. This is because spirit guides look at things very differently from us; they’re on another wavelength, and the things which are of crucial importance to us are not of consequence to them. Spirits don’t give a hang about what we call the “future”, and they regard our obsession with it as an odd peculiarity of our species, scarcely worthy of serious notice. On the other hand, things that spirits believe should be simple for us (such as dropping lifelong habits, addictions, fears, etc. as a simple act of will) in fact present insuperable difficulties which spirits can’t really appreciate. Even spirits who have had human incarnations tend to forget what it’s like down here. Things just aren’t as simple as they try to make them seem, because they don’t have to deal with doubt, fear, inertia, temptation, taxes, etc.

Nor are spirit guides capable of pulling our chestnuts out of the fire for us, saving our skins, or changing the outward circumstances of our lives. There are spirits which can assist us with the concrete problems of our lives to some extent, but spirit guides are basically advisors, not employees.

Spirit guides can’t live our lives for us; they can’t feel our feelings for us, can’t absorb or deflect our pain for us, can’t resolve our problems for us, and can’t find our happiness for us. All they can do is show us how to take responsibility for doing these things ourselves.

(excerpted from Bob Makransky’s book Magical Living)

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