Five Temptations for Channels to Avoid --by Carla L. Rueckert Author of A Channeling Handbook

In 1975, I had a student I'll call Millie. She was an intensely intellectual, likeable sort of woman, approaching 30 but prematurely middle-aged and dressed in that manner-and extremely swayed by whatever she was experiencing at the moment.

Every time our L/L Research doors were open, there was Millie. As I do with all my students from the beginning, I scrupulously counseled Millie to avoid any thought of learning channeling on her own. This is not a pursuit to be undertaken in solitude. When she began to try anyway, I kept advising her against it, but she interpreted my warnings as insults and thought I was trying to "corner the market" by doing all the channeling myself.

Millie received information almost immediately. Unfortunately, she became one of three different "Virgin Marys" I have known who each channeled that she was destined to bear the Christ Child and be his mother for his second Earthly pilgrimage in 2,000 years!

Later, Millie called me in a state of nervous excitement to say that a presidential candidate was about to board an airplane that would crash, killing him. She wanted me to call the psychic Jeane Dixon (whom I didn't know) so that she could warn the man. I tried to explain why I wasn't going to fulfill her request, but Millie didn't understand me and rang off, convinced that I had turned against her.

Not very long afterwards, a Catholic priest called to tell us that Millie had sought sanctuary in his church because she thought she was being attacked by Satanic forces. She believed that both her mother and father were possessed and did not trust anyone except us. The priest asked if we could come get her, because she'd had nothing to eat for days and, for the 48 hours she had spent in his church, had refused even water.

Reluctantly, we brought Millie home and tried to feed her a light meal. It was after midnight, but she was too tense even to lie down. When she suggested that she relax, she accused us of trying to control her mind and, before we could stop her, ran from the apartment. We went after her, but we lived close to a park with many winding, hilly roads, and there were too many turns for us to guess which way she had gone. All we could think of to do was to notify her parents and the priest who had called us that she was loose in the city, clad only in a nightgown, penniless, and driving a car that was almost dry of gas.

Millie ended up in triage at a mental hospital, where she was in therapy for some months. Upon her release from the hospital, she brought the leaders of Ananda Marga, a spiritually oriented Buddhist sect, to see us, wanting to prove to them that evil thought-forms were influencing our work and disturbing her.

The orange-robed Ananda Marga teacher had a good deal of psychic ability, and a sense of humor as well. After demonstrating that he could tell us things that he could not possibly have known thereby reaffirming his skill to Millie--he showed her that we did not have any such presences about our benighted heads.

"But they believe in magic," said Millie.

The leader humorously picked up our television's remote control. "So do I," he said. "Let me show you some magic." He pointed the device at our television across the room, and it sprang into electronic life. "Magic," he said in his charmingly accented voice. "You see?"

Millie was not pleased, though I am happy to say that she gradually got better.

In short, lack of discrimination can have heavy penalties. To dramatize its importance, a friend of mine who teaches Free Soul in Colorado asked her class to suppose they had a difficult financial decision to make. Would they call ten people at random on the telephone and ask their opinions, without knowing whom they were calling? The class immediately recognized the folly of such a procedure. How, then, she asked, could they consider her extra special because she was a channel? Rather severely, she suggested that they all start seeking their own inner senses of recognition and learn to be able to discriminate regarding new information.

I don't think there's anything wrong with skimming the surface of a variety of things, testing the waters, seeing what is right for you and what isn't. I can only suggest that in sampling the gift of channeling, you who are merely curious seek a controlled group situation where you have a structured way of going about learning the mechanism of this gift's manifestation.

These days, metaphysical truth is sold in many packages-as it always has been. There is no penalty for skipping about from discipline to discipline; the penalty is for remaining in one discipline long enough to learn from it, and then not using this knowledge in the service to others.

If you do not intend to persevere in the discipline of vocal or written channeling, it is centrally important that you go no further than will satisfy your curiosity, because opening yourself to the incursion of deeply impersonal, often external personalities makes disintegration of your waking personality far more likely-especially if the contact is a poor one. If the contact is a good one, however, longer exposure will bring about new understanding, and thereby, place you under the rule of responsibility: What one knows, one is responsible for reflecting in one's life.

A second great danger of deciding to channel is that one will become self-important. The names of contacts are often somewhat similar to the sounds young children make when they are trying out the language-lots of exotic consonants and a liberal supply of vowels. But if you start getting information from a Lord Joseph or a Commander Umgawa, be warned. The title-which at first may not mean anything to you-is a kind of temptation, a word that makes your channeling seem better, more elevated. The inevitable respect you will develop for your trance contacts will cause you unconsciously to give them honor in your own mind. But in my experience, it's not common for even the most advanced entity to use a title or offer praise on its own behalf.

Contacts seem to take an almost childlike delight in meeting with humans, but they show their joy by blessing those they have met, not by talking about their titles or honors. When you hear such a title, as you inevitably will, challenge the contact in the name of the highest and best that you know. Lesser contacts will flee from you if you ally every fiber of your being with a matchless point of view.

Remember that channels are like pipes: Everything they do, they do prior to receiving the water that flows through them-which may well be from a higher source. Thus, an instrument (another word for channel) is not part of an elite. He or she knows no more than the person who hears the channeling--we are all bozos on this bus! But some people accept the falsehood that because they are channels, they in some way, have a leg up on the rest of humanity-and such people perpetrate no end of folly.

For example, after the first Law of One book came out, a long-established channel whom I'll call Susan wrote us, asking for advice on how to improve her meditation group. She had succeeded in teaching channeling-as always, an easily transmitted gift-to her students. But rather than remain in her group, they were leaving to start their own meditation and study groups. What, she wondered, was she doing wrong?

I really couldn't diagnose any problem from the information in her letter, so I wrote back, describing the way I run my meetings and gladly listen to those who wish to share with me the honor and responsibility of being instruments: "I consider it a great boon to be able to enjoy other people's channeling." Susan's second letter was far more revealing. She did not want to listen to others' channeling, but to use them to confirm the virtue of what she had already channeled. When I wrote to suggest that perhaps her ego was getting in the way, she became defensive and said that I was a very judgmental person.

Not too long afterward, she began receiving large amounts of information about "terrible catastrophes" to come. To survive, it would be well for the chosen ones listening to her words to band together in a remote area. Her channeling even included suggestions as to the supplies needed-such as diapers. Note the twist of "love and light" information into messages of doom, and the movement from universal love to the establishment of an elite group which must then defend itself against outsiders who do not belong! Inside information is always alluring, but none of us is primarily responsible for others' spiritual evolution; we are responsible for our own. Therefore, the primary victim of Susan's difficulties was-and is-Susan.

I don't shrug off channeled predictions of the coming transformation of our planet, but it seems to me that we who are functioning as light workers will be far less interested in our own survival and more in how to excite and engage our own consciousnesses in helpful work. I hope to view my life not in terms of how I survive, but in terms of how much I was able to offer.

Please examine your motives. If you are channeling for reasons other than to be of service to others and the Creator, it would be well to avoid the practice, or you can really land yourself in the soup emotionally, mentally, even physically. You can lose contact with waking reality as the bulk of humankind perceives it. Opening yourself to the incursion of deeply impersonal, often external personalities makes disintegration of your waking personality far more likely.

I should say here that I have a strong bias toward service, and of those who are serious about channeling, this is an almost constant attitude. A large number of human beings seem able to go through life asking nothing more than a peaceful, happy home, enough money to buy what they need, and some gusto to grab. Others of us, Christian or not, are convinced that we have some work to do in this lifetime, some mission to accomplish. Commonly, such people assume that the Unseen overshadows the seen, has created the visible world, and is far more real than that which we see with our physical eyes. The student who wishes to be of service by channeling has the feeling of reaching out to all of humanity, as a shepherd would reach out to the sheep to whose care he is dedicated. Regardless of how efficacious an instrument may be, regardless of the channeling's relative beauty and inspirational value, most instruments' motive is the old White Magical motto, "I desire to know in order to serve."

For every new channel, a third great temptation is to believe that it isn't really happening. One day, I am sure, the reality of telepathic reception will documented, but for now, our instrumentation is not sophisticated enough to "prove" it as fact. So when you begin to channel, you will inevitably think you are the sole author of everything you're saying, that there is a great conspiracy pretending that channeling is real, when of course it isn't.

Temptation Number Four: When a difficult question comes up, you may tend to try to search your own knowledge, your own stores of accumulated conscious lore, for the answer instead of leaving your mind free and empty for whatever may come through. Worse yet-if someone you think a lot of asks a personal question, and your trance contact does not reply, it is very easy to save face by giving your own opinion as part of the channeled message. Don't give in to the temptation to answer in your own words-if you receive nothing, channel nothing.

The longer you channel, the more confident you should be in the reality of what you are experiencing, and the less excuse you have for such lack of discipline. If you want a handy slot in which to put yourself, think of yourself as the village philosopher, who has often been a drunk-and when not a drunk, an idiot. You are merely one of a long line of people whose minds have been upset and overshadowed by a greater force. Let your faith in a benign and kindly Universe capable of communicating to us, furnish you with enthusiasm and respect for the channeling you have set out to do.

Do not try to eliminate the influence your personal thinking may have on your channeling, for in my opinion, you are a valuable part of the channeling process. The great bulk of channeled information is produced by those in a light trance or at least, not asleep. Past a certain point, you are not responsible for what flows through you, but as an instrument, you are responsible for how well you are able to transmit what you receive. Since it seems impossible to eliminate the personal factor, it surely seems desirable for the instrument to have a disciplined, predictable share in the material.

Most likely, you will be receiving concepts rather than words, and your ability to clothe them in apt examples and accurate vocabulary will make the difference between a so-so discourse and an inspiring one.

If you desire to increase the world's store of information and wisdom, I would suggest that you first seek out information on how society works. Your knowledge need not be encyclopedic, but naivete is almost as inexcusable as cynicism. You would do well to read a book or two on American history, present-day politics, the history of science, space exploration, and today's social problems. When you learn a bit about the historical function and nature of wars, the intuitive desire for a peaceful world becomes far more concrete. When you volunteer to aid the homeless, the gut feeling that no one in the world should go hungry becomes articulate.

"Getting your hands dirty" raises not only your awareness, but also your ability to function as a channel. Don't baffle yourself by asking what is right for all of mankind; accept that you cannot tell any other soul on this Earth what is right for him and realize that you are responsible for your own stance. The more you exercise discrimination in choosing what you think is right, the more powerful will be the antenna that brings in your signal.

Since you are offering yourself as an instrument, be aware that the "notes" you play are words, sentences, paragraphs, and concepts. If you are not fully comfortable with your degree of literacy, put yourself to the task of reading to make your tongue wrap itself around a larger vocabulary and become more able to articulate concepts. If you cannot live on a steady diet of culturally uplifting material, any good mystery, science fiction, romance, or suspense potboiler will exercise your vocabulary and your reasoning process.

A fifth and final temptation is to progress too fast. If you take a long time to let go, you are not necessarily a bad channel, and if you open up right away, you are not necessarily a good one. It took me two months, working every day, before I was able to deliver my first channeled message, which was: "I am Hatonn. . . Greetings in the love and light of the Infinite Creator. . . I am having trouble with this instrument."

If you recognize anything of yourself in the preceding examples, don't panic. It's human to have a bit of ego involved, and a complete waste of time to be angry at yourself. Laugh at the human condition and keep on trying! Through meditation and contemplation, you can begin refining your motives for seeking to be of service by channeling. In the spiritual evolutionary process in general-and in the practice of channeling in particular-there's no time when you cannot begin completely anew. I think the best of us have to do that every day, if not more often.

Try to remember at all times that what you're basically working on is not your channeling, but yourself. All your work is interior, all your advances invisible. You are disciplining your mind and personality in order to turn them over to the highest, best source you can contact for purposes of information giving. Be the person you truly are, right now.

Carla L. Rueckeri holds degrees in English Literature and Library Service and she is the co-founder of L/L Research. Carla Rueckert has co-written two books and served as the channel for the volumes of The Law of One material. She lives near Louisville, Kentucky, where she teaches meditation and channeling.

The foregoing article was adapted from Miss Rueckert's A Channeling Handbook, available from L/L Research, Box 5195, Louisville, KY 40205. www.llresearch.org Carla can be contacted at rueckert@llresearch.org or rueckert@iglou.com