Focus Your Thoughts

A very important part of learning how to channel is learning how to focus your thoughts. Meditating will help you to do this. There are other activities which, when done very intensely will serve the same purpose like running, or drawing, or maybe writing, but for our purposes here I’m urging a practice of meditation.

Now, please try not to get so all fired impressed with people who say they can meditate for hours on end and adopt that as your goal. What you need, instead in the beginning, is a regular practice. Every day for 10 minutes. First of all this is not going to put a crimp in any of your other activities. For pity sake, the day is 24 hours long. You can spare 10 minutes of it to meditate. Additionally, you’re the one who said they wanted to learn how to channel. I’m telling you that you need to do this. For clarity. Fine, you’re channeling and somebody says, “If you don’t turn right at the corner three people are going to die.” Well, that’s channeling isn’t it? Yes. It’s also warped channeling. So, meditate already. For clarity.

Next, put away all your expectations about what meditating is like or how you think it should be. It starts out one way and ends another. It is over time that your meditation will change and it is as you do it more and more that you begin to see the results of the meditations. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

It starts like Grand Central Station in your head. There’s just no getting around it. Your mind is not trained. It’s a new place to be. You’re trying to be quiet and it just isn’t working. Do you quit? No. Keep doing it.

Be kind to yourself. Realize that for everybody it is going to be noisy in their head in the beginning. It happens to everybody. Be kind toward your wayward mind and when you find yourself straying from the act of meditating and thinking about all the things you want to do or all the things you need to do gently take your mind by the hand like you would a little kid straying from a path and bring them back to the meditation. If you’ve got to do that 25 times during the 10 minutes you’ve devoted for meditating do it. The next time you meditate you’ll only have to do it 22 times.

What you could do is to have a piece of paper and a pencil by your side and every time a thought occurs to you write it down. That way you won’t spend energy being anxious that you’re going to forget something. Actually, this technique is fantastic to use for getting your ducks in order for the day. Just depends on how you look at it. In any case, reassuring your mind that you are not ignoring it, that you depend upon it to keep you on track and you appreciate all these reminders of things to do is great. Eventually, it will realize (this is your subconscious, by the way) that you are not going nuts with this new practice of meditation and it will be quiet for the time that you want to spend meditating.

Something else that happens to folks who embark upon a practice of meditation is their own personal demons will rise quickly to the surface. This is also understandable. Keep meditating. You are toeing your way into an expanded reality and for somebody who is trying to learn how to channel the clairaudience and the clairvoyance takes off. You’re not trained in this and it’s going to be odd, strange, weird and possibly frightening. You know it’s coming. Keep meditating. The distorted, yowling faces will stop. I know. It happened to me.

In the beginning you can use tricks to help you move into the meditation. You can visualize yourself descending a ladder. You can count backwards. There are all sorts of things you can do to help yourself into the meditative state of mind. I used to pretend I was melting like when Dorothy throws water on the Wicked Witch of the West. She melted. It was great for moving me into a meditation. Whatever rocks your boat. There are lots of techniques to try out.

Get a book about meditating. It doesn’t matter which one. There are lots on the market. Find one and try out a few of the techniques. They work. What doesn’t work is the person trying to learn how to meditate because they don’t stick with it. Same thing with diets. That’s why there are so many books on the market. Anyway, if you can make a deal with yourself that you are going to devote a short period of time every single day for a month to a practice of meditation and then step back at the end to see how you did I can almost guarantee that you’re going to see results. This will be the encouragement you need to continue.

Developing Resolve - Learn to Channel

Ensure you are exhibiting resolve. This is very important. Not just lip service. Imagine that you are a millionaire. How did you get to be a millionaire? Imagine that it was plain hard work that did it. They didn’t start out with any money. This person started out the same as you or I. But, what is the difference between a millionaire and you? It is resolve. It is a focus on the one goal you want. In the millionaire’s case it is money. In your case it is the desire to speak to your guide.

Now, just for a moment imagine that you want to be a millionaire. We’ve all done that often enough. It’s easy to enter into the daydream of this particular imagining. But, this one time there’s a little twist to the daydream. This time you have resolve. In your imagination pretend that you are faced with one obstacle after another. Now, pretend that you, Joe Future Millionaire, have the ability to move past those obstacles. Argh…you got a flat tire. So, you put the spare on and move forward. Argh…you got the flu. So, you take it easy until you are recovered and then continue on with your plan of being a millionaire.

The interest you have in learning how to channel is actually one of the more important keys to success than you could imagine. And, you will be faced with obstacles. The first will probably happen when you decide to set aside some time to do the necessary exercises to retrain yourself to connect in a more conscious fashion to Spirit. Notice I said in a more conscious fashion. That’s because we’re all already connected. We just don’t pay a lot of attention. In any case, the time you set aside to do this work will be challenged at any and all opportunities. You will fall asleep and forget. You won’t wake up in time. An emergency will crop up. You will need to reconcile your check book. Your computer will start acting up. Your car will start sputtering. Anything and everything will start happening to draw you away from your new found resolve to learn how to channel.

You will likely become discouraged and quit. Fine. You have proven to your Guide that you are not ready to talk to him or her. That’s okay too. Not everybody has what it takes to learn how to channel.

Irritated yet? I couldn’t possibly be talking about you? Good. So, we continue. What happens when all the most incredible things start happening to draw you away from this resolve you need? Get more resolve. Don’t forget. It’s like the ocean is throwing you out time, after time, after time onto the shore. Turn around and dive back in again.

What else do you figure that a person wanting to be a millionaire would need to do to actually achieve their dream? One thing would be in how they go about overcoming obstacles. As a person decides to do something that is going to take them out of their already known and comfortable life they are moving from what might be considered a safe place to a dangerous or unknown place. Scary. As an adult you figure that you can do this easily and it couldn’t possibly be such a frightening thing to do. You’re thinking of brute force here. Just keep pounding on the nail and eventually it will be driven into the piece of wood. Right? Well, sort of. You could destroy obstacle after obstacle in your way, but there would always be the next obstacle on the horizon. The more efficient way would be to address why you’ve got these obstacles in the first place. Your subconscious is throwing up these road blocks to dissuade you from moving into a dangerous and unknown territory. It is keeping you safe.

This is where you begin to make the shift from being a victim to being somebody in charge of your own life. I don’t mean to get your goat here, but many people do have that victim sort of mentality. It was luck. They were born with a silver spoon in their mouth. They get all the breaks. It wasn’t my fault. Everybody hates me. Nobody loves me.

Admitting that you’ve got a problem is half the battle. So, although these obstacles aren’t exactly a huge problem, solving them or making the commitment to solve them is certainly going to make your life, spiritual or otherwise, easier. It’s all in your head. It is psychological. It is emotional growth and healing. It’s paying attention to the stuff that frightens you, to the stuff that irritates you, to the stuff that just pushes your buttons every time.

It is real and everyone has these issues. What normally happens with people is that we live quite happily with our neuroses and are able to cope and have a relatively okay life. Gradually, gradually as the years roll by we learn, we fix, we heal the stuff that hurts emotionally. By the time you are 89 you’ll be feeling better. But, from the age of 17 to 89 you weren’t able to ride in an airplane. It terrified you. No problem. Take a train. Or, go by car. But, for all those years you had a horrible fright of being in an airplane.

This ignoring things and letting them take care of themselves by themselves and in their own time isn’t going to work all that well if what you want to do is learn how to channel.

* Make a commitment to pay attention to your own emotional and psychological well being.

* Make a commitment to do something about healing.

One thing that came as a shock to me was that psychological and emotional healing doesn’t happen all at once. It is a gradual process. You heal a little bit at a time and keep doing it for the rest of your life. It’s actually not that much of a drag. What you learn is to recognize when your buttons are being pushed. And, when you see that happening you dive into a quick 15 minute quiet time meditative inner search and release of pain and you’re good to go until the next time. The next time might even be 3 years down the road. It’s not onerous work. Consider it as necessary as cutting your toe nails. You just need to do it every once in awhile. Interestingly, for me, one of the “signals” I get when it’s time for me to do inner work? Crappy drivers. They’ll be all around me. I can attract them like flies. But, that’s my own signal. You will learn to recognize your own.

So, here’s what happens:

* You have decided to learn how to channel.
* You set out on a course of instruction, mine or somebody else’s.
* You start encountering roadblocks.
* You move past them developing your resolve.
* You notice the road blocks are continuing and come to the realization that there’s something else going on here.
* You decide to be interested in your own mental health.
* You seek out a solution whether it is with a psychotherapist or via a book somebody has written on the matter. Personally, I recommend having a look at, “Be Your Own Therapist - Whoever You Hire Is Just Your Assistant” by my friend Thayer White. It is available free online at http://www.psychologyhelp.com/

One of the reasons I’ve spent so much time talking about the necessity of psychological and emotional healing is not only to be able to learn how to channel, but to ensure that the channeling you do get isn’t too warped and wrapped around your own psychological issues. Because it will be. I guarantee you that no matter how exalted your Guide is if you’ve got a weight problem and your guide wants to talk about weight issues it’s going to be really skewed information. Go ahead and do it. Just don’t publish it or tell anybody. As an example: I have had a life long weight problem. I’m chipping away at it, but it still is a large issue in my life. I once channeled that there would come a day when humans would not need to eat. Hey, I bought into it. Sounded good to me. Until my friend Thayer clued me in that it wasn’t valid information. And, all that time I thought it was truth coming out of my mouth. Hah. Anyway, my guide helps me with cooking and we steer away from talking about dieting, at least in public.

So, the more you lessen the impact of psychological issues on your own life the more enjoyable will be your overall channeling experience, both in the beginning as a raw new channel and 20 years into it as an experienced channel.