Row, Row, Row Your Boat

Interestingly, as I wait for November 1st to come and can begin work on the book I will write I find that the commitment of giving an hour or so a day over to channeling is slightly daunting. I knew that my stamina was not good and that I would need to practice and get ready. To that end I was introduced to The Work by Byron Katie. I checked the book out from the library and have been reading it. Slowly. Very, very slowly.

The reason, I think, is because this is such life changing stuff. And, again, to do what is going to be an incredible amount of channeling in November I just plain wasn’t ready. So, trusting in the Universe to provide and my Higher Self to arrange, I’ve got a book to read. Whether I read the entire book in the next week or not is not the point. The point is to get me pointed in an entirely different direction. This sort of brings me back to my original point all along which is in order to get good channeling the channeler needs to take care of his or her own business.

It’s not like the guides are going to refuse to speak just because I’m cranky, or ornery, or being a mean secretary. Like they’ve said before, “We work with what we’ve got.” Which means me. I want this stuff to be good for people. I want somebody to be helped by it the way I have been helped. I want what they say to be said in the quickest and quietest way possible. I don’t want people to have to lug around a 12 pound book in order to totally absorb what the guides have to say. These need to be short books. They need to be quiet books. There needs to be a lot of white space too. I’m reminded of somebody who was griping about how they’d spent a lot of money on a book that had an inordinate amount of white space between the lines and how she felt she’d gotten gypped. Anyway, that’s off topic. And, what I want to say is that I’m in training for a marathon of channeling.

It was interesting to me that when I first thought of channeling a book during the National Novel Writing Month I felt such a thrill go through my body. It was like bells. It was like a terrific shot of electricity that instead of shocking was healing. Even as numb as I’d gotten to stuff lately, even I could tell that was a resounding, “YES”.

A day later somebody made a comment and said how thrilling it would be to channel a novel. What I felt upon reading that was a really sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, because I hadn’t planned on channeling a novel. But, when you get technical about it the National Novel Writing Month is geared toward getting a novel written. A story. A fictionalized story with characters and a plot and interesting stuff happening and a wonderful ending. A story. What I had planned to do was to just channel whatever the guides wanted to talk about and I was pretty sure it was not going to be a story. But, as the day wore on I thought more and more about doing just that, except I was really intimidated about it. I thought about how Jane Roberts had written, “OverSoul Seven” and how it had always seemed to me that Seth had a rather large hand in that project though nothing was ever really said about anybody but her writing it. And, I wondered if I could do it, because if I didn’t come up with a novel I would be violating the rules of the National Novel Writing Month.

Poop.

Guess what? I don’t care. I’m going to channel whatever gets channeled. For all I know they’re going to come up with a bunch of short stories. I have to just relax. I have to meditate. Really meditate to be prepared. I have to commit to this. I have to surrender a whole lot more than just what it takes to Talk to Spirit. I’m not sure right now what that is, but this is an undertaking for me. And, I need to do a bit of what Byron Katie recommends with The Work.

This will not be a novel. I’m okay with that now. I will use the momentum and the vehicle of NaNoWriMo to move me forward here.

Maybe next year I’ll write a novel. I know it would certainly be interesting. But, this year it’s got to be something I channel.

And, to gear me up...to get my channeling muscles loosened up for an hour's worth of channeling today I'm going to do one of the really easy elementary exercises that I recommend people try when they're just getting started.

What you do is you get to pick a nursery rhyme that you know by heart. And, you type it at your keyboard. This isn't something that you're going to show anybody and say, "See? I was channeling just then. Isn't this amazing?" No, you're not going to show anybody. Besides, who would believe you? You know this by heart. You could just as easily have done it yourself. The exercise is totally for you. It is the surrender I spoke of earlier. You pretend and surrender and trust that your guide will be with you on this. You also do it more than once.

The first time it sure as anything feels like you did this and there is no guide around. They're pulling your leg. The second time you do it you remember that you're supposed to pretend that your guide is doing it with you. The third time you do it you begin to wonder if maybe they are there after all. The fourth time you do it you sort of "feel" them riding alongside of you. You, just for a few seconds, feel that maybe, just maybe there is something to this. The fifth time you do it you think, no, you were mistaken it was you all along. The sixth time in a row that you write out, "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" you remember to trust in the process and pretend that you are channeling.

Trust. That's the main word there. So....even though it sure as shootin' looks like I'm the biggest quack and faker around...here goes with a very simple exercise for channeling.

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream.

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream.