I thought I’d already posted what I’d written about the second channeling class I took from Betsy-Morgan Coffman, but no, I’d let it slip by. Sorry. Here it is, just as I wrote it soon after the class in 2007. Among other things, this account contains a great example of a spirit contact that seemed questionable and better not to continue. For context, see my post “A Beginning Channeling Class.” https://elenedom.wordpress.com/2010/09/26/a-beginning-channeling-class/
On September 29, 2007, I jumped back into the fray and took Betsy Coffman’s second channeling class, now affectionately referred to as “C2.” For the most part, I still wasn’t really channeling when I worked on my own, and I didn’t feel very ready to go on to the C2 class. I decided to try it and go with whatever happened.
We began by telling what we had gotten out of the first class and what we hoped to obtain from this one. While some of the students were going like gangbusters and even doing formal readings for people, others expressed misgivings similar to mine. They said that they still couldn’t clearly see or hear anything, and that while they were very much aware of entities being in contact with them, they often couldn’t be sure who those beings were. I heard these things before it was my turn to speak, and so I already felt better by the time I was asked to describe my own situation.
I told the group that after the C1 class I had essentially gotten more of what I already had, especially increased empathic ability. I said that had found myself working more as a psychic and medical intuitive than a channeler, meaning that I was receiving useful information and relaying it to patients, but I wasn’t getting that information from entities other than myself. I had been in touch with various beings, but I generally couldn’t get verbal messages, and I often couldn’t tell one being from another. I was hoping to develop more as a medium, I said, with clearer and more definite communication.
“I think you’ll be getting that, and a lot more,” Betsy replied. She looked at me and announced that there was someone trying to contact me right then. He was a doctor, she said, then added that he was in fact a surgeon. I had just started feeling something going on at the back of my neck, a little toward the right, with a sense of a small area of a golden tan color, and I told Betsy that I was indeed aware of someone being there.
Betsy called upon her guide Orion, Jesus Christ, and Archangel Michael, as she always does. The energy in the room got thicker, and I felt activity around my head, as at the first class. The first exercise we did was also similar to what happened in the CI class: we were supposed to ask for three guides to show themselves to us and give us their names and a message.
I had just expressed a desire for more better mediumship with more verbal communication, but my experience of this exercise could hardly have been more opposite to my request. The guides which revealed themselves weren’t even persons in any sense. The first impression I received was of an evergreen tree, not a realistic image but more like a green paper cutout. There was a deep green all over my inner field of vision. I asked for a message, and it seemed to be, “Keep growing.”
Next, I saw an image of a stairwell on the outside of a stone building. My view zoomed in on the stone, and I felt surrounded by a sandstone-like color and texture. The stone seemed to permeate my body, and I felt strengthened. “Solidity,” I thought.
I was expecting water to show up next, but instead I vaguely saw a yellow light, and thought it was the sun. Rather than more light, I was surrounded by warmth, with no strong visual images. The principle expressing itself seemed to be heat, not light. I was perfectly happy with that, because I had been freezing the whole time in Betsy’s living room despite being wrapped in one of the blankets she had thoughtfully provided. I stayed warmer for an hour or so after that.
Again, as at the C1 class, I felt awfully rushed during this exercise. I was just barely bringing things into focus with each entity when Betsy moved on to the next, and when she had us finish up, I was still trying to figure out what was going on with the Heat being. Yet, when we went around the circle and described our experiences, it turned out that some other students had received massive quantities of material in that short time. I was the only one who complained of feeling rushed.
I couldn’t begin to understand why I might be hearing from elements of nature. They didn’t seem to be nature spirits like, for example, the personified spirits of plants that appear in Carlos Castaneda’s work. The only purpose I could imagine was that they were intended to shore up my physical structure. If there was any purpose at all. Did Orion send them to me? Did I bring them in on my own?
We had another go-round before lunch, in which we were supposed to ask for our “highest, best, and easiest advanced channeling guide” and give a message. As the other students did their work, I found myself a bit overwhelmed, receiving four different “stations.” One was Orion, who I perceive as mostly white light with hints of iridescent, coruscating colors. This was coming in near the top of my head, toward the front, and from the direction of the chair Betsy was sitting in. Slightly lower and to the right, another energy was streaming into my head. I thought this one was Michael, not because he was telling me so, but because the tone felt like what I had perceived earlier when Betsy called Michael to be with us. A little lower on the side of my head was something that I was pretty sure was Fryderyk. And still at the back of my neck was that patch of tan-colored light that I thought must be the doctor that Betsy had mentioned.
The tan color deepened to brown and spread around me. To my astonishment, the area of color developed, like a photo, into a vision of a man with chocolate-brown skin. He superimposed himself over the left side of my face and upper chest and my left arm, and I perceived him as if from the inside and the outside at the same time. I could actually see him, with technicolor clarity, something that had never, ever happened to me before. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, with very round cheeks and prominent eyes, a little like Louis Armstrong. I heard the name “Bertram.”
Bertram, or whoever he was, was doing his darndest to get through to me. He was practically jumping up and down and shouting, and he was putting a great deal of pressure on me. I didn’t like it one bit, and I held on to Orion for dear life, asking over and over, “Is this OK? Is this going to be a problem? Should I be working with this guy?” I couldn’t get a clear answer. I didn’t have the sense that Bertram was evil or malicious, but he was coming on awfully strong, and considering my previous negative experiences, I wanted to be cautious. I didn’t want to overreact or freak out, though, and I held a center of calm as best I could.
In the background I could hear Bertram telling me that he had not been able to complete his work on Earth and that he wanted so much to come out into the world and do more. That probably wasn’t the best thing to say to me; it only increased my resistance and caused me to react like, “Not on my time, buddy!” He seemed sincere and enthusiastic, though, and I wondered if my misgivings might be unfair to him. He was positively bursting with a desire to speak. I still kept my hold on Orion and on myself, refusing to let Bertram get the better of me, feeling like I was holding down the lid on a box of squirming animals that were all trying to escape. I had to wait for my turn to channel before I could let anyone speak anyway.
I was curious to see what Betsy and Orion would have to say about the party going on around me, whether they would notice the multiple entities. When my turn came, Betsy gazed at me and said, “There are three cords of light coming into you.” That was true, assuming that Orion didn’t count himself. I introduced the three other entities as apparently-Michael, a deceased friend of mine, and the doctor Betsy had seen earlier. I described Bertram’s appearance and manner and gave his name, but said that although he wanted to speak directly, I was not going to let him do it, because I did not feel entirely comfortable with him. I told Betsy that I was asking Orion for support. I gave Bertram’s message about not being finished with his work and hoping to do more, but in my own words and without leaving my own persona.
I wasn’t really given any specific personal guidance about dealing with this, and neither Betsy nor Orion expressed an opinion about whether Bertram was on the up-and-up. There was a discussion, though, about how it often happens that whole crowds of entities surround the channel, all clamoring to speak at once. The advice was to ask Orion or another guide to act as a gatekeeper and let only one in at a time.
(This reminded me of something that Rosemary Brown had described in one of her books. She mentioned that both Liszt and Chopin seemed to perform this gatekeeping function for her, organizing the work of the other composers so that she wouldn’t be overwhelmed. At one point, she heard Chopin snap at someone in Polish, and she wrote down what she heard phonetically so she could ask someone what it meant. It turned out to be, “You go away!” I wonder who the intruder was. Mrs. Brown also noted other instances in which Chopin acted protectively toward her, and this doesn’t surprise me in the least.)
So I was given exactly what I asked for, clear verbal and visual communication and a definite experience of mediumship, and I rejected it. Figures. But I felt that I was doing what I needed to do to keep myself safe.
Fryderyk either declined to push himself through all the noise, or he was overwhelmed by the other voices; at any rate, he faded out. I did feel connected to him to some degree for most of the day, though.
At long last, much later than planned, we had lunch, which seemed to go awfully fast, since we all had plenty to talk about. After lunch, there was one more exercise, for which two hours were allotted. This, too, was just like the format of the first class; we were to ask each other questions and produce channeled answers. I wasn’t worried about this part, because I knew that I was likely to come up with some sort of useful and interesting answers whether they were channeled or not.
While the other students were doing their stuff, I tuned into, or was made to tune into, the entity that appeared to be Michael, and I received clear words, so when I had the chance I wanted to tell everyone what he had said. “I had Michael on the line a minute ago,” I announced. “This is what he said: ‘Your questions are so small. Enlarge yourselves! Remember what you truly are! You are not small creatures who live in buildings and worry about money.’” I thought Michael’s comments were a little unfair, especially since after all we were only asking the questions for practice purposes, and I said so. (One of the students had asked a question about a business she was planning and had received information about the building she would be using and the income her business would generate.) “He sounds kind of combative today,” I added. It occurs to me that whenever I have been able to bring through any clear voices, they have sounded forceful, maybe annoyed, maybe almost belligerent. I expect that this says more about me than about them. Michael’s pronouncements were not so different from those of Marie in the C1 class, although the “feel” of the two entities was totally different and one could not be confused with the other.
But then I had to be on the spot. I did the dropping-into-the-heart thing and asked Michael to be present for us. I could feel him strongly. “We’re ready,” I said.
The first question came from a woman who was the head of a business. She had an unusual appearance, which she had alluded to by saying that she looked and felt like a “hybrid” and didn’t fit in with her family, and I had been trying to figure out her exact ethnic background. She said that she had been told she was to do something important in her home country, and she wondered whether she would be going there to live, staying in the US, or going back and forth. She thought that perhaps she was meant to go into politics. This brought forth a cornucopia of images, which, again, I felt like I was getting on my own, not being shown by any entity but her. It looked like she was going to be a bridge between the two countries in some way. I wasn’t sure exactly what sort of work she was going to do, but I felt that she was a kind of cultural ambassador or head of a social organization rather than a politician. I could see her surrounded by crowds of people, who were delighted that she was there. The people were holding banners with writing on them, which I couldn’t read, not because of a language problem but because the picture was too vague. There were flowers all around, as if the event was some kind of celebration. I also could feel distinctly that in this vision, her family was overjoyed to see her. As things were in our mundane present, they missed her terribly; I felt this as a cord pulling on her, which she was resisting. By my standards, this was a spectacular amount of vivid material. I was pretty clear about it all, but I expressed myself diffidently and as if everything was a question, like, “Um, it’s in Asia?”
According to her feedback, I did pretty well. She was from the Philippines, and hadn’t been there in 20 years. She said that her family was always begging her to come and visit, but that she hadn’t wanted to do it. It was a big family and she didn’t know a lot of the members.
The next questioner was a woman in her twenties who was wondering about her health. She had recently developed a chronic fatigue type of situation, and wanted to know whether it was only because of the energetic changes related to channeling work and psychic development, or whether something was physically wrong. This ought to have been right up my alley, but I didn’t get all that much information. I did think that there was something physical going on that should be checked out, but I didn’t think it was serious. I could see her reproductive system glowing with light, bringing itself to my attention, so I concentrated on that. It occurred to me to ask, “Have you been pregnant?” She hadn’t. “Do you want to be pregnant?” Heavens, no! I kept scanning and found an energetic hole in her middle, around the solar plexus, so I asked about digestion and assimilation. Other people jumped in with comments, and we all seemed to be seeing something similar. Michael wasn’t telling me anything helpful about the problem, but he was pouring a great deal of energy into that deficient area. I could see and feel it swooping across the room toward the young woman, and it looked like the hole was filling in and she was being strengthened considerably. I wasn’t putting forth any effort myself. I just described what I saw.
I was less impressed with myself after this second reading, but there was still some positive feedback. The young woman had been having considerable difficulties with hormonal issues, and so far no form of medicine had helped. And while she wasn’t thinking of getting pregnant anytime soon, Betsy had already seen a baby in her future.
I don’t want you to think I was intentionally shutting off impressions from Michael or anyone else and trying to go it alone. I was staying open, or at least I thought I was. Every time I made a statement, I checked with my “uplink” for clarification. It’s very possible that I was receiving more input than I realized.
Betsy asked if Michael had a message for me. “She worries too much,” I heard myself say, in an offhand, curt tone. “Relax. I’ll take care of it.”
I hate to ask personal questions in this kind of context. I suppose I feel that I should be going after the answers myself. But since I had to ask something when it was time, I came up with a health question. (I’ve always got those.) I said that although I had been getting stronger and stronger with the energetic inputs I’d been getting from Michael and other sources, in the past few weeks I had been sick a lot and still didn’t feel like I was quite right. I asked whether I might have picked up something from a patient or been energetically damaged somehow in the course of my work. The person doing the reading had trouble getting anything, and other people tried to help. Everyone, including a Reconnective Healing practitioner who was in the class, felt that something was actually wrong, but nobody could put their finger on it. Betsy told me that I could ask again later, but I was feeling so completely filled with good Qi by the entities around me that it didn’t seem like an urgent question anymore.
I needed two questions, and I had another that was bothering me a bit. I told the channeler of the moment that there was someone who had been a close friend of mine, that we had become estranged, and that I was thinking of contacting her. I wanted to know whether that would be a good thing or whether it would only cause my friend unnecessary pain and distress. I was told that making contact would be fine and that “love would blossom” between us again. I guess if I try it we’ll see.
The woman who did this reading for me hadn’t formally practiced her channeling skills for a year, but she described being in daily contact with a number of angels and saints, Michael in particular. She had a particular difficulty, more than most of us, with having to sort through myriad entities and pull in a clear “radio station.” She worked very slowly, taking an agonizingly long time to listen before making any statement. I wasn’t really bothered by the wait, especially since I felt that I needed a lot of time for this work myself, but Betsy tried to find ways to help her be more efficient. She reminded us that we are “on a three-way phone call,” and that we can request that the person ask the question some other way, find a clearer question, or add details, in addition to checking back with the guide spirit. Restating the questions differently seemed to help some in this case, but this student never did get much of a flow going. She felt frustrated, but she was undaunted, and she resolved to practice more.
Another student got stuck in visions of beautiful colors, which seemed significant but never yielded any answers. Betsy stepped in and helped her get out of the psychedelic loop and move forward, and then she was able to come up with relevant and helpful impressions.
We put a lot of time and attention into this exercise, and every student’s session was interesting and enlightening. Every one was unique, too. A number of us were (apparently) dealing with the same entities, with Michael being popular as usual. I noticed that the tone of “my” Michael was different from the Michael brought through by other people, and that their versions were different from each other. I wonder, of course, whether we are all really in contact with the same entity, and whether we are accurately hearing from whoever that may be. Perhaps it’s not strange at all that our own personalities color the interactions and the messages. I do know that when I’ve spoken with other fans of Michael, they have described someone very much like the being I perceive.
There is always, always the question of whether we are getting anything real and true when we look for information this way. Betsy made a comment that I took to heart: “When it’s fear-based, it’s you.” This must be meaningful in the context of the confused interactions I’ve sometimes had with Fryderyk, when I’ve thought I’ve heard something negative from him at the same time as I was feeling love and warmth.
I had been worried about falling asleep during the class, as I had during the second day of C1. I’d gotten up extra early to attend the beginning of our Oriental Medicine Association annual meeting, then rushed over to Betsy’s, and I’m usually wiped on Saturdays anyway. I got through the day just fine, though, and in fact I felt more and more energized as the class went on. Queen Marie never showed up, but I saw myself in my queen-archetype guise, not as a beginning student, but as royalty from another country, as a master in my own right. This has happened before, and I don’t understand it yet, but I like it. I confess that, despite my fairly low level of skill, I am beginning to see myself as a power, an entity much like Michael and the other angels, saints, and avatars. Maybe that’s just hubris, or maybe that’s the whole point. That’s exactly what we are.
During the C1 class and in the days soon after, most of the entities I contacted insisted that I didn’t need them and that they wouldn’t be speaking through me on other occasions. I remember being especially disappointed at hearing that from Kuan Yin, and sincerely protesting that I did too need her, unable to understand why I was being abandoned. I think I understand now. Channeling is not my primary function, and is not going to be. I can receive information on my own more easily than I can through another being. That doesn’t mean I can’t have friends in high places, though, and I still intend to pursue better communication with them.
Betsy mentioned that the rose I had brought her at the C1 class stayed in bloom and fresh for two weeks.
I slept through a lot of Saturday evening, after the class, and I’ve needed more sleep than usual since. Nothing too strange about that. I wanted to be alone on Sunday and kept away from any disembodied guests.
At one point I dreamed that I was taking a piano lesson with a new teacher that I was apprehensive about, and I concluded that he was OK and I should go ahead and work with him. The teacher was a white guy with light brown hair (who does that sound like?), but I took the dream as being about Bertram. I decided to give him a chance. I called up Orion and asked him to put us in touch. I did get a contact with the new guy, and I very frankly described my attitude about associating with him. I told him that I had some seriously difficult patients who were not making good progress in their healing, and that I could certainly use his help, but that I needed to stay in charge of my body and I didn’t want to be pushed around.
My first opportunity to let Bertram get in touch with a patient was on 10/1/07. I had no idea how to go about this, or what he might have in mind, even though I had done a good deal of healing work in the past with Fryderyk and other invisible helpers. I held my hands over the patients’ bodies and told him he could come through and do whatever he thought best. He was definitely there, but the contact was much fainter than at the class, and not a lot seemed to happen. Maybe it was a decent first try. If it’s true that he is a surgeon, I may not be at all the right partner for him. As usual, I await further developments.
Not long after that, I concluded that I should not try to work with Bertram, although he didn’t do anything noticeably inappropriate. I still didn’t feel comfortable, and it did not seem like a fruitful avenue to pursue. I simply told him good-bye, and that was the end of that.
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