Barbara’s Story
In 1972, just after the birth of my first child, I unexpectedly became deaf over the course of two days. The nerves to my ears had died because the blood flow had been cut off, but my doctors could offer me no cause for the sudden failure. I struggled with deafness and the anger I felt about it for many years. By the 1980s I was still experiencing great pain around this event and the ways that loss seemed to cut me off from the world. Although I was coping well with a difficult situation, I felt stuck with anger and prayed for help. I began to experience guidance that offered clear insights to which I had no previous conscious access. Because of my strong intention to move toward healing the anger, and to live without harm, the source that came was positively polarized. I had no previous experience of channeling, nor any conscious knowledge about it. But the loving and wise answers that came supported my intention, opened my heart, and led to healing. After a period of learning, I consciously met Aaron in January 1989. It was only gradually that a more personal relationship was formed. Friends began asking to speak with him, so I began to channel him for others.
The experience of contact with a discarnate entity was bewildering. Who was he? What was I doing? I went into a local bookstore and asked for a book about channeling. They had a few channeled books, but nothing about the process. After rummaging through the shelves in vain, I returned to the front desk to ask if they knew of anything that could be ordered. There on the counter sat a brand-new copy of Carla’s A Channeling Handbook. It had not been there ten minutes earlier. I told the store’s owner that this was exactly the book I needed. He looked at it and said, “We don’t carry this book; I have no idea how it got here.” I accepted Spirit’s gift, read the book, and wrote a fifteen-page letter to Carla. An excerpt of that first letter is below.
Dear Carla,
I’ve just finished reading A Channeling Handbook and am writing to you for two reasons. The first is to thank you for this direct and honest book. You’ve taken many of the issues at which I’ve been looking these past six months and put them into clearer focus. This clarity has been a big help to me recently as I’ve examined the direction my life is taking, away from my past work as a sculptor and into those areas of more direct service to others.
My second reason for writing is because I do have some questions. I find myself wishing I could sit down and talk to you for an hour or two. . . . [Here I describe in several pages how I met Aaron.]
At first my rational mind tried to ask, “Who is Aaron?” Slowly I realized it didn’t matter . . . He defines himself as a “being of light,” which he says we all are. I’ve come to know him as a being of infinite love, compassion, and wisdom. He also has a beautiful warmth and sense of humor. He is a teacher.
As my trust deepened, Aaron led me on a beautiful journey into myself, into past lives, to unearth the sources of some of the pains of this life, examining the questions of isolation and separation on which my deafness forced me to focus. Together we healed the pain of that deafness and went on to investigate the origins of these issues of separation and isolation. It has been both painful and joyous, frightening and beautiful. Always, Aaron’s love has been there to help me through the rough places . . .
I’d been sharing the experience with friends. A few asked me questions to ask him and I did so, listening for the answers and then summing them up for each person who’d asked. I still really knew nothing about channeling. One day a friend asked me a more complex question and for the first time I found myself following Aaron’s suggestion, “simply say the thought you’ve received.” The next day a similar situation occurred, and I found myself in the middle of a long conversation, this time the first written one, as my friend was not present. I was shaken by these experiences. Below is Aaron’s conversation with me from my journals about these two experiences, written out as we spoke, and therefore exact.
I am wondering about sharing this information with the friend who’d asked for it. I hadn’t expected this kind of dialogue as an answer. A little shaken by what I’m doing here, I ask if I was meant to be some kind of channel?
Aaron: You are not meant to. You may choose to, if you wish.
Barbara: Is that what I should do?
A: There is no right or wrong here. You have the capacity to hear me. I have a voice and am a teacher. You must do only what feels right to you. There is no coercion. I am glad to teach anyone, but I am your guide. Others have their own guides. If they have not yet sought their own guides, and ask my understandings, I shall be glad to share through your voice if you wish to do so. In any situation, you are free to choose what feels right to you. There is never any force here. You must use this responsibility wisely.
B: I just don’t feel ready to do this.
A: That’s perfectly acceptable. Do what feels right to you. There is the whole question of trust that we must investigate. As you trust the process, your feelings may change. But it is not selfish to relate to me as only your personal guide. Without trust, you can do no more than that with honesty. I am your personal guide. I love you. I will not hurt you in any way. I ask only that you be as honest and responsible as possible.
If you choose to do this you must look within to be sure there is no “self” involved. The teachings must be pure. I know you understand this. Perhaps it is not distrust of me but of yourself and your motives, your ability to keep out self, that makes you hesitate.
B: I think about this and acknowledge that he is right.
A: Then do not try it further until you trust in yourself that you can recognize ego. If I see it I will tell you. You must spend much time every day without writing. These written meditations are not as deep. We cannot do some of the work this way. And you must spend some time each day in devotional meditation, just with God. This is very important. It will keep you clear in your trust of what you learn. You must not lose track of the source and reason for all of this work. Do not allow this to become an escape from the depth that is necessary to your learning, nor a block to the deep stillness that heals and teaches you.
Aaron and I have talked at length about the ego questions of channeling. I’ve gone past the concern of bringing myself into it. Here I disagree, for myself and Aaron, with Carla’s statement on page 23 of A Channeling Handbook that “about one quarter of most good channeling is contributed by the channel.” I wrote this to Carla.
Occasionally someone asks a question I know I can’t answer and I lose my contact to Aaron as I attempt to search my own mind for what to say. Each time I do this, I eventually hear Aaron through the static I’ve created, gently reminding me, “When you’re ready to move your own thoughts out of the way and let me answer, we can begin.” I am learning to trust that when I open to him he will always be there.
The ego questions that have concerned me more in recent months are those in chapter 6 of A Channeling Handbook— questions of power, of honestly examining my motivation to do this work, of looking at my responses to the attention it has brought me. I see that my own growth is deeply wrapped up in this, as I strive, as Aaron suggested, to examine the ego-self and transcend my attachments to this ego. The more I channel and examine and reexamine this, the more practice I get and the sooner I do recognize ego when it’s there.
The important thing about channeling for others, I’m finding, is that so many people are learning so much! Many others have come to love Aaron and trust his wisdom and guidance, first my friends, then their friends, and on and on in an expanding circle. I watch it in wonder. He feels strongly about our responsibility for our own growth, and always seems to have the right questions to lead people to examine their own issues honestly. It humbles me to see myself as part of this chain of sharing, to be permitted this part in it, and to learn and watch others learning. It brings me much joy! And as I see good things coming out of this, not just for myself but for so many other people, it reinforces my trust.
Carla sent me an equally long reply on a tape. In it I learned she was living with her own severe health catalysts and pain, so she could not type easily.
Excerpts from the letter received from Carla Rueckert:
. . . One way to forgive yourself and your deafness is to look at it as a catalyst and to look into that catalyst for the lesson of love. That lesson, like you said, sounds like a real ordeal and I congratulate you for surviving. On the other hand I realize that you made your work harder on yourself by delaying coping with it in a deep way. But that’s good. That’s okay. That’s human. I think we have to expect a hump of humanness, I guess I would call it. That’s the way it is. We just need to accept that fact. I myself went through the same thing (with my illness).
. . . One thing I don’t do is shut off my feelings, or go into isolation, or shut off my faith in God. It has always been there—a faith in the Lord God, and Jesus Christ, and that has helped me. When I see someone that works as hard as you do, I know I couldn’t. I wonder what would happen. I really admire you for having that sense of the eternal. I get a tremendous amount of that kind of energy from your letter.
I think it’s very important to appreciate that animal that carries us around and be nice to it without judging it because it got us into Gimpsville. I mean bad luck’s bad luck. Life isn’t fair. And do not try to be (in high voice) “No, I’m fine, there’s no problem.” I mean it’s a bear to be deaf or lying on a couch. No need to be a Pollyanna about it or to feel sorry for ourselves. I mean that’s life. The thing you’re responsible for is your reaction. The deafness I think perhaps was your own higher self trying to show you that we are all one, because that probably was the trigger for it, as opposed to karma. But that’s just my opinion.
I like what you said about the ego and I very much approve of Aaron’s making it clear that there was no pressure to accept Aaron, and that there was no pressure to believe unless you felt it was right. These all are hallmarks of positive channeling. I think if you have a group and develop questions that are really sound that you will have a more universal message that will probably make you more pleased.
. . . About the process of channeling: completely, exactly, totally all you have to do is picture a concept as a baseball. Catch the concept. Put it in your words and throw it and then you’re free to catch the next concept, throw it, and so forth. If you stop and say, “What?” don’t fear that you’ve lost the channel and may not get it back . . . Totally suspend disbelief . . . Now it has never failed me . . . .
It’s possible that you misunderstood what I meant in the book. I did not mean that a channel should contribute some of their own ideas, I meant that when one receives a concept, one must put a concept in words and so I find myself using my vocabulary, my feeling for nuance, my experience to state and conceptualize and manifest what I am hearing inside. I’m not really hearing anything; it just comes to me. It sounds like my own thoughts. So, you have to be loose as a goose and not worry about a thing. I was channeling to somebody and started hearing numbers and letters for 30 seconds so I trusted them and channeled them.
Now as to your question, “Was I meant to be some kind of channel?” and Aaron’s answer, “You were not meant to; you can choose to.” This brings us to a cardinal point of the spiritual cosmology. You gave yourself this assignment. You probably came to Earth and incarnated here because you had a plan. But you have free will. If you cannot say, “Not my will but thine,” drop channeling. Channeling is a very serious ministry. It is rewarding, but it requests of the individual an attempt at excellence, especially morally and ethically, and basically of every aspect of life. I remain impressed by what Aaron said. He maintained that free will. Negative channels would say something like, “You have been chosen by the Galactic Command.” But you really are free to choose if you want to go on or not. If that means talking to your husband until 2:00 in the morning because something is wrong, so be it. You have to allow for harmony in your life.
Let me tell you from experience—if you do good work for the light, you may come under the eye of the loyal opposition. Beware of any negative thought that comes to you. Not because it’s a negative thought but because it can be intensified for you to a really scary point by psychic greeting. What you have to do in that case is love and pray for the entity and give a blessing to his sending and forgive yourself for your part in this.
When Aaron speaks about trust and doing what is right, I think that there is an implied suggestion here to challenge for the ultimate trust. When you have what feels like Aaron’s vibration, no matter how many times you have had his vibration in the past, challenge that entity. You say you’re a Quaker so you can challenge in the name of Jesus Christ as a disciple.
Carla’s warmth and reassurance to me as I stumbled a bit on this new path were vital to my ability to continue as a channel. When I asked, “How do I know it’s real?” she replied, “When you have ten thousand pages of transcripts you’ll know you couldn’t have made all that up.” Now, ten thousand pages and more down the road, I know how right she was.
We corresponded in twenty-eight long letters each that first year, in which we explored everything from metaphysics to personal life and values to gardening. We became close friends, though we had never met in person.
