I’ve received a question so many times now, I’ll try to answer it here. The question has come in two forms:
“You’ve said that you don’t know whether the information that you receive when you channel comes from another being, or another aspect of yourself. Can you explain that?”
“You’ve said that during a ‘soul retrieval’ you might be retrieving parts of yourself. What do you mean by that?”
First let me say that I, like each of us, am limited in one way or another by my beliefs. Although my beliefs about reality may be much broader than many, I still have some limiting programs running, and those beliefs color how I perceive and understand reality, information I receive, and who/what I interact with in other focus levels or dimensions. This must be taken into account when you read this, because while I may seem to have clear access to information, I really have an access that is as clear as I can make at any given moment.
With that in mind, when I perceive other beings, whether that’s during a reading, when I’m channeling, or when I’m helping disincarnates, I perceive them as separate from myself, as other. A conversation is like a conversation with another person in this physical focus in that it’s back and forth exchange, and what the other person/being ‘says’ is often unexpected, or information that I’d have no way of knowing. I do perceive them most easily as Other.
In my understanding, however, my perception of them as one thing doesn’t mean that’s true. It could be only accurate as far as it goes. My perceiving us as separate doesn’t guarantee that they’re not also aspects of my Self, or that I’m not an aspect of them.
We assume that we are the individual conscious awarenesses of personality that we’ve been taught to understand ourselves to be within the thought systems of our cultures. I am this. It seems possible to me, however, that our definition of individual is just one choice of understanding or perception, and based on perspective. Change the perspective, and the definition of individual might also shift. I am also one part of the consciousness of “Woman,” “American,” “Sudman,” “archeologist,” or “writer.” I may be one one part of the consciousness of “anger,” “amusement,” “healing,” or “pig-headed.” Pig-headedness as a consciousness may think it’s pretty funny that I think that I exist and can function as an individual without the Pig-headedness consciousness, just as we would think it were pretty funny if our left hands all decided they were individual and could function and be individual even if separated from our arms.
That’s one awareness that I bring to Me or Other. I’ve experienced it in two forms, and so it sits. I don’t really understand it intellectually, but I feel it.
Another awareness that I have is that we attract or connect with that which resonates with our “chord” or energy signature. If I focus on a “place” where I connect with people who have passed over, I’m unlikely to be led to or drawn to or find disincarnates who are resonating at a frequency that I’m not holding. Or at a harmonic of that frequency. So far in my experience, whomever I encounter is likely to reflect an aspect of myself. I seem to connect with a lot of soldiers and other war-related disincarnates, and emotionally abused women and children and animals, those with an amusement and bemusement about themselves or their situation, those who are rather indifferent to their fate and are content to sleep or tune out or hold some state of suspension, for instance. In connecting with these people, I also connect with aspects of myself.
Are these people other or are they me? They may be both. That’s difficult to conceptualize because our learned perspective is that something is one thing OR another. I am this individual, Natalie, or I am other. Moving between worlds, I’ve often encountered situations where something is both this AND that, contradictory in our view of reality, yet making perfect sense outside of our perspective.
When I channel information, I perceive other – a being or beings who are giving me information, or actually speaking through my body. When I help disincarnates or interact with disincarnates, I perceive them as being separate and distinct from me. That’s what I’m most comfortable with from the perspective of being Natalie, and that may be what my beliefs support. Yet I try to keep my mind open to the awareness that my perspective is one limited perspective that may be accurate as far as it goes, without being true.
I may be holding the elephant’s tail, unable to perceive the whole elephant of my Self.
Our inclination is to find definitive answers. Our culture and science encourage and value definitive answers, definitions, proof, a big theory of everything. I’ve found that there’s value in sitting within not-knowing. Allowing myself to wonder without demanding or requiring a definitive answer allows me to expand my perception, open up to something I may never have imagined or something that defies my beliefs. Pondering without requiring full understanding or systematized definition can lead to experiences that expand my perception beyond current limits.
Natalie, delicate and intricate explanation of that which is difficult to explain. In a nutshell, since we are all One (entangled – and for those reading this reply who believe they know what that means, look up the definition; you’ll be surprised), all that is perceived and experienced as separate is also in union. From the vantage point of resonant frequencies, we experience what we focus upon based upon what resonates with us at the moment . . .and that can be anything despite our belief that we know what is going to occur. For those who would like to know more about this subject, I would suggest two books that do a very good job of explaining the situation: Robert Monroe’s Journey Out of the Body and Michael Newton’s Journey of Souls.
Well said, many thanks Toni.
Yes, very well said……. I once asked my Tai Chi instructor who also had been a Monroe explorer if a quite complicated vision I had during an OBE was “true”. He said it was “How they chose to show it to you.” which I thought a good answer that retains the paradox of so much of what is True in this regard. I think that speaks to whether it could be some version of self or distinct other self who yet is also a subset of the same Whole.
Part of that vision was a view of my personal creation that populated my soul with individual characteristics drawn out of a mandala. Nothing in that process separated me from the whole, it just gave me individual characteristics as particular expression of the whole.
Later in the process of doing a lot of reading on Buddhist Pure Land and the Amitabha Buddha, it seemed clear to me that the Amitabha Buddha was my own Buddha nature at its highest best self (not the whole but my individual self). Again, my highest best self could be or evolve into any one or all of the Pure Land Buddhas without violating the integrity of any of the others. Behind the veil, its one big soup of Consciousness as Loving Kindness to which we will ultimately blend back into anyway.
Somewhere in the Advaita Vedenta literature there is a description of 13 levels of consciousness of which only 8 (I believe) are human. We cannot begin to contemplate that from this perspective.
Thanks for the chance to try to articulate what is difficult.
To insist that diligent thought bring an understanding of change is to limit life to the comprehensible.
An edited quote I’ve used/believed in for decades, from the book “Blue Highways” by Wm Least Heat Moon. Yet grasping the incomprehensible has been a mostly asinine struggle until recently. The gift of the internet, its infinitely yet often unrecognized value, its pathways to re-connect us helps the insurmountable to become the molehill.
Joseph Campbell always maintained the very oldest, most ancient myths/metaphors he found were simply about realizing and living the joyous dance of life. Soon enough changed to the incomprehensible we now live in. He’s one I’d invite to a dinner table, along with Oliver Sacks. Their books/videos are worth exploring if you haven’t already. Out of the realm of psychic, rooted instead in absolute physical reality, they are nonetheless worthily, and relatively, insightful along this line.