Tuesday, October 18, 2005
CHANNELING WITH CARLA L. RUECKERT
who has written A CHANNELING HANDBOOK. The first three chapters are online. The purpose of her book is to teach people how to do it. She believes that "People are designed to be channels."
The ways of approaching channeling that are available according to Rueckert include the spiritualist seance, the American Indian medicine person, the religious and traditional channel, the new-age religions, and "vaguely Christian sources which channel archangels, various lesser angelic presences, spiritual masters of various kinds, such as Kuthumi, and of course, Jesus, under various names." Edgar Cayce is mentioned as well, and the "contact with the plant devas" at Findhorn.
She also includes "The ascended masters...channeled by several large and organized groups of instruments, such as the Order of the Rosy Cross, Eckankar and Theosophists."
Rueckert makes a claim that it is essential to stay with a single doctrine:
Most of these systems teach the channeling in a coherent and useable format, and I can only recommend to those who are interested in this kind of channeling that, as always, discrimination should be used, and those powers of discrimination honed carefully, for although one system may seem much like another, each comes with a dogma or doctrine with which it is necessary to be conversant and to accept, at least in some part, in order for the student's experience with the system to be satisfactory. Indeed, part of middle America, the lodge--Moose, Elk, Mason, Shriner--is a good example of this basic gnostic kind of channeling. I am not saying that your husband or father, boyfriend, or nephew is channeling when he goes to a Shriner's convention. However, those who structured these organizations were certainly channeling this type of "wisdom" information.
She insists that channeling cannot be done for selfish purposes but must be done with the intention to service your fellow man, and talks about meditation and contemplation:
Through the use of tools such as meditation and contemplation you can begin and enable the process of refining your motives for seeking to be of service by channeling, and, meanwhile, the knowledge that such motives do not serve one well as a channel will help you to recognize times when you have gone a bit astray.
She speaks positively of religion and of silence:
The most effective way of immersing yourself, during your waking hours, in the subconscious powers of your mind is to meditate. If you are one of those people who has decided that you are some orthodox religious follower such as a Theosophist or a Christian, you are already going to church and may well have daily religious devotions and prayers. Meditation is recommended in addition to these things. Meditation is silent. The basic idea of meditation is that no rational processes are accepted in the practice. For this reason, those who teach meditation are usually interested in finding ways to still the conscious mind with all of its complex worries and chains of thought.
An immersion in silence is powerful. Even one such experience may be life-changing although that is not the norm. Perhaps the most important feature of your meditative practice should be its dailiness....Aim for doing it every single day. The length of your silence may vary although it is a good idea to become regular in your habits in order that you might do it at all.
That recommendation would fit with what is taught in centering prayer--silence and an empty mind. It is not what is claimed to be proper Christian meditation by the CDF. They recommend that meditation be a dialogue with God.
