The Reluctant Channeler
(An essay about how this all began.)
When I was six years old, my friend lost her favorite red rubber ball. We were playing in her house. I remember closing my eyes and seeing the red ball under her brother’s bed. At the time, I didn’t think much of it. I went upstairs to his room, got down on my hands and knees, peeked under the bed and there it was. I never told anyone how I found that ball. But I’m sure many, many children have the same ability.
A few years later, my family went to Lake George, N.Y. for a summer vacation and, well, it happened again…
Part of the evening entertainment for guests at the lodge involved a horse race. Adults would place “bets” on horses, then we watched a film clip of an actual horse race. The lucky gambler who chose the winning horse would receive a bottle of champagne. Once again, I remember closing my eyes and seeing which horse crossed the finish line first. I told my mother, she placed the bet, and a little while later we were holding a bottle of champagne.
I have no memories of my mother or father’s responses to that event. It’s not like these experiences kept happening every day. In fact, the next time anything strange happened was decades later, in my twenties, when i began reading about E.S.P (Extra Sensory Perception) and playing with “automatic writing” where it felt like someone (or something) took control of my hand as I scribbled all sorts of odd comments and instructions that always began with “We.”
Then in the early 1980s I took a class from a gifted psychic, Michael Sanzone. We met through a good friend when I was living in Manhattan as a struggling freelance writer. Michael, whose talents were even utilized by the New York City police department, taught his students how to channel. This was long before channeling was popular. I took to the whole thing like a fish to water. I loved it. It was easy. But most importantly, it felt good. Meditative, calming, expansive, high vibration sort of thing.
Yet as the years (or rather decades) passed, I stopped. I’m not sure why. I’ve always had a very dominant, intellectual left brain side of me that seems to question that sort of thing. Whatever the reason, I let it go.
When I started up again (because of my dear friend Heidi who you’ll hear from shortly) I was still in a Doubting Thomas mode. Sometimes I felt like it was all a bunch of New Age crap, that I was making it all up.
That is, until I would be wowed by what came out of my mouth during a session. Like the time I channeled for Heidi’s neighbor, a young woman mourning the recent loss of a friend. Oddly enough, this dead friend popped into my mind during the session in the form of, well, an elf – yes, pointed ears, green clothes, the whole shebang - and offered comforting words about his own passing. When I shared this, the young woman was shocked because her only photo of this friend was of him dressed as an elf at a Halloween party. Other times, when I’ve held sessions for clients (from Taiwan to Hawaii to Mexico) who were in crisis or following a traumatic world event, I am surprisingly impressed by the clarity and insight that these sessions seem to offer.
“Your existence needs no justification whatsoever. Your existence is enough. This non-stop, unrelenting reason to justify your existence is at the core or root of your unhappiness.” - TLC
The thing you need to know about channeling – or at least, about how I do it – is that it’s not like someone takes me over, and my head starts to spin, and my voice turns deep, and I speak with a thick Irish accent. I’m totally alert, present. I can hear everything around me: the birds, cars passing outside, stuff like that. If the phone rings, I can even open my eyes, then close them again and be back “in.”
What the experience is, for me, is that I’m a translator, or an ambassador of sorts. I feel the information viscerally, occasionally visually, and then I have to translate it. I also have to step aside and let the energy or information flow through me, become a sort of spokeswoman for, well, them. “We are a planetary council of light beings,” they once announced during a session. “You can call us The Light Council.” So, Heidi and I affectionately address them by this acronym that also seems to reflect what they offer in their wisdom: TLC.
A few words from Heidi…
It all started 5 years ago when I called Marcia to get advice about something I was struggling with. During one particularly difficult weepy phone call with Marcia, she commented that we could try something different other than just talking. How about channeling, she suggested. She told me she hadn’t done it in years and years but that it was pretty straightforward and all she needed to do to prepare was sit quietly for a few moments.
Sure, I had misgivings and doubts. But this was not some woo-woo crystal-carrying purple-haired gypsy I found online at PsychicsAreUs.com so I could talk to my dead grandmother (although, as it turns out, I’ve since been able to do so thanks to Marcia and TLC.) This was - and still is - my best friend, Marcia: a tough ex-New Yorker, daughter of a Manhattan taxi-driver and Polish bookkeeper. In other words, a no-bullshit kinda gal.
So, on that fateful day in April of 2015, I decided to shove aside my fears and record the weirdness on my computer. That first session with Marcia - I mean, TLC - gave me the clarity I needed to work through my issue. I have, since then, recorded nearly 300 sessions with Marcia, devoting thousands of hours to what has become an increasingly overwhelming database of audio clips, written transcriptions, and collections of salient quotations that we simply call The TLC Project.
“There is nothing more important than cultivating and abiding in loving yourself and pouring compassion on yourself. There is nothing more important. Are we making ourselves clear?” - TLC
At times this Project has even felt like an important part of my spiritual path, for I have developed a degree of trust and even faith in the seemingly universal truths spoken by this group of non-physical beings, whoever they are. Marcia continues to kindly, but often reluctantly, agree to hold these sessions, even when she feels ill, or exhausted, or simply has her own doubts and suspicions about the validity of the insights brought through. More than once, she has proclaimed that “this is a pile of shit” before a session and then admitted thereafter that the clarity of information offered when her eyes were closed goes beyond anything she, with all her own self-professed quirks and imperfections, could muster.
TLC has consoled friends upset by the current political climate in the US with (non-partisan) wisdom that highlights reflecting on how to raise one’s consciousness in an increasingly unconscious world, and TLC offered invaluable advice to my now very healthy 83-year-old father regarding how to work with his mind during his recovery from major surgery. In response to personal questions, they have offered practical invitations, or exercises, that turn out to be relevant to anyone who might be willing to take in advice that challenges their own assumptions but who may not necessarily believe in, or even understand, the source of the wisdom.
At least for now, we feel compelled to continue this project. (I’m usually on the phone with Marcia, recording the session for the client.) You see, we figure that, especially in these crazy times we live in, if The Light Council is indeed, as they have expressed - “serving as catalysts in the evolutionary awakening of humanity” - we can use all the help we can get. Even from a bunch of Wise Guys.
