Loving the Light Within: A Seeker's Guide to Channeling and Your Own Spiritual Journey
296
Loving the Light Within: A Seeker's Guide to Channeling and Your Own Spiritual Journey
296eBook
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504370370 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Balboa Press |
| Publication date: | 12/14/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 296 |
| File size: | 628 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Loving the Light Within
A Seeker's Guide to Channeling and Your Own Spiritual Journey
By Caroline Coulombe, Jack Cain
Balboa Press
Copyright © 2017 Caroline CoulombeAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5043-7036-3
CHAPTER 1
Writing
The Written Word
The power of words is immense.
I yearned for that power, achingly and for a long, long time.
Words for speaking about myself, words for sharing the power of my breath or its collapse, words for speaking of my suffering just as much as my happiness, those words had been stolen away in my childhood. They remained in the dark, hidden away, held back for a long part of my adulthood.
My estrangement from words, like my sadness, found its time of resolution. What I have to say does not reinvent me — it allows me to remember myself, to remember what I know, who I am.
I wanted to write so that my imprisoned words could escape, so I could read them and rediscover them, understand them and deepen them. I wanted to write for myself but also to offer a little of the light that I have acquired over time to those who might need it. It would take me ten years — ten years of solitary work that has stamped the words offered in this book with an intimate and transformative signature.
In coming to clarity and maturity, could there be a way of avoiding difficult paths? Could there be less suffering in freeing ourselves from the illusions that litter human life, so that the blindness that often darkens our younger years might be lifted? Certainly there can. Gently, without jolts, the ego must be allowed to die. But before letting it die, we have to know how to give this same ego all its room and all its force. However, this inner science seems to be totally lacking in our western world — a world that is materialistic and profane having been deliberately made profane.
For the moment, suffering remains the most effective way of growing and touching heaven with our fingertips. No container for the energy of the spirit will be found in a life that has been emptied of meaning. There was a time when certain religious rites obtained that energy by creating a welcoming structure for the sacred. Those rites are still intended to do that, but since they have been stripped of any significant connection with the intangible, they no longer comfort the soul. The light bearers have become rare and their pilgrim followers, people in search of their own divinity, have been abandoned, left alone in their quest for spiritual enlightenment.
In a materialistic world where appearances are more important than interiority, where doing and having trump being, the inner worlds are traveled on pilgrim knees with great difficulty. Isolated, the travelers are weighed down by the intensity of the pain. Their prayer, repeated through a crushing solitude, is wordless and disorganized, and often shifting to profane objects such as alcohol, money or even hyper-sexuality. But this prayer nevertheless rises up as a desperate cry for freedom just the same. This phenomenon is perhaps related to the birth of a new, liberal spirituality that is in direct contact with divinity. This spirituality is in response to a pressing need since the religious systems have failed in their mission of accompaniment. They were supposed to bring us closer to whatever is called God but they don't anymore. In this beginning of the Age of Aquarius, incarnated souls, mature and at one with the problems of humanity as a whole as well as with the problems of Mother Earth are supporting a more intuitive and broader view of life than ever before. And from that, perhaps, there may be as well the birth of a new mediumship — one that is more accessible, more within the reach of hands and heart, less an affectation and less stressful for those in service of the Light. The energy portals that support regular contact with Light Beings are ever more numerous.
Mediumship is a generic term that designates various ways of reading subtle reality or it may mean entering into contact with deceased individuals or with beings living in a vibratory field that is different from one's own. In energy readings, the modalities of perception change according to the person acting as the medium. Such a person is called a channel, a medical intuitive, a shaman, a clairvoyant, or a clairaudient, among other names. You can consult a glossary at the end of this book to become better acquainted with the various aspects of trance work and with the general field of divinatory arts.
Anyone who wishes can experience the awakening of his or her own mediumship which I will also call channeling, or, with a broader meaning, trance work. This work is developed through a focused attention to the body and its sensitivity. It also unfolds based on how the world of the inner mind is seen, observed, illuminated, and embraced. This inner seeing reveals the unity in all things. Did not Socrates tell us that knowing oneself was the same as knowing the whole universe?
Opening a channel of communication with a benevolent holiness is to find comfort formerly sought in church or temple and, in this opening, to discover words to speak of the experience. Such an opening is also a path to the awakening of consciousness.
Words Conveyed
From our life stories is born our experience.
In return, experience shapes our story.
This book — I have delighted in making it full of stories.
Some of them, luminous or dark, are about me. Others are those of individuals who came to me for channeling or who participated in my training seminars. They have agreed to speak about what they heard and to confirm the value of the messages that touched their lives, expanding and enriching them. Both the shorter and the longer tales, integrated with mine, tell of an experience capable of inspiring love and of adding substantially to the fabric that is the basis of our existence.
My book relates my awakening to mediumship — how it took shape as channeling and how it was launched into the world. Accepting to be an intermediary between the world above and the earth is to allow a flow of words from beyond oneself, arising from the heart like a prayer renewed, illuminated, never again lonely. Channeling proceeds from a very straightforward partnership with Guides. Mine are a representation of Christ energies. Angelic, Pleiadian, Arcturian and other energies can be contacted by various mediums or channelers. In this collaboration, images form and helpful messages are provided through the interpretation of these images. Sometimes, words that are also helpful come spontaneously as well as physical sensations and even emotions.
Through channeling, I do not attempt to help those who consult me to rise above their humanity but instead to rise above their small self to the true quality of a liberated human being. I want to help them to no longer be trying to change themselves but instead to return to themselves, to that island of their inner world where they can pursue and perfect the often unfinished task of constructing their ego, their I, that pillar of earthly existence. It is in this sense that I can say that I instruct based on the present without predicting the future. For those who come to consult me, I read a page of their lives so that they might be able to write the next page with more precision and serenity. From another point of view, I read it for them so that they might share that page with others offering love and mutual support. Almost all of them already have answers to the questions they ask of my Guides. My channeling simply helps them bring some order and clarification to their questions, sometimes confirming the authenticity of their decisions and their actions. I do not try to lay a possessive hand on the messages that pass through me. Each reading lightens and transforms me personally, bringing clarity to me as it does to the person consulting me. I am not attached to the message. I just let it pass through and meet the needs of the person it is addressed to. In this way, I become more available and more likely to help, sustain, and guide. This is what I have to do for the moment. I do this in collaboration with the Light. Who knows where this journey will take me?
... no individual, even the most generous, can cause another person to be spared the solitude of human destiny. One day or another, we all simply have to open our wings and accept that we are, as Sartre phrased it, condemned to freedom.
More than thirty years of work as a psychotherapist and then as a clinical sex-therapist have allowed me to understand clearly the deep emotional life of the human being. All the beauty of the human lies just in that. It is certainly not a situation that requires fixing. Emotions distill creativity and support the growth of the soul. Once my heart was more open, I had a greater ability to deeply feel emotions of all kinds and intensities along with their infinite richness. I am not inclined to shy away from them as much. I don't spare praise for human feelings anymore. I oppose my associative mind more directly — that trickster who sidetracks me, who knows so well how to object to life, and who disguises his suggestions in words of love — suggestions that remain just illusions. My heart is still able to love even when it continues to be unable to attain unconditional love because its opening is too constrained, because its expression is cut short. May it soon be free ...
Emotions experienced with humility and simplicity make possible a penetration into deep layers of the divine in oneself, as if a sacred fluid irrigated the quality that carries them.
Whether presenting in-person trainings or offering here in this book some directions for working towards opening one's own channel or cleansing a channel already opened, I aim to help those who wish to reclaim a birthright that many have forfeited — the right to live with an open heart and to establish more concrete and deeply comforting bonds with the Light. I went back to my own journey and identified its principal steps. I found myself called from beyond doorways, sometimes so narrow, they tore away at my heart. They were closed, imposing, and imprisoning. I learned, and I continue to learn, how to open them and to cross their thresholds. Behind each one there awaits a renewal — a breath of life. The sense of my existence is thereby clarified, woven together more solidly, as I move from trials to successes, from darkness to light, from awkward words to ones that are inspired. And from suffering to happiness. Until the point at which the wheel of this dualist life, relentlessly careening from one pole to the other, offers once again an agony, a challenge or an adversity. What one has garnered must be revisited constantly. However, it accumulates and solidifies with time. Hope gives way to more and more certainty; freedom replaces slavery.
In any work of awakening, in its patient and intimate working away, the essential is to never lose sight of the fact that the energy which moves up and offers a taste of ecstasy to the soul must necessarily move back down. Just as the fall must be followed by a movement back toward heaven. Balance returns. Renouncing delight leads back to our earthly home. Slowly, our home prepares for us, in the real world and in the body, the next contemplation. The mission of inner work is to accomplish the opening of the heart.
CHAPTER 2Seeing
Blindness
It was the beginning of September 2001 and the weather was magnificent. I was sipping coffee as I sat on the patio of a restaurant in Outremont.
Absentmindedly, I had just been cleaning my reading glasses. For some time, I would find myself repeating this procedure several times a day, to no avail. I was no longer seeing clearly. Finally; bringing all my attention to this mechanical movement, I realized that the cloud that I was trying to wipe away was still there in front of my left eye, even with my glasses off. I put my hand over my right eye and the shadow caused by the cataract in the other eye revealed itself for the first time.
On that beautiful autumn afternoon, so full of sunshine, the full extent of the discomfort which had crept into my days became clear and suddenly my life swung toward a new aspect of reality. A door was opening before me, inviting me to move through a certain something. Apprehensive and resistant, I tiptoed in. This illness is not all that serious. It does not imply some future fatal outcome or handicap; in fact, it is only a little incident along the way. I accept that. Cataracts are such small everyday things for seniors! However, they were showing me that something was no longer quite right in my body and therefore in my life. I needed to think about what it was. I could not simply assume it was due to aging. Early fifties is too young to be developing cataracts.
Waiting for an exact date for the operation and with the problems caused by a less and less competent vision, I began to worry and I felt really vulnerable. You have to look at it from the other side in order to be aware of the considerable damage caused by these little clouds. For the healthy, those with good vision, cataracts are invisible and therefore don't exist. With damaged eyes, the vision clouds and begins to hide what is essential and necessary. Cataracts are huge seen from the inside; quietly and steadily they gnaw away at the field of vision in front of you, figuratively and actually.
It wasn't long before I was negotiating a deal with this situation. I would find solutions other than surgery and triumph over the threatened darkness. I had to act quickly otherwise the clouds in my eyes would gain ground and I would have to undergo surgery too soon for my taste. I had gone back to school and it was demanding. I certainly had no time to be slowed down by altered vision or by undergoing an operation.
I hoped that with certain approaches of alternative medicine I would be able to slow down or even stop the process of my eyes' crystalline lenses becoming opaque. I wanted to find the energetic causes of the attack on my vision. I learned that this problem derives from a deficient assimilation of calcium or an aberration in this process which are conditions that can also cause arthritis. I was also able to understand better why I wasn't able to adapt to light — be it from the sun, at night-time or artificial light. I gathered information, did research and my eyes continued to cover over and cloud up. I had not reached the underlying cause of this affliction.
Several times, in front of a mirror, I tried unsuccessfully to see what was not visible. Rebellion almost always accompanied this exercise: "Why me? Why that? Why has my body forsaken me?" My heart felt torn up, my eyes teared up and clouded over. They refused light that was made dazzling by the kaleidoscopic effect of the cataracts. And then, the operation having been put off for bureaucratic reasons, almost total darkness invaded my activities, my work, my studies, and my life. All I was able to do was to contemplate this strange health problem that was as disturbing as it was enigmatic.
Whether or not I was going to undergo an operation, I had to decipher the language of my eyes — their message. All distractions gone and vulnerable in my day-to-day life, I entered a deep existential suffering. Since this suffering had been with me for many long years, I had learned to set it aside. I no longer really lived in my inner world nor did I maintain a effective contact with the external world. The decision to complete my university degree gave me a new direction and brought a breath of fresh air to my work, but it wasn't enough.
When the body suffers, the eyelids close. When you are unable to carry on any longer, you fall to the ground and your eyes close. It's the same when the soul is suffering, it's inner eyelids close. For me, the cataracts acted like an inner eyelid, bringing darkness so that I could finally stop and recuperate, right in the middle of my headlong flight forward.
A New Vision, a New Life
This illness called out to me in a way that was crystal clear. It posed and imposed a basic question: "What is happening to your connection with the Light?"
I was undergoing a loss of adaptability to sunlight, street light, night light, lamp light in all locales. I was aware that I was no longer adapted (had I ever been — really?) to the shadow of my secret world, to my inner light, to the human, or to the divine.
I had lost my way in a no-woman's land. Outside, the colors of nature became less precise, less brilliant, long before the grey of the cataract interfered with the look that I laid on life. Even though I had retained a healthy ability to sometimes laugh, to amuse myself, to wish for a happy life, my joy had dimmed as the colors had dulled.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Loving the Light Within by Caroline Coulombe, Jack Cain. Copyright © 2017 Caroline Coulombe. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction, vii,Part One, 1,
Chapter 1: Writing, 5,
Chapter 2: Seeing, 13,
Chapter 3: Opening, 23,
Chapter 4: Preparing, 35,
Chapter 5: Understanding, 47,
Chapter 6: Tuning, 63,
Chapter 7: Protecting, 81,
Chapter 8: Channeling, 91,
Part Two, 109,
Chapter 9: Evolving, 113,
Chapter 10: Grounding, 131,
Chapter 11: Reuniting, 151,
Chapter 12: Radiating, 173,
Chapter 13: Loving, 191,
Chapter 14: Communicating, 203,
Chapter 15: Perceiving, 219,
Chapter 16: Serving, 235,
Appendices, 247,
Appendix 1: Thoughts on Ethics, 249,
Appendix 2: Training in Channeling, 259,
Appendix 3: What Others Say about My Work, 263,
Bibliography, 271,
Glossary, 279,