my bio

I can't remember the very first time I learned about channeling, but I did know about mediumship as a child. I wanted to "be psychic" from a very young age. In first grade my friends and I would search the neighborhood for clues—kind of like "Harriet the Clairvoyant." I remember we found a mitten-shaped marking in a paving stone down the street from my house—ooh! A sign! Never mind we had no clue what it was a sign of.

At my 12th birthday party we had a séance trying to contact Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We sat at a table and passed around a red rose chanting his name. The candle in the center cast creepy shadows on the wall. We had almost convinced ourselves that we had made contact when my Dad sprang through the door, shouting "boo!" and sending us into scared giggles.

When I was 16 I discovered the Tarot, and began a life-long love affair with it. It really suits my particular learning style—intuitive, emotional, right brain, experiential and kinetic. Early on I abandoned the "you will meet a brown-haired man" school of thought. Long before I understood what the word meant, I was searching for the symbolism of the archetypes.

When I was 18 I learned how to do self-hypnosis, which was the first time I was able to access different levels of consciousness. My friend had gone to a lecture, and described the technique to me when she came home. I was fascinated. I remember sitting in the cement stairwell outside my dorm, looking up at the stars, determined to master it. It turns out I am an easy subject, which has its good and bad points.

Coming of age was marked by a trip to the Isle of Mytilini (Lesbos) in Greece with a women's study program. Here my psychic abilities blossomed. We had no phones; we had to rely on the psychic airwaves to communicate with each other. The messages were very specific: "Meet me at the crossroad at 1:00." And there my friend would be, saying "Hey, I had a feeling that I'd find you here!"

I found myself in the role of oracle there… mostly through the Tarot cards. I felt like the "airspace" was a lot clearer than in the States—both because not everybody spoke English, but also because there was literally less electromagnetic transmissions in that part of the world. I imagine that its very different today.

At this point my spirituality was kind of Pagan, with an emphasis on the Goddess. I never joined a coven, but I did enjoy the ritual of casting a sacred circle, calling the four elements, and reading the Tarot. I got very into candle magic. One time my lover and I burned two candles, one for each of us, and for "some reason" stream of wax built up a third column, and then a piece of the wick split off, landing on top of it, essentially forming a new candle that then burned down along with the other two. We were astonished!

Another time we had the intention to release the influence of a witch on my lover, and the whole time the candle burned it moaned, I kid you not. She did not let go easy!

But I quit doing magic when a love spell backfired—coming true after I had changed my mind.

In my early 20s I read a workbook about energy work that had an exercise about connecting with your spirit guide. I found it surprisingly easy to do (my self-hypnosis skill came in handy), and my guide showed up in a white robe and headdress on a rocky beach and introduced herself as "Ruth, which rhymes with Truth."

Five years later I was at a workshop (more about this below) admiring a participant's pendant which had an unusual golden sunburst design with a diamond in the center of it. She told me her spirit guide designed it for her, and she had it made with her mother's engagement diamond. As we shared spirit guide stories we were shocked to discover that her guide was also "Ruth, which rhymes with Truth," wore the same white robes, and lived on the beach. I guess Ruth got around!

But before this happened, a friend of mine who had graduated from a psychic school led me on my first past life regression. We both got information about the same situation—living in Atlanta around the time of the Civil War. We saw that we were still in the same relationship patterns. It was disturbing. She went on to continue to work out her karma with the other two people involved by becoming roommates with them. I ended up moving to Atlanta totally unexpectedly 15 years later.

The next set of lessons in my life happened when I began to study ontology ("the nature of being") at a martial arts school. We explored energy ("chi"), perception, cognition, the functionality of the body, and consciousness. I learned several forms of meditation in the general categories of energy circulation and empty mind and practiced them a lot. Our "heritage" was Eastern, specifically Zen, but we did our meditation in pairs, which was very powerful.

We would face each other, and one would say: "Experience who you are, and communicate that to me." The other would try to do just that. Its hard to describe in words, but the communicator would try to presence the totality of her being, really loudly, and then transmit it on a non-verbal level to the receiver. It was a powerful practice.

I had some wild psychic experiences at these workshops. At one point I started seeing clear "flames" coming out of the top of people's heads who were having some kind of enlightenment experiences. It reminded me of the paintings of the Apostles in my Children's Bible—they had little flames floating above their crown chakras.

I became curious about developing my psychic abilities so I went to get a reading at the school where my friend had trained. They did an "assessment" of my various abilities, including "channeling." They said I only had a 3% talent in this area. I was crestfallen. By now I had my heart set on it.

I began to go to a weekly channeling session with a young gay male teacher who had studied with Elizabeth Claire Prophet and became a channel for St Germaine of the Purple Ray and various other entities. He would not only channel them, but also lead us in energy meditations, bringing light into our chakra system. It felt SO good. I would pay lots of money to go to private sessions with him. I felt like I was mainlining Light. We were very involved in the Harmonic Convergence.

So I joined his two-year metaphysicians program. We worked on our energy bodies, clearing out our chakras, "transmuting" negative energy, and developing our ability to do psychic readings. People came for free readings in our class and we would all sit around them in a half circle, sharing what we saw. In this way we could "calibrate" what we saw with other people, and the clients would give us feedback on our accuracy. It was an extremely valuable experience.

The first time I channeled was on a psilocybin trip. I got a message from God that I will never forget. He sent me an image of a big oak tree, and a poem:

When this you see, remember me
I am as constant as the tree.

I was thrilled! I wrote it out in calligraphy and put it on my wall. I was not sure I believed in God, but apparently he was there for me nonetheless. But I was not able to receive him in my ordinary consciousness.

Then in 1986 I encountered some channeled material in the form of a book called the Right Use of Will. This had a profound impact on me. It introduced the idea of the Will—the emotional body—and provided a way to heal and evolve it through emotional expression, or "movement." Vibration was a key attribute of a healthy will, and so the reader was encouraged to express their feelings with sound.

It opened up a whole new realm for me—and brought many of the threads that I had followed before together. Here was where God and the Great Mother intersected. Here was an explanation for the turning away from the Mother on our planet. And here was a way to restore the Feminine Aspect to her right place… both in the world, and within me.

I ended up leaving the metaphysicians program and the martial arts school, and embarking on my own path of healing, using the Right Use series of books as my guide. I discovered that I could access many understandings as I allowed myself to feel and express my grief, terror, and rage fully.

I decided to try and make a living using my psychic skills in a tourist location. My psychic teacher gave me his blessing, saying that I was ready, and would learn much more by doing that than he could ever teach me in a class. He was right. I encountered many different kinds of people from all over the world, and saw all kinds of things.

One reading that I remember the best involved a beautiful young woman who seemed drained of vitality. I saw a golden cage with six bars surrounding her chakras. When I do readings I usually tell the client what I am seeing and they help me interpret it. I told her what I saw and she sighed, nodded, and said her family was very rich, and she felt trapped by their expectations. The six bars represented the six children.

Another time I saw a Chinese dragon flying around the client's aura, and we were puzzled until his sister said they had just been looking at dragons in an Asian import store.

The most magical experience was when I explained the basic energy circulation to one of my clients, and his Spirit connected to him. He started to cry, and kept saying "thank you!" I kept telling him "its your Spirit, you can have this!" He gave me a big tip, much to his girlfriend's chagrin.

One the one hand I was very balanced during this period, because to be a clear psychic I had to do my mediation every day. On the other hand I was exhausted, both from the readings and from working outside in the elements.

As I worked through the material in the Right Use of Will (RUOW or RU) series (there are eight books total), I began to get some perspective on my own issues on a more "cosmic" level. I started to understand why I had drawn the situations I had been in. I began to try and understand my "reflections"—especially the responses I got from other people. What were they telling me about myself, and what I was denying?

One of the key concepts in the RU series is denial. When we deny our feelings they do not just cease to exist. They are either held in our bodies, or they fragment out of us and go out in the world and act out. This was a very shocking revelation—that we were, in fact, causal to and responsible for the horrible things happening out in the world, despite our best intentions. But it made sense to me. I vowed to do my part to heal the planet. I began to accept my feelings and give them expression, no matter how I had previously judged them as "unloving" in the past.

One of the promises in "the Books" was that each of us could hear from God. This gave me hope that I could someday channel myself. But I was intimidated by the prospect. Then I came across some earlier channeling by the author of the RU series. I suddenly had the feeling that "I could do this!" It seemed more on "my level." So I sat down in front of my computer and tried to listen.

The very first words that God said to me were: "You have to bring your Will all the way up to Purple so that you can know it is Me." He was saying that I needed to have my will energy fully present in all of my chakras, all the way up to the Crown, so that I could use my will to distinguish His Light as I was opening my chakra to receive light.

Eight years later, I still practice this principle when I channel. I find that my best channeling comes when I spend some time opening my Root chakra to Mother energy coming from the Earth, allowing it to rise and nurture all of my chakras, and fountain out of my crown. Then I open to Loving Light from above, and draw the Light that has acceptance for the Mother down through each of my chakras, and finally out my Root into the Earth.

I experience myself as a Conduit, or Vessel, for the Two Greater Cosmic Forces to meet, join, and heal. In my latest dialogs with Deity, I call this being a "tube."

Shortly after this first experiment, I decided I wanted to talk to other people that were channeling. I had heard about the GodChannel, and so went to their website. They have an excellent course in channeling that I recommend. But you do not need a course to do it.

I ended up contributing to the site, mostly behind the scenes, and developed a very personal relationship with God, as my Coach. He gives pretty good advice!

I have not fully developed the skill for channeling for "public consumption," but I have channeled "for" other people and shared my work with a small circle of friends over the years. Some of my pieces are better than others, but I have gotten the feedback that the material I am able to get is useful.

I don't believe that I have an "omniscient" point of view with my channeling—quite the opposite, in fact. I believe that I am one tiny "hole" which FatherMotherGodHeart come through—and the shape of this hole is limited my own denials and judgments and emergence point and history.

I am very much still on my path, and the one truth I have discovered, is that my point of view is constantly evolving. My ability to receive has evolved along with it, and it is clear to me that Deity is only able to give me what I can open to.

So I offer this blog as just another point of view to add to your own understandings. I think all of our points of view are so important, and so important to share. This blog is just one facet of the diamond. Reality is multidimensional and complex, and we can only understand it if we have all of the voices expressing.

In this Spirit I welcome your contributions, either as comments, or as emails to me, and if you would like, I will post them on the blog.

Namaste,
Sapphire