My friend Richard and I met at a Monroe Institute program, Lifeline, a dozen years ago. Since then he has gone on to do several programs with shaman Hank Wesselman and his wife Jill. (Rich presently writes a blog that I have mentioned before, http://thesacredpath.wordpress.com/. Well worth a visit.) When Rich and I met, it was old friends meeting for the first time in this lifetime, and that hasn’t changed. As it happened, he and I were involved in a little private experiment that broadened the Lifeline experience for us. [This is adapted from my book Muddy Tracks.]
During a tape one morning, The Gentlemen Upstairs suggested to me that it would be productive to have several people talk to them together. They said, “Pick them carefully. Or rather, let them pick themselves.” So I took my tape recorder and sat in the lounge at midday. TGU had said they would self-select, and they did. First Rich came over, then, one at a time, five others, and we wound up recording nearly 90 minutes of tape.
The following transcript of the first few minutes, in which Rich and I were alone, should be of interest, in connection with your access to guidance.
Frank: Monday July 17, 1995. The idea for this session was given to me this morning as a way of various members of the Lifeline class sharing experience and being given stuff that we wouldn’t get otherwise. The only other information that I have is that the person who asks the question should then do the channelling on the next go-round. That way there would never be pressure of the questions on the person trying to channel. That’s all that I know about it, and we’re going to rely on people showing up who are called to be here.
Rich: What can I do to establish a strong link with my greater self?
Frank [Upstairs]: Well, you’re in the right place at the right time. This experiment is an example to show you that the link is there all the time, and can be used in your daily life without any elaborate preparations. You know how to get to 21, which is one way to do it, or some people can do it from 10 or 12; just fool around and find it. Once you are persuaded of the reality of the process, you won’t have to have anyone else involved in it unless you want to, or unless it’s something so sensitive that you can’t get your own emotional body out of the way. So you could write the questions in a journal or on a piece of paper and then ask yourself the questions. If it would help you to get out of the way you could ask the questions on a tape recorder, and then wind it back, play the tape recording and stop it, with yourself in 21, and answer your own questions. The physical details of how to do it is not at all important, but the process — once you’re confident of the process, that’s all you need.
That’s not the only way, but it’s a very simple way for somebody who’s had the advanced training that you’ve already had.
Frank: All right, are you ready to try it?
Rich: Um [pause] Yeah.
Frank: [pause] If there’s a new technique or a new approach that will help us all to accomplish the goals of this Lifeline program, will you please outline it for us, or give us some experiments to try.
Rich: Uh — I sort of get the strong feeling, what we’re doing here right now. That in a larger group, where you can just start out and go from person to person around the whole room, that there’s several things that would happen, number one, there would be a building of energy and confidence in the group as they went around, and there would also be a drawing of focus and power from the group that would help each individual person to make the connection and make it strong and get the information through.
Frank: Is this something that TMI is liable to resist, or embrace, or be indifferent to?
Rich: I see TMI as being open to it. To a certain extent I think that this is happening already in the group discussions; it’s just that it’s sort of a group discussion in a different form. There’s right now where we’ve got basically two trainers that take care of the group and keep things moving along. This would be sort of like a perpetual circular synergy or whatever. And you know right now we’ve got– there’s — somebody will put out their feelings or their questions or their experience with the tape and in almost every instance, in fact I think that probably in some instances there’s something that some person in the group has to say, but they don’t say it, that would help that person. And in many cases they say it and it does help. And I think that by getting this into maybe a slightly different structure, and starting off in sort of a round-robin format and just moving it around, I think that it would help a lot. And I do see TMI as being willing to at least try it.
Frank: All right, let’s give you another shot.
[tape off. We listen to what we had just recorded, and Rich starts to give his reaction to it. Tape on.]
Frank: Actually, let’s get this on tape! Were you surprised?
Rich: Yeah, I was real surprised. There was a little bit of a –it’s kind of funny, there was a little bit of a stumble at the beginning as far as my confidence, but then, it’s real funny it just starts to flow out of you. You know, once you start to pull the thoughts in, or to open up to it, it just really starts to flow in on you. I’m actually quite amazed.
Frank: I think the embarrassment factor is the biggest single damn thing that stops people.
Rich: Yeah. Definitely so.
Frank: And that tells me why we started with two [people].
Rich: Yeah.
Frank: And this has gone on with me now since Guidelines. Guidelines started the process, and I learned why channelers talk sometimes in staccato ways, because you don’t know how the sentence is going to end!
Rich: Yeah. That’s right.
Frank: Stuff starts and you’re just going with it and find out if it makes any sense, but if it doesn’t, so what?
Rich: Right. In fact, it’s funny, when you mention this, because there was a book that I read on channeling, about how to make connections with your guides and, you know, to open up to that, and one of the things that they suggested was to read questions into a tape recorder and then listen to the question, and again it mentioned the same thing you did, don’t feel embarrassed or anything, just put the question out, you know. And they suggested maybe starting with a tape alone because of the fact that there’s nobody else sitting around, to be embarrassed, and if you felt comfortable with it, have other people ask the questions.
Frank: But TMI is a protected environment, so I think we’re a little more open to that kind of stuff…. But I find even … that I want to ask my guys upstairs, and I ask them to ask it for me, because it seems easier than changing gears. And I don’t think it’s necessary…
Rich: I think that may be one of the problems I have in asking my own questions, that sometimes I get in my own way.
Frank: Interesting…. Let’s listen to this again.
[tape off/on]
Rich: Okay. What I’m seeing now, in listening to this back again, was that the group, especially — it kind of seems like the circular analogy can be expanded a little bit. Number one, I think the group should be in a circle. I see that as being important. The other thing that I see is that the group actually acts as like a satellite dish, or a collector. And that as each person is getting ready to — is asked a question, that the group acts basically as a large receiver and almost an amplifier to allow that person to pick it up easier.
Frank: You mean the existence of the group helps everybody to focus easier?
Rich: Yes.
Frank: Which means it helps each person to get information easier.
Rich: Right. Yeah, and another thing that just occurred to me is — and I’ve read it many, many books in many, many different places — is that the energy that one person has, or one being has, is like x; when two beings focus their energy into one endeavor, it’s like x to the two. And as the group continues to grow, it just keeps becoming exponential.
Frank: Let me add to your analogy about the collector dish? When you were saying that I got a — it’s not a visual image, it doesn’t make sense visually, but — I got a clear image that all the members are around the various points of the circumference and that without somebody’s contribution you’ll miss something. In other words, somebody over there can get whatever hits that part of the dish–
Rich: That’s right.
Frank: and if they don’t contribute, it’s lost to everybody.
Rich: That very well could be. You know, and it could be with the point of our growth right now, that what happens is that maybe we aren’t quite strong enough in most respects to be able to get that collector dish large enough by ourselves, or to keep it steady enough, maybe, to take all the information in. And what we’re getting is good information, it’s just that we’re maybe not getting the entire picture.
Frank: As individuals?
Rich: Right. In other words, there’s a larger focus with a larger group, so there’s more to draw on
Frank: Again, fewer pieces left out.
Rich: Right.