Loving the Light Within: A Seeker's Guide to Channeling and Your Own Spiritual Journey

Copyright © 2017 Caroline Coulombe.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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ISBN: 978-1-5043-7036-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-7035-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-7037-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016920153

Balboa Press rev. date:  12/15/2016

CONTENTS

Introduction

Part One

Chapter 1:   Writing

Chapter 2:   Seeing

Chapter 3:   Opening

Chapter 4:   Preparing

Chapter 5:   Understanding

Chapter 6:   Tuning

Chapter 7:   Protecting

Chapter 8:   Channeling

Part Two

Chapter 9:   Evolving

Chapter 10:   Grounding

Chapter 11:   Reuniting

Chapter 12:   Radiating

Chapter 13:   Loving

Chapter 14:   Communicating

Chapter 15:   Perceiving

Chapter 16:   Serving

Appendices

Appendix 1: Thoughts on Ethics

Appendix 2: Training in Channeling

Appendix 3: What Others Say about My Work

Bibliography

Glossary

INTRODUCTION

In the present, presence shines.

I am touched by all those who search, be it in anguish or in joy. More than a book on channeling, more than a book on spiritual development, this work of mine is a book on life itself.

I strive to illuminate the perspective that trance work, in any form, requires work on oneself that is revealing and in constant evolution. Inner work, by harmonizing the personality, transcends the act of channeling. The reverse is also true. Channeling, in all its variants, informs and transforms the person practicing it as well as the person receiving messages.

The first part of this book is both intimate and theoretical. A number of personal passages have been woven into the theoretical elements. I have developed it as a mapping of the path I personally traveled to open myself to my mediumistic work even though it was not my first destination. Becoming a medium was a secondary path that I discovered without having sought it out. My original itinerary was simply a spiritual one and it still is—meaning that offering messages of light is only one of many avenues that I turn to in my quest for the divine. I am not attached to that one avenue. The development of intuition is just one more tool on the journey of return to the divine self. This return led me to write about channeling, or mediumship. Throughout the book, you will find reflections, questions and exercises, humbly offered, to help with a work that is inner or sacred. In that respect, this book is for the benefit of everyone.

The second part is practical. Taking the theory of the chakras as a base, I explore several areas of life and provide a few daily practices designed to lead to spiritual awakening and prepare for trance work should you wish to devote yourself to that. Certainly, the result of all work on oneself, in looking more deeply within and being animated with a new energy, also leads to happiness, to an ease in living and to a more affirming presence, day after day. Even though my inspiration came from the chakra system, you do not need to master that system in order to profit from my advice.

Whether you are a light worker, a person consulting someone for channeling or just someone making her way along the path of the spirit, I am sharing with you ways of being and doing that can punctuate the spiritual journey like a scattering of precious stones and can prepare you for trance work if you so desire. Certain practices overlap, some lead on from one another and others mesh together. I present those that have been most helpful to me up to now. I don’t know which ones are still to come.

What have been, are, or will be yours?

Take one from among those I am offering and taste it, take two and feel them both, take three, or take them all as your heart dictates. From experience, I know that all practices can be a working through leading towards redemption and a preparation for awakening as long as you don’t become attached to them. In the West, the arrival is often taken for the journey, the end for the means, and the relationship with the supranatural is worshipped as if it were the ultimate relationship with God. The divine is not a being to be seduced with our prayers, our dutiful work, and our sacrifices. It is not a being outside oneself that must be conquered. It is the essence of who we are.

The aim underlying a renewed study of the chakras, or particular spheres of life, is to continue to create in oneself a fertile soil for spiritual awakening as well as a burgeoning of happiness. Awakening and happiness are most likely to happen when life has been nourished in a satisfactory way and when the heart has been refueled—in that moment right after the moment when the inner struggle was still a distraction—in that moment when the greatest serenity has been cultivated.

Linear, sequential writing is not well suited to the full expression of my creativity. Instead, I entrust the expression of my message to my intuition, to the urgings of my heart and to the sometimes erratic movements of my personal history. In the end, all will be made clear through a multiple weaving together of various concepts and different levels of writing.

Writing is one vehicle among many for transformation. It leads me back to the pleasure of being a woman and of writing in a way that is sensitive and expansive rather than informative and rationally organized. It is important for me that what I have to say be charged with feminine magnetism.

I thank all those who were involved, either close up or from afar, in the completion of this writing project whether it be for their support, their caring, their teaching, or their talent.

My thanks to all those who believed in me and came to consult me or studied the art of channeling with me. My experience was greatly enriched by their opening and by their involvement.

Jean-Guy Nadeau, Jim Lewis, Gisèle Thibault, Tara Lewis, Marie-José Leclerc, Anne Leblanc and Suzanne Gagné reread the manuscript at different times in its evolution and generously offered thoughtful comments. Suzanne Gagné moreover reread the final version of the French book suggesting with great perspicacity the final invaluable corrections. A big thank you to one and all.

I am deeply grateful to Sergine Martinez and Mathieu Bélanger who stood by me during the rebuilding of the book’s structure when I was feeling very lost and on the verge of abandoning the project.

A special thank you goes to Mathieu Bélanger for his superb layout skill and illustration talent that he brought to the digital book as a whole. Thank you Mathieu for your talent, your patience and your always-attentive ear. The digital versions of this book, in French and in English, are available on my site as both an iBook or PDF: www.carolinecoulombe.com

To Jack Cain, my translator, my sincere gratitude for his talent and his attention to detail in the rendering of my not-so-easy text from French to English. I feel that he has understood the essence of my work.

A sincere thank you to all the people at Balboa Press who graciously helped me complete this project and bring it into the world.

Finally, Jim, Tara and Solène, thank you for your unconditional support during the whole course of this project. And a special thank you to Jim for reviewing and editing this English version of my book. My thanks to all my family members and to my friends who continued to believe in the publication of this book even when its fate seemed uncertain.

At 52, I developed some cataracts, a rather simple and seemingly harmless health problem—at least in the eyes of those with good vision. At that moment, my life began to quarrel with me. It wasn’t happy anymore with many things. It ordered me loud and clear to bring some order to how I saw life in general and to stop my endless grumbling.

In other words, it told me to stop resisting and it offered me the leisure of serving humanity. Nothing more, nothing less!

Part One

The Art of Trance

Learning it,

Perfecting it

To every thing there is a season and

A time to every purpose under heaven.

A time to be born and a time to die,

A time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted,

A time to kill and a time to heal,

A time to break down and a time to build up,

A time to weep and a time to laugh,

A time to mourn and a time to dance,

A time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together,

A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing.

Ecclesiastes

The time has come for mankind to open to all of life’s dimensions…

Chapter 1

Writing

Communication is a way of going beyond our usual limits.

Anodea Judith

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.

Ginette Paris

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