How I Began Channeling Michael from "The Journey of Your Soul"

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HOW I BEGAN
CHANNELING MICHAEL

from THE JOURNEY OF YOUR SOUL

A Channel Explores Channeling and the Michael Teachings

By Shepherd Hoodwin

Many of us have experienced synchronistic strings of "coincidences" leading to something new in our lives that was unexpected but that we later knew was "meant to be." In 1986, I had that type of experience, which led to my channeling Michael. Previously, I had known little about channeling, although I had been receiving inner guidance for many years, and had recently attended a workshop that had enhanced my ability to receive images and thoughts from my spirit guides and other discarnate friends. (This is a little different than channeling, in which another soul speaks through one.)

I first encountered channeling early that year when a friend's girlfriend told me that she channeled an extraterrestrial. She played me a tape of one of her transmissions. I heard much truth in her words, although I was unsure whether I believed that an extraterrestrial was actually speaking through her. I decided to keep an open mind, and thought little more about it afterward.

That June, I met with another friend, who I knew gave "psychic readings" nonprofessionally, although I hadn't experienced them and didn't know what they entailed. He told me that there was a message "floating around me," and would I mind if he gave me a reading? He began channeling someone who called himself Michael. The material was quite loving, if a little general. I thought it might have been coming from my friend's own consciousness, but then he called me by the name "Shalom." This got my attention, because my grandmother used to say I was named after her father, Shalom. I had never told anyone this, partly because I wasn't sure I believed it. I later learned that in the Jewish tradition, someone could be considered to be named after someone else if he had the same first initial.

Three weeks later, the first friend's new girlfriend told me about something she had studied called the Michael teachings. She knew several people in and around Orinda, California, who were studying this channeled material. She told me, for example, that she thought that I was probably a sage with a goal of acceptance (which turned out to be correct), and she briefly explained what that meant. Again, this made little impression on me. It didn't occur to me that there might be a relationship between the Michael she was referring to and the Michael who had called me "Shalom."

About three weeks after that, while I was visiting Colorado, a close friend who lived there rushed out to meet me where I was staying. She could hardly wait to share a collection of teachings that had changed the way she looked at the world. They were from the book Messages from Michael, and we discussed them at length. After I realized that this was the same Michael who had called me "Shalom" and whose teachings my friend's girlfriend was studying, I decided that I would like to find a regular Michael channel so that I could ask some questions about the Michael teachings. Back in New York, on a quiet afternoon at work (I was a stockbroker with a discount brokerage at the time), I decided to write down my questions before I forgot them. When I finished the questions, my pencil kept moving, and answers flowed out of me. (Incidentally, that was the only time I channeled Michael through automatic writing.)

Since I had already had experience communicating with discarnate beings, I was not shocked by this; my response was something like "Oh, that's interesting." I mailed the channeling to my Colorado friend, since one of the questions was for her. She has a master's degree in linguistics from Yale; she felt that the channeling was linguistically similar to the channeling in Messages, and that I wasn't a good enough linguist to copy Michael's language style, so she felt the channeling was authentic. She asked more questions. Soon, a mutual friend also started asking questions, and then others. I began to offer channeling and what I now call Michael Readings for other friends and acquaintances. In this way, I got started as a Michael channel.

I got in touch with Aaron Christeaan at the Michael Educational Foundation in Orinda. He answered many questions, and those at the Foundation have continued to be helpful. I realized that the previous events had been orchestrated, and later came to understand that I was "keeping a date" or fulfilling an agreement I had made with Michael before this lifetime began. In hindsight, it is remarkable that I don't remember ever actually deciding to channel professionally; I just started doing it. I had no conscious idea that Michael would come to play such a major role in my life. It happened gently and gracefully, with a sense of inevitability, like many of the most "right" things in my life.

By nature, I am a question-asker, and from the start, my experience of channeling raised many questions, both about the Michael teachings and about channeling itself. This book is a result of my quest to answer those questions.

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