Why authors should learn to channel

When I first came across the idea of channelling, like most people I thought it was to do with connecting with the recently departed. Accordingly, when someone told me that I must have channelled my first book, I took it with a pinch of salt.

Just three years later, I not only channel daily but I find myself teaching other authors how and why to do it.

Channelling is not a special gift, we all can do it but for many reasons it has been suppressed and sometimes is treated with derision in our society.

Vitrually all the literary greats will testify that they did not know where their Muse exactly came from but allude to it being external to them.

We also have this gift innately but somehow lose it. For example, seeing a child immersed in a drawing reminds me of the famous Picasso quote, “”All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

By learning to channel, we can get back to this child-like state of awe and wonder but with all the experience and wisdom we’ve amassed over our life times.

Passive vs Active Channelling

I found out there are two types of channelling. Passive channelling is where people let themselves kind of be taken over. Accordingly, the literary output tends to be repetitive and quite often frankly a bit dull.

When you actively channel, all that happens is that your conscious mind gets out of the loop and you silence your inner critic. You don’t lose control from directing the flow, shape or semantics of the work. You just get ‘in the zone’.

What’s more, you come out with stuff that you amaze yourself with both from the perspective of quality and information that you didn’t know you knew. This applies equally well to musicians and artists as it does to writers. I’ve lost count of the time when writing where I’ve got access to information that I could not have possibly known which latterly I’ve discovered was true.

So what are you channelling?

Again the common misconception is that we channel recently departed spirits and indeed some people do. More commonly people channel their guides and some say they channel Ascended Masters, angels and archangels. I’ve worked with authors who channel elementals like fairies and others that channel the Sun, Earth, Moon and stars. Again, whether this is all true or not is down to one’s personal belief.

Now I don’t doubt this is what people are experiencing but I feel this is likely to be more personal intepretation than fact. What is more likely to be happening is that we are connecting with levels of consciousness that we struggle to explain in our language and three dimensional reality so they end up with names that sound a bit far out. Also, sometimes when people lay claim to channelling x, y or z, all too often, ego sneaks in to play and common sense goes out of the window. Two elements that are not overly healthy in the creative writing process.

I am agnostic about who is channelling what exactly and prefer to focus on the output. What seems to work a treat in this regard is not channelling randonly but giving whatever source is feeding you with information to a structure. In my workshops, I use Mind Maps. They have the added bonus of bypassing that inner critic by busying the left hemisphere so the right can be holistic.

It’s worth noting that you are also not limited to channelling the words (or images or sounds). You can also ‘channel’ or conjure up the perfect publisher, sales and marketing contacts, speaking engagements and your readership.

So how do you go about it?

Regular meditative practice is the key. This doesn’t mean sitting cross legged on the floor for an hour chanting “Om”. A good walk so long as you primarily look up is good enough. There are also some great Meditation Machines you can buy nowadays.

Joining a yoga, Pilates, Tai Chi or Qi Cong class is also a great way to immerse yourself in the state that is ideal for channelling.

If you have trouble quietening the mind, have a listen to this MP3 visualisation called The Quantum Collapse of Thought

If you want to fast track your channelling skills, there are two workshops coming up that will connect you to your Muse in a way that will astound you.

The first is my next 3 day Author’s Retreat starting on the 30th June – details here

The second comes at it from an artistic as opposed to literary perspective.

A good friend of the Bookwright, Cat Bennett, is running The Confident Creative Retreat on the 25th & 26th September – details and early bird here

… also see my blog on Why Authors Need to Draw to see how these are connected