Questioner
In the tuning process, when you ask for the archangels to come, in my notes it says, “to represent all those who come in the name of Jesus the Christ.” Could you expand upon the purpose of bringing the archangels in?
Carla
Protection. It’s as simple as that. When you’re dealing with non-seen, non-physical energies and essences, the human—as we come from the factory with our five physical senses—is remarkably unequipped to know what energies are around us. I think that through meditation and just the process of becoming more awake and aware, we do begin to become more able to sense energies. But in terms of getting ready to channel, I personally like the feeling of hedging myself about with energies that I trust and that I know are strongly protective and strongly positive.
Questioner
And they stay there throughout the process, basically?
Carla
Right. And then at the end of the channeling they’re released.
Questioner
I was thinking about the process of tuning for protection before the challenge that we were going through yesterday, and I was curious about people who are actually able to make contact and channel. How do the words come? Do they pops up in your mind? Because it appears to be slightly different for everybody.
I could get as far as waiting and asking for conditioning. There was a particular physical sensation, so I thought, okay, they are basically telling me they are here. But then I wondered. I was so focused on seeing the words come up in a certain way that I wonder if I am setting up a block. I actually couldn’t tell what my mind was thinking. Because my mind is quite capable of saying, “I am Laitos.” But I wanted some sort of confirmation, something that has a better feeling or meaning. I could not really tell my thoughts from their thoughts, so I waited. Maybe I wasn’t ready for contact. Anyway, that’s my curiosity, if you are able to describe how your mind translates it, how it comes to you.
Carla
It’s interesting that several of you have been working to put words up on the screen and to read the words off of your screen. It’s certainly logical, but it’s something I’ve never done. I just feel the presence and go ahead. When I go ahead with the act of saying, “I am Laitos,” I begin to catch another ball.
You had felt enough presence to venture forth and say, “I am Laitos.” Next time, if you just go ahead and do that, then perhaps the concepts will come to you. The reason I don’t use the screen is that I don’t get words. I get concepts. Then I have to translate them into words. It’s not precisely a picture. It’s hard to say precisely what it is. It’s just impressions. I go with a very slight impression, start talking about it and it gets clearer as I speak. My experience of it is that it’s subtle work. It’s not obvious work.
Questioner
So in other words, just go ahead and flip the light switch. Whenever it’s your turn, say you transfer the contact to R, he should just go ahead and say, “I am Laitos.” You’re flipping on the light switch and then the next set of words, or concepts, or pictures should start coming to you.
Carla
Yes. That was the figure of speech which I used before, laying one’s ass completely over the line and letting go. It’s risky. You feel vulnerable. It feels like a big risk that you’re taking, to carry on when you don’t have any control over what’s going to come out of your mouth next. It goes against all the dictates of our society to do that. So it’s counter-cultural. It’s counter-intellectual as well. It’s not an intellectual process at all.
Those of us who are used to working with the intellect, and used to controlling what we have to say, and being careful as to what we have to say, have to overcome quite a bit of conditioning from the culture just in order to be able to work with these energies.
I think as you work, by an act of faith you’re sort of leaping out there. R did say that he felt the contact. He had felt some conditioning. So he wasn’t just going from nothing. I wouldn’t advise starting the channeling if you’re not feeling anything, I mean, you could try to say the signature, “I am Laitos,” and see where that gets you. Because it could be that you’re not the type of person who is prone to feeling your nerves being excited. You might have fairly quiet nerves, and therefore you might not get the tingling and so forth. But yes, just take a flying leap and see where it gets you.
Questioner
You threw in a key for me, because I was hoping or expecting to get some indication. But as I said, it was a total void. Can it happen that, with prayer from the group, Laitos would come whack me up the side of the head? Would that help instigate anything?
Carla
No, the group can’t do anything except lend you their support. You don’t realize how excellent the group help is until you’re without the group. And then you realize that the group energy has been able to carry you. But the group can’t intervene with Laitos for you. But I think what may have happened with you, just going completely blank like that, is that you were overwhelmed. Did you have any physical sensations when everything went blank?
Questioner
No, there was nothing. It was just darkness. I was in a total void. There were no feelings or anything’.
Carla
When you meditate, do you get to that place that you experienced, or is that unusual for you?
Questioner
No, I’ve never gotten to that nothingness.
Carla
Totally unusual. Well, then I think you need to be encouraged by that because you are experiencing a state that’s new to you. Maybe the way you channel is on the other side of that, somehow.
Questioner
I wonder if it could be expectations. Remember the little story I told? Back in 1999, I was getting up early and reading from the Bible. At 4:30 in the morning I was sitting there reading in the Old Testament—I have no idea where. Sometimes, you know, you’re reading along and all of a sudden you look at the pages and you realize you haven’t been reading, you’ve just been looking at it. Well, I was in one of those states of mind when an impression came up in my mind—it wasn’t an audible thing, it was in the mind—“Edgar Cayce.”
I’d never really been familiar with the name. I just sat there, and the hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I knew. Something inside me said I had to investigate it. So I went over to the library and started looking it up, and then for the next two or three years, that’s what I worked through.
So my point is, is it possible that my expectations that this is the kind of wording, or sensation that I would get from Laitos would block me because, I’m expecting something similar to that?
Carla
It’s possible. But on the other hand, I’m not altogether sure you’re being blocked, because of the fact it’s a novel state for you, this state of nothingness. I’m wondering, rather, whether you’re being given a new place from which to work. It seems it would be very rich in possibilities to work from a place where you didn’t have any thoughts in your head. It seems like that would be perfect for getting new thoughts, to have that ground zero to work from. I’ve meditated all my life and I’ve never gotten there. It sounds wonderful! So it’s almost an achievement as far as I’m concerned. Just in absolute terms, to reach that state of nothingness is a real achievement. I’m not sure you’re being blocked. You may be being developed.
Questioner
May I share an experience I had? When I took the other channeling training about five years ago, we were doing preliminary exercises. I was following along with the instructions quite well and then all of a sudden I was out there in the black, in the nothingness. It felt like a void. My perception of the void is that it was the space from which all things come. And then after I had the experience of being in the void, the next exercise went fine, and everything with the channeling went fine. I just wanted to share that with you.
Questioner
Are you in the void when you go to your screening room? Are you in the void at any time when you’re tuning for your channeling?
Questioner
No. I just had that one experience. I’ve gone to the void other times, but in the channeling process I overlook the void.
Questioner
I think that that’s probably where I am. And I think that’s a good idea. I don’t think you’re being blocked. I think you are completely the opposite. When I go to my screening room the last two times that I’ve tuned, the female came in, in her amorphous astral form and she says, “You don’t need this.” And she took off my skin and threw it to the side and I was just this light being.
And then the male came along and said, “You don’t need this either,” and took off my light and threw that to the side and I was just this wire structure. And then it was up to me to release the wired structure that I was, this last frame of who I was, this last essence of myself.
And then when I did that, boom, I was in that dark place that you talked about. To me, I took that to mean I wasn’t allowing my personality to get in the way of my vessel. So I think that’s probably a very good place for you to start. You just have to learn about how to work with that now.
Questioner
I might offer also that the in processing we do, we often encounter a process where we hit a state of nothingness. A state of nothingness is perceived to be a block. Actually it’s the opposite polarity of yourself. Oftentimes it’s scary for someone to go to a state of nothingness, or a void, because it’s a different perception. It’s just a perception. And the perception is that if you go into the void, then you don’t exist. Or it challenges your existence. So it’s a matter of balancing the polarity of existence and non-existence. And the deduction of the polarity, or the goal you’re striving to achieve, is to surrender to the concept enough that you are not fearful—whether knowingly or unknowingly—of the void. The void doesn’t exist any more than substance exists, it’s just the opposite polarity of existence.
Questioner
Would you describe and explain the physical experiences of both positive and negative channeling and also what are the physical feelings of what it’s like to channel both positive and negative entities?
Carla
I’ve never channeled a negative entity. I’ve always been careful enough to avoid that. But as I understand it, the experience of channeling positive and negative entities is the same. They used to say that they come in on the same energy, when I’ve questioned before about how people get fooled. I’ve seen several really good sources through the years become tainted, and then become basically, as far as I’m concerned, discredited. They start out extremely positive and then because of people asking fear-based questions, they get more and more fear-based answers, and specific answers having to do with doom and gloom and Armageddon.
So we have asked the source, “How does that happen? How can those good people, who remain positively oriented even though they’re getting these mixed polarity messages, get fooled?” And the answer was that the negative-polarity entities are using the same light as the positive-polarity entities.
They’re very clever. They can mimic the vibrational features of a positive contact, and take over the contact from your original, good, positive contact, because of the fact that you’re not willing to say simply, “I don’t know,” or “My source can’t say it,” or “We’re sorry but free will will be infringed,” or whatever.
They get that, but they don’t want to channel it. So in rejecting that, it opens the door for a negative-polarity entity to mimic the positive-polarity contact, call themselves that, and start giving mixed information.
Mixed information is sometimes a very subtle thing. Obviously, if you start getting, “Everybody but you is secondary. You’re the important one,” and start getting obviously negative information, you wouldn’t be fooled. But on the other hand it’s very easy to be fooled by saying, “Various aspects of the group just happen to be more spiritual than other people,” or “You’ve done more work than other people,” or, “There’s a place for you that there isn’t for other people.” You start becoming an elite and you receive, “Those of you who are working for the light shall have to have safe places; so we wish to give those of you who are especially filled with light, inside information about what places will be safe.”
Only gradually does it degenerate into saying, “Be sure to have a cow there because the children will need milk,” and things like that. You get pretty far down the line and you can look at it and say, “That’s just nonsense. That’s definitely a service-to-self entity that’s gotten in there and started channeling.”
But that’s the way it happens. The service-to-self entities are quite clever. They’re good mimics, and they simply say they’re the contact you want, and then they give you the love information, the light information, and that you’re special, and you must go to a safe place.
There’s this one gal—I think she’s on her fourth trip now—who has this way of getting beautiful information, but it always tends towards the fact she is going to be leaving with a bunch of people when everything falls apart and the world disappears. She will be managing the tour to heaven, and she’ll take those that belong with her. So people want to get on this heavenly express.
She’ll always start by saying, “Well, it’s four or five years off.” Then the time comes and nothing happens. She sort of disappears for awhile. Then she starts channeling again, “Well, you know, the reason we got that information wrongly was blah-blah-blah,” and then she starts all over, a whole new generation, same thing.
I’ve had people write to me that say that, because of the fact that they disagreed with her, she said they were no longer worthy of going with her to the heavenly realms. They would have to be left behind.
She’s a very positive person in and of herself. I’ve met her. Her only desire is to serve. She’s dedicated her life to it. But for some reason, she really needs to be this tour guide, this person of importance that’s going to lead people. Because of that she keeps getting this mixed message.
I was working with a fellow on the radio, doing an interview with a guy called, Lance White, the Zany Mystic, who had this happen to him. He had been talking to her for his radio show. They’d had a cordial relationship at first. Then he somehow got athwart of her and she and he had a disagreement. He showed me the letter where she kicked him out. And of course you know the mark of positive polarity is inclusiveness.
It’s an easy thing, if you don’t keep your mind free of attachments when you’re doing this work, to get caught. She was caught because she had an egoistic need in her channeling to be important.
Ruth Norman—I don’t know if she’s still extant. In the ‘70s and ‘80s she was already doing this. She claimed that she was the reincarnation of the archangel Uriel and that everybody had done her wrong. All these people that read her work had to realize that they were one of the ones that had done her wrong. They had to come back to her and ask for her forgiveness and give her money and treasures to indicate that they were really and truly sorry. She must have been doing fairly well at this because she was advertising in Fate magazine, which is expensive to do. That’s where I saw her ad. There was this long rap where she’d been done wrong. So, you know, you can get channels where there’s obviously a lot of ego involved in the process.
Questioner
Is it accurate to say that for the negative entities, their one tool is really deception, and that they use deception to get the energies of others? And that if they didn’t get the energy of others, they’d probably shrink away? Or do they have their own energy, independent of others?
Carla
Well, I think the answer is both yes and no. First of all, when positive people wake up and begin polarizing towards the light and begin generating light because of their process, then those forces in the universe which I tend to call the loyal opposition—it remains to me a mystery exactly how this works—become aware that there’s a new source of light. They want either to put out the light or to take over the light for their own purposes.
In that case, their tool is deception. They simply want to put out the light by offering temptations and fooling people into simply being distracted from what they’re doing. You don’t have to put people down. You simply have to distract them and get them off on a sideroad somewhere, or get them to start doubting themselves, feeling unworthy, and things like that. In that way they use the tools of deception and cleverness and guile.
But you have to realize also that there is a small harvest—but a harvest still—of those who are attempting to polarize negatively. And those who are attempting to polarize negatively have access to unseen help, just as those of us who are trying to polarize positively have access to the Confederation. So you get Orion sources of information that work pretty much the same way as the Confederation does. In talking to those polarizing negatively, they’re not deceiving at all. They’re simply giving forth the message they came to give. The negative message is simply, “You are the Creator. You are wonderful! Experience your own glory! Experience your own majesty! Know that it is your destiny to use the people around you in order to do your work.”
There are a lot of very negatively oriented people, in the church, in politics and in corporations, who are very charismatic and who draw people to them who want the experience of learning from this fellow, even though that makes them not just students, but almost slaves, where they’re being worked very hard and having to work on weekends, and having to give up their personal life in order to work with this great person.
But what they’re attracted to is the power of it. So they want to learn enough so they can become that person who has peons under him to do all of the work, and therefore has accrued the power, and so forth.
So in a way, you can’t say they are positive. They’re negative. But they do not resort to deception. There is that element of negative contact for those willing, students of the negative harvest who are clear about how they want to polarize. Straight-out information is available. I’m thinking about things like Satanism, where there are some very persuasive writers that write about how that’s really the way to go. That information is out there just as the positive information is out there. So it’s not always deceptive. Sometimes it’s just honestly straight-out service-to-self information.
Questioner
I’d like to relate an experience. It’s sort of along the same lines of protecting oneself. Last night, a couple of hours after I went to sleep, I started having dreams in which I was channeling. I was in the circle, channeling, and I started to fall into trance. Another portion of myself took me by the arm and said, “You’re not allowed to channel alone. Get out of this trance.”
Well, in the dream, I was in the circle, but no one really knew that I was also in my bed, and that I ought not to do this. Then it happened again. I would fall back into sleep, I would be in this channeling circle, I would be channeling, and then I would go into trance. My voice changed, I was completely consumed by a different entity, I spoke completely differently, and every time, an element of myself took me by the arm and said, “You’re not allowed to channel by yourself. Don’t do this.”
It got to the point where my higher self, or whatever being was watching over me, said, “You need to wake up and get out of this, because if you don’t get out of this dream now, you’re not coming back.” My question is, when I’m alone, and I’ve been channeling, could I get into danger in my sleep? Is that possible?
Carla
Not really. You could certainly get all out of whack and have a scare. Again, I think it’s pretty much a distraction.
Questioner
I wonder if anybody else experienced that, at all, in their dreams last night, or ever.
Questioner
I think I dreamed I was channeling, then I woke up. My higher self woke me up. And it was right at 3 o’clock. In a little sense of humor to myself I said, “Well, if this is a greeting, I send you light and love.” You know, I had a sense of humor about it.
Jim
Years ago when we were having the Ra contact, in sleep one night I had a vision in which Don and Carla and I were sitting on the front porch of a cabin. It was a pretty day, except there was this very dark cloud that came over and it covered the sky. And then a tornadic type of whirlwind came out of it, came down to the door of the cabin where we were sitting. There was a skull on the end of this tornado. It was attempting to take us over. I sent it love and light, honest, heart-felt love and light, and it went away.
So I think whenever you come in contact with any type of force like that, whether you’re sleeping, or in a pre-conscious state, or channeling, if you send it honest, heart-felt love and light, and really mean it, they usually can’t take that. It’s too sickening. They go away.
Questioner
If I get barraged with anything negative, the best way I’ve learned to deal with that is to get the big picture and look at it from the top down. Really what we’re doing here, we are all the Creator, even the negative entities are the Creator, and they are experiencing extreme separateness. For me, it’s easy to get to love and compassion for that, and gratitude that I don’t have to be there and feel so separate, to see it as a game. Then you say, “Oh, okay, it’s my move.” Sometimes it’s hard to do, and I’m not saying I’m able to do that all the time. I’m certainly not, because it can wear on one…
Carla
One thing I would comment on here is that all these experiences indicate just how responsive the spirit world is to exactly what it is we’re trying to do. There’s positive help out there, but many of us are experiencing negative greetings designed to frighten us, distract us, or to cause us to shut down in one way or another.
Isn’t it interesting? We’ve been working to open ourselves to more service and more love and light for just a couple of days, and already the loyal opposition’s all over us. If you wonder if you’re doing something here, all of this resistance that some of us are getting indicates, as nothing else could, “Yes, this is real. Yes, this is happening. And yes, this is being noticed by the spirit world.”
Questioner
We’re becoming more of a player.
Carla
Yes. Well, in the book , when people decide they’re not just going to open their heart, but they’re also going to access the gateway for meditation, healing, channeling, journaling, and all those things that you pull through the gateway, I call them lighthouse level players. So, players of the lighthouse level are especially prone to psychic greeting. They’re using more light.
Questioner
I suffer from stage fright, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it took me a whole bunch of times of practicing to really be able to open up and let go, and so I wondered if you thought stating something specific that during the tuning would please allow me to overcome my innate shyness…
Carla
Sure. I think suggestions to yourself are very helpful, absolutely.
Questioner
I had a dream last night that may involve the forces of darkness. I had an uncle whom I’m convinced is on the negative path. I don’t know who he is really, because my last interaction with him was as a child. But he’s a character in my dreams often, and he’s a dark figure in the dreams, not favorable, definitely. But last night he came to me and he was demonstrating his powers. He had obvious and unmistakable powers. He could read minds. He could change material reality. And he wanted to teach me then. He seemed genuine in his desire to help me somehow. From what I can remember, I kept affirming my positive polarity, I said, “I can’t thwart another, I can’t control another,” I kept asking him what his polarity was and he was really ambiguous about it. He wouldn’t reveal it. That’s all I remembered.
Questioner
I could share one too, real quick. I was telling N and T this morning before I got up that I had a dream. There was a severe wind storm and it blew down the house that I was in. I raced to the front of the house as it was starting to topple over, and these gears were going to come down and kill me as part of the rubble of the house coming down. And I remembered the saying Carla taught us, “If I live, I live in Christ and if I die, I die in Christ,” and I lost the fear of dying.
But at that moment with the house coming down and these huge steel gears coming down, I knew I was going to die. And I made it out by them coming down at each other with me protected in the middle. I escaped out of the house.
But it was just hugely symbolic because of what was happening. I see the house as being myself, and winds and bad weather being change, stuff like that happening, and then reaffirming my position, being in the positive, by not being afraid to die. I’ve never had that experience before. You know, I’ve always been afraid to die. That was a huge awakening for me. Very profound.
Questioner
I understand that because of my stage fright, not wanting to embarrass myself. When I feel the energy and I know it’s there, the way I perceive it is I have to meet them half-way, I have to open my mouth. I have to have the willingness to put myself out there on the line and speak, with faith that something’s going to come out, and it’s not going to sound foolish. So I understand where you’re coming from. I guess the way I’m perceiving it is I’m meeting the contact half-way.
Questioner
I have another question for the group which is a repetition of R’s. I think you’ve probably already answered the question I’m about to ask, which is: As you transmit the words, do they come one at a time as you are vocalizing it, like you say, meeting it half-way? Or do you have a sense of what the words are going to be before you get them out through your voice?
Questioner
Yesterday, at the end of the preliminary exercises, I was watching the screen and words simply appeared on the screen. I had that experience. Then when we actually channeled and were telling a story, when the story began and I was staring at the screen, nothing happened. Then at a certain point I saw a picture on the screen. It was like looking at a movie on the screen. So then my words described the picture that I saw on the screen. Okay, now, later the picture and the screen all went away. After I started channeling it was as though the story was choosing my words, if you understand.
Questioner
One at a time?
Questioner
In frames.
Questioner
My experience is that you get into a state, you know you’re in an altered state. For me it’s feeling your third eye activated. And then you say, “Okay.” You don’t get involved with watching the screen itself. For some people it works. Other people are visual and see other things. But I don’t think anyone can pattern somebody else’s technique. I guess what I go with is, if I’m in the altered state, whatever I’m saying is okay.
Questioner
You’re not monitoring the words? You’re just very passive?
Questioner
Well, if I tell you how I do it, it’s not going to be the way you do it. My sense is if you’re in the state, just go. Forget about how the words come out. Just say it. If you’re in that altered state, be confident that whatever you do is okay.
Questioner
I tried to anticipate what the words would be, before they came out, and it was just nonsense, mumbo-jumbo.
Questioner
I’m pretty sure that the thing that I saw was my imagination, and I just said it because that’s what was there. And then from there I met them half-way, and that’s when they started giving information. They sort of used that element that I put out there to them.
Carla
They’ve got that GPS feature in cars where, if you’re off course, the gadget resets somehow and guides you from the place you actually are. The channeling sources are like that a little bit. If you get off course they just work gently with you to tell the story from that point, or to channel from that point. They’re quite tolerant of slight variations in between what it was they were putting out and what it is you pick up. They can work with you on what you have to say. Their goal remains unchanged. They want to produce a body of words that has the potential to help people wake up and realize who they are and why they’re here.
Questioner
My perspective is that free will has to work that way. Otherwise they would be encroaching upon your free will. It has to be your own imagination. There has to be a meeting of peers. Otherwise, if was their words and just your mouth, it’s almost like it would be encroachment, possessing your body, invasion. You know what I mean.
Questioner
It was weird for me because during my construction of my work space, I was having trouble seeing myself construct the work space. It was as though somebody else was constructing it. It was me but it was somebody else. When we were talking I was the man in the story, and different things were happening to me. It was kind of like the concepts you were talking about. They would happen as different bubbles in the story. So that’s kind of how I knew that it was not just my imagination. Because it’s hard for me to put myself in that third person’s point of view, for some reason.
Questioner
I thought I might relate a story that strikes me as bringing out this whole idea of how negative can get into positive; how people who start positive get into negative orientation without knowing it.
I used to work for a policy research group in Washington D.C.. The president of the group used to be in the cabinet of Lyndon Johnson and he told this story. Johnson apparently never liked for a policy to be leaked. He wanted to disclose it himself. And one of these things got leaked.
After the policy was made, apparently they went off on vacation. The policy got leaked, and the fellow who was president of this institution, who was in the cabinet, was in Puerto Rico on the beach. He sees this messenger coming toward him, across the beach, and the guy has a telegram. The telegram is from Lyndon Johnson, and it says, “Did you leak the story?” So he gives a message back to the messenger saying no. But he tells him that he has to say, “No, sir.” Because if he doesn’t say “sir,” another message would come back to him from Lyndon Johnson saying, “Say ‘sir’.”
So, talk about power and being self-important, there’s this Lyndon Johnson, creating all this around him, creating all this for the people who have to work for him. You know, when you said, “Make the people around him work day and night,” that’s the way he worked. You had to be on call, day or night, any time, for whatever reason.
What occurred to me is that Johnson himself was trying to do good things on the one hand, and on the other hand he got us into Vietnam more deeply. And everyone working for him was trying to do good, and yet they were simultaneously caught in this power thing.
The president of this institution was the same way. You didn’t have to say “sir” to him, but you could never criticize him, or say anything that would disturb his ego. And yet the institution was designed to do good. So if you’re living in this world and you’re going somewhere to advance yourself in your institution, you get constantly caught trying to be positive. And yet this negative part is there undermining the whole thing. What you do about it, I haven’t figured out.
Questioner
I remember S bringing that up at Homecoming. There was a session about how he maintained positive polarity in the corporate environment.
Carla
It does seem there’s a scarcity of positive places to work, so that anywhere you get to work, it’s your input to help make it more of a family-oriented feeling of camaraderie instead of a place of endless competition, dog eat dog. So, any more questions?
Questioner
[Inaudible]
Carla
I’m not hearing everything you’re saying, unfortunately. But let me say what I think I heard which was, there was a guy experiencing both the positive contact with a lot of love and light, and also the feeling of a negative contact with a feeling of dread and cold and heavy feelings.
I haven’t had the experience in waking because I’ve always been thick as a plank psychically, so I don’t just inadvertently start picking things up. I have to intend to do it. But in nightmares I’ve often experienced it. It’s a sense of nameless dread. And it just starts getting heavier and heavier, and colder and colder. And then my reaction to it is to wake myself up. Then it seems as though it takes me forever. I know that if I can do so much as to raise my little finger or open my eyes, I’ll be all right. So I’m sitting there in the dream, trying with all my might to lift my little finger and it’s as though it’s the heaviest thing in the world. And finally there’s almost an audible snap, and I’ll get my little finger raised and I’ll wake up.
The most fiendish of the nightmares I’ve ever had would be where I would do the finger thing, or get my eyes open and wake up, but what I wouldn’t realize is that I was waking up within the dream. Then I’d think, “Oh good, I’m free now! I’m awake.” And then things would gradually start getting heavier and colder and darker again, and I would realize that I wasn’t all the way out of the dream. I’ve had that go on for four, five and six times before finally I’m violent enough in my desire to get out of it, that I do just thrash, finally, and get myself up, and get a cup of tea, and maybe read for a while to get myself completely out of that. Because if I go back to sleep, I’m going to be back in that same dream.
Questioner
I think sometimes those cold, dark and scary feelings are almost a blessing because they really make you reach for your faith. I’ve been through that, like in church, where I could almost see visions because I was so much in despair that I had to just really, really believe. Reading Carla’s material helps me a lot in getting through hard times.