Some of Julie’s early work in channel from 1985 where Micciah answers questions from the class:
• Micciah’s intro: Intimate relationships, peace and anger. View Section
• Why do people create conflict, and what purpose and lesson does it serve? View Section
• What role does sexual fidelity play? Is there a real need for it? View Section
• What are the consequences of single parenting? View Section

   Micciah:  We greet you all, dear friends.

   Julie:  We do greet you, indeed.  This is Micciah Channel, and I’m Julie Winter.  Micciah is an energy entity who works with me while I’m in trance,  and while I’m in the trance state I have access to a point of view that seems to come from a non-physical realm.  This series of programs is drawn primarily from videotapes taken during my regular classes.  We want to expand our circle, and include your energy and interest in our work.

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   Micciah: We greet you all, dear friends. Now, you have many questions about personal relationships, and you are quite right when you say that personal relationships, intimate relationships, friendships, community relationships are the basis for world peace. We will say again, it always seems as if peace is out there somewhere, elusive, desirable but elusive. Both in the greater context of planetary harmony and in the personal context of celebration in relationship, the greatest risk is peace. You think of peace as being somewhat static, yes? A peaceful lake, calm. But there is another dimension to peace, which is the risk involved in laying down your arms. To gather weapons, to create more and more of them, whether you are creating an individual arsenal of spite, to “get” someone with, or whether you are creating nuclear bombs, to give that up, to offer your hand, that is a great risk. And we are not suggesting in any way that peace precludes anger. Clear anger, truthful anger, is a cleansing process; but it is anger with cruelty, anger with spitefulness, anger that is used as retribution that tears at the emotional fabric. So.
   Please, what are your questions?

   Christina: Micciah, why in intimate relationships is conflict present, why do people create conflict? And what purpose and lesson does it serve?

   Micciah: Conflict appears in intimate relationships because it is in people. Now, let us discriminate between useful conflict, or productive conflict, and negative, destructive conflict, damaging conflict. The arena of intimacy is a very fruitful and safe one to have productive conflict. “You have your idea and I have my idea, and we are willing to butt against each other, each to explore the other’s offerings, the other’s possibilities.” So, then the conflict can be like a spark and have a beautiful fire, a warming fire, in a relationship. There is no dynamic without an interplay of creative, but perhaps conflicting, ideas.
   In negative conflict, damaging conflict, the heart is closed — that is the difference. In creative conflict, the heart center is open and there is a movement, like a dynamic dance, or like animals playing. And it is exciting and lively. In destructive conflict, the heart center is closed, and each person protects his or her position, with violence sometimes, emotional violence, sometimes with coldness, with withdrawal, with rejection of the other. What is at the bottom of that kind of conflict? Fear. Fear of what? Of yielding. You are afraid of releasing. It is a product of the stiffening of the ego self, an inflexibility of the ego self. It is like armor, and you can see it in people’s bodies, yes, tissue that is blocked, tissue that is drained of energy or too charged with energy. And in the stiffening of the ego’s position, there is no opening of the heart. Then what comes up? Blame. Blame is a demon. When someone begins to blame you, walk out of the room. Don’t even dignify it by listening. Leave them with their blame. You can do it lovingly. Hang up the phone. You do not have to cooperate. But it is enticing, because when the old angers have not been addressed, have not been personally addressed, have not been cleared out, then there is a sort of feast of blaming. “You are to blame!” “No! You are to blame!” “No, no, no!” And the memory, the emotional memory, and the mind cooperate. Lists of difficulties come out from the deep past. It is very sad. It is very damaging. It is no different than a war.
   Often in intimate relationships the same dynamic pertains as does in international conflicts, and the monster is money, property. “What I own, what you own. What I gave, you gave.” That is a shadow. It symbolizes other needs that are not being met, either by the person individually or in the union. You must find a way, you must find a way — that is what your personal work is about — to have differences, to have conflict, and to have your heart open. It is frightening. It seems to bode death, just in the same way that giving up your land, on an international basis, bodes annihilation. “The Russians will come and take us over.” No one can take over your spirit, and the land does not belong to you anyway.
   So, all of this sounds much easier when we say it than it really is to do. To love someone, to be a whole and independent being, nourished by many sources, to live with them in an intimate situation or to be friends at a deep level is always a joyful, creative challenge. To be with them, to be with your heart open. And much is burned through this way, the potentials are extraordinary. Relationship is grace and joy. We feel somehow that what we are transmitting has a sugary tone, and that is not quite accurate. The potential of love between two people, or between a group such as yourselves, or a group as big as the city, or the planet, is enormous. And really the sadness, the loss when your heart is closed in relationship and you or the other person are stuck in blame, in bitterness, the sadness is that you don’t tap that extraordinary, bittersweet potential. And it is a great risk. Begin by telling the truth. Relationship goes dead when you cannot tell the truth. Your truth. You cannot tell anybody else’s truth. “The truth about you is...!”
   You can’t do that. You can only tell your truth.
   Please go on.

   Carol: We have a question about sexual fidelity in intimate relationships. What role does that play? Is there a real need for that? Especially in terms of the permanence or endurance of the intimate relationship.

   Micciah: This is also a very good question, and we are sure it will elicit much feeling, pro and con. You do confuse sexual feeling with ownership. People are not things. In earlier times, when the economics of reproduction were even more important than they are now, it was literally life-threatening for a woman to be adulterous, and this was because so much feeling and greed and misperception was focused on the phenomenal world, again, on objects, the same things over which you make wars. Women were stoned to death for their sexual practices, because there was a wish to insure the inheritance of property.
   Sexual expressivity, sex itself, is a gift. lt is like the sparkle of the stars. lt is the fire of life. And every human being needs to be free to express as he or she wishes. This can vary enormously from person to person and within an individual person at different times of his or her life. Again, we will differentiate. You think of sex as, you know, sex — as if it were one thing! That leaves no room for sexual expression as part of friendship, as part of an erotic exchange that is itself a celebration but has nothing to do with whether you wish to live with someone. What a confusion! You are not necessarily temperamentally suited to live with someone because you wish to make love with them. The most dangerous is to coerce the sexual expression either way: coercion to promiscuity or coercion in terms of repression. The fear behind sexual sharing is a fear of separation and of loss, and really, of death and annihilation. And it turns the other person into a thing. And, you may wish to choose to share sexual intimacy with one person. The key word is “choose.” You cannot choose when you are frightened, you cannot choose when you are being coerced, you cannot choose when you are afraid you will be punished or scorned or harmed. And the idea that fidelity — your word — that enforced sexual choices, or really lack of choices, will help a relationship is in some ways as absurd as believing that weapons will keep the peace.
   This is going to bring up a lot of feelings, as we said, both pro and con. It is important also to remember the word “intimacy,” because although you can have a very powerful and extraordinary erotic relationship with someone with whom you certainly do not wish to share the rest of your life, it is still intimacy. And you must know within yourself whether you wish to be intimate, which means to be vulnerable, with that person. Do you wish to? It is intimate. If it is not intimate, what’s the point? Unless there is a projection of other issues into the sexual arena, which of course there is: status, power, power over, money, economics.
   Do you wish to ask more about this?

   Carol: Not about this particularly but perhaps a related question about the possibilities of single parenting.

   Micciah: lt is very complicated to take care of a child, one person alone. lt is very complicated to take care of a child two people alone. lt is really the quality and the development of the person involved rather than whether it is one person or two people. If it is a destructive relationship between the two people who are caring for the child, that is not very good for the child. Really, children are better off... This is going to be a session that gets everyone mad. Children are better off in communities or extended families than they are in what you have created as a nuclear family, which is a relatively recent historical development. When there is just the mother and father to give love, to share, to nurture, the complex attachment and difficulty in separation and individuation is very much amplified. In a more communal situation the child has other adults, of different ages, different temperaments, different karmic relationships, to depend on. Very much of what is written about in western psychology is the pathology of the nuclear family. And it is not connected with development if the development is in another style of life. But you have nuclear families.
   So, how to make the best of it is to let the child be with other people whom you trust and care about. People of all sizes. Children need people of all sizes, all ages. Yes, it is fine to take care of a child alone. lt is complicated, but then so is everything else. And if someone has a very deep soul yearning to be a parent, then it is wonderful. Everyone should not be parents. lt is a special gift. There are some people who might enjoy bearing children but not raising them, and some who don’t want to bear them but they would be happy raising them. And some who are best with children in their mid life, their adolescent life. As a form, the nuclear family presents extraordinary difficulties. lt is a consciousness based on industrialization of culture, yes? lt was not so common in other times, in other earlier times, and it has problems. lt enforces dependency and pathology. lt does other things as well. lt can give a child tremendous nurturance if the family is basically a loving one.
   You who are watching, we hope you will all meditate on the quality of your own intimacies, be they sexual or otherwise, and that you will honor your own truth. We share with all of you much love and much joy, and we bid you now a very good evening.

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   Julie:  That’s all for the moment. At the end of class we discuss the information that Micciah has shared and talk about how to use it in ordinary life since all of this information was given to be used.
   Several final words. The thread that runs through my work of, which the channeling is one aspect, is healing. So, the thread of healing goes through my work with individuals, my teaching, my lecturing, my writing. And that healing, I believe, comes from a truthful exploration of one’s relationship with spirit. Spirit heals through us, and that healing enables us to be with the sacred nature of everyday life. I urge you to use your prayers and meditations toward experiencing the joy and sacred nature of life itself.