Some of Julie’s early work in channel from 1985 where Micciah discusses:
• Marriage as a spiritual journey. Maintaining interest and vitality in marriage through being truthful and being in the experience of choosing to be with your partner. Using sex as creative and playful exploration. “The skill is to be in the truth, dance with the truth... Be revealed.” View Section
• ‘Who is Micciah?’ An early answer to the often asked question. What is meant by the term “we” that Micciah uses in describing “herself.” View Section
• Celibacy. The purpose, in many spiritual disciplines, of sexual abstinence. Underlying these disciplines is often a split between spirit and matter, the upper half of the body and the lower half, with a hatred of matter and the lower half of the body. On a personal level, sometimes the self has no interest in sex, or may be interested in opening to a particular quality of vision through celibacy. 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.
   I have a question from a viewer about marriage: how marriage is a spiritual journey, potentially; what is the role of sexual exchange in marriage; and how does one deal with the problems that arise, such as anger and conflict, and sexual difficulties, most particularly lack of sexual desire?

   Micciah:  We greet you all, dear friends.  We will deal with this issue first — marriage, the possibilities of marriage as a spiritual quest.  First of all, in determining what is a spiritual quest for an individual, it is of the essence that the individual feel empowered to choose, to choose, out of a number of possibilities.  So whenever there is an assumption, as there is about marriage, —  although it is less true now — that it is the normal thing to do, the right and proper choice — then in order to experience it as a spiritual quest, you must be able to separate, it is desirable to be able to separate, the group belief, the cultural pronouncement, from what is really your own soul’s purpose.  Can marriage be a spiritual quest and a journey?  Of course.  And in some way, everything, everything in life, is grist for the mill.
   Marriage, as you conceive of it in your culture, as it has been handed down, as a political and religious institution, has very strong economic roots.  The ceremony of marriage, with its attendant laws and prohibitions, masks what were initially not spiritual concerns but economic concerns.  So it is no wonder it has become so turgid, so misunderstood.  And there is a very important factor about choosing to be on a spiritual journey with another being in an intimate relationship.  That is the factor of time.  In the traditional ceremony, it says, “Until death do you part” (Death doesn’t part anyone anyway).  A true journey has its own interior time.  It could be a short one or a long one, in linear time.  To promise that something will be  for a lifetime does not necessarily support the vitality of that choice.
   In order to have something be a spiritual quest, anything, any thing — a quest for peace, for creative liberation, for healing — anything — it must be  a choice.  You must be always in the act of choosing it.  Not, “Choose — finished.  I chose it, that’s it, now it is the same for the next thirty years.”  No, you must be in the vitality of choosing it all the time.   In this case, of choosing each other all the time.  And also, in this culture, where people are confused with commodities, when there is dissatisfaction, rather than being with the other person in the quest, on the journey, telling the truth, and going through the emotional rising and falling, which is what gives the quest vitality, one partner or the other begins to cast his or her eyes around for a better product, a superior model.  When there is the substitution of commodities for people, people as commodities, you have lost the spirit, the spirit.  “Spiritual” is a funny word, yes?  It implies many base and lower realms above which one rises triumphantly, so we would rather say you lose the spirit, the liveliness, when you lose choice.  And the skills in a marriage — whether it is a legal marriage or not is unimportant — the skill is to be in the truth, to dance with the truth, to tell the truth, to observe the truth.  Be revealed.
   To be revealed, and revealed, and revealed.  The two people who begin a marriage, a close alliance, are not the same two people after five years or ten years, hopefully.  So you’re not choosing the person who was five years ago, you’re choosing the person who is now.  This is the same for any commitment.,  And the loss of vitality in sexual sharing also arises out of the loss of truth, the loss of integrity, although it might be that in being in your truth, in having integrity, you discover you are not drawn to that person any longer in a sexual way, in an erotic way.  If the rule of the game is monogamy, you will put yourself in a very narrow emotional place.  Again, you many choose monogamy.  We have said this before.  But if you are monogamous because that is the rule, how can you be sexually alive in the middle of a rule?  You can’t, you can’t.  Nor will trying to replace one person with another and renewing the excitement, not through real contact but through newness, solve it either.  It is a constant exploration with truth.
   You go about making love, speaking of no choice, as if you were on an express train.  Once puberty is a physical fact, there is very little real sexual exploration.  To begin to kiss another adult person is immediately to be on this train heading for the last stop.  This is very boring, isn’t it?  There are no side explorations, there are no journeys into sensuality, there is very little play, it is all programmed.  If you begin to kiss, it must end in orgasm or you have a problem.  That’s the rule.  So this is also very deadening, very deadening.  And there are all kinds of names for people who explore in other ways — “infantile,” “adolescent,” whatever, whatever.  So, to encourage the natural vitality of the human being in its dance of spirit which is the body — it isn’t separate — you need to be able to choose to be with the person and to choose to explore.  And to choose in terms of when you are making love or some variety of it.  It gets very mixed up with rules and schedules.  “ ’Normal’ people make love 2.5 times a week.”  How is this going to support your creativity?  Do “normal” painters paint 3.4 paintings a month?  Or “normal” writers write eight pages a day?  No.  Some do, some don’t.  And it changes in a lifetime.  Why is sexuality less important than creativity?  It deadens because you deaden it and because there was, is, no learning about playfulness and truth and communication.  It is all “on the train.”  So our suggestion is that you explore with someone what it would be like just to kiss them or to touch them or to hold them.  Get yourselves off the train!  The vitality in your body will move you, if you can get through the embarrassment and the hesitancy.  And that will bring enormous aliveness into a relationship.  So, that is quite a lot on that subject.
   Please go on.

   Brenda:  Micciah, you speak of “we” a lot of times when you give information.  Who is the “we” that you speak of?

   Micciah:  We will answer that.  It is not a committee.  The aspect self, the personality of Julie, who is part of the greater self of Valanatia, connects in channel by loosening the lock, so to speak, on physical awareness and opening to allow a connection with a realm of reality that is not physical.  And the two coming together, using the information that Julie has, that her Great Self Valanatia has, plus what is available through the gestalt, the connection of this and that, so to speak, produces what you call Micciah.  Now, we are no more a “we” than we are an “I.”  And this kind of channeling is co-created.  Julie is not unconscious.  She is not asleep.  The aspect of this great realm that she is able to draw in is only part of the vast ocean, an energetic ocean of possibilities and probabilities.  And she catches certain impulses and parts of the whole and draws it through.  It has a group quality rather than a personal quality so we call it “we.”  It is hard to explain.
   You are all connected to many realms other than this physical focus.  All of you.  And the animals.  Everything, everyone.  The part that appears in the physical world has to beat in a certain way and has a particular set of sounds, a beat — frequencies.  You think the rest of it isn’t there because you can’t bump your nose on it.  But it is all there, all the time, all here interwoven; but only a portion of it is physical.  The more you conceive of life that way, the richer your experience will be and the less frightened you will be of dying, of changing.  The whole shebang, so to speak, blinks on and off anyway.  Beats.  And each reality conceives of itself as being real because it perceives itself in the on phase.  On/off, on/off.  This is a very clumsy analogy.  On/off, on/off, on/off.  So all the “ons” have probable “offs,” and all the “offs” have probable “ons.”  It is much more playful than you think, much more exciting.
   So, have you other questions please?

   Elissa:  Micciah,  I’d like to ask you a question.  There are many spiritual disciplines that either insist upon or encourage sexual abstinence.  Is there a purpose to the sexual abstinence?  Does it increase your spiritual awareness?

   Micciah:  A good question.  We will offend a lot of people with this answer, so listen.  A great many, but not all, of the disciplines that encourage or insist upon celibacy, on abstinence, do so out of a hatred of the body and a separation, a split, between spirit and matter.  And we tell you, there is no such split.  There is no such split.  Your rear end is just as spiritual as your head — and in some cases far more useful!  The whole body is sacred, just the way the body of the earth is sacred.  Most, but not all, of the religious practices that have a rule — we are back to rules — about celibacy also have rules about hating the earth, rules that result in the earth itself, the body of the earth, being despised, or at least ignored.  Sometimes, however, since there are no rules — there are laws but there are no rules — the self simply does not crave — we don’t mean crave in the voracious sense — does not wish, is not seeking that kind of experience, sexual experience.  Because of a particularly focused quality of consciousness, that is, consciousness focused in a particular way, there is no interest.  If there is no interest, there is no interest.  Often, when sexuality is rejected purposely to enhance the “spiritual powers,”  the powers are seen as being either magnificent, above, from the crown center, or base, lower, below, from the root center.  Split, yes?  What is below the waist is bad, the earth is bad, and heaven is good.  So you draw the energies up the spine into the lotus center, it is divine, and you do not want to interfere with it, with sexuality.  You could just as well say you draw the divine energy of the earth, of the blessed earth, into your root center and express it through the moon and the stars of making love.  It is just a different philosophy.  Different in different lives.  Different predilections, different tasks, different wishes.
   Sexual exchange has been used in many cultures as a magnificent vehicle, as part of a ritual, which you do not do consciously in your culture.  It can also be that one chooses to refrain from sex for a while just as one might refrain from food, for a purpose, for example, before a vision quest, to “fine tune” the body, the dense body, the physical body.  We don’t mean “fine” as opposed to “gross,” “better” as opposed to “worse” — the language is misleading.  But relinquishing sex, like fasting, is literally like a thinning out of the physical vibration so one is open to a particular quality of vision, to heighten awareness.  This doesn’t quite answer the question, but it almost does.
    You have much to  explore.  It takes courage to explore, to take the risk and relinquish the deadness of rules, of the tried and true.  And we very much hope that you embrace your own courage and encourage it in each other.
    So, we will leave you now.  We share with you all much energy and love, and we bid you a very good evening.

   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.