Some of Julie’s early work in channel from 1986 where Micciah discusses:
• The role of the people we call great artists. Do they choose these roles? Do they continue to incarnate after that? “Mastery...and stature... is represented in many other ways in human beings other than in the fine arts. But not as visibly, because you are not looking for it.” Also, “this realm is extraordinary... not just a bad trip to get out of if you do well.” View Section
• How do we make contact with the Great Self? How do we recognize it? Exploring consciousness to reach the experience of no separation. Making choices with integrity. Increasing vulnerability. View Section
• Completion in intimate relationships. Must work with “the unacknowledged truths and a dissolution of pain to the extent that it is possible.” What roles were played in the relationship? 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. You are an experiment in the territory of love, and it is part of the joy of the possibilities of the way that you embrace life to question, to observe your lives with compassion and also with a questioning.
   So, what are the questions?

   Linda: I have the first question this morning, Micciah. It concerns the role of the persons who choose to be or who are chosen to be what we call “great” artists in our culture, like Mozart, or Rembrandt, or van Gogh, or Beethoven. Is the life that they are when they are great artists a culmination for them of many lives? Or is it just one of many and they... Are they chosen? Or do they choose to be, those very particular and special persons on this planet? And how do they go on after that life is over?

   Micciah: First we must ask what it is to be special. Van Gogh in his own lifetime, in terms of his personality and his relationship to life in an ordinary sense did not consider himself to be special and was really tormented. There are those who are equally extraordinary in any given lifetime but not necessarily in art. It could be in mothering, or fathering, or building, or hunting. The mastery that a van Gogh had, or the stature of a Rembrandt in terms of artistic magnificence is represented in many other ways in human beings other than the fine arts. But not as visibly, because you are not looking for it. But you are asking a deeper question, yes? In extraordinary behavior, is this behavior a culmination? Is that the essence of the question? Or do you refer specifically to artists?

   Linda: No, that really is the essence. If a life so expresses, so finely, so fully, the spirit, is that spirit, so to speak, retired from other lives?

   Micciah: No. Well, the notion that you retire from this veil of tears — your veil, not our veil — is based on a linear concept of time, that you have so and so many lifetimes, and if you hit the jackpot spiritually, you can get off the bus. So this is a very big question.
   There is no time. It all exists simultaneously, so you are here and not here, and even though the focus of your personality self, the Linda portion, or the Mary Anne portion, or the Karen portion, is here, in the totality of the self, you have feet in other realms, even while you are here. This realm, this physical world blinks on and off, and you experience other realms, the most obvious is the dream realm, you experience other realms even while you are here. Now, in some spiritual teachings, this plane of action, this earth, is considered to be very low, the schoolroom, or a place to be gotten out of because of the dilemmas it presents. We have a somewhat different point of view.
   This realm is extraordinary, and it presents the particular dilemma of the oppositional world, of duality, of separation. And — this relates back to your question — when the dilemma is penetrated at some level, then glorious work emerges. When the sense of separation, the sense of being opposed to other things or people, opposed to circumstance, opposed, when that is penetrated, and the Great One is experienced, clearly, there is an outpouring that flowers, perhaps as art, perhaps as shoemaking — it doesn’t really matter. And it may not penetrate at the level of personality self. That is, there have been many great artists who were in their personal relationships, in their caring, in their ability to nurture, to be compassionate to people real — we shouldn’t use those words on television — not such nice people. And there are people whose flowering, the penetration into the one, or the realization of the one, comes about, and it is very evident in the personality.
   So, we are saying two things. The earth is not just a bad trip to get out of if you do well. It is extraordinary, it is miraculous. You have all the possibilities of loving yourself and other beings and the world and the earth, the body of the earth itself, and feeling spirit. There is not any realm that is “better” in that sense. And in another way, all of you is never here. You are always, there are threads of your awareness that go to many other realms and inform each other. Really. The earth awareness is part of the totality of greater and greater awarenesses, greater simply meaning there is more than just what you see. And, no they are not retired. And they are still here. That kind of penetration into the one is not really cumulative. That is, it doesn’t exactly happen because you have worked at something for a long time. It is an opening to something which can happen at any moment.
   We could continue on this, but you have other questions so we will go on. Please.

   Karen: Yes, I would like to - I’m not sure how to phrase this question - but there comes a time when I feel as though when I get information about decisions to make, or how I feel physically, or about myself that I’m not always sure if it’s the Great Self talking. I get muddy signals. One, I wish that I could know how to be sure that it’s the Great Self speaking, and two, if I know that it’s not, if I sit and I try to meditate and get to the center of things, and I know that I’m just not reaching it, how can I reach it?

   Micciah: Well you are really asking the question about how does one reach the experience of no separation. And this has been asked by every group, over and over again, it is the profound question. And you can treat it lightly, you know, [whispers] lightly. To badger yourself about it will cause constriction, like squeezing a daisy. You really want to see the essence of the daisy, so you hold onto it very hard, but then you will have a squished flower. [laughter] So, your own consciousness can be explored with all the lightness that you would explore a flower.
   We will say one thing, however. When you are in the midst of this kind of work, play, and you are asking with your heart how to follow a course of action, or which to follow, contemplate what you hope, not to gain, exactly, but what is the innate spirit, as far as you know, of this choice or that one? Sometimes in contemplating you discover it doesn’t make a bit of difference. These choices are really one choice. To paint this painting or to paint that painting is really the same choice, because you are going to speak in the same way through both of them, and it doesn’t matter, it is chocolate and vanilla. Just choose. Sometimes there is a difference in integrity, at the root of the choice there is a difference in integrity, and your heart will sense that, that this choice is made to satisfy, oh, perhaps, an insatiable quality of the personality, or to satisfy your maintaining a particular posture or pose in life. And if you needed to do that, that would be all right. You might not be ready to give up that pose. And this choice might be made out of needs that are not connected with a pose, that are more vulnerable. You see, the thinking mind will say, “Oh, clearly that’s the more spiritual choice, right?” No, because your power, spiritually, your power, your real power includes loving yourself, embracing yourself if you need to make that choice.
   Now, if you are making choices that are overtly destructive, or even covertly destructive, really destructive, you need some support, help, to take away the pain that is causing those choices. Listen to this. Destructive choices are made when some part of the being is in pain. So listen with your heart and evaluate the essence, or the intention, and you may find that choice, both, all the possibilities represent the same core feeling. Then you just choose. And you may find that they don’t. And you can only know with practicing. It isn’t really like a mathematics test. And then when you reach a new level in your life — all your language is hierarchical — when you are taking different risks, you will again be clumsy, yes, you will not know how to evaluate this thing, this thing. When you increase your vulnerability, you feel foolish, you feel clumsy, not so sleek and smart, in making the choices. So each new wave, let us say, of growth produces a clumsiness and a difficulty as you assess the new choices. Then your thinking mind says, “You’re getting worse! Not getting better! You’re tripping over your own feet.” Yes, well, yes. When you make changes, you trip a little bit. If van Gogh had to do concept art, he would trip too. Ha, if the concept artists had to paint like van Gogh, they would also trip, or Rembrandt. Does this clarify it?

   Karen: Umhuh.

   Micciah: Yes. It can’t be answered exactly. Perhaps we shouldn’t really call these questions because questions imply that there are answers.
   Please go on.

   Rowan: Can you say something about completion of intimate relationship?

   Micciah: Completion occurs all the time in relationship. Not just at the end of something. In a relationship where you are conscious, where you are aware of what is transpiring, there is always movement and completion, and movement and completion. And the completion is like coming to a point of wholeness, or oneness, beyond judgment about whatever is going on. It doesn’t mean finishing something. It means the word that we see is “full.” Having a sense of fullness about it. At the end of — you are speaking of the end of contact in a relationship?

   Rowan: Yes.

   Micciah: And do you want to talk about it in the frame of reference of doing it with the other person present or alone?

   Rowan: I’m speaking mainly of the karma that is generated during the course of an intimate relationship and when contact with the person seems appropriate to close, how to feel complete, how to feel complete with love and not to sever but to recognize that it’s appropriate to stop contact on whatever intimate level has been going on and to free both parties to move on into other areas of their lives.

   Micciah: We will say what we said to Mary Anne and also in a way to John, that you need to feel the fabric of the relationship and move toward the spots that are painful. And there can be pain around unacknowledged truth, there can be pain around joy that was never acknowledged as well as around difficulties that were never acknowledged. But to feel where the knots are, where there has been a lack of truth. And to merge with the pain of those withholdings till you watch it dissolve, like watching pain in the body dissolve. It may take some time. It’s not just [snaps finger] you do it, and that’s it. Over. And also move through the history of the relationship, acknowledging the beauty of the contact.
   So, you are playing with two sets of things — the unacknowledged truths and a dissolution of pain to the extent that it is possible. And an acknowledgment of the creativity and the beauty that you shared with someone. It is sometimes tempting at the end of something to either romanticize the whole of it or to trash it. “And well out of there anyway!” After that phase is through, you can acknowledge both yourself and the other person for your love. And ask, “what would bind me to this person?” This will be different with different people. “What would bind me, what incompletion, what unexpressed truth or unexplored chunk of pain, or unacknowledged joy will bind me to this person in a way that I don’t wish to be bound?” But you work with it, play with it. It is not [snap of fingers] poof, and it is over. What were the unfulfilled yearnings and expectations? Can you let those go, be in peace with them? You are always in process. The mind would like to have things over, like an arithmetic problem. Do this, two plus two, equals about seven and a half. Finish the problem, rip the page out, mark it correct. Next. But life is not like that. And if you wish to work very deeply with it, what role did you play? Who were you with this person in the dance of this particular life? What masks and costumes were you wearing with each other? The betrayer and the betrayed? Mother and the child? The healer and the sick one, because they are... We will assure you of one thing. They are all costumes. We are costumes. So... [exhale]
   Do you wish to ask further, Rowan?

   Rowan: No, I think that’s complete for now. Thank you.

   Micciah: So. We will leave you.

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Julie: Is it over? It’s over. What we do in class after a Micciah session is talk the material through, and agree, and disagree, and we would love you to do the same.