Some of Julie’s early work in channel from 1987 where Micciah discusses:
• Intro: Embracing the sacred foolishness. View Section
• Disciplining yourself in a loving rather than a punitive way: Punishment creates opposition and cuts you off from sources of nourishment and creativity. “Reclaim playfulness as a guide.... consult the wily fool.” View Section
• Trust of the intuitive self for creative expression: “Combine your fact-oriented observant side with your intuition.” View Section
• Caring for yourself while caring for others: “True metaphysical spirit is founded in generosity,” not narcissism. Allow yourself to be nourished from spirit. Nourish your inner child. “To be healing is to be wholly, truthfully and as fully as possible, present.” 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.

   ----------

   Micciah: We greet you, dear friends. In the willingness to claim and to embrace one’s foolishness, one opens, you open, to a great and fertile chaos. In the fear that guards against foolishness and therefore is attached to “rightness,” “correctness,” you lose your creative contact with the life force. Much pain, much suffering emerges on a great scale as well as on an interpersonal level through the fearfulness that freezes the structure of the ego and protects itself by being right at all costs. Sometimes the cost is in human life in a very literal way. The cost is protecting a position that says, “We cannot feed the children who are starving. It will destroy our economic system which we think is right and true. We have invented it, but we treat it as a cosmic truth.” That kind of hardening foolishness, playfulness, asymmetry, and creative chaos sucks life energy. So you might all, for yourselves, contemplate and meditate: where are the areas in each of you where you shy away from being a fool. You cannot ever learn anything without being foolish. Nor do you have access to the wealth of possibilities that are available as solutions to ease suffering if you cannot allow yourself to be foolish. And there is much shame around appearing the fool, so then it is impossible to say, “I lied, I made a mistake, I didn’t know enough, I was afraid.” Children, before they are programmed otherwise, are truth tellers. And they have access to their own wildness. When you lose contact with the sacred fool, you lose your wildness.
   So, please let us begin your questions.

   Sylvia: I have a question about self discipline and willpower. I find that in my attempt and desire to have a sense of wellbeing and health and have a good diet and exercise, I go through kind of a seesaw or battle within myself, it’s as though I’m divided. And I don’t know exactly what to do about it.

   Micciah: The division between the authoritarian aspect of the self... Do you approach your good diet and so forth from a position of interior authority over, let us say, little Sylvia who wants to eat chocolates or whatever...

   Sylvia: I think so, sometimes.

   Micciah: Yes. So this is a split and really this reflects an element of what we are discussing about foolishness. The way to heal this dilemma of wanting discipline but attempting to enforce it in a punitive way, sometimes even in an abusive way — “You will discipline yourself or I will wring your neck.” — is to reclaim your playfulness as a guide. So, we would recommend for you that you begin to identify the wily voice of your sacred fool, inner fool, as a voice of guidance. That there are ways to feed yourself well and care for your body that come from the pleasure of doing it. You see, when there is this split, you have lost the pleasure of caring for yourself, and it all becomes drudgery. And this split goes down so deeply into the root of your collective being that even sexual expression becomes sometimes a chore. So, once a day would you consult your wily self about how you could claim her help in solving the nourishment of Sylvia and the care of the body?
   You also tend to routinize activities. This and this and this are good foods, this and this are bad foods. And the fads change. And you give a great deal of power to food. And it must be done in a certain way. And you must exercise so many times on one side, so many times on the other side. There is no playfulness. So one day you might wish to eat all green vegetables. One day you might wish to eat red fruit. And one day you might wish to eat grains. There are solutions to this you have not come anywhere near to touching. And this operates in all areas, with creativity, with writing, with painting, with loving, that you make it into work. And that continues to support this splitting, with the authoritarian parent and the willful child at war with each other. We could say that to all of you as well. Consult the wily fool. Consult the sacred fool. You have very few possibilities available. Does that make sense?

   Sylvia: Yes. Thank you.

   Micciah: Susan.

   Susan: Well, I think you’ve answered my question too. I’ve been working on trust of my intuitive self, and I would like a meditation to help me extend that out into creative expression.

   Micciah: Trusting the intuitive is closely related to what Sylvia has asked and also what we began with. In order to have a conversation with the fool, when you have the power of your fool... You know this is what Zen masters have, this is what mistresses... This is what great teachers have. The venerable Trungpa who recently left his physical incarnation had crazy wisdom. What is called in that tradition crazy wisdom. So, this involves trust. Giving up the rigidities. And for you in particular, let us see. Well we would like you to combine your fact-oriented, observant side with your intuition. So when you are faced with a choice, write on two pieces of paper, or five pieces of paper, what you would like to choose. And turn them over, face down. And pass your hand across them and ask your intuitive self to let the appropriate one be warm. Turn it over. And then you need to be willing to follow that course. And record the suggestion and how it works out, because you particularly like to — what is the word? — assess what the odds are. But it is no use to do it if you’re not willing to then trust. So if you are con... Don’t start with enormous life issues. “Should I marry one of these four people,” let us say. [laughter] “Okay, it’s Joe.” That is a self sabotage. There’s too much at stake to do that. But try it with issues that are of less consequence, so that you build up your dynamic flexibility in your willingness to pursue what the intuition has suggested. And you will feel both excitement and trepidation, and the part of the self that has lodged itself into being right and therefore follows established formulas is going to kick up an enormous fuss. When you begin to follow your intuition, really follow it, take, let you take it, let it take you where it leads you. All the old parts of the self that were, after all, protective being to scream, hurl curses at you. You too, Sylvia, with, “What do you mean you’re going to eat red fruit one day. That’s ridiculous!” Or grain, or whatever. “It’s not a balanced diet!” You will have the little gremlins come up to tell you to stop. And we suggest that you don’t make war with the gremlins, just acknowledge that they are voices that mean to protect you and that you are going to try another way now.
   The next step, of putting it into your creativity, will just happen. You are by nature a creative person. We have given you this particular exercise to try to bring the threads together, where your logical tracking mind stops your spontaneous flow, and if you can get these elements merged, your creativity will start to sp... not even flow, but spill. And you are most creative about people and about your insights about the workings of people. And about particularly people in groups and how they affect and interact with each other.
   Please continue.

   Judy: I need to know how to deal with a lot of the problems in the world and deal with helping people.

   Micciah: Yes.

   Judy: I’m thinking of my parents in particular. Without getting buried, without dissolving.

   Micciah: Yes.

   Judy: I need to learn how to protect myself.

   Micciah: To care for yourself and care for others. This also is seen in your group mind as a dichotomy. Furthermore, it is often seen, said, that metaphysics, metaphysical teachings are uncaring about others, that they are really a form of intensive [pause] self-involvement. Narcissism. And we would like to say that a true metaphysical spirit is founded in generosity. This will relate to what you want directly, Judy, in one second. That to work with the incarnation that you have, which is the only one you have at the moment, at least in the illusion of physical time, to allow yourself great foolishness, sacred foolishness, great generosity, by truly experiencing yourself as the principle of love, going from an idea about it, a thought about it, to surrendering into the feeling of it, then you are liberated into the pleasure and the trust of generosity and the service, the dedication, the devotion to service, to alleviating suffering. But you must find a balance. It has been split in group consciousness between people who care for others and people who seem to be involved with a closed, or a contracted, or greedy kind of caring for themselves. Indeed, in many social systems the caring for others is merely an extension of that greed, which is, which is fear, and the need to suck, to suck from other people, to grab at life because you are afraid. You need to care for yourself, to give your permission to yourself about every ten minutes, to care for you as a way of caring for others. And to let yourself be filled by spirit. You tend, you personally tend to use your individual Judy self in caring for your parents, in caring for the world, and that personal self, which is honorable and completely valid and part of the whole, still is not the whole.
   So for you and for anyone who is involved with ongoing care and the path of service, let spirit feed you first. The care that you give does not — what is the expression? Come out of your hide. That it is not flesh you take from yourself to give to another person but that you can be nourished by the all enveloping, all pervasive, constant and inexhaustible fund of energy. And, on a very practical note, this would be well for many of you to do, if you are giving to other people, let the cosmos give to you and also give something to your child self. When you are going to be heavily involved with your parents, or if you feel exhausted by contemplating the political situation, ask your child self what she needs so that she does not become neglected. It might be some time to play, it might be a hot bath, it might be a particular kind of food, so you are taking care of her. And the universe is taking care of you, and then the middle portion, the personality, is free to take care of other people. And you must realize too, when we say you are all responsible, you are all engaged in healing the earth, that no single one of you is responsible for the..., for the literal conditions on the planet. Yes, that is a horrible and exhausting notion, that if you just worked a little harder, if you just gave a little more, all the social injustices would dissolve, and all the children would be fed, and the earth’s body would be healed.
   Is that clear?

   Judy: Yes, thank you.

   Micciah: Healing can come right through your bodies, as you have experimented with recently. To be a healing force is a natural part of being alive. And you can be healing in your touch, you can be healing in your speech, you can be healing in your teaching, in your writing, in all the interactions that you have during the day. And you perhaps have an idea that to be healing is to be sort of sweet and ingratiating and, uh, always smiling. No, to be healing is to be wholly, truthfully, and as fully as possible, present. Present. People who are healers are present. That is what meditation is about. Becoming present in your incarnation. Not being out to lunch. That is why, part of why, the fool is sacred. Because there is something so wet and present about foolishness. It cannot be remote and proper. We know, we are bending language a little bit. It is possible to say, “Well I know plenty of people who are fools who are not present.” We are using the word in a particular context to represent that sacred nature of play.

   ----------

Julie: I want to remind you that the channeling that I do with Micciah is really an ongoing exploration; in watching and listening, you’re part of the exploration. So the work is here and it is our intention to share it with those of you who watch. You need to evaluate it for yourselves, to go over the information, to assess what feels right to you, use what feels right and let the rest go.