Some of Julie’s early work in channel in 1988 where Micciah discusses:
• Tithing: When done not mechanically but “as an inner recognition of the abundance of Spirit then, it is a great joy.” Tithing can be in any form: “You give where you want to put your heart.” View Section
• Charity: Often connotes accrual of personal virtue (and tax deductions) to the giver. Enforced taxation would be unnecessary if the system were based on “spiritual understanding of abundance.” 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 want to thank all of you who have been watching and who have written to me. And what you are going to see is me, with my personality and intelligence, awareness, go into an altered state. And while I’m in that altered state, I join with other energies, or another energy, and produce the personality of Micciah. I have, in that state, an awareness that I don’t ordinarily have. And I’m going to respond to questions that my classes have asked me.

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   Micciah: We greet you all, dear friends.
   And we would like to speak, first, about the paradox of generosity and abundance, and how it can be that you can conceive of these and express these and also have a ruthless kind of clarity as a component of compassion.
   You have a false belief that the universal source withholds from you, consciously, as if the universal source mirrored the human condition. Yet we tell you — absolutely! — that the source of Spirit abounds. And that the only limitation on that source is that which you put upon it.
   Now: Let’s have the questions.

   Maria: What is the spiritual significance of tithing; and why do so many people seem to have such a strong, energetic charge around the concept of tithing?

   Micciah: Yes! Tithing: when you give some designated percent of everything that comes to you back.
   Well, again, it depends on the consciousness in which you do it. If you are brought up in a formal religious setting — one that happens to incorporate tithing as a social amenity or belief — then you can give back the ten percent or whatever it is to the church (in this case), and you can do it as a mechanical act: “This is what is required of me in my community. I am attached to the notion of being an upright citizen and member in good standing of this community. I could not hold up my head if I did not tithe.” Then the consciousness is really the same as the person who saves because they are afraid. The consciousness is one of, perhaps, social capitulation, shame, fear of shame, and so forth.
   We are not saying this is true of everyone in a formal religious setting, but it is surely true of some people. So it is a mechanical act. It is like the difference between bowing out of a spontaneous gesture of deep reverence, or raising your arms out of a gesture of celebration, because you are motivated to do that out of your own powerful feelings, and bowing mechanically or putting your hands up mechanically.
   So, when tithing is done as an inner recognition of the abundance of Spirit itself then it is a great joy. And it is an expression of generosity of the self as a bearer of Spirit, and it is done in the spirit of trust. Because when you are using material substance as Spirit — this is the whole point here. When it is enspirited (is that a word?)
   [Laughter]
   then the totality of your awareness of it — the way you touch it, work with it, share it, care for it, draw it to you and release it — is a dance of the sacred and of celebration.
   If it is a mechanical act, then you have separated the action from its life force. All actions, my friends, potentially are carriers of the life force. Everything! Talking on the phone, making love, buying your groceries, going to the bank, cutting your fingernails — all actions carry the life force.
   When an action is negatively destructive (that is, harmful; some actions are creatively destructive. Chewing your food, for instance. You have to destroy it to get the nourishment); when an action is negatively destructive (harming the earth, harming other human beings deliberately) you know the person delivering the action has himself or herself suffered an inner deprivation of their own relationship — in their own relationship — to the life force. Because life, when it is flowing through you, protects life.
   Protecting life might include killing something to eat, if you need it, also done in a consciousness of blessing.
   So, when you give back because you are in the awareness of all form and all action potentially carrying Spirit — affirming, expressing, and celebrating Spirit — then it is a great thing. To do it mechanically — it’s not great, or not — it’s not — it’s a mechanical act.
   Then there is the whole political question of… where you put it.
   [Laughter]
   Is that clear? Do you want to ask further? Oh — why is there so much feeling about it? Yes. Because it is often the necessity of tithing, whether it is delivered by the church or the temple or delivered by a metaphysical teacher or guru (which is a teacher), is often done as a spiritual imperative. And if you do it in that way, as we say, either it will be an empty act, or it will be capitulation to the authority — then there is no joy! If you don’t come to it yourself; if you don’t discover it as a possibility yourself — why bother?
   Sometimes you can begin an action, you can begin at a relatively mechanical level, and as you go along with it it picks up energy. You can begin something mechanically, and ask that it become part of a spiritual outpouring. It’s like priming the pump.
   So, when the necessity for tithing is delivered as a spiritual imperative, “Well! If you don’t do this you are no one, spiritually!”
   [Laughter]
   Of course, in a statement delivered with such judgment, there will be a spasm of emotional reaction, either for or against. There would have to be.
   You don’t have to tithe money. You can give of your time. It is the notion. Tithing is a formality. When you say, “Well, it must be ten percent” Ten has some numerical significance. Numbers have their own quality of power. But, what is the most important is your relationship to Spirit as itself abundant, reflected in the way you take in and in the way you give out.
   When you are in a personal consciousness of poverty (we are not speaking of — of literal, physical poverty, which — leave that aside for a moment); but when you live in a consciousness of personal poverty, then the way that you take in is often to snatch, [gasps in breath] to take in with fear, to take in with trepidation. The taking in is as much an exultation of Spirit as the letting go.
   And when you understand these things to be one movement, you have BOTH! the urge to surrender to the joy of receiving, and the urge to be of service and to express your praise and your gratitude for that source which is inexhaustible.
   [Pause… quiet laugh]
   Please go on.

   Marian: Micciah — could I just ask you one more thing about tithing?

   Micciah: Please! Yes.

   Marian: Does it have to be done to a church, or a temple, or religious or spiritual, or can it be given to a soup kitchen?

   Micciah: Of course it can be given to a soup kitchen.

   Marian: Oh, okay.

   Micciah: It can be given — you give where you want to put your heart in the form of the enspirited gift of time or money or concern. Of course it can.

   Marian: Okay. Thank you.

   Micciah. Yes. The churches. You know the obvious answer to that. It will probably irritate everyone; but the churches wish to support themselves. If Spirit shows up, appears, for you, as feeding people soup, or, bringing meals to those in a culture where you have created older people and invalided people as bereft and ghetto-ized and homeless and starving and incapacitated. Of course Spirit goes there. Of course it does. Absolutely.

   Karen: Micciah, you’ve partially answered this question already, but — is there a distinction between tithing and charity?

   Micciah: Between tithing and charity… hmm. Hoist on the petard of language.
   [Much laughter]
   Do you all know what a petard is?

   Student: No —

   Micciah: Well, we will leave you to look it up.
   [Laughter pause]
   Charity. In the way that a charitable gift is expressed, often the quality of consciousness that is embedded in charity has a higher or lower connotation in terms of the donor and the recipient. So, if this one were to say, “Well, Karen, we will give you this class as an act of charity. Poor dear.”
   [Laughter]
   “We have no confidence in your ability to pay.”
   So, there is a connotation about giving a charitable contribution that uplifts the giver in, oh, perhaps, the sense of the ego. It doesn’t have to be bad; we are being sly about it. But, it has a connotation of those who have much giving to those who have little, not so much through Spirit but through their own personal goodness. And culturally you have all of this organized — all of your giving organized — around what you can deduct.
   [Laughter]
   Now there is an interesting item of consciousness.
   [More laughter]
   If you can deduct it...

   Karen: You give once so you don’t have to give again.

   Micciah: Yes.

   Karen: Then you also get the government to return prosperity back to you, you see.

   Polly: Right.

   Marie: What does that mean, though?

   Micciah: It is all based on a system that is bereft of a metaphysical or spiritual understanding of abundance.
   If there were a greater real understanding — genuine understanding — you would not need to enforce taxes. You see? It would be clear to every individual that the well-being of their land, of their community, was their responsibility.
   [Deep breath] You cannot legislate generosity.
   So, that is the difference, as we see it.
   Please, do you wish to go on?

   Marie: Micciah — I was just thinking of the tail end of what you were just saying. I had another question, but it’s — we might as well go with this a bit.

   Micciah: Yes.

   Marie: What’s the significance of ten percent? That’s something I personally resent [laughing].

   Micciah: Oh, well, what would you like to do?

   Marie: Well, I mean, I —

   Micciah: Try one percent.

   Marie: One percent. I can do one percent.

   Micciah: Try one percent.

   Marie: But why is it then —

   Micciah: Well —

   Marie: It seems to me arbitrary. And when someone then says, “Well, ten percent is the way to tithe,” then I go, “Well, what does that mean?”

   Micciah: Yes. It is arbitrary when it is delivered, as we say, as a spiritual imperative: “You — over there, with the eyeglasses! You — tithe ten percent, because we say so.“
   Experiment with one percent. No, we meant that numbers themselves have power. Numbers have a vibratory quality; a — a — [searches for words] a movement and a force of their own. Numbers are entities.
   Ten is a number of completion, so it represents a hologram. You know what a hologram — hologram, holograph, hologram —

   Students: Um-hmm.

   Micciah: You know what a hologram is?

   Students: Yes.

   Micciah: It is when the tiniest particle of something can be displayed in such a way that it shows the entirety of the entity from which it was plucked. Is that right, Jon?

   Jon: Close enough.

   Micciah: Close enough. So, when you take “ten,” a number which represents, in its vibrational significance, a cycle of completion, it is as if you take all of it, and yield it up. It is a symbol, and a resonating entity.
   So, when it loses significance, and it is given to you as a rule, then you are back in the mechanical world; and then it no longer represents what you wish it to represent symbolically.
   It is like saying a name that is powerful. You say the name of Jesus. You can say it in a way, and with an intention, that evokes enormous power. Or the name of Ram. Or the many names of the Goddess. They can be incanted in such a way to evoke their power.
   Or you can just say it [slaps knee] can, stub your toe, and say, “Oh, Jesus.” So it doesn’t have the same quality. Although there is always that shadow in it. Even at the mechanical level there is a shadow of true power.
   Wonderful questions.
   So if you wish to experiment with giving, you can play with the percentages.
   Keep a journal. Test it out. Test it! Live it! That is how it becomes enspirited, because you live with it, and dance with it! Not because someone tells you and then you capitulate, you obey.
   So [claps]. We will end with that.
   You have a direct line, a direct means of communicating, through the personality self, to Spirit. And don’t ever let anyone imply anything different.
   We thank you for this meeting. We hope you will play with the abundance… and know for yourselves how magnificent it is. And we bid you a most joyful day.

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   Julie: That’s the end of this particular segment... of this particular adventure. And this channeling is meant to be a spiritual, emotional, intellectual, heartful, mindful journey that I share with another realm, that I share with my classes and that we all share with you.
   Please go over the material, evaluate it for yourself, and know what it is that you think about it.