Book Talk, TIGM/es 04

Post 4 in a series related to Edwin Steinbrecher's book "The Inner Guide Meditation."

This is the last post on "Part One" of the book.

This is actually a defensive post not about archetype work, but about channeling. Except at the end.

ES seriously disses a couple identities I'm very fond of and grateful to. However, I'm working to open my mind to the idea that maybe he is right, and these are things I should consider seriously. So far... I'm more argumentative than musing, though. If there are good points to be made against my POV I would love them as comments. This is a subject that has a ton of superstition and little intelligent discourse, in my observation, and it's interesting and deserves better.

Jane Roberts was a woman, a writer and poet, who in the 1960's began experimenting with psychic functioning, initially with a Ouija board, and ended up -- after awhile -- 'channeling' an entity that called himself 'Seth.' There are many books written by Jane 'channeling' Seth, and by her-as-her. She had health issues for a very long time and finally died in the 1980s. Whatever else she might have been, she was very intelligent, very open minded, yet a critical thinker too (rare and invaluable to find that combo in people!), and one of the best poets I've ever read.

Seth, over time, said that Jane was an Aspect of him -- not the other way around which I believe is the norm for (healthy) channeling. She had a burning desire to know, he was a teacher, she looked inward and called for answers, and he answered the call. She was skeptical of this, fascinated but reserved especially initially, was always wondering if he could be caught in something inconsistent, and she and her mate Rob took and kept extensive notes on everything. In fact if you read a Seth book I recommend ignoring all the notes. They had such detail about their tracking him that it kinda distracts from the information in a way.

Her successful work with Seth was followed, shortly in, by a whole wave of channeling popularity that included some entities and channelers that, shall we say, are part of the reason modern channeling has such a bad name.

I might add that some of the most powerful works of occult literature in our time, including most all of Alice A. Bailey's work, The Urantia Book, and A Course in Miracles, are channeled materials. Also some occultists write "in the spirit" at times which means about the same thing -- channeling 'information/energy' as opposed to 'with identity included'. These people, these entities, and this information, is almost incomprehensibly different than the burbling crap you find in new-age bookstores -- the latter stuff being from the cosmic alien channeled through the walk-in telling you why you're an indigo child and special, and that'll be only $399 for that next conference on why the stars say this is a special time for special people like you.

I personally felt -- maybe still feel -- that most "identity" channeling amounts to voluntary temporary possession. However I think whether one is bringing forth "an aspect of themselves", vs. "the wandering dead guy I met during the Seance" -- or even "the person in focus in this remote viewing session" -- I think this is a different thing, in both experience and in result. I am not really saying any are good or bad, I'm just saying that "opening to a part of yourself" is not quite the same as "hosting someone you don't know" in my opinion. One is evoking-from, one is invoking-into.

And I think the hosting of a stranger, if you were doing it on purpose, may be a useful means to an end if it works (eg for psi info). Whether it is bad or dangerous I don't know. Maybe a little of both. But so is eating donuts, crossing against the light, and running with scissors, and sometimes we do those things with full awareness for our own reasons.

I am often "sitting in on" other identities, in dreams and sometimes not-dreams, without even trying, and I am often "feeling energy move through me", which I think makes me a little more blasé about the topic--as some degree of these things occur with me natively (naturally) anyway.

I believe that most channeling is "information/energy" channeling and does not come with the 'skin of identity'. I once knew a woman who channeled who only sometimes even spoke. The planes in her face would change and the energy in the room would change, sometimes radically, and that was the point of it. The whole funky pay-a-zillion for Ramtha's-cosmic-insight seems hilarious to me. I know this was a big thing especially when Steinbrecher was publishing this book. I sometimes feel I am channeling, as if information is 'coming through me'. And sometimes when the Aeons are talking to me, I'm sorta translating and I feel it amounts to channeling even though to me it's more like 'subtle conversation I am recording'.

Back to Jane and Seth.

Seth's book "The Nature of Personal Reality" is IMO one of the most important spiritual contributions to several generations. It's a bit cerebral. There are smaller simpler books by them most people would like better.

Jane and Seth are part of the reason I'm a normal person exploring myself instead of drugged in a straightjacket somewhere. I found them at just the right time. My whole life followed the book I finally (reluctantly, I was very biased against channeling) agreed to read, me having ongoing 'experiences' and 'ideas' that the book would then explain and annotate shortly after. If you allow it, Seth books can be an 'experience' not just a read. I had no mental models or frameworks to handle my spontaneous experiences, I had no vocabulary to treat it as something sane, rational, and able to be integrated. They gave me that. I am still grateful.

In a world full of left-brainiacs who want to vomit over most woo-woo channeling, Seth and Jane singlehandedly redeemed the entire genre. They made a critical philosophical 'doorway' a lot more accessible to much of our culture. He was consistent; brilliant; insightful; humorous. He was not a guru by ego, only by result.

Seth's message, from start to finish, woven inextricably through everything he ever did for the public, was:

* You create your own reality-experience.

* What you perceive as reality is your belief systems manifested.

* "You get what you focus upon. There is no other main rule. [session 617]" (I have this, in calligraphy and frame, on my bedroom wall.)

* Your beliefs about reality are "about" it, they are not IT.

* The point of power is NOW.

* You have the ability to commune with yourself. Don't live in fear of 'hidden subconscious' stuff. Trust that if you truly inquire, anything you want to know about yourself is available.

Everything Seth did was about personal empowerment and an individual's ability to get to know themselves and intentionally shape their reality.

In short, everything that was Seth's message, is a total confirmation and support for inner guide / archetype work.

And as a matter of fact, Seth provided many exercises over time, several of which are incredibly like archetype work.


Another point:

Jane's mate, Rob, once felt he 'saw' Seth and painted a portrait of him.

ES says that portrait clearly looks like Jane's third house guide, hence obviously Seth was the false inner guide.

This has so many problems, where to begin?

1. The painting is by Rob, not Jane. SHE did not describe him that way; she didn't 'see' him. At least that I recall. Why on earth do we assume that "how Rob perceives" some entity is exactly what that entity looks like for Jane? Saturn looks different to me than to my friends. Why not any other totally nonphysical identity??

Is not one major lesson of the inner world that perception and reality are both totally subjective, that the same thing can be many things from many perspectives? The whole judgement on Seth, based on what he looks like "to Rob," compared to what he is allegedly "supposed to be for Jane," makes no sense at all to me as a result.

2. I respect ES's work and perspective but I do not yet know that an IG 'must' be 9th house match. But I am not taking this point seriously in the Seth debate -- as I do not care to dispute it because maybe he is right -- the above and following points are more relevant to this topic anyway.

3. Jane never said that Seth was her inner guide. Seth said that Jane was an aspect of him. ES seems to assume there is no other possible role that anything, anyone, could have to a human being. There's you, there's IG, and that's it. Everything else in existence, if it isn't you and it isn't IG, must be a false-IG! Come on already. I think that is taking the I-have-a-hammer way too far.

Steinbrecher accidentally almost created a religion here. Let's look at what we have. A method for talking to 'the divine/wise/guide/spirit/etc.' A description of what the good guy (IG-as-Messiah in this analogy) 'is'. A clear warning about how everything that is not the good guy, is bad. A specific model/map grafted onto it all of how-this-really-is. OK we have a few more bullet points before true religion is reached, I admit, but still, he was walking a pretty good road toward a doctrine there. At the least, it's a clear paradigm. And I wouldn't care because you have to believe SOMETHING based on experience, except for his seeming to think everyone else's experiences no matter how different, were to be judged by the framework of his own preference.

Seth said he was a teacher, he and Jane were connected, she asked, he answered. I'm having a hard time figuring out what part of this is inherently bad.


Next: ES suggests that if Seth hadn't been a 'false inner guide' that his information would have been (wait for it): "more spiritual but less clever."

Since Seth's entire message was always of individual reality and individual empowerment to change that, the 'not-spiritual-enough' accusation confuses me. If he had used flowery words and talked about scorpio and karma would he have been better accepted by Edwin? Is that spiritual? Inner Guide work is all about the exact same inner-world topics Seth addressed, amazingly. Which part was the 'not-spiritual-but-clever'? Was the fact that Seth basically dumped 99.99% of the mumbo jumbo BS out the window and discussed 'the nature of reality' as if it were a reasonable thing, was that too "clever but unspiritual" because it didn't have any spiritual terminology involved?

Was the fact that Seth did it without invoking astrology or tarot the real problem?

Or was it just that being 'a channeled' identity was the judgement? I mean for all the ranting about those in the channeling field, the aliens and the make-me-a-gurus and so on, none of that applies to Jane and Seth.

It is like taking someone who does doubleblind remote viewing, quietly, and then dissing them because there are these bozos on late night radio using that term and making worse than a mockery of it as its alleged 'representatives' to millions. Yes there are stupid people and wannabes but what does that have to do with Jane and Seth, who were close to the polar opposite of that? It's completely injust to judge them by behaviors, issues and circumstance they had nothing to do with. It's a hand-waving assignment of everything-obnoxious-about-new-age-channeling, glue-sticked onto Jane as if she bears the responsibility for everyone else.

Yep, she met him through Ouija (sorta indirectly or at least not as the initial meeting). Yep, she was a 'trance channeler'. Yep, the energy was very strong and the timing and volume (and accent) of the delivery quite odd, but there may be perfectly logical reasons for that; on its own I see no reason to judge that in any direction. Yes, she had other people in her living room a few times a week and sometimes, for some classes, Seth would talk with them on some topic or answer questions for various people. Did she charge big sums of money? No. She was a down to earth person. She had issues, everyone has issues, she had longstanding health problems, but she managed this despite that. That doesn't make Seth a bad guy because she failed to be perfect and Ascend Into The Light or whatever.

Maybe there is more to 'identity' and its merged-multiplicity than the simple "one person, one guide" model allows for.

Maybe ES was right about Seth being some "third house guide". Maybe, if so, "so what?" Personally if we were talking about identities, entities, which are part of us, I have a hard time grokking why part 9 is good but every other possible part is bad. Might this be because ES associated his experiences with part 9, so everything after that was expected to follow that model? Or is it that ES simply only looks for things that fit in the IG model, so anything else is wrong?

Sudden idea: 12 houses? Is there supposed to be a 'guide' in each house? What if they each have some specialization, and the 9th house is the IG specialization, but the others have... others?


Next: ES implied that Jane's illness that eventually killed her was something that Seth should have saved her from if he'd been her "real inner guide." This point has a lot of problems too.

First: he wasn't her IG. Nobody, not her or him or anybody else, ever claimed that he was her IG. So the repetition on "he was not her true IG!" as if this is some hugely important statement that officially damns them, is just ridiculous to me.

For the record let me state that my Four, my Consortium of 12, my child, my cat, my friends, and my dream characters, and my favorite deities, are not my IG. If this statement alone implies something bad about them I might as well take it right up top.

Second: she could have worked with her IG in addition to Seth. It's not like her work with Seth made work with any other source of energy, spirit, info, etc. impossible. If she did not choose to work with her IG, that is her life issue, not Seth's; she was not his puppet. He gave her all kinds of advice some of which she openly ignored.

(Actually, I feel that Jane was hugely experimental. A lot of her writing that is not official books is like a "varying % of her vs. Seth". Some people have been disillusioned by this, as if it put all of Seth's work, which they found otherwise stellar, suddenly in doubt for them. I however feel that this was part of her own learning and processing of identity.)

Perhaps Steinbrecher was right that working with her IG on her health might have saved her. But you know, I read an original, prior to publishing version of what became the book that went up to her death. Seth was trying to save her ass until the last minute, literally. (I bawled helplessly all day about it.) It was so pitiful. I think blaming Seth is really SO injust there.

Maybe--I don't know, so I'm open to this--maybe something about the energy of their work together actually did make her more vulnerable to something that affected her health. Mind you she had issues aside from him but maybe her work with him really did have an effect on her health. Maybe that kind of work does have a certain cost. Hell, even if it did something minor like deplete potassium and vitamin D for some reason (which even ordinary activities can do), if done consistently without compensating that could greatly gear someone toward low immunity and disease.

Maybe she could have done things, including IG work, to resolve it. But even if all of that is true, in what way does that make Seth inherently bad, false, distractive, dangerous, or whatever? EVERYTHING is a trade-off of energy. Everything, and everybody. The Private Oracle told me that but I believe it for my own reasons. My Aeons, my Four, the private oracle, inner guide, everything, everyone, every "interaction" is an energy trade of some kind.

Learning what identities are best suited for what, and learning what it "costs" us for that and whether we choose that, seems like the task of the century.

Maybe Jane was unbalanced because she had so much 3rd-house-guide energy and so little every-other-house-guide energy. I imagine there are some risks to everything. Some people die doing daring skiing, or from eating too much of one thing and not enough of another. If that contributed to her death, that sucks, but I don't think it is appropriate to blame Seth for it. If she did not choose to save herself, not via Seth's advice and not via working with other entities more geared to direct-healing, if for whatever reason her soul chose to check out of this frequency, then you know -- that is her choice.

Sometimes the most exceptional people in some areas are the most torqued in some other. Suggesting that she might not have died if he'd been different seems unfair; with this logic, anybody doing IG meditations should have eternal life, right? So where is Edwin? Dead. Granted he was 71 when he died in 2002, but if I extend his logic, nothing besides old age at 115+ should kill someone with the proper inner guide relationship -- at least, as he is projecting it (unfairly in my mind) toward Jane and Seth in this instance.

I'm not arguing ES's claim that Seth (a) was not Jane's "true inner guide" or that (b) was Jane's "third house guide". I don't think the former is even relevant as that was not what she was questing for anyway. And I think the latter, even if true, simply makes the topic of "sources of information" even more interesting to me. I don't consider Seth some kind of negative entity of darkness. I have a huge respect and appreciation and gratitude for him. So if he is representative of "third house guides", which so-far have been relegated solely to the dismissive category as "false inner guides" (in other words not-a-9th-house-guide), then that doesn't make me think, "Oooh, bad, avoid that!" -- instead, it makes me want to understand more about that kind of identity. So it's not IG... I get that. Not everything in my internal universe has to be IG. My IG rocks and is unique... nobody else could be her anyway! That doesn't mean they don't have value for whatever they are.


I think that Edwin Steinbrecher's model for Inner Guide as used in archetype work is very cool and insightful. I think his mapping all this with tarot and astrology as the most (obvious and powerful) archetypes is also very cool and insightful. I think he was a smart guy with a questing mind and I respect him a lot.

But I think there are many more questions to be answered in this work and certainly his groundbreaking, very cool book is the alpha, not the omega. Like:

* What else can IG do, besides bring us archetypes, Aeons (or according to ES, talk to the dead)? I have the gut feeling there is a lot of powerful potential there that we have never even thought to ask about, have not even considered.

* Do the energy relationships in us manifest in our body too? Are there certain 'mappings' of the internal world that would do better for health-related work?

* If IG is a 9th-house guide, and 3rd-house guides are known and recognizeable for different qualities (of behavior not just appearance), is it possible that all one's houses have guides?

* If all one's astro houses have an equivalent 'guide' in the archetypal realm for the asking, is it possible they each have a specialized function/area that we have not explored yet?

* Is it possible that often the 3rd-house guide comes forward for a good reason, like maybe in our culture that's a part of ourself we actually tend to lean toward more? (Eg more logical and verbally communicative.)

* What other 'maps of the internal universe' besides astrology and tarot can be utilized in an archetype model? How about:

• the i ching?
• The Tree of Life?
• Feng Shui?
• Power-animals?
• What about colors, numbers, and other elements of "correspondence" that qabala also uses?
• (What about Enochian entities? I'm not trying it...)
• What about 'elementals'?
• What about body-parts -- what role does my liver really have on a larger scale?
• What about astronomy, and not just the major planets but other things too (major moons in the system, rings, the galaxy, the asteroid belt)?
• What about the zillion heirarchical angelic troops delineated (ad nauseum) in The Urantia Book?

The universe is infinitely divisible so is the inner archetypal realm the same?

I'll head into part 2 in awhile, might take a reading break for a few days.

PJ

Book Talk, TIGM/es 03

Post 3 in a series related to Edwin Steinbrecher's book "The Inner Guide Meditation."

ES feels that the archetypal energies are "collective" entities. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I guess I kind of agree. I do feel that 'archetypes' by nature are singular in-themselves. What I mean is, the archetype of green is always the-archetype-of-green no matter who is asking for them. Whether Jane's interaction with green affects Howard's interaction with green--a truly "collective" result for green--now that part, I do not know. (Given the bazillions of humans now, previous and later, how on earth could we ever evaluate such a thing anyway.)

I think that a person's unique relationship with green would make the archetype they experienced--not to be confused with some master/universal archetype--unique to them, at least in some respects.

From the beginning ES had tied the arch work to his astro work. He spoke of introducing others, talking on this publicly, getting people to work with him and give him feedback about their experiences, which is much of what went into this book, the conclusions that brought him to.

I find that very interesting, though I think it's worth considering that him as the point of commonality makes the alleged separate-ness of all the experiences in question. That doesn't mean it invalidates it. Just that I would be intrigued to hear the results of someone with a different paradigm doing the same work.

It occurred to me that perhaps others could contact their inner guides, so I began trying to get others to their guides at the conclusion of my horoscope readings. [...] I began to get a concept of the archetypal forces as collective entities.

Which got a great deal more 'doctrinal / predictable' once he decided the experiences of the people he was leading into 'introduction' to their guides, and/or working with, matched his own and each others':

I began to notice a remarkable similarity between one area of the horoscopes of the individuals I worked with and their descriptions of the Guides they contacted in their inner world. I discovered that the personality and physical appearance of one's first inner guide always corresponds to the ninth house (...) of the natal pattern (...Koch...). This is traditionally the section called The House of God and Religion and the area describing your philosophical and spiritual views, as well as your own ability to act as a guide or way-shower for others. [...] That we are so completely programmed, internally as well as externally, came as an astronishing revelation. [later, ES writes:] The guide's ascendant or first house (what he looks like and what his personality is like) is the ninth house of your chart.

I admit this makes my brain hurt. It does seem possible that it's this way, that all first IG's match the 9th natal Koch house. That's amazing if so! I mean that it's so... universal, or predictable. But other things seem to be like that sometimes, so why not that.

I guess the part that concerns me here is that it is so easy to build anything into religion. Here we are with this mostly-freeform "exploratory" experience, right, unique as your dreams, then bam before you know it we have pre-decided what everybody's personal inner guide is going to look like and act like and anything that doesn't fit that mold...

So you know what's coming next, right. Once we define the good guys, that makes everything ELSE... well. You can take the religion out of people raised in the judeochristian model, but you cannot exorcise it from their personalities. (I'm one of 'em, I should know.) If there is a good, there's got to be an evil, and it's probably lurking behind doorways hoping to ensnare you at every turn.

Not saying this does not exist, mind you. Just saying it seems to get more focus than it should sometimes... it's a big universe, so when we limit the 'good' to what we already have a label for, that sure leaves a big universe of stuff to be bad.

In addition, "false" guides ... were also described in the natal pattern by the third house. [...] this new insight gave the ability to distinguish the true guide from the false to anyone versed in astrology.

More is coming on that topic a bit later.

The thing I often warn people about with archmeds, is that once your psychology really and truly "groks" -- understands -- just how powerful, how profound, how fundamentally and reality-changing this process can be, the mind gets completely resistant. This takes the 'change=death' to new levels that nothing else in life can touch.

Most people are resistant even to changing software in their job. Imagine how resistant most people are to something that fundamentally changes their entire self and reality! And so, you're going along meditating and feeling delighted with how amazing it all is, and then all the sudden -- you can't "get around to it". The resistance that develops is ridiculous. ES also mentions that:

These sudden outer changes initially produced a common reaction in those experiencing them, including myself. It all seemed "too fast". A resistance to sitting down to work with the Guides and the archetypes would develop and last until our egos got used to the outer changese and assimilated them.

The following point is a dilemma for me, the kind I mentioned in my first post. Let me give an analogy before I give the detail.

In the QBL (cabala), there is a 'tree of life' with 10 (ok technically 11) Sephiroth. This basically "composes the universe". It breaks it down into major categories of energy, is one way to put it. Eons ago when I had an 'astral college' experience for awhile, there were 3 crystals each with 10 prismic 'sections' and those were each a world. The Enochian Aethyrs also number 30. My so-called "Linoleum Theory" divided 'the universe of my soul' into Four.

I suppose "every number is infinite" is the reality of this. Some people use Tarot. They may use just the 22 trumps. Or they may use all 78 cards like in Thoth. Or they may use astrology and divide it into 12, or many other forms of division which number 12, or the 7 of a rainbow or octave, those are common numbers in metaphysical stuff. Or they may use the 22 Trumps of Tarot plus the 12 signs of the zodiac plus 7-9 planets. It is my personal suspicion that ALL of these ways of "dividing up the energy of the universe" are valid, and probably many more. I do think some are ancient, perhaps created with 'insight', and as a thoughtform, then, may carry a great deal more power -- tarot, astrology, the Tree, being primary examples.

I totally agree that you can use any of these systems as a "map" -- of the soul, of the universe, whatever. But I'm not sure that it's the ONLY map. And every map, just like every model, does come with some assumptions. Not saying that makes them bad. Just saying that assigning "one" map as if that is the only thing, the literal thing, the whole thing, tends to result in doctrine. I know it probably sounds like I'm being pedantic here, but actually I'm actually trying to be semantic instead: I think it's important for the mental models, for genuine creativity and freedom, for me to think of this as "a" model or "one possible model of many". I think if I set it in stone like THE model, it will paralyze my inner world into certain pre-set patterns. I'm willing to bet we could use the i Ching or chinese year-animals or whatever to address archetypes and that would work just as well.

It also showed that the horoscope is a literal road map of the inner world's inhabitants, geography and physics, and a tool which can be verified by your own personal psyche.

Yes. But I am willing to bet that any 'road map' one chooses to use, particularly that ties into worldwide archetypes like tarot, astrology, or sephiroth, will work and could be verified by personal experience.

That the archetype meditation model actually works is totally brain-crunching up close. ES did a nice job exampling this:

...if I could meditate in a chair in ... New Mexico, working on an archetypal energy within me that corresponded to my oldest brother in my horoscopic pattern, and have that brothr go through sudden positive change fifteen hundred miles away at the same time that the archetype that I project on him (according to astrological theory) changes in my inner world, something is erroneous in the way we've been taught that reality works. Somehow the energies I carry are making the world I occupy and experience. Not "I," the current ego, but "I" as a totality.

In my own mental model (subject to change), there are infinite variations of his brother, all equal, some manifested some not depending on his brother, and what changed was 'the version of his brother that his reality was associated with'. A prettier way to put it might be like this:

Imagine an infinite kaleidascope universe, with infinite patterns. I'm a fractal flower with lots of petals, leaves, and associations with other patterns around me. The process of the energy work causes me to basically decide that instead of being THIS flower, I'm going be THAT flower now, which is mostly identical except that one leaf (the brother) is a different color in this new pattern. All the pieces and patterns are still just as existent. Nothing moved, nothing changed, nothing appeared or vanished. My ATTENTION shifted, and when it did, of course, my sense of identity moved with it. Now I am 'paying attention to' being pattern-B rather than pattern-A. The only difference I notice is the part of the pattern that is "mapped to my brother" (and probably some other things too).

Does this make sense to anybody but me? I'd like to come up with a way of putting this stuff in words that makes it less, not more, confusing!

Anyway I agree with him in general: we are obviously creating our reality-experience, even when it sucks, which is very frustrating when some part of it sucks and the road to how to change it is not immediately clear. I mean it seems obvious to all of us how to fix a given problem... as long as it's someone else's. :-)

Back to the dark side:

False guides ... become a problem because of our naive ignorance about "inner speakers" and a lack of clear definition of who is who on the inner planes.

I agree that we have this 'naive ignorance'. What I'm not sure about is -- well, it seems to me he is implying, with the book, that we have now figured it all out thanks to Astrology, Tarot and the Inner Guide, and it's all mapped out and a 'known', so there is no more 'ignorance' about what I would call the universe or the jungian-stew of what's inside us.

I'm not sure I'd agree we are anywhere near that happy place. I tend to think we are all still wandering the masculine polarity of the universe (which refuses to ask for directions...) and while we have found a few 'things that can be mapped' on that universe, I don't really feel like we have THE answer yet.

This matters to the topic at hand. Think about it this way: if you decide that entity-type-1 is good, and you know nothing about entity-types-2 through 29, but you have a few reports on entities 2-4 (which were unpleasant) and 11-14 (which were confusing), it is easy to make it insta-doctrine and say, "entity 1 is good. All other entities are not-good." Because your map has a little legend or annotation with entity 1 on it and who-the-hell-knows who all those other entities might be or what their nefarious purposes might be.

Historically, man-made religion is so quick to do this. I'm reluctant to assume anything is wrong, bad, misleading, black magick, evil, etc. without some personal experience and consideration. For all we know, entity #19 is completely useless for most things, literally harmful for some things, but an ass-kickingly powerful perfect for some other thing. How are we ever going to learn this if we're assuming the whole universe inside us that isn't IG is "a false IG" and hence bad??

...the test of love is the test of the true guide. If there is no consistent feeling of love and total acceptance from a figure you think might be your inner guide, you are probably working with a false guide.

I don't remember my first guide much except that I was new to this and nothing including IG seemed like more than crap-I-was-making-up back then, until I adapted to the habit and did them real deep altered state.

The next guides I've had, when I met them I felt shy, and felt they were in a big judgement of me (and not necessarily a good one), silent but ... a sort of 'has an opinion, keeps his mouth shut, is waiting for me to 'prove' myself, has a pre-existing hard opinion about me' sort of feeling. Yes I know that people with resistance to this may manifest all kinds of dark-side/scary things so maybe it's hard to tell.

I keep a positive intent and I pray (literally to God) so the way I see it, if it wasn't the right IG to start with, my intent and prayer would shift it into being so pretty shortly. If it didn't, if prayer had no value, and interior energy/focus had no value, then WTF are we doing here anyway...

I prefer 'dominant males' and I respond to authority, so I suspect that is part of my own psychology; part of my respect for him assigns him some of those qualities, and some father-energy which is not perfect for me. But definitely I was not feeling love and light pouring out of my guides when I met them. Later, I developed that relationship. To start with? Nope. If I'd been using this as a map of what was real I'd have had some real problems at this point and would have thought everything was 'false'.

I do not for a moment believe that my past guides which felt like this initially, were 'false' guides. I suspect that allowing is on the part of the person, not the IG. Much like Nero and Taan told me that channeled info 'style' is based on the channeler not whatever energy they are in contact with, maybe our emotional reaction to the ultimate inner authority(s) is more about us than it is about them.

I might add I never felt that 'prove yourself' feeling with my current IG. She felt compassionate and understanding -- about my trauma of having to give up the previous IG, and me not wanting her -- from the start. I thought it would take me a couple years even to learn to like her. But I ended up crazy in love with her almost right away. She's been quite different for me in several respects than the previous guides.

I often feel like the work she and I do is an 'opportunity' for both of us but her too. As if she is... like a creative soundtrack composer. And when we work together it's a chance for her to see what neat things she can accomplish. And I often feel the urge to work with her solely for this reason -- like because she is very cool and I want to see what she can come up with for me. I didn't have that with any other guide.

ES suggests if you don't feel love/acceptance for your guide that you look to his right and there will be the 'real' guide. That sounds like a programmed belief to me. If you can make people believe this, it would probably work. Of course it might be true, too. Still.

ES has some good general advice about what might constitute a 'true' guide. All the examples he gives of 'warning signs' that a guide is a 'false' guide--ok most of them anyway--are pretty obvious and I would be concerned had I ever perceived those in an IG. The kind of entities he's talking about remind me of the sort most people get from Ouija boards or 'lite' channeling (he actually says the same, later) -- egocentric, pontificating, highly polarized, ego-flattering sorts. Or simply 'other identities' -- which may not be an inner guide, though I don't know for sure that this indicates they are necessarily bad, as just not what we're looking for in this case.

ES has (well, had when he was alive) an organization that uses his theories and astrology and he suggests if there is question to send info to them. He suggests you include this whole long list of physical attributes about your guide. I really laughed about that. I have NEVER seen my inner guides clearly except when I had worked with them for quite awhile and even then I usually see them in pieces, like at one moment I'm aware of their height or their hair and eyes or whatever. When I do get a full-sense of them it's usually a 'sense' more than real visual. But then later on the same page he adds:

When a true inner guide is initially contacted in the visualization procss, it is usually difficult to see his face clearly, while the face of a false guide is usually quite clear. Why this is, I have no idea. Maybe we see the true guide's face when we stop trying to make up a face for him.

I agree, but... well how are you supposed to use the physical appearance of your guide to determine he is the 9th Koch house appearance, if you can't see the bleeping guy? Am I being picky? I am not worried personally, but I feel like people just starting this who are reading the book fiercely and trying to do it "right" would be understandably confused here.

ES gives his traits that define the 'true' inner guides:
1) A feeling of love for the individuals they teach and guide;
2) Never volunteer information unless first asked;
3) Generally don't make predictions for you or others;
4) Don't judge you or anyone else, nor do they take sides in disagreements;
5) Will not contact the dead for anyone but the individual whose Guide they are;
6) Will not give information about other people;
7) Do not manifest through automatic writing, ouija boards, channeling or trance states;
8) Are always accepting of where you are emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually;
9) Don't lie or give inaccurate information, nor are they inconsistent;
10) Often answer questions with questions, teaching in the Socratic mode.

I've already addressed my hesitance about 1) and 4) above; with those caveats I agree on those. I have to admit that 2), 3), 4), 9), 10) have always been true for my guides so far.

5) Will not contact the dead for anyone but.... I beg your pardon?! You're telling me IG will contact the dead for me?! Holy crap! Well here I was recently wondering what else she might be able to do. Now if only I knew someone dead I wanted contacted. Exactly what good would this do, I wonder?

Honestly I am a skeptic on this. I don't mean I disbelieve it's possible. I mean that I think you could work with 'someone dead' as if they were an archetype, including 'via' IG, and how would you know if it was your-archetype-of-the-dead-guy or really IG-contacting-the-dead-guy-for-you? I mean I imagine that people sensing a deep loss from someone they loved having died, could probably use archmeds well to this end, but whether it's really THE dead person vs. something akin to the archetypal energy of the dead person? Who knows?

Maybe it doesn't really matter and that's just quibbling on semantics. But it won't be ME telling people that my IG talks to dead people. :-) For now, anyway.

6) Info on others -- I have never asked for info about other people so I don't know. Actually I have seldom asked for info from IG at all, in part because I so seldom see or hear IG clearly enough to get an answer, and often when I do it is not informative (more a question or feeling and I'm often still wondering), so have kind of adapted away from communication being primary. I talk 'to' IG but it's very rare I actually get talking back. Sometimes, usually in impressions.

2) Never volunteers information unless asked, and 8) are always accepting of where you are... well yes. But my current IG will stuff Aeons down my throat at every opportunity it appears, when I refused to go to the Tower with the Four where they were being urged on me, so it's not like she doesn't have her own opinion on things.

7) Doesn't manifest through autowriting, channeling, trance states. Now this is an interesting one. I would say that generally, yes, IG will not spontaneously arrive via at least those first two states. Mostly because one is not ASKING for him to manifest through those states. Intent is everything. To me this is like saying, "When you look at your astrology chart you won't see Tarot symbols on it." Well... yeah... that's because that's not what it is designed for. That doesn't mean that one or the other are invalid or bad. Just that these things are different. In fact I'm confused about why he seems to insist the entire universe of human spirituality come through his doorway instead of any other.

I think I dispute the assumption in this one. Once one IS connected consciously I think IG could manifest any way IG wanted. Maybe IG would never want to do that. I don't know. But much like IG being human, I think some things are so more because of US than because of IG.

As for trance states, ES seems to have some kind of polarized view of this and judgement about it ('related to channeling eww ick ptooie!') but that's IMO the wrong thing to include. Archmeds are often done in trance states because trance is merely varying degrees of brainwave states and the most powerful inner work tends to be in pretty altered state.

ES gives traits for false guides:
1) Volunteer information freely, some of which may be valid. They are often very long-winded.
2) Judge you or other, or try to make you feel evil, wrong, or guilty.
3) Communicate often in terms of separation and polarization, good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, good guys vs. bad guys.
4) May make you uncomfortable or ill, or draw illness and unfortunate outer-world circumstances into your life.
5) Inflate the ego. They often may make you feel that you are a "chosen one," a "walk in," better, higher, more special or more spiritual than others.
6) Are often figures from your own reality, e.g. famous gurus, saints, dead relatives, historical figures, or figures from your fantasy system, e.g. entities claiming to be from outer space or other galaxies, or they may be disincarnate entities or one of the archetypes, the latter being quite dangerous to sanity. In order to work with the archetypes safely, it is absolutely necessary to have the true inner guide, who has the ability to protect you from an overwhelming archetypal energy or to pull you out of the situation if necessary.
7) Make the conditions of your life worsen.
8) Will lie or exaggerate, or are inconsistent.
9) Will flatter and agree with your ego's opinions; usually they are definite Yes-men or -women.
10) Are usually quite theatrical, making grandiose claims about themselves, and, when channeled, speak with strange accents and gesticulate in bizarre ways or cause strange body movements to occur in the naive channeler, who is generally sincerely ignorant of who or what is being channeled or the danger of the process he or she is involved in.

I don't dispute ES's definition of true or false guides. However, I do want to address a couple things. I think that he, like everyone, has certain paradigms and they tend to overlap a little with this subject.

1) Maybe he is right and IG is not an elaborate communicator. I don't necessarily judge any identity that might be as bad, though. Just that maybe they aren't your IG.

4) and 7) How would you know if your 'guide' was making you ill or giving you bad outer circumstance? Isn't the entire point of all this to grok that outer reality is a reflection of inner self? This line item seems like an unprovable tenet. I'm not saying that it is inaccurate; it might be true; I'm saying that there is no clear way I can see for people to evaluate this, since if WE create our outer reality experience via inner energetic relationships, I can't see how anybody would know whether to "blame it on the false-IG!" vs. consider it part of oneself. In fact, geez, I'd think the tendency to blame it on someone else might be worrisome.

10) I consider this whole point another bias-against-channeling issue. I'm happy to agree that one's IG is unlikely to be a pontificating channeled entity. However, (a) you are unlikely to expect IG to be that, or such entities to be IG, anyway, so what's the point here, and (b) all his other comments are not about IG, they are about his negative opinions on channeling. I think that is a separate topic. I could address the issues of channelers, accents and more, but I just don't think that has anything to do with inner guide / archetype meditation work.

I also might add that he seems to ASSUME that any identity anybody works with in any fashion whatever just HAS to be an archetype or your inner guide. Anything else -- say, channeled info -- falls into the category of "false inner-guide." Well that's ridiculous! I mean if someone is channeling and he's going, "Hey! That's not their inner guide!" I feel like, "Er, so? Who said it was?! Who said that IG is the ONLY source of info, energy or interaction anybody is allowed to have?"

It's like Inner Guide became his Jesus. Everything else is not-jesus and hence by definition, bad.

Even good and smart people have biases sometimes. Sometimes they are just, sometimes not. Remote Viewing has taught me a lot about that over the years. What most people have as their definition of psychic or remote viewing or the people doing it, have little in common with reality. If my definition were the same as theirs, I'd be as dismissive as they are. Much of one's evaluation of anything depends on exposure to what's real, vs. the media hype and late night radio bozos. I agree that most 'new age' stuff is eye-rollingly stupid, but, like religion, that is man-made, not of spirit. Here's hoping no part of spirit judges me by someone else in my neighborhood just because I am sometimes found in their company.

A few other points:

ES says that all inner guides are human, always. They are always humans who lived in some prior time. And they are always dressed according to their prior life. They never have any "godlike powers," although of course they have full control in the inner world.

OK, all my IG's have been human, I'll admit. However, I think I expected that, so that might be part of why. But on the last IG (which I think was my... third?) it gradually became clear that his human form was designed 'for' me. That his "true nature" was something different and more... amphibian. I ASKED to see him as he really was and to 'truly' know him better. He was a giant creature I've never seen before, couldn't get clearly, our closest concept here being a frog but not that. I imagine if I had not pushed for that he would always have seemed like a normal human to me. So was it that he was some faker and I gradually got more observant of the tiny clues, once I started to gradually be able to perceive him more clearly? Or is it that he, and all guides, appear in human form always by default, because WE are human, not because they are?

I don't mean to be picky but there is a big difference. Since if it's the former, it "implies" that someone like that is "a false guide", and if it's the latter, it implies that maybe we don't know everything we think we know about sentience. I loved him beyond all reason in a way I believe only an IG could inspire, and he was nothing but good in my view, and it was the Four especially Senior that made me let him go and adopt the new IG, which makes me trust him utterly.

Now I can see that the way Steinbrecher put this has some advantages. People will not believe projections they might make of a current guru. They won't believe any alien (or guru) that shows up psychically to claim the role. They won't over-interpret anything like clothing to have some significance it does not (e.g. 'dressed like an egyptian I think it was a god'). Or that it's something from the future which also implies some god-like (at least in information terms) qualities. So there are benefits to insisting that IG will always be 'a normal human not from this time'. I don't think he wrote that to soften the possible wrong-turns for newbs though, he appears to simply believe it is always that way with no exceptions. Whether it is as literally true--given my last IG's eventual revelation--as the book indicates, I am not sure.

ES says the first three guides are male, the 4th is always female.

This seems to have worked out for me too, actually. I think. I have lost count. I think she is 4th. Although I will mention that while I had zero conscious memory of this detail, I am certain I read that 15 years ago, so who knows what prior expectations might have set up.

PJ