Each of us has memories of childhood experiences with family and friends which have formed a part of our personality. Some are happy and helpful; others seem to be problems or hangups needing therapy. How much of such early childhood programming is designed to help us grow along a certain path? What kind may actually harm us? And is any by chance?

(Carla channeling)

I am Q’uo. I greet this circle in the love and in the light of the one infinite Creator, and express my deep gratitude at being invited into your midst. You are, for us, very special people and we bless and love each. We hope we may be of service by sharing some few thoughts about childhood [discipline], about that period in the young life of the incarnate soul when it is small and the world is large.

We would first, in order to have a reference point, gaze at the spirit which has not yet entered manifestation in incarnation. That spirit is an unique one, as are all individuals. It has the harvest of many lifetimes collected within its complex vibratory pattern, and because it is not within third-density manifestation, the spirit is aware of itself and its relationship to other entities and to the Creator of all things, for these relationships are as apparent as is light to the physical eye.

This entity in a discarnate state is, therefore, a solidified distortion of the one original Thought of the infinite Creator; that is, each unit of consciousness, each spirit, is a clear distortion of love, for indeed, love must be materially distorted as light to bring anything into manifestation at all. And once light has been distorted in such and such a manner and consciousness resides within, so shall consciousness work with and thus distort the one original Thought.

This discarnate spirit has an opinion arrived at after long and careful thought, and aid from those who help on what needs to be done, what needs to be changed, what needs to be reemphasized. In other words, what work needs to be done to rearrange the distortion of that one original Thought which is the essence of the self, in order that the self may be less distorted and thus may be a clearer channel for love itself.

Let us pause before we plunge into incarnation in our thoughts and gaze at the immensity of the creation and the infinite bits of consciousness which are distorting love, creating ever-anew ways of expressing the Creator, ways of expressing Love. Each bit of consciousness, at some point in its evolution, begins making its own choices about what it needs to learn next, and so you see the process taking place over an infinite span of time, whereby consciousness, having become distorted by coming into manifestation, works with each distortion slowly, patiently and lovingly for the most part until, one step following another, that state of consciousness which is known to your peoples as the Kingdom of Heaven is again achieved by experience and grace.

When the spirit is born into incarnation, it has set up the larger patterns which it wishes to concentrate work upon during the incarnation. Most often these choices include the choice of parents and all that that implies, the choice of geographical location and condition of existence. Those who feel pangs of heavy sorrow for a starving child may surely do so to their own benefit, yet it must also be pointed out that it is very likely that this entity is doing valuable work in consciousness through the experiencing of this seemingly negative incarnation.

This entity who has been brought into manifestation has agreements with mother, with father, and with others within the incarnation, and each of these agreements will to some extent be realized depending upon the ability of this spirit to remember, and by intuition to trust those feelings of familiarity when the significant persons are met.

Now let us focus in upon this young entity whom we shall call John. John has chosen a father who must work very hard to make a living. This entity has powerful prejudices, formed because of the pressures under which he works, prejudices against race and against some religions. Agreement has also been made with his mother, a woman who clings to father and to son, a woman who controls by being in suffering of some kind, by being the victim of many pains, aches and ailments.

John then gains from his childhood the prejudices of the father and the guilt of the mother’s son who could never completely please or satisfy. John is now an adult, and as he gazes back upon his childhood, he can see that among the many good things he gained from childhood, he still must count racial prejudice and instinctive guilt towards women as those influences which have hindered him in his expression of love.

Perhaps by now you may see the sense of what we say to you, and that is that those influences picked up during childhood, and of course later on also, cannot hurt from the outside in, though they can indeed hurt if they are taken up and used from the inside out. These same good things from childhood also cannot help, cannot be good things, if John himself does not as a mature entity originate these things from within himself.

The illusion which your world is is very efficient, is very believable, and can be very opaque, and it would be easy to blame John’s problems upon mother’s influence and father’s influence, yet we say to you that the mother and the father exist, insofar as this question goes, only as quite distorted images within the creation, the metaphysical creation which John is in the process of building and revising within the inner universe of John’s own mind and heart.

We are not saying that there is not what you would call an objective reality. The mystery which we all seek is indeed that absolute reality, and we affirm that we have the bias that it does exist. However, in terms of the growth of consciousness, each entity’s actual perceived universe is totally subjective. The only entity which has ultimate control is the creator of that universe, the self. Thus, John’s mother and John’s father are just that—characters in a play which is all about John.

Each entity is utterly responsible for itself. The influences of early, late and middle childhood, all influences whatever, let us say, are designed as catalyst, chosen by the self before incarnation, and encountered while the mind dwells within an illusion which keeps the entire mind from knowing how the greater mind hoped that the lesser mind would react. However, you will find that you and those who helped you before your incarnation used a fairly heavy hand with the hints that point the seeking self to do the work along the lines that were intense before incarnation. Again and again throughout an incarnation, John will find, and you will find, that there is a return and again a return to a particular theme of learning about love and service, something that is difficult, something with which you grapple, and each time that you face it, you understand just a bit more, and you recognize the bones beneath the flesh of catalyst, so that you can say, “Aha, I know this anatomy. I have healed the break in these bones before.” And thus, little by little, you work with that lesson which you have given yourself to learn, healing more and more the distortion that you have wished to heal, and turning more and more to a clearer, more lucid perception of the great thought of love, which is the life of all creation.

You wish to know if any significant details of the life come to one by chance. There is an element of chance that cannot be denied, a rogue element, indeed, in every equation of manifestation and metaphysics. The rogue element is a part of consciousness itself, and, indeed, is that distortion without which manifestation would be impossible. We speak here of free will. It is possible that a headstrong entity might, indeed, push so very hard that a life pattern is seriously disturbed, and chance must buffet that individual until it has somehow found appropriate footing once again.

It is always dangerous to desire without understanding the responsibilities of that desire, for that which you desire, you shall get. This is nothing more than simple metaphysical arithmetic. If any entity finds itself lost, regardless of material status or position, then is the time not to push further, but to sit and allow the self to recollect the intended path. It is difficult, but not impossible to move significantly off of a life path. Once off the life path, there will be the need for an honest surrender to that will which was yours as you come into incarnation. This is not a surrender to an outside, impersonal and unfriendly Creator, but rather a surrender in trust to yourself and those helpers with whom you have worked.

We shall linger only to comment that the pain of dealing with the so-called hangups given one as a child causes within us a sorrow, a fellow feeling, for we remember the process through which you now go. As you think and look back upon your hangups and all of those things learned by the bumps and bruises of life in incarnation, remember that your incarnation is a miniature of a process through which all of creation must go, for the period of birth, existence and death is repeated again and again infinitely, from microbes to galaxies, and in the end all of creation shall move back into the limitless of infinite intelligence, and once more there will be that great pause wherein nothing is manifest and all consciousness dims.

We would like to move on at this time, and would transfer to the one known as Jim. I am Q’uo.

(Jim channeling)

I am Q’uo, and greet each again in love and light. At this time it is our honor to offer ourselves in any further queries which those present may find the value in asking. Again we remind each that our words are but opinions and we do not wish overemphasis to be given them. Please take those which have value to you and leave those which do not. Is there a query at this time with which we may begin?

Well, it just seems to be that there is so much that is unpredictable about society, that chance must come into the equation more than just a little bit. Do you want to speak any further about chance and learning?

I am Q’uo, and when we spoke concerning the random element within any incarnation, we were suggesting that there are within each entity’s incarnational pattern the general categories of types of experience and hoped-for responses to these experiences which the entity will find occurring in a pattern within the incarnation. This is not to say that each individual experience was seen beforehand, shall we say, and dutifully logged within the program for the upcoming incarnation. Rather it is to say that the entity which moves through the incarnation shall find various outer stimuli, we shall call them, presented at various times during the incarnation, and there is for each kind of stimulus an hoped-for response which will either balance an existing distortion or create a new bias in the consciousness of the seeker.

Thus, it is not the particular experience that is precisely planned, but is rather the potential for a certain response or attitude of response which is indeed planned in the sense that the predisposition for such response is carefully fitted into the incarnation. Thus, the pattern of an incarnation is not so much dependent for its success upon certain outer stimuli as it is upon the entity’s response to the various stimuli that it finds within its incarnation. Thus, much which seems to be random is easily utilized by the predisposition to see general categories of stimuli in a certain fashion that is preincarnatively programmed.

May we speak further, my sister?

Yes. You spoke several times of helpers. I really couldn’t get any other word than that—it was a difficult concept for my instrument to carry. I’d like you to try to clarify through Jim if you could. Who are the helpers? Is it one or more, or is it a euphemism for all impersonal principles beside the self?

I am Q’uo, and am aware of your query, my sister. The term “helpers,” or alternately the term “guides,” and occasionally the term “teachers,” are means by which a description may be given of entities of an unseen nature, unseen to your third-density eyes, which attempt to guide and in some instances protect the third density in whose service they have bound themselves by preincarnative choice, that is, the preincarnative choice of the entity living the incarnation.

Such helpers or guides may be of various origin, but are most usually for each third-density entity also of that planetary origin, and have for a certain period of what you may call time or experience chosen to remain in a discarnate form in order that they may serve another entity as that which you call the guide or helper and in some cases the teacher. This is a service which also teaches these entities, for all experience offers the opportunity to learn and to use that learning for the teaching of others as well as the self.

In most cases entities within the third-density illusion have the triad of helpers, one being of the male principle, another of the female principle and a third which may be seen as androgynous, in order that these elements within the third-density entity’s nature may find a balanced expression.

Many third-density entities have through many lifetimes gathered within their auric field other helpers, shall we say, which are drawn to an entity according to the entity’s unique nature of seeking in a particular fashion which is shared by others who, because of this shared quality, gather together at certain intervals of experience to serve one who has manifested this seeking in a third-density incarnation.

Each entity, of course, is always accompanied by a greater portion of the self which you find you call the higher self. For each third-density entity there is this greater part of the self which oversees each incarnation, and in most cases makes itself known more clearly during the experience between the incarnations when the previous incarnation is reviewed and the incarnation to follow is determined. Thus, each third-density entity has a great company of souls that surround it…

[Side one of tape ends.]

[Transcript ends.]