The question this afternoon has to do with voices and emotions that we hear as we go through our daily round of activities, that might speak to us of fear, of memories of the past, of feelings of abandonment, of feelings of joy and peace, of anxiety, of wondering exactly how we fit our lives into the larger picture of the world scene. When we hear these voices, is there the need or any benefit to bringing the voices under any kind of supervision or control? Is it well to allow each voice to speak its own message and then determine what value the message has for us? What value do these voices have as we go through our daily round of activities, and how can we make reliable decisions concerning our service and our growth as we listen to the variety of voices in our heads and in our lives?

(Carla channeling)

I am Q’uo. Greetings to each of you in the love and in the light of the one infinite Creator. How precious each of you is and how grateful we are that you would wish to call us to share in your meditation and to offer our service of speaking upon the topic of the inner dialogue and its reason for being, its way of working, and its relevance to your spiritual journey. To say that we are offering a service is true; yet, we also wish to say that we are fallible. Therefore, if any opinion of ours does not seem right to you, it would be very gratifying to us if you would leave it behind and keep for thought only those things which seem helpful and right to you, for each has a personal discrimination which is far wiser in its instincts than any outer authority.

As foundation for this collection of thoughts, we would ask you to visualize the seeker that you are in meditation with the entire universe of meaning, both without and within you. You are perhaps more used to thinking of an inner and an outer experience. Yet, the outer experience is, at a deep level, formed sometimes decisively by the inner self. Thusly, the visualization of the self in meditation, bringing the outer world within by allowing, accepting and forgiving outer experience, becomes half of the self’s realization that all of the infinite creation is within each seeker, each self-conscious entity. The outer struggles seem light except when those outer influences come too close, and resemble too much, the difficulties of the self within. The outer experience is most usefully thought of as a mirror reflecting to you your inner situation and the joys and challenges of it.

Within you lie all qualities: those that you think of as contradictory, those you think of as good and as bad. All imagined possibilities of self lie fallow within each person. Each is completely universal. You are all that there is. Within your consciousness lies this knowledge. Yet, as you come to your work of spiritual seeking, it is not usually one’s desire to begin with the broad and untamed bewilderment of self-contradictory forces. Far more natural to one seeking is the urge to move into a positive service and love-filled environment.

This is a good instinct, and for the student who is beginning to be aware of the choices that can be made, it is a functional and practical point of view. The decisions are normally fairly simple in an ethical or philosophical sense. Faced with a choice between loving behavior and self-serving, lying or other negative behavior, the student will either choose, usually, to do the positive thing or to fail to do the positive thing but to remember the preference in 20/20 hindsight, as this instrument would say, looking at the undone thing that would have been positive or the error that was not positive and saying, “I will remember to affect future decisions because this decision did not satisfy me.”

However, the query that you have asked is about those times when there is no obvious positive choice. That control of choosing the positive thing is a kind of artifact of one doing work while attempting to open the heart. The choices at that level bloom like flowers and are often irresistible. The virtue of service, the joy of giving, the desire to make those you contact feel better—these are the choices made easily, lovingly and freely by those moving to open the center of heart energy.

Yet, the spiritual path of evolution becomes like the planet that you rest upon—creatures of night as well as day—and after the heart is first opened on a reliable basis there yet remains the traversing of the twilight and evening and midnight of the spiritual journey. As you advance in your choices, they become less than obvious. The deepest, most profound darkness lies upon the advancement of the spiritual path. Within this darkness there is one light: the reflecting light as of your moon to this planet of yours. This spiritual reflective essence may be called your higher self, the larger self, the all-mind. It may be called the Christ within or simply guidance. Whatever it is called, it does not cast a clear and bright light, but casts an often deceiving, very subtle moonlight of the spirit. And in this light, with only your guidance to have faith in, you make the more subtle, more difficult, and very important choices having to do with the energies of communication and inner work. Most of the inner work is done in this spiritual, deep-shadowed twilight.

Why is this so? The gates to learning the truth open only to those who are able to use the keys. The first key is the silence of meditation. And after the resources of meditation, contemplation and prayer have aided the seeker enough to open the heart, then the choices become those focusing into the universal nature of the self and an archetypical understanding that allows the seeker to have more keys minted and placed in the spiritual grasp.

Each period of learning at this level is called initiation by your people, and it is, indeed, the beginning of a new subtle pattern which you shall choose. Yet, this choice is not simple, for it is a choice of an entire pattern, a pattern of thought, of intuition, certainly not a clear-cut process. Rather than working upon opening the heart to all that there is in service, the initiatory lessons have to do with solidifying the nature of the self, of envisioning and seeing the more desirable pattern or way of being the self, and, overarching all, the pattern by which the seeker chooses personally and only for the self to discipline itself.

The personality is a magical thing at this spiritual level. It is not the personality of your culture, the right word, the ready joke or laugh. We speak rather of focusing into the true unique nature of you, this one seeker. For you, the joy that awaits at the end of each choice is an enlarged vision, not only of the self, but of the nature of service. You know in your open hearts that you love very, very deeply, to the core of your being, the one Source of all that there is, the one great Thought that initiated and continues creation. You wish all good things. This is always so.

Yet, the later lessons are often tedious to the impatient spirit who wishes to get on with being of service. Yet, as you gaze backwards and see a completed initiation and testing and feel the enlarged strength and stability of your compassion, you feel that all the subtle inner discussion was, indeed, not pointless and not irritating and certainly not a sign of laziness or personal weakness, and you are encouraged by a feeling of inner strength. You see yourself not only open-hearted, but free, for the open-hearted one has not yet dealt with the murderer, the thief, the traitor, all of the negative possibilities that lie within, except by closing the door upon them.

The last artifact of negativity in the open heart is the unforgiven universal self. You think you are serving all those you meet, and you are; but, in more advanced learning, you discover that you serve and are served with no breath between the two, that service is another way of saying praise or thanksgiving or intercession for forgiveness, and you begin working on the universal self within.

Now that we have described the basic path as we feel it to be, we can zero in a bit upon the so-called “voices within.” Let us place them in three categories. Firstly, there are those voices within which are memories from very early times within this incarnation and sometimes having the feeling of experiences not limited to this incarnation. These voices of parents and those in the early world of incarnational time come plangently and persuasively across any number of years to tell you the first things that you heard regularly again and again. These voices may have been wise or unwise, or, as in most cases, a confusing mixture of acceptance and non-acceptance, of forgiveness and of punishment, of stability and abandonment, of security and insecurity. The tangle of emotions wells up within those who are parents and the child remembers so well.

In this first category of voices within, the voices are often fairly easy to pick out, for you hear almost the voice of that early authority speaking. It is fairly clearly not your voice, although you allow it to be so. In this first category of voices, it is well to examine the thought welling up within you for any possible aid. And if there is no real justice, fairness, or help in this voice, it is well to remove it regularly and for a period of time by saying, “You are my mother; you are not me,” or whatever the entity and its relation to you is. These voices may be respected, but need to be taken very lightly, for now you are making these choices and that voice speaks to a young child no longer in need of harsh measures of protection.

To allow these voices full sway is the equivalent of failing ever to pick up the matchbook when you are cold and could start a good bonfire on a forest journey because the father or mother said, “Do not use matches.” You are now in charge of your equipment for life. The use of any fire to warm body, soul or spirit can be both helpful and destructive, so you must be careful in your choice. Yet, to fear to pick up the tool by which you create the light and warmth is to refuse to move further upon your path.

The second category of voices within is the category of, shall we say, the stray negativity which surrounds and envelops the third-density illusory experience which you call life. Within your density you are specifically guaranteed to be kept off-balance, continuously to encounter situations that baffle and confuse your mind and make it necessary to abandon the intellectual logic and move into the feelings of the heart wherein lies wisdom. There is always the illusion of more negativity by far than positivity, for in the illusion it is often so that loss and limitation cause the spiritual seeker in its pain to do more good work in consciousness than it does during easier times. The easy times, so-called, are seldom well used. May we say that many of those issues which have been brought up this day at this working are of this type.

When the time is fairly joyful, the spirits and will to serve are high. Within this period of experience many entities slack off in their spiritual work. Each of you is expressing an extremely good aspect of spiritual seeking by focusing in, for the purpose of learning, on those motifs that keep reappearing in the inner life that are exceptions to your basic joy. That you not stress these difficulties is good. That you realize them and respect their value enough to do work in the indigo ray or brow-level area is that which will bring you more sharply into the position of initiation where a new key, an enlarged realization of the clarity of the pattern of the self, may begin its process of transforming you by enlarging your stable point of view. We hope that each values these voices that are not parental but are those inner portions which observe the self and speak to the self of patterns not yet fully realized, not yet fully conceived.

You see the pattern by the incompleteness which moves into manifestation in conscious life as the “fly in the ointment,” the inner ambivalence, the something not quite comfortable. There need be none of this process, but, if there seems to be the need for some fear, then allow and accept that you have a concern, that there is something that makes you feel the negative rather than the positive. Allow this, for it is a part of the process. Only end always with the realization that the process is positive, and the resulting seeker—that is, you—will learn from this quiet, constant testing, not any large detail of spirit, but, rather, the undergirding patterns that support continued spiritual evolution.

As you evolve, the race which you are a part of evolves. You are all entities within your planetary sphere in that, as you evolve and are able reliably to be more of a clear, transparent channel for the infinite waters of love, so you shall be both less yourself and more yourself. You are attempting to move from the personal self to the magical or impersonal self, and these small voices within tell you of the pattern that you are just missing.

This is subtle work. Do not be discouraged, but move forward, and in forgiveness of self—not the forgiveness of one who may confer from the outside, but forgiveness of the universal self by the universal self. To serve love is truly freedom; yet, to perfect that freedom, you move into and through the large choices involved in opening the heart in non-judgmental compassion to the realization that beyond all these choices there is a universal nature which includes all things, and as all-self there is forgiveness of the forever incomplete all-self being perceived as becoming. The more you become, the more freely and gladly you will take on this subtle and essential task.

The third category of voices within is peopled by those presences to which you become sensitized. These are not, in your way of speaking, parts of the self. They seem to be people, entities, energies which are apart from you, which have their own lives, their own bodies and their own thinking. It may be useful for you to think always of your inner guides or the Holy Spirit, or whatever you find to be your guidance. If that be so, then stop right there, for that is an excellent way to relate to these essences, these energies, these people. They truly are here to serve you as a seeker, to aid you in attaining that perfect clarity which lets the Creator shine through undiminished and undistorted.

There are, however, many who find it useful also to feel kinship with or to find themselves to be part of these presences. The way to consider them then might well be that there are energies, essences and traits within yourself which draw and attract these entities, energies and so forth to you. It is well always if a new voice is heard—and all voices are new until challenged—to be clear about being in charge of either accepting these voices or requesting that they leave in no uncertain terms. If you find a portion of guidance—one of the guiding voices—to be destructive, then you must do that which is natural for you to do to remove that voice from the opportunity to speak further. To do this is a matter of knowing where your essence lies so that you can stand solidly upon the spiritual rock upon which you have placed your journey and say, “By this imperishable ideal which I take most seriously, I command you to go and stay gone.”

You are not without power. Your thoughts have power. But for them to be full of your true power you truly need to become clear within your heart about your choice of path, for there are many, many paths to the one infinite Creator. For instance, we are such a voice through this instrument. This instrument spent some of your time in moving carefully over its basic faith, its basic way of relating faith theoretical to life specific. This instrument challenges us in the name of Jesus the Christ, and because, to this instrument, Jesus the Christ is the way, the truth and the life, we may then say to this instrument, “We come in the name of Jesus the Christ; Jesus is Lord.” We can say this because this is this instrument’s true heart. There is no equivocation. This instrument has chosen.

If you were to form your spiritual life upon conversations with your bedpost, we would have to come into harmony with what you and your bedpost conceived to be the way, the truth and the life, and we would see that this bedpost had given you the energy to move into serious consideration of the infinite nature of your spirit. And for you and you alone, we would, silly as it may seem, need to come to you in the name you had given your bedpost. This is very simplistic. However, we are attempting to crash through the barriers of words to express that when you speak to guidance, you must test it.

And do not think that, because you know the energy of your guides, that they are necessarily your guides. There are negatively oriented, spiritually advanced entities who are excellent mimics, shall we say, who work with as much light as do your guides, and their guidance moves in to those who do not take care, first fooling the instrument with positive information, then gradually de-tuning the instrument, asking it to turn from imperishable ideals to specific dogmas and doctrines, be they obviously spiritual or tangentially so, as in thoughts about the diet and the ways of being healthy or unhealthy. Eventually, an untested voice may well become quite negative. This occurs only to those who are already listening to the silent wisdom of guidance. This protects those who have not moved to a magical point, a powerful point, in terms of the infinite spirit, the journeying seeker within; ignorance is truly bliss.

To each of you, more knowledge has meant more care, for as you become powerful, you attract attention. As you serve and create light and radiate love of the infinite One, you also cast an ever sharper shadow. You become harder upon yourself, setting yourself up for the forgiveness of the universal self. My beloved ones, know that this query is one asked by those who already love and are already upon the path. Know that you now are working with the discipline of your universal personality. You are beginning to set archetypical habits for yourself and building, ever more polarized, a channel for compassion.

As you do this work, we hope you have the light touch, the sense of humor, the ability to take yourself lightly, for attaining the keys to learning the correct and appropriate use of personal power is a long, long process. You have moved into an area that will be continued in your development for many, many incarnations, and through at least one more density. This situation of loving, serving and trying to become the forgiving universal self, and, therefore, the forgiven universal self, is a sacred and a monumental task, and you are working in the all too dim light of inner work.

You now plumb the depths and wait for the flashes, rare though they are, of perfect realization. May you have faith in this process. May you help each other to bear the burdens and to meet the testings of this process. And may you see always before you the love that surrounds you, the support of that infinite love, and the utter clarity that is possible to achieve when once you have freely forgiven, forgiven and forgiven.

We know that we have spoken overlong, and this instrument has been very formidable in her disapproval; however, this was a subtle query and we could not leave it until we had said at least our outline. We thank you for allowing us to keep you in this circle, and at this time, if there are any queries that you wish to raise, we would answer them. However, we find that this instrument is very willing to transfer this contact to the one known as Jim, and, therefore, we shall take this opportunity to thank this instrument and transfer. We are known to you as the principle of Q’uo.

(Jim channeling)

I am Q’uo, and greet each again in love and in light through this instrument. At this time, it is our privilege to offer ourselves in the attempt to speak to any further queries which those present may have for us. Is there a query with which we may begin?

Can you give us some kind of insight on how to hold onto the humor and to not get so intense that we can’t see where we are?

I am Q’uo, and am aware of your query, my sister. The sense of humor that is so valuable an ally upon the spiritual path may be described as a sense of proportion which allows you to see beyond the moment in which you are experiencing one motion, event, experience or another. This perspective allows you to place each individual experience within the larger continuum that moves ever onward as the river flowing.

Look then at any moment in which your humor has seemingly evaporated, at the entire situation in which you find yourself. Look at the world about you, seeing those entities and events which are momentous and powerful. See yourself placed within the context of a Creator which has made an infinite variety of entities of Itself which seek their identity and the nature of the Creator through myriads of interactions that may or may not make what you call sense, and which may reveal to you the humorous nature of the human creature.

This creature is one full of desire to know the truth, full of the energy of inspiration, full of the confusion of the illusion, and yet which moves valiantly forward, sideways, up, down and around in order that it might progress yet one step further. See the anguish, the confusion, the joys, the determination, all of the emotions that comprise the resources upon which you draw. See them moving with you as colors of the rainbow. Look at yourself upon this rainbow journey and remember that that which is of value is the love which you create in each moment and all else shall fall away, having little of impact in your future. As time progresses, only the love remains.

Is there a further query, my sister?

No, thank you, Q’uo.

I am Q’uo, and we thank you, my sister. Is there another query?

To follow that one up, I would like to ask if there is a way that we can trigger remembrance of all that you have said in the middle of having a fit of some kind, being intensely, overly involved, the way we all do get sometimes, and not seeing anything funny about anything? What kind of trigger can we use to get out of that intense and ever-inwardly spiraling kind of way of concentrating and frustrating ourselves?

I am Q’uo, am aware of your query, my sister. We are of the opinion that it is well for each seeker to experience fully the emotions of the moment without contrivance or control, for it is in these spontaneous responses to life’s “slings and arrows,” shall we say, that the truer nature of your inner self is revealed. And, as this nature is revealed, then you see those areas of strength and those areas of weakness and may work more successfully upon your weaknesses having them thusly revealed.

Thus, we would not suggest that one attempt to impose a sense of humor, or of any other kind of control, upon the moment in which the experience is “hot,” shall we say, and the emotions are turbulent.

However, to remain with such turbulence overly long provides the difficulty, much as the electrical circuit that has had too much voltage in the weakest point [and overloads]. Thus, it is at this time that we would suggest that the humor be invoked by any means which has value or shows efficacy. These possibilities would include the making of a taped reminder to yourself while you are feeling the inspiration of the overview and have with you the ally of humor. This tape could then be played back to yourself as a reminder that that which you have experienced has value. And when the value has been determined, then the humor may be invoked.

It may be that you find there are others in the field of consciousness expansion which have written upon the subject of humor and which give an overview that is felt by you to be valuable and which could be referred to at the appropriate moment. It may be that there are certain moving pictures that bring you this sense of humor and relief from the difficulty of the moment that might also be utilized. Find that procedure or method which has value to you and use it when you feel that the time is appropriate.

Is there a further query, my sister?

Just a clarification. I take it that you mean not to attempt to move into that which is going on in your thoughts, not your actions. You’re not talking about the world of manifestation here, you’re talking about the world of internal thought, right? Because you obviously wouldn’t want to allow yourself to give into your impulse to kill your employer or something like that.

I am Q’uo, and am aware of your query, my sister. You are in the large part correct, for we do not advise the losing of the self-control to the point of infringing upon the free will of another, but were suggesting that the internal experience which moves you so mightily is that which must needs be expressed in order to be examined at a later time for the fruits of such experience.

Is there another query, my sister?

Not at this time. Thank you very much, Q’uo.

I am Q’uo, and again we thank you, my sister. Is there another query at this time?

Yeah, one more. No prejudice intended—could your answers not possibly be more direct and to the point, being as we here on the Earth plane think that way? Do you understand?

I am Q’uo, and we are not certain that we grasp your query. Could you find another means of stating it?

No. Thank you anyway.

I am Q’uo, and we shall speak to that which we feel we grasp. Our responses are tempered by two features of this illusion, the first being the limitations of the instrument and the language with which it is familiar; the second, being more important, and that is the free will of each entity, so that as we speak in response to any query, we give that which will inspire thought, rather than that which will completely sate the hunger, wishing not to do another’s work for that entity, for it is the work that is the value of the decision-making and the choosing.

May we speak in any further way to any other query, my sister?

No. Thank you.

I am Q’uo, and we thank you. Is there another query?

I have one more. You’re talking about having already opened the heart and working in communication and inner work, but I don’t feel like my heart’s open all the time at all. I feel like I’m frequently screwing up and blocking energies or over-spiking them so that they’re overly active and so forth, and that my heart isn’t always just great. I don’t really feel that I could really say, “Well, yeah, I’m doing lots of inner work now because I’m all done with that open heart stuff.” I’m not. Could you comment on that, because I don’t feel like I’m “here” and not “there.” Maybe I’m “there,” but I’m also back down in blocked personal relationships and stuff, too.

I am Q’uo, and am aware of your query, my sister. As you learn any skill, whether it be how to open the heart in unconditional love, how to juggle, or how to cook a certain meal, there will be those expressions of the skill which are better done, shall we say, than others. There will be the dropping of the ball for the juggler. Yet, if the juggler can accomplish a certain skill or procedure, the ability is present. And it is to the entity that has moved into the opening of the heart that we speak in relation to the seeking of truth and the serving as an instrument or vocal channel. If an entity has the ability to do this, called “loving without condition,” it is not important that the entity is not always able to express this loving without conditions, but it is important that the entity has the desire to do so and will examine its experience with that desire foremost in the mind.

Is there another query, my sister?

Just sort of a left turn into the question about why can’t you speak more simply? Let’s see how to put this. I realize that you want to teach and not do our learning for us. There are often teachers around that give you a very simple—and something you can hold onto—type of answer, and they seem to have real success in being able to deal with spiritual questions a lot of times. Does the infringement of free will sort of “catch up” to you after awhile, is that what you’re saying, when the spiritual student goes over these own issues himself, looking basically at what you have said just for principles that he can use as resources… that the student has then done a better job than if the student just heard somebody that was absolutely brilliant just telling him everything, and said, “Okay, I’ll believe that”? There is a difference between those two? If you both have the same belief in the end?

I am Q’uo, and am aware of your query, my sister. In a large part, you are correct. However, we are as we are and we must, in order to remain true to that which we are, speak in the way in which we speak when given the constraints of the language, the ability of the instrument, and the free will of those to whom we speak. There are many teachers. There are as many teachers as there are entities and experiences, and each will teach with a certain voice, a style that will be unique to that teacher. Those words which have value to the student will find their way to the student’s heart. This is why we always recommend that each student discriminate those words and concepts which we offer, and forget those that have no meaning, saving only those which ring of truth for that entity. We recommend that each student find those teachers with which the student is comfortable, for all teach and all learn.

Is there a further query, my sister?

No. I thought that that was a really helpful answer. Thank you very much.

I am Q’uo, and again we thank you, my sister. Is there another query at this time?

[Pause]

I am Q’uo, and we feel that the queries have been exhausted for this session of working, and we would take this opportunity to thank each for inviting our presence in your meditation this day. We are greatly honored to be so invited and we cannot express to you the joy that we feel at the opportunity of walking with you upon your journey, even but a step, for as we walk with you, we walk with the Creator, and are overjoyed at the opportunity to learn from you as we share with you of that which is ours to share.

At this time we shall take our leave of this instrument and this group, leaving each as always in the love and in the light of the one infinite Creator. We are known to you as those of Q’uo. Adonai, my friends. Adonai.