The Dead Guys

The actual secret of The Secret is that most of the wonderful information being offered in this movie comes from ‘dead guys’ but the producers don’t ever tell you that! It’s still a secret, you see!

So let’s come out of the closet around this issue already! Who are these ‘dead guys’ and why do they matter?

Well, in the case of The Secret the dead guy was mainly ‘Abraham’, channeled by Ester Hicks, along with several other sources. So what we’re talking about here are channel sources, non-physically focused ‘essence personalities’ speaking through a medium or channel.

And what these guys [there are feminine ‘dead guys’ of course, let’s call them ‘dead gals’.] have to say is fascinating and life changing. I remarked to a friend once, "I don't care if these turn out to be old Johnny Carson monologues, the content speaks for itself!"

The original idea, of course, was that these were ancestors, or other people who had passed on, hence the ‘dead’ guys. But our understanding has grown and this is too simple a distinction for us now. As Seth says, “you’re as dead now as you’ll ever be!”

But some of us continue to call these sources ‘dead guys’ out of a sense of affectionate irreverence and perhaps a little teasing of these gentle intelligences, who are by and large earnest, and respectful to a fault.

Of course, we all realize that this kind of communication has been going on forever in the human race. Only its name and the meanings ascribed to it have changed; shaman, prophet, seer, medicine woman, inspired poet, mesmerizing singer/storyteller, blessed religious leader, messiah, honored ancestor, and on and on...

Something changed though, at the beginning of the last century, or perhaps ‘came to a head’ is better because there are clear antecedents for all this material in the eighteenth century too. But certainly in the early 1900’s, perhaps because of emerging mass media, suddenly there were many channels speaking for many sources.

[Draft list of seminal writers - all wingnuts and crackpots from the perspective of official reality - from this time period, such as Earnest Holmes, Alice Baily, Catherine Pounder, Norman Vincent Peal, the ‘think and grow rich’ guy. All these great early manuscripts on topics that presage the New Age; will and imagination, consciousness, psychic energy, power of the mind, triumph over conditions and circumstances, non-physical source and essence, and on and on.]

This climaxed in the 60’s when Jane and Rob started speaking for Seth and publishing their sessions together. Seth Speaks becomes THE example of a source speaking through a channel. [Of course Jane, bless her, would vehemently dispute all of these labels, and demand total artistic freedom in her unique relationship with Seth, as well as in all her other writings!]

With the publication of the Seth material, millions of people came into contact with these ideas, and the phrase “you create your own reality” entered our lexicon, along with “channel” and “energy personality essence.”

In some ways you could say this was a tipping point in our species’ consciousness reflected in our culture. We openly examined the ideas that we were not ultimately physical beings, and we could access a vast, non-physical part of ourselves - in essence becoming the ‘greater’ part of ourselves.

Whatever a particular source might say through a particular channel, the very fact of what is going on in front of us speaks silent volumes about our potential as human beings. With the prevalence of channeling of all types, we must assume that this is an inherent, though underutilized, capacity of every human being. [So who have you been channeling lately?]

Now that we know this, why not just channel our own source and get rid of all these middle-men and women? [Oops! turns out that’s what we’ve been doing all along! The outside world and what anybody else has to say, can only appear in conjunction with our inner actions, feelings and assumptions.]

Are we communicating with god, with another being, or with some remote aspect of ourselves? Perhaps a future self? Often the temptation is to attribute divine powers to this voice and locate the source outside of ourselves, even though the thrust of the 'dead guy's' message is always to locate divinity, truth and power within ourselves.

The more I experience and understand channeling, the harder it is to draw a line between channeling and non-channeling, and the richer and more varied the options become for experiencing this most useful capacity in my own everyday life.

Indeed the basic message being offered by the ‘dead guys’ might be that we are vastly more than we have been thinking of ourselves, and that the world we’re living in ain’t so bad either... quite the achievement in fact, and worthy of our exploration and appreciation.

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Illustration: This wonderful poster is entitled Dia de los Muertos, artist unknown.