Contemplating 'Guides,' Creativity, Channeling and the Higher Self

This is the image on the postcard that I received from Hanna at the Martin Lawrence Galleries in Century City.  (Golden Kiss, Screenprint 33x33 inches)  I was invited to an "Artist In Attendance" reception for Mark Kostabi.

On November 8, 1995, I attended a reception for the artist whose name appeared on the painting I'd seen in the showroom window of the Century City Martin Lawrence Galleries outlet.  The artwork seemed unequivocally ideal for the cover of the case study book that I was writing.  An art consultant named Hanna had advised me about the artist's visit and I'd received a reminder postcard utilizing an illustration by the same artist entitled "Golden Kiss" that seemed to express my own relationship with my unseen guide.  The name of the artist was Mark Kostabi and the works on display showed that he often used symbolic figures.

I learned that Kostabi was based in New York City where he operated a studio, gallery and office complex known as Kostabi World.  He was an artist of international renown and one of the attributes of his oeuvre was employing a retinue of other artists to conceptualize and/or create individual works in the style that had come to be associated with his moniker.  Born in 1960, Kostabi had grown up in the city of Whittier in the county of Los Angeles.

My finding the painting expressed my realization that all human creative expression is inspired through varying mental capacities and environmental influences as there is a shared subconscious and Superconscious omnipresent Mind. 

At the reception, among the eclectic assortment of art patrons was a gentleman in white apparel and a turban that made me curious about his religion.  I talked briefly with his companion while waiting for Kostabi to arrive, mentioning my impression brought to mind by one of the paintings that God was the ultimate split personality.  The woman gave me a business card that indicated the man as a "Nazir/High Priest" associated with "Nazir/High Priest's Daughter."

When Kostabi arrived, I didn't spend much time conversing with him because I had to leave to attend my hotline training class at APLA yet I learned that the original form of the painting entitled "Official Greeting" had been created in 1992 with augmentations added only recently that included the outline of the angel.  Meeting Mark Kostabi paved the way for me to have my attorney contact him.  It was interesting that we shared the same first name while the last name of my attorney was Handel, a friend who a couple times went on vacations with me, my twin brother Mike and our friend James.
 

Testament was published at the beginning of 1997;
below is a recent video about artist Mark Kostabi.

On the following weekend, I decided to discuss my bizarre experience at CPC Alhambra with my brother and recorded our conversation for the book.  Some of the impressions and interpretations that I shared would continue to evolve with further experiences and research.  During the conversation, I attempted to make it clear that love was the essential lesson in my discovery of 'Michael,' the unseen Intelligence/guide/angelic Force who was manifesting around me in diverse and unexpected ways as detailed in preceding articles.

My background as a writer, cinema major, talent agent and movie publicity writer had given me much to contemplate about Pop culture and the personal ego.  Each person experiences Pop culture in one's own way in the selection of news, information sources and entertainment.  Throughout my life, I'd always been attracted to reading about the supernatural, including many reprint editions of texts from long ago centuries. 
 
When outlandish occurrences began happening to me in the 1990s, I had to cope with the expectation that others wouldn't believe me.  Some of the most sensational moments of my personal 'paranormal initiation' I'll leave to be read in the proper context in Testament (1997).  My radio interviews that followed may be recognized as perhaps being somewhat ahead of the time when it came to embracing all sexual orientations. 

Videos of hypnotists show that people's sexuality can be altered through hypnotic suggestion.  An example is shown below.  A Psychology Today article is "Hypnosis and Sexual Health".

During the period of my life documented in the case study, some prophetic elements of Pop culture had seemingly gone unnoticed and I was ready to make these manifest.  For example, word and name synchronicity patterns as with Andy Warhol's ascent to fame and fortune being symbolized by his paintings of the Campbell soup can; and the name 'Mickey' as in Mickey Mouse or Mickey Rooney being derivations of the name 'Michael' along with Michelle, Mick, Miguel, Mikhail, and others.  The Archangel Michael is the archetype for an angelic Force interacting with mankind throughout the ages.  During each of the world's epochs there has been a popular culture.

The evening after my phone conversation with my brother, I interviewed his housemate at the time, James, who as international editor for The Hollywood Reporter wrote a column called "In Transit."  (A state that we are all in during an Earth life.)  His work for the entertainment newspaper included compiling an annual ranking of the top Hollywood stars as they were perceived on an international basis.  Later, after leaving the staff of the publication, James would continue to rank stars on what he called "The Ulmer Scale" and he wrote a book published by St. Martin's Press entitled James Ulmer's Hollywood Hot List — The Complete Guide to Star Power (2000).  When James told me about his recent trip to China, his most memorable experiences had nothing to do with celebrities.  In particular, he described meeting an elderly Chinese woman who befriended him first by serving as translator for him to police after his camera was stolen and then by massaging his sprained foot with oils.  My own career had been in the Southern California entertainment industry influenced by the traditional 'cult of celebrity' associated with 'Hollywood' prior to the recent events in my life. 

During the autumn of 1995, I found an unusual paperback in the bargain section at Crown Books in Studio City that seemed to crystallize many of my own perceptions during this time.  The book cover seemed to express the precise way I was feeling as a result of having experienced a sequence of bizarre yet spiritually revealing events. 

 

On the cover was a bright and pastel-colored human form symbolizing the self.  Swirling pink energy connected the blue orb in front of the being's chest to a dazzling sun overhead.  A caption on the image related: "How to contact your inner guidance and use it to change your life."  The title below the image was Love's Awakening (1987) and the authors were Dhara Star Zyir with Marilyn Painter.  The back cover blurb indicated that the book "consists of a series of messages from Christ Consciousness sent to assist humanity during the transition to a higher level of awareness . . ."  The struggling of humanity in the corporate system seems epitomized by the demise of the Crown Books chain of bookstores that was so dominant in Southern California when there occurred a power struggle between a son and his father in the Haft family that founded the company.

The book was manifestly a channeled work and in the brief introduction, Marilyn Painter wrote: "I ask Spirit to breathe into me and use me as an instrument."  This was the first channeled book 'd purchased and most of what was presented seemed meaningful.  I appreciated reading about such concepts as the ego being a collection of tapes collected from parents and society; and the search for truth being a removal of denial.  Some statements had already been made clear to me in my experiences; for example: "You have to dance the tightrope and you have to be ready to do whatever Spirit asks" and "God chooses the hierophants, not man" and "We are a kaleidoscope of consciousness."

There are some appraisals presented by the book that may seem too simplistic on a literal basis, such as "Everything is perfect."  Otherwise, my reaction at the time as a relative newcomer to channeled material was that Love's Awakening didn't offer the mild platitudes I'd noticed when glancing through a few other books labeled as 'channeled.'  One 'channeled entity' has addressed how a reader may evaluate channeling, (article) differentiating 'objective channeling' from 'subjective channeling.'

The difference between my orientation to 'channeling' back then and now is that what one might consider reassuring platitudes if expressed on a high level can be wonderfully reassuring.  This week I found the video below that exemplifies this perspective.  The expression 'Higher Self' heard in this video is a common one in channeling cases

"Emmanuel DVD"

  
During the eventful year of 1995, I was able to personally observe several women acknowledged as 'psychic.' When I interviewed my friend Fiona to learn some details about the influence of her ability upon her personal life, she related that her mother died when she was six years old and she became aware of her psychic ability soon after that, recognizing the spirit of her mother as her guide.  After beginning her career in Australia, Fiona talked her way onto the Los Angeles staff of Star magazine at the age of twenty-three.  She would later describe her experiences in an Australian paperback entitled Inside Hollywood — Adventures of an Australian Tabloid Journalist (1989).  I met Fiona when my employer needed help with Christmas decorating and I suggested James, who brought Fiona with him.  This was prior to James getting hired by The Hollywood Reporter.  Fiona and I became friends and an unpublished novel of hers I read entitled Truelove offered strange parallels to my future experience with the Entity 'Michael.'  In her manuscript, a young woman encounters a mysterious being named 'Frank' who seems to materialize out of nowhere as "a combination of entities" to provide the protagonist with a surprising romance. 

It seemed curious that I'd once remarked that Fiona was the reincarnation or a reincarnation of Morganna le Fay.  I can recall once being together with Fiona upon encountering the actress Helen Mirren at the Beverly Center.  Fiona received a hug from her upon complimenting her for her screen work.  One of Helen's movie roles had been 'Morgana' in "Excalibur."

Progressing on documenting my experiences for my planned book through the interviews and audio journal transcriptions, I also recorded another therapy session.  I read to my psychic psychiatrist Judith portions of Love's Awakening to see what her reaction would be to some of the 'channeled' information.  Upon reading to her "You are stuck in time, and what's keeping you glued to time is denial.  Denial, denial, denial!"  I've constantly noticed three word repetitions in other channeled works ever since then.  As with 'channeled' material, conscious creativity may also have encoded meanings.  Another recurring word pattern in channeled material is the word 'peoples' instead of the more common 'people.'  My interest in Love's Awakening resulted with Judith suggesting that I investigate the Philosophical Research Society in Los Feliz, on the other side of the hill in the vicinity where my brother lived.  The PRS was known to offer Sunday lectures on diverse spiritual and metaphysical subjects.  As a child I'd noticed the name of the organization during the bus ride from Hollywood to Pasadena and wondered about the research taking place there.

Knowing that I am an identical twin, Judith showed me an article about twins from The New Yorker entitled "Double Mystery" by Lawrence Wright.  The article chronicled how twins raised apart developed identical habits.  It turned out that being a twin was an unexplained phenomenon in itself.

Considering all that we've learned about human nature from studying twins, it's astonishing to realize how little we know about the twinning process itself.  In spite of the burst of twin-based scholarship in recent years, much that is commonly believed to be true about twinning is either wrong or in dispute.  It is not clear, for instance, whether twinning is a kind of birth defect or, contrarily, whether birth defects are caused by twinning (or if, indeed, either has anything to do with the other).  We don't know what significance, if any, to attach to the elevated incidence of left-handedness among both kinds of twins.  It is not even certain whether fraternal twins always come from two eggs or sometimes from one that has split before fertilization.  We are just now learning that twins are different in particular ways from singletons (their teeth are more symmetrical, for example), but we don't know why or what that means.  In sum, we don't know who twins are or how twins happen.  We only presume to know what they tell us about who we are.

Also during that session with Judith, I told her, "Of the phenomena I've been experiencing, what's really been interesting, though — does this ever happen to you?  When you turn on the radio you keep hearing the same songs over and over again — like some kind of message.  Some of the songs I keep hearing are 'I'll Stand By You,' 'Time After Time,' 'American Pie,' 'Can You Feel The Love Tonight,' 'Don’t You Forget About Me.'"

Judith said, "Well, I think the main message is that you need to have faith.  You're being watched over.  And whether it's Michael or whether it's God, have faith that there is a being that is helping you and that is by you and it will stand by you no matter what happens in your life . . ."
 
Shortly afterward, I decided to conduct a brief interview with Chris, my brother's associate at Rogers and Cowan.  She was another person who was aware of having psychic abilities.  Chris commented,  "I think that we're here on Earth with guides, friends from past lives and angels that help us; and that we travel — do you know the word 'karass'?  It's an Indian word meaning groups of people who travel together in lifetimes.  It's a word from India."  Chris also said that she believed what her father told her were the three most important things: compassion, kindness and love.  She also observed, "We should really try to see God in everyone and know that we're all the same."

When I had lunch with my brother Mike that day, he shared some rather uncharacteristic commentary: "God has existed for all eternity and time is circular."  Afterward, I dropped by the Martin Lawrence Galleries and said hello to Hanna.  As we were standing in front of the Kostabi collection, four paintings stacked together against a wall toppled over.  I was again reminded that incidents comparable to 'poltergeist'-style phenomena could be overlooked in just about any ordinary setting.

That night, I noticed my daily horoscope mentioned that I would find something I'd misplaced.  I'd been looking for the tape recorded in 1991 of my psychic reading with Maria Papapetros but had given up so the horoscope encouraged me to try again.  The first place I decided to again search was the closet between my kitchen and living room.  I reached to the upper shelf and pulled out the cassette, astonishing myself. 

A few days later, my brother brought me some channeled books that Chris had generously felt were necessary for me to have: new trade paperback editions of Messages from Michael on the Nature of the Evolution of the Human Soul (1979) and Michael for the Millennium (1995), both by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and Emmanuel's Book (1985) compiled by Pat Rodegast and Judith Stanton.  All three were identified as 'New Age' books on the bindings by their respective publishers.  On the repackaged edition of Messages from Michael, the spooky Ouija Board cover from the earlier paperback edition I'd one glimpsed had been replaced by a colorful photograph of the sky featuring birds flying beneath blue, pink and white clouds.  This 'Michael' communicated via the Ouija Board, commencing with the message "WE ARE HERE WITH YOU TONIGHT."  The messages would continue, comprising a book of 284 pages.  Three additional Michael books by Yarbro followed, encompassing such subjects as the planes and levels of existence; the nature and evolution of souls aka 'fragments' with 'monads' [essential and complete experiences and relationships]; 'the essence or role of the individual soul' and goals, modes, attitudes, centers, and chief features — these attributes comprising 'overleaves' for an individual; among other 'teachings.'

Reading Messages from Michael, it was interesting that 'Lansing' had been selected as a pseudonym for the pivotal individual in the case study offered by Yarbro.  For me, the name brought to mind my association with Sherry Lansing, who in 1995 was studio head at Paramount Pictures, where I'd worked for seven years as a publicity department writer.  Furthermore, this individual was said to be "a publicist by profession" and, together with her husband prior to experimenting with the Ouija Board, "had long been interested in parapsychology and psychic studies and occasionally tried their hands at different techniques, but with no significant results."

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro attested that she, herself, had a 20 year involvement with occult studies prior to writing Messages from Michael.  Yarbo originally met the woman she called Jessica Lansing through musical activities and almost a year later gave her passes to a San Francisco nightclub where Yarbro regularly gave Tarot card readings.  Around two months later, Yarbro attended her first Michael session at her friend's home and heard communicated 'THE WISDOM WHICH COMES TO US FROM THE PLANE BEYOND AND YET INTERPENETRATING THIS ONE.'

Such commentary as "WE CAN MANIFEST THROUGH ANY OF YOU IN THIS ROOM.  IT WOULD REQUIRE A LIGHT TRANCE, WHICH ALL OF YOU ARE CAPABLE OF ACHIEVING AND MAINTAINING" may lead one to ponder how the range of trance states occur, from light trances (where the experiencer is able to recall what happened) to deep trances (where there is no recall).  Some of the occurrences I've witnessed lead me to ponder how trance states develop and how thoughts originate.  I remember once speaking to my brother in front of his house on Lyric Avenue, expressing some confusion about the vagaries of my Angelic Collaborator being the channel between the incarnate and the discarnate in conjunction with my own apparent reincarnation.  Mike responded casually, "Michael is One and many.  If you play your cards right, this time you won't have to have another incarnation."  In a relaxed mood, a person might say the first thing that came to mind and this is what seemed to have happened on this occasion.

The more I thought about aspects of Michael, the efforts and opportunities that shaped my life often showed Michael's influence.  I soon caught on that when a credit card payment didn't go through for some reason, this indicated that the expense was not one that was necessary and this was one way Michael was encouraging me to become less materialistic.

Listening to songs on the radio, I sometimes was reminded about Twyla mentioning that "Yeah" was one of Michael's frequent comments.  I realized just how prominent was this word in lyrics.  One song popular at this time that featured "yeah" was the hit "One of Us" performed by Joan Osborne.  A back-up vocalist's utterances of "yeah" especially reminded me of the spirit messages I was hearing on interview tapes.  In asking "What if God was one of us?," the song suggested an association with God for each of us, even "just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way home."

I also recalled one of the clients when I worked at the talent agency, Victor Rogers, whose credits included a bit part in "Thoroughly Modern Millie" where his character's only lines had been "Yeah, yeah, yeah."  Now it also seems significant that he had a small role in the movie "My Fair Lady" while another agency client, Lola Fisher, had once been the understudy for Julie Andrews on Broadway before taking on the role of Eliza Doolittle herself.  I'd seen the movie version of "My Fair Lady" and recognized my initiated 'Mark Russell Bell' persona (taking form in my spontaneous audio journals and interviews) as being a similar prototype — or 'costume' as the channeled entity 'Emmanuel' might say.

Considering the symbolic figures seen in the works of Mark Kostabi and on the cover of Love's Awakening, while writing Testament I realized the events I'd experienced made my 'Mark Russell Bell' persona a symbolic 'everyman' to convey the message of how every person should become a 'Christed One' and be personally responsible for one's decisions in life.  This message is also conveyed in some of the blog articles about channeling cases.  As I've commented before — readers will find that the experiences documented in my book correlate with many of the messages of so-called 'channeled' transcendental communication.  I found myself called upon to become an embodiment of some of these teachings.  Awareness of contemporary channeling cases and the metaphysical reality of each person having a 'guide' are profound dispensations and this news should be happily shared.
 
The guides interact with us in accordance with our awareness level so someone who has learned about metaphysical aspects of life will probably experience a comparatively more highly evolved interaction with one's guide (or 'guardian angel').  The limitations in the interaction with a guide suggests the complexity of the relationship — seemingly it is best to provide clues and allow the human counterpart to make sense of the clues through contemplation.  At all times a person should think about whether one is going through life merely reacting to the environment or alternatively being mindful to continually giving careful consideration to what studies and objectives to pursue. 

Here in Los Angeles I'm often reminded how unusual some aspects of life are in this vicinity.  Tonight is taking place the Grammy awards show at Staples Center and right now local news headlines bring word that local sports hero Kobe Bryant and a California college baseball coach named John Altobelli along with family members have today unexpectedly made their transition to the ascended realm due to a helicopter crash in Calabasas a few miles away from where I live.  As I mentioned in another article this month, to be human is to know how during one's current momentary situation anything can happen.