I'm coming out of yet another closet with this admission: I love channelling. Channelling is the intuitive or psychic ability to bring forward the thoughts of a consciousness outside oneself. When I have an opportunity to ask a question of a channel, I find the answers are given from an objective distance that helps me gain perspective in my life. I usually find that the information that comes through confirms my own intuition, yet the person channelling would not have known any of the details of my life. This is fascinating to me . . . and apparently to millions of others. Yet the question remains: do we really need to confer with others for wisdom or can we learn to access it for ourselves?

Channelling is one of the phenomena most associated with the "New Age" and its subsequent spiritual movements. Edgar Cayce is probably the best known of the deep trance channels, but Jane Roberts would likely come in second. Born in 1929, Jane Roberts was a writer and poet from upstate New York who from 1963 until her death in 1984 channelled an entity (a consciousness with no physical form) who called himself Seth. That means that Jane's own personality would step out of the way, so to speak, and Jane would then speak the thoughts and opinions as Seth. Detractors at the time claimed Seth was an aspect of Jane's personality, or worse, they painted Jane and her husband as fraudulent con artists. Nevertheless, Jane's husband, Robert Butts, recorded every word that Jane channelled and eventually donated this body of work called "The Seth Material" to the Yale University Library before his death in 2008. The archive contains both Jane's/Seth's published and unpublished work. Some of the Seth Material is still in print and available today and the topics discussed are as current as the day Jane channelled it more than 40 years ago.

The Seth Material is an impressive body of work and knowledge that I believe was offered to help in the evolution of humanity, at least for those who chose to study it. It was the material that Esther and Jerry Hicks were studying when the group entity or consciousness known as Abraham came through to Esther more than 20 years ago. You may not believe in the ability of one individual to bring forth the consciousness of another, so I'm going to ask you to suspend any disbelief while you read on, so we can get at the larger message. And that message is that you are innately and inherently wise whether you are a professional channel bringing wisdom to others or you bring forth your own wisdom—when you allow it.

Let's start with "when you allow it." One way to access your wisdom is through your dreams. Seth said, "You are sometimes wiser, more creative, and far more knowledgeable when you are dreaming than when you are awake." In part that's because, psychologically, when we sleep the usual defences of our personality come down and we are more open to "receiving" than when we are awake—or, as Seth would say it, in dreams we are more open to tapping into the very real world of dreams that already exists. The familiar expression "I'll sleep on it" reflects the creative solutions that our dreams offer our waking problems. All throughout history, both ancient and modern, we have an on-going example of music, art, poetry, literature, film, and inventions whose creators credit their work to their dreams. In our dreams, we are faced with challenges yet we find creative and atypical ways to deal with them. Seth took our dreams even further than our limited psychological definitions, teaching that dreams are that, and more saying, "Many concepts, advancements, and practical inventions simply wait in abeyance in the world of dreams until some man accepts them as possibilities within his frame of reality. Imagination is waking man's connection with the world of dreams." So when we quiet our mind and pay attention to our dreams, we are rewarded with accessing a very real world of potential.

And my earlier question: Do we really need to confer with others for wisdom or can we learn to access it for ourselves? My answer is, "Of course we can do it ourselves." It takes effort to grow and evolve and going to a trance channel is the short cut. It best serves our inpatient selves (I'm often very impatient) that want fast answers with little work. The truth is, we are all inherently intuitive and we can learn to develop that muscle to bring out our own wisdom as surely as daily weight training builds our physical muscles. I love conferring with all the "Seths" out there, as I would love checking in with a beloved teacher, but a channel to my own inner "Seth" is all I really need. We are all wise, and your wise self is waiting patiently for you to tune in.

Patti Allen