Channeling Your Spirituality

“Channeling—1:00-1:30,” read the sign posted on a classroom in Irvine’s School of Multidimensional Healing Arts and Sciences (SMHAS). About 10 people gathered inside and spent 30 minutes listening to messages of self-love, respect and compassion.

“It is so important to shake the boundaries that prevent you from loving yourself… We will go in love, laughter and pleasure to eternity.”

This is what Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart said to the audience.

Rather, this is what Frances Pullin—a volunteer at the school— said while channeling Amadeus for her lecture at SMHAS’s Holistic Wellness Faire and Marketplace on February 28.

Dozens of people ranging in age and ethnicities attended the Faire, which SMHAS hosts on the last Saturday of every month to promote healing and spirituality in Orange County. Activities included psychic reading sessions, vendors selling crystals and healing paraphernalia and a variety of free lectures with topics such as channeling, mediumship and the many forms of energy. People could pay $25 for one 15-minute private healing session or $40 for two sessions.

Founded five years ago, SMHAS is the product of Jerry Woods’ desire to create a more solid community for local healers, psychics and followers of this spirituality. SMHAS has healers trained in both Reiki and Theta practices, tarot card readers and classes in numerology, to name a few. Pullin, one of SMHAS’s founding members, volunteers her time teaching classes about channeling.

Pullin’s free channeling lecture involved her initially explaining to the class what it means to channel and her own discovery of it.

“I have been channeling for eight years. In 2003, my son passed away and I was feeling super overwhelmed so I took a meditation class. Soon after I started automatic writing and channeling,” said Pullin, referring to two practices that deal with contacting other spiritual entities via written or visual communication, respectively.

Soon after, Pullin had her first encounter with Amadeus Mozart, who she said was “a white-haired old man standing at a gazebo.”

In a past life, Pullin was Amadeus’s older sister. They had a very competitive relationship, all of which Pullin details in her book “It is I… Amadeus.”

“He told me that he needs to repay the karma from that life time,” Pullin said, which is why she now channels him in this life.

Those in the audience had an opportunity at the end of the lecture to ask Amadeus questions in the hopes of gaining some advice from the spiritual world. People asked about their current family problems and concerns about their futures. Amadeus’s responses encouraged continued exploration of past lives and the teachings practiced by SMHAS.

Natalie Kassir, who attended Pullin’s channeling lecture, said, “As understanding as I try to be about other people’s beliefs and practices, this felt totally disingenuous and scripted to me. She also promoted her class through her channeling, which made it feel even more unrealistic.”

For those who may not have been rushing to buy Pullin’s book after her lecture, there were plenty of other people to meet and lectures to see throughout the afternoon.

Vendors outside the school filled the parking lot with color spectrums, as the sunbeams struck crystals and stones at each booth. Customers took their time as the wandered from vendor to vendor, inquiring about the different stones and the energies associated with them.

Rocio Charry has been making jewelry out of crystals for a year now but has been drawn to studying crystal healing for six years.

“I feel like I have a special connection to stones since they are from Mother Earth,” said Charry. “Wearing crystals and stones offers healing, protection, grounding and a connection to a higher self. Some people don’t believe in this but I believe that they come from Mother Earth so they have to have something special to them.”

This theme of combatting preconceived notions of what goes on at SMHAS resonated amongst teachers and participants at the Faire. Jamie Goldenfield Nelson gave psychic readings to attendees, a practice she started five years ago after her dad died.

“I saw his spirit leave his body so I started exploring the psychic world. It’s all about white light and helping people. There’s nothing dark about what we do here,” she said.

As the afternoon turned into evening, the small rooms of SMHAS grew more and more crowded, with a flurry of conversations filling the air.

“Today we have seen so many people who have never been here before, some who were just looking for something to do on a Saturday,” Pullin said. “It’s what’s out in the universe now; people are just picking up on spirituality.”

A Lesson in Self-Healing

The moment Heather Green stepped into the School of Multidimensional Health and Sciences lecture room, I felt a wave of relaxation and affirmation rush over me. I had just spent the last 30 minutes listening to Amadeus Mozart AKA Frances Pullin tell me that I need to love myself and to say I felt unsettled would have been an understatement. Green’s group healing lecture ended up being exactly what I needed to re-center myself.

She started off the lecture explaining the existence of a Fifth-Dimension Energy System, a spiritual world that is constantly in a state of flux. By targeting our healing at our fifth dimension chakras, we can better cope with anxieties and stressors that may exist in this flux.

We all closed our eyes, steadied our breathing and followed Green’s voice into the fifth dimension.

Most of her lecture consisted of me getting lost in a dreamy half-awake, half-asleep stasis of serenity. I focused on my internal organs and nerves, opened up my soul and released any negative energy stored within my carbon-based form out into the universe. All the while reminding myself to shift positions in order to not completely fall asleep mid-lecture.

Once Green got to talking about trust, then my mind and body woke up.

She said we need to consider how and who we trust, particularly any part of our bodies that have issues with trust. Immediately I could feel my hands ignite with energy, as if every muscle and nerve-ending had been zapped with a small electric shock. It lasted only a few seconds but its impact was enough to jolt me back to reality.

Of course, I thought. Out of anyone I know, I have the most difficult time feeling comfortable touching people. My hands are telling me to let loose a little, to purge myself of these issues with physical trust.

With Green’s half-hour coming to a close, I continued to massage my hands and contemplate the oddity of what I had just experienced. I only came to the Faire out of curiosity (and to complete an assignment), not as a devote follower or teacher of these new age forms of spirituality. How do I make sense of all I just experienced?

Green’s final words, unintentionally, quelled all of these thoughts.

She said to us all, “We ask this. So be it, let it be done.”