Here a Godphone, there a Godphone, everywhere a Golden Godphone

Every fledgling mystic wants one. A godradio, godphone, or godline, or whatever you want to call it; to be able to hear the Gods’ voices, like so *clicks fingers*. Everybody wants a godphone, including myself.

Some people hear the voices of spirits or Deities all their lives; most people, however, don’t. It doesn’t mean you cannot ever connect to a Deity that way; it just means you’ve got work to do. Not everybody wants to work for it, though.

Here’s an example. Imagine a group of relatively inexperienced followers of Loki—people who are looking for something, maybe guidance but probably, for the most part, just company and kinship. The group will hang out in chat rooms on the Internet. It’s a nice enough group, really. Some guys are more level-headed, some are, more fanciful. There is a good balance overall.

Then, things start changing slowly. At first, it’s almost too subtle to register. People ask for help connecting to Himself, and whoever thinks they have an idea about what could be done, will do their best to help. It’s the way those offers of help would be handled that changes. Ideas that require practice, patience and discipline—in short, work—are more and more often rejected in favour of more woo suggestions. As an example: instead of establishing a regular meditation or prayer practice, one rather turns to another member of the group who then works on one’s aura over the Internet. Now, whether or not energy work can even be done over the Internet I don’t want to presume. I guess, an experienced energy worker can do it.

The problem is not that of energy work. The problem is wanting something, but being unwilling to work for it, especially if the next person seems to say work isn’t necessary.

Let’s talk about group dynamics for a bit.

The person doing the energy work, of course, will appreciate some kind of feedback—you know, something along the lines of “wow, this feels tingly all over…”. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Just something that indicates their work is successful and valued. The person receiving the energy work, will want to provide said feedback, mainly for two reasons. One: because they want to have a better godphone, and they expect to get their wish. Two, because often skill and leadership tend to correlate; therefore, the energy worker is likely to be or become a leader within the group dynamics. Thus, the person asking for help is going to be (selfishly) motivated to provide positive feedback.

Cue motivated reasoning, vested interests and confirmation bias. Now, whether or not the energy work was successful, whether or not the godphone situation was actually improved… doesn’t really matter. What matters is witnesses, and wishful thinking.  Witnesses because due to the positive feedback, energy worker’s social position as “someone competent” is established. Wishful thinking, because the mind is a powerful thing.

We edit memories without even being aware of it—the whole concept of memory suppression hinges on it; it is a healthy mechanism, arguably necessary for survival.

Having received the energy work, and having seen how skill can help social status, the individual puts themselves under pressure to actually experience improvement in the “general godphone area”. This is confirmation bias in action: the person receiving help is going to look for clues that the intended goal was reached.  And the mind will provide. Using some exaggeration,  this examplifies how: suddenly, a pin dropped into a bowl of soup while watching “Four Weddings and a Funeral” is surely a divine attempt to communicate… oh, more still, it must be a proposal! (Because, Film! And after all, bowls are kind of connected to… you know what I’m talking about).

Of course, there’s every chance that the energy work did help and helped improve one’s receiver unit. I’m not saying anyone’s lying, either: the energy worker has been given positive feedback, therefore is right to believe they’ve been successful, and the receiver is experiencing a change in God-connectivity, therefore is right to believe the same. No one is lying!

What I’m saying is that it’s a precarious situation. The next time someone has problems connecting, they will just turn to the energy worker in the first place, since that has been proven to be effective. Thus, they add to motivational pressure and positive feedback loops start building and intertwining all over the place. This is when strange things start to happen.

Things like people going from constantly complaining about their lack of mystic experience, to being Mr or Ms Golden Godphone, in a matter of days only. Things like similar and colourful experiences made across the group, by a variety of people, at roughly the same time. Things like the complete marginalisation of more down-to-earth approaches, and more level-headed people starting to leave the group.

This is what makes it even more complicated: according to some views, Deities work as anti-entropy of sorts. They reduce the entropy where They  work, i.e., reduce randomness. This means: synchronicity will happen legitimately. It’s in the nature of the beast, so to speak. And what is more: probability warping is practically a Trickster God’s job description. (It almost seems like pouring oil into a fire! Or, more modernly put: trolling).

So it’s either a genuine probability warp field, or—and this might sound cynical—everyone is being quick to confirm each other’s ideas. Suggestions to seek outside advice by way of divination go largely unheard, then taper down to a low murmur in the background that is easily overlooked. Because the system feeds itself—by definition, since it’s basically a highly complex co-dependency, a positive feedback loop—and it will keep working, as long as enough positive feedback is provided. And nothing, nothing is as positive as the confirmation that the godphone is amazing, and those God-messages are real, and one is so special.

I am not saying that the above must always happen. It can easily happen (and has, not only once); I’ve written about why.

If you’re in a group, and suddenly golden godphones with 100% signal clarity are popping up all over the place, or even everybody starts channeling: DO NOT PANIC.

There’s nothing wrong with your godphone. Please copy this sentence down until you start believing it. Seriously, I mean it, your godphone is alright! It is going to be just fine, whatever it is you’re doing to communicate with Deity, just continue doing it. You’ll get better at it. I know this because I am one of those people who have to work for it. Those who don’t have a hardwired mortal-to-Deity connection.

Me? It’s all software, if you follow. Might be a bit slower than the hardware solution, and a bit buggy at first (but that’s discernment, and I’m not going to stick a pole into that hornets’ nest). But all in all, it’s definitely functional with an overall tendency to improve. AND: software is a lot more economic. Do you know how inefficient hard-wiring is? It’s a lot of energy and resource consumption before you even get a workable prototype. (Leaving the dodgy computer analogies behind now…)

Being witness to a sudden godphone inflation can be a tad daunting, and a major challenge for your self esteem. What you need is not a better godphone, because yours probably is just fine. What you need is better shielding. Again, DO NOT PANIC. Ur NOT Doin’ It wrong Ermahgerds.

Just to give you an example: my own godphone is pretty crappy, compared to some claims I’ve seen.

It consists mainly of two different kinds of physical sensation, then there’s the odd mental image, or single words or concepts dropped into my mind if I’m very, very lucky. There was only ONCE I’ve ever experienced a complete sentence said to me. I was fasting at the time, so I was open and my shields were more than down. Plus, it was an important sentence, and one I definitely needed to hear.

ALL the other “conversations” are just my mind filling in the blanks. That doesn’t mean message passing is not taking place. The mind supplies fillings for the gaps in between flashes of Divine communication. My brain needs to be able to digest it, after all.

I used to agonise about that, but guess what: there is nothing wrong with the godphone. I remembered this passage by a shaman, regarding hearing the Gods:

[…] it’s usually not as cut and dry as those words make it seem. Rarely do I actually hear words that come from an obviously external source. It does happen, but when it does, They’re usually pretty succinct. I may get a word or three, even more rarely a sentence, that I hear with my actual ears as though someone else in the room has said them. A recent experience was when I heard laughter, so loud and so obvious that I walked around the house looking for the source before I realized (quite rightly) that it was Loki, laughing at something I had just read.

[…]

I think this is what trips up a lot of people; when a spirit worker or other spiritual person says, “Odin told me such and so”, there’s an internal assumption that the communication was an external voice stating things plainly so that the listener immediately understood. As most spirit workers will attest, this is usually not the case.

So how do I know anything? For instance when I’m looking at something in a shop, and feel one of the sensations I associate with the godphone—then I’ll not jump to conclusions, but ask, what is it about this. If the physical touches continue, or if they are amplified by any of the other indicators, then I will consider that a possible communication attempt. I will then proceed (using divination) to find out if this is a negotiable request, or not, or whatever details I think I want to know. Sometimes no answers will be given (there is a particular movement of my pendulum that means *you do not get to know that*).

A word on physical sensations: I have found that if they happen, it’s not exactly the best idea to keep prodding the issue and expect the sensation to stay exactly the same. It will stay and/or repeat itself for a while, but at some point my mind will have become used to the thought, and then the sensation will be gone. It’s a question of attention really. Miss it, and you’ll have missed the message.

I have found that to be a more or less reasonable, workable and dependable way to determine what is going on. Same thing about synchronicities. If unsure, ask. If it’s important, answers will be provided. (Unless you’re being tested, but HEY I’m talking Everyday Stuff (TM)).

So yeah. Channelling? As in, hearing what He has to say about whatever I point at, at my will? First of all, that does not work with the kind of relationship I have with Him. Second, the process of extracting messages from a mess of indicators takes time. As in, something in the order of minutes or even hours, sometimes days. I’d make a completely shitty channel, at least at the moment. Things may change, but certainly not tomorrow. The best I can say with some confidence is I can usually interpret nudges.

That’s it.

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