Channeling Extraterrestrials at Lake Atitlan.

Channeling the Wisdom of Dante

Cassie Childers Ryle

When you think of ‘channeling,’ it may bring up images of an end-of-the-world psychopath wearing a wizard gown in Roswell, or an old frizzy haired Puerto Rican woman babbling in her hole-in-the-wall Hell’s Kitchen storefront circa 1989. Travel to the village of San Marcos, Guatemala, though, and you might be surprised at what you find.

Here on the spectacular shores of the glowing caldera lake of Lago Atitlan, a gringo village fully dedicated to the metaphysical arts has sprung up. Among its lush floral-lined stone paths, healers, therapists and teachers of everything spiritual and mystical have opened for business, and if you’re into that sort of thing, you’ll feel like a kid in a candy store.

I had come to San Marcos for a month-long retreat, but had an entire week of free time before it began (on the full moon of course.) What to do, how to choose? It was literally the hardest task I had to accomplish in weeks, just deciding which astral-studded healing journey could be mine. Massage course, archery-yoga, ayurvedic consultation, kirtan singing lessons, sound baths, astrology, tarot, soul therapy, karmic release… ahhh! The list goes on and on… I scoured the local bulletin boards covered with groovy spiritual-nouveau advertising fliers, but nothing really pulled me in.

I had resigned myself to reading trashy novels and watching YouTube videos for the week instead, and ruminating a bit longer in my recently acquired state of depression, when suddenly a post on the San Marcos Community Facebook page caught my eye. It was a photo of a young bearded man with a sparkle in his eye and tinsel in his beard, advertising a 3-day extraterrestrial channeling course that would begin the next day. I don’t know what it was, but I knew that was the thing for me. I booked it.

Channeling? Extraterrestrials? My husband looked at me with a playful smirk. True, I am the type that tends to side with science most of the time, a true skeptic with all kinds of trust issues, never quick to believe anything I can’t prove. That being said, I always had a certain awareness of the unseen world, and a few paranormal experiences I couldn’t otherwise explain. In my heart of hearts, I do know there is so much going on around us that we can’t see or measure or understand, and being that I was in San Marcos, I figured I might as well do a full investigation and dive in head-on with a full power alien contact mission. Go big or go home.

I liked Dante from the moment I met him in front of a chai-and-spirulina selling café the next morning. Twenty-something, hailing from a dreary coal-mining town in Pennsylvania and a five year resident of the lake, Dante had a very gentle energy about him, but managed to balance it with a saucy east coast authenticity I found refreshing. He greeted me with a hug, and introduced me to my two classmates for the week; Sasha the elven, shaved-head Dutch girl, and Gunther the burly, intellectual German neurophysicist, who happened to be a professor at a certain Ivy League university.

We were led to an open-aired wooden deck surrounded by lush greenery, a thoughtful mandala of crystals and candles laid out on a tapestry of hand-stitched sacred geometry next to a deck of oracle cards and steaming cups of pure ceremonial cacao. Dante took his position next to his quartz crystal singing bowl, and asked us all to hold our cups of cacao to our hearts while we set intentions for the day and opened ourselves up to receiving messages from beyond. We took turns shuffling the deck and picking a card. I drew Arcturus 7, representing the fourth brightest star in our sky, and *unconditional love.*

After a very brief introduction to channeling and the realms of extraterrestrials, we dove right in with a guided meditation enhanced with the galactic sound vibrations of Dante’s singing bowl. I was positively shocked at how easy it was for me to slip into a meditative state after all but ignoring my spiritual health for years. We visualized deep roots stretching from our first chakra into the center of the earth, and portals opening from our crown chakras to the sky, ready to receive.

Dante explained that he would begin by channeling the Plaedians, an extraterrestrial race he was able to receive verbal messages from, and that we could ask them any questions we wanted. As we began, I peeked through my shut eyelids and saw that Dante’s eyes had rolled into the back of his head, his neck and shoulders slightly convulsing as he swayed gently side to side. Within mere seconds, his voice had completely changed, and he greeted us politely as if he had never met us.

“Greetings, all, and we are so very happy to be communing with you. Please, ask us any questions you like, yes?”

Whoa. Shit just got real. This was my chance to ask any question I wanted about the nature of life and the universe. Of course, my mind went blank.

My European classmates were more eager. They went back and forth for nearly an hour, taking turns inquiring about certain aspects of their personal spiritual journeys, or broader questions regarding the truths of existence and the meaning of it all. The responses put forth through Dante I found to be very much in line with the esoteric teachings shared by purist forms of Buddhism, Christianity and Judaism, as well as the pagan and nature-worshipping traditions I had studied. The universal truths beholden by all spiritual traditions seemed to be also held by the Plaedians, who Dante had explained were much further evolved than us humans. As the channeling session went on, I continued to find myself in a shockingly easy state of deep meditative space.

The entire session passed without me finding the voice to ask a question. I realized I had come to the proverbial fork in the road. Was what Dante was saying information coming direct from extraterrestrials, or were they coming from Dante himself? Was he simply regurgitating spiritual principles he had studied over the years, or was there something really new to learn here? I decided in that moment that the only way to find out was to fully take the plunge, and for once, believe. I would choose to believe that the messages were sent from above, and see where that path led me…

Dante asked us to lay down and to prepare ourselves for the next session. He introduced us to his channeling partner Thomas, a dashing blonde-bunned fellow wearing a lilac kurta. Thomas was a sound channeler. The messages he received were not verbal, but expressed through his vocal chords in the form of song and vibration. We were to enter another deep meditative state and open ourselves to receiving the messages into our body as we listened and felt the sound waves.

I had decided to fully let go and believe. Again I found myself in a deep meditation almost immediately, and allowed the sounds to wash over me. My awareness moved to the gentle, full-bodied tone beginning to emanate from Thomas’ vocal chords. The sound grew louder and more clear, and danced itself into a mesmerizing expansive melody in a tone so unmatched to the masculine guy I had just met, I could swear it must be a member of the Vienna Boys Choir. He sang on, gracefully enunciating syllables in some unearthly language worthy of angels, traveling the lengths between high crescendos and low wavelengths worthy of Tibetan monks.

As I lay there, I couldn’t help but notice how warm and cared for I felt. I was brought back to that sweet primal time at the beginning of life, when I was just a baby cradled in my mother’s arms, fully trusting that I was held in a deep space of love and that everything would be taken care of.  I hadn’t felt that way for a very long time.

More than an hour later, Thomas’ voice never wavering, we finally emerged from the sound field. I sat up, my eyes filled with tears, and more filled up with pure liquid love than I had felt in a long time. Dante looked at me and blinked. “You look so different,” he whispered.

I felt different, too.

Our course progressed throughout the week. Something had shifted in me, and it was completely undeniable. Years of stress and fear had begun to unlock inside of me, and I felt my sense of faith in the universe begin to reawaken. Surely these guys were on to something. But where were these messages that had evoked such feelings really coming from?

The next day Dante explained that now we would try to develop our own channeling prowess by tuning into one of three aspects of each other’s psyches; the masculine, the feminine and the inner child. While in a meditative state, we were to concentrate on embodying whichever aspect we were assigned, clearing our minds, feeling whatever emotions or messages came up, and repeating them out loud to the group.

Sasha went first. She lay down as we sat around her in meditation. I was to embody her inner child. Dante, Gunther and I took turns expressing what we felt come through us. My mind was filling up with information in the form of symbols and feelings and emotions I couldn’t quite explain. I told Sasha that she had always lived her life as a beautiful, delicate hummingbird, but that her inner child was now ready to become the mighty condor, and soar above all the madness of the world. Dante and Gunther, channeling aspects of her masculine and feminine, had extremely profound advice for her as well, and our three talking points merged to form a surprisingly cohesive narrative describing the innermost conflicts within Sasha’s psyche. By the end of the thirty minute session, Sasha was trembling and crying. We had definitely hit the nail on the head.

When my turn came, Gunther, representing my feminine aspects, piped right in that he could sense a massive fireball in my chest. Wow. He had picked up on my anger, all directed at various men, immediately. Sasha, my masculine, said that she yearned to be trusted again, and that she wanted to reconnect with the feminine. Dante, my inner child, said he could act as moderator, and bring the male and female aspects of my psyche back into union again as they had been when I was young.

Before arriving in San Marcos, I had spent about six months in various forms of therapy with professionals. These three strangers had managed to sense my innermost psychological conflicts simply by shutting their eyes and feeling. Were they receiving this information as conductors from some unknown beings invisible to my eye, or had they simply tuned in enough to my moods, body language and vibe to generate the information themselves? I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I, too, began to shake.

As we completed the course and life went back to normal, I found myself in an intense dream cycle every night for five nights. In each dream, all of which seemingly lasted throughout the night, I fought a different battle. In one I spent hours using all my mental prowess to overcome fear of a thief, outsmarting him finally before waking up. In another I physically beat to a pulp a former colleague who had betrayed me. On the third night I had to face my fear of rejection head on, only to find out that there was never any real threat to begin with. With each passing dream I felt more free, and the fireball that had lived in my chest for so many years had begun to lose its burn.

Something had profoundly shifted in me during my course with Dante. Pains and traumas that had previously seemed insurmountable were now dissipating rapidly. Where they once dwelled, deep in my heart, was now filling up with hope and gratitude.

I went to see Dante one last time before he set off on his world travels. He was holding a public channeling session at a yoga center in the village. As I approached the open air pavilion, I couldn’t believe my eyes. More than forty people of all ages from all over the world had gathered to join Dante and Thomas for a four-hour journey through time and space. I couldn’t help but smile.

Bottom line – I can’t prove either way if Dante was channeling extraterrestrials or not. But what I can say with total certainty is that I felt more whole, more loved and had a greater trust in the flow of life after. I received the message one way or another that I was safe, and was reminded that the only thing that’s real in this world is love. This young, tinsel-bearded guy from Pennsylvania made that happen. Revelations like that are priceless.

The truth is that Dante carries a wisdom beyond his years that transcends physical reality and makes you feel good. I don’t care if it came from outer space or from his own intuition. Either way, I’m buying. Up, up, and away…

Look up Dante at blissbeings.com and Thomas at soundandchocolate.com

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