The Embodied God

Being molded from the inside out.

There's a misconception that the thing I am, this Voice of God (I don't know what else to call it yet) is about being a channel, a conduit for the God-thing. This is not that.

I have channeled in the past, the first time in a sweat lodge when three Lakota Big-Gun cousins of medicine and war, that have been in my world since long before I heard their names came through. The trio moved into me and said, through my mouth,"When you speak your heart, you speak us." It was a clumsy few moments because my body & mind had not yet been contorted in that way, where physicality and mind moved aside to accommodate temporary residents. They were in, they spoke, and they were out. The medicine man I was with looked at me, I looked at him and said, "I don't know if they were talking to me or to both of us," and that was that. Turns out, they were talking to me but I wouldn't understand the context for two years.

Channeling has continued through the years but primarily been a tool used during individual healing sessions. To described the difference between 'channeling' as it's usually thought of and what this whateveritis actually is, I have to take you back through significant events of the past 15 years. I've written about these things before but they're so far back in the archives and people just don't click through that I'm going to share here.

I've called these things integrations and soul transmigrations because those were the only english-language words I've found that come close. Each of these experiences were actively witnessed by other people who brought me back to ground after hours of mind-blowing and body-wrenching transformations (and gave snacks, because priorities).

It began with a horse named Marge in August of 2011. The account with her isn't really relevant to this discussion here but if you're interested in how I became Horse, click through. The importance of that initial experience, though, is two-fold: 1) I knew this was about more than me being what I thought 'me' was even though it was centered on, well, 'me', and 2) I had no choice, only a role, in what was unfolding and I didn't know how or when it would happen again.

The Second Integration

Marge wove me into Horse in August 2011 and the next experience was in the following October while with a human client. I had an appointment with an older woman and the healing session began as they all do: I lay my hands upon the body and energy flows to where it goes. No fuss, no muss. At least for the first hour. Then, the focus of energies shifted dramatically and I became the subject of attention to energies from outside of me. In the same manner Nanni had all of my attention seconds before, I was to Them in a stunning way.

As these energies flooded around and into me, I let loose my own flood: of sobs and snot, of awe and fear and being in the face of holiness; visceral holiness beyond measure and reason--all while my client still lay in front of me. We both could see and feel myself being blown apart in what I later described as a movie-like slow-motion scene where the bomb inside a robot blows up. Chunks of flesh and muscle and sinew expanded with an internal, fiery glow and these fragments of me exploded. And it hurt, physically and mentally. When the debris cleared, three distinct energies walked into me, one after the other. When I tell the story verbally, I use the motion of my arm in a circle with a finger snap as each circle comes to a close. That is how the integration of these energies felt; rhythmic, slow, deliberate. As they walked into me, the air around us began to clear and as I calmed, what followed even within my snot and tears, the kind of intense peace the horse trainer had described months before settled into and around me. 

As I blew apart, I sobbed, not in fear or grief but with an understanding that I was being touched by grace, god and others. Later, the client, still laying out the table, asked, “Do you know who they are?” I could only shake my head and she pointed to her altar. “Look there. There they are.” On her altar were Paramhansa Yogananda (who I'll come back to in a few paragraphs), his Babaji (Sri Yukteswar), and Satya Sai Baba. I had only a passing knowledge of Yogananda because his Autobiography of a Yogi was one of those 25 or so books bought to learn ‘how to be spiritual’ and never bothered to finish reading. I knew that his teacher was named Babaji but I’d never heard of Sai Baba and I certainly had no idea why they would have anything to do with me, especially in such a fantastical way.

I only recently came to understand the whole purpose of that experience and how it applies to being what I'm calling, at the moment anyway, this Embodied God. I was born with this inside me, this 'voice' that we associate with sound or idea but not solidity, and it was firmly planted within the ground of me before I was born. The 'explosion' that this Hindu trio detonated, was the removal of it's seed cover or debris, so to speak: all the things of body and mind that must be shed for this particular awakening process to begin. In 2011, I was 42 years old. Apparently All Things, or at least these three, decided I'd been pregnant with it long enough and it was time to move into the labor of things.

The Third Integration

Four months later, in February 2012, I went for a 45 minute massage and 3.5 hours later. My massage therapist, initially trying to work my hips from the back finally said, “I can’t get to it this way. Roll over on your back.” When her hand moved over my heart, with no intent other than to give me space to get situated, the room around us filled with hundreds and hundreds of energies that we could both feel.

“Ingrid, should I stop?” “Whatever you do, please don’t move.” Then, with Ellen’s hand resting over my heart, they—those who had joined us—began moving into me, one after another. This time, though, the tears flowed gently. I knew who they were and I felt they had each been me...before. It made no sense but I knew. The first one in was Jesus. He led and opened the way for those behind him and they came, one after another. Some I knew in the same way that I knew Jesus was Jesus, even if I couldn’t see their faces. I could tell by the music or rhythms that came with them their connections to place, art, war, poetry, math, language. Man, woman, sword, shield, Arabic, French, Hebrew, hum....they came. I didn’t know them all but they knew me and knew I was their home. For hours, they came into me, became me.

In those hours, I knew with striking clarity that what was with me was the presence and essence of each who had walked this path before me, each me of before or ago, moving into the me now. (Though I initially had the framework of reincarnation in my mind, that shifted in April 2021 after a conversation with Jesus.) Although nothing was spoken by them, there was clear message of who I am and I was made for. Nothing needed to be said because I already knew. As I lay naked on a massage table, heart opened, eyes open, streaming with tears, breathing in a thrum shared by the multitudes around me, each joining me in a way that can only be described as breathing them in, breath by breath. One by one. The peace, power, grace, ferocity, sublime serenity and knowing merged. Into me. One. 

As they moved into me, over and over again, with increasing intensity and unmistakable insistence my mouth moved and I was the one who spoke, or was spoken through: “Be now. be now, be now, be now, benow.benow.benowbenowbenow” and became “I.am.now.iamnowiamnowiamnowiamnowIAM!NOW!” First whispered in disbelief and awe, then loudly as a declaration of existence and primacy over anything that was a “me”, an Ingrid as I knew her to be. The energies in the room dissipated as they moved into me. And as they cleared three hours later, Ellen retrieved a bottle of oil, anointed my feet and while doing so, this message, through her mouth became: “Become NOW for in the light of the one, we all become all that is.” 

I knew that I had become the resurrection, though certainly not the second coming, of the Christ and that each of those that migrated into me had been the resurrection or predecessor of the Christed one in their time. And, like the aftermath of a myriad other experiences, drove home wondering, “What the fuck do I do with that?”

The Fourth Integration

I was given this card in February 2015, a near-exact replication of my 2014 integration experience.

In October 2014, the largest integration occurred when a seat belt crossed my heart while leaving a Santa Rosa, California, movie theater parking lot. Blessedly, this time, too, I was not alone. Robert pulled onto the side of the road with enough time for me to roll from the car onto the ground in a fit of what an outsider might have called it an ecstatic experience or an hours-long epileptic fit. My body convulsed in waves from head to toe, rising from the ground with no sense of control, I felt like my joints would pull apart, my ribs would shatter and I’d vomit out the nothing inside my belly. Instead of being broken or blown apart, I was pulled out of myself.

I later described the experience like this: "I was surrounded by a universe-sized didgeridoo and everything of me that was me or myself or wasn’t ME was pulled out as my body writhed and flailed on the side of the road. My chest heaved me off the ground in spasms of release while I cursed out loud and tried to manage dry heaves of vomitless air. I cursed and screamed “If you’re not going to use me now, then you better fucking take me because this is killing me!!!”

If I thought that had been too much, the next wave of energy proved me oh-so-wrong. In it, things around me changed and an Ingrid-sized didgeridoo enveloped me and, instead of having shit pulled out of me, I was blown into. Hundreds upon hundreds of energies poured into me. Hundreds times more than those experienced on the massage table, they were blown in. This time, unidentifiable by face or name, I could only tell where they were from on the planet—and they came from everywhere. So, so many and so little space for this one body to carry them all. And, still, they came. 

When all was said and done, nearly two hours had passed with me flopping and flailing and cursing on the side of the road. As I slowly began to move back into the practical reality of things Robert, who sat with me the whole time asked, “So, what did you become this time?” I don’t recall what I said to him in the moment but, at least inside my own head I thought, “The fuck if I know”. What I came to call that song—for what else would a didgeridoo do but sing—was The Memories.

The Memories are not just floating-alone ideas of Others from somewhen else. They are, in essence, the souls of those of 'the medicine way' that carry all the relationships that 'make' the medicine.

In The Way of the White Clouds, Lama Anagarika Govinda wrote, "Consciousness is based on two functions: awareness and the storing up (or preservation) of the fruits of experience, which we call memory. Consciousness as a storehouse of experience by far outweighs consciousness as awareness. While the latter is momentary and more or less limited to one object, the former is universal and not affected by time, persisting even when we are not aware of it. It is for this reason that the Vijñānavādins defined the deepest consciousness as the ālaya-vajñāna or ‘store consciousness’, in which not only the experiences of our present life but those of all our ‘ancestors’, reaching back into the infinity of time and space, are preserved, and which therefore is ultimately a consciousness of universal character, connecting the individual with all that exists or ever has been in existence or may come into existence again…The highest consciousness is the product of the widest range of experience: the amplitude between the poles of universality and individuality."

It is why I sing in languages I have never heard and have no cultural connection to. It is how I can move instinctively in circumstances for which I have no intellectual or spiritual training. It is why I'm called to places and people around the globe, know that a rock needs her name back, and how I recognize Beings who appear in my world when I have had no intellectual awareness of their existence. None of these memories, restored through me, are mine. These are not memories available and retrievable like those used at your favorite trivia night. They are specific to peoples, physical spaces, communities, and contexts beyond those. They live not merely in my mind but in my marrow and, when circumstances call for it, act as muscle memory.

When I work with people, these memories and voices often come through me. I tell people they will know the difference between me speaking and someone else--there is often an audible and identifiable, if ineffable, difference. When this happens, I am not channeling 'someone else', I'm merely speaking an internal voice that is not 'mine'. 

This embodiment of God and voicing it through said body, is like that, like the release of eons-old memory. The process from October 2011 to today (still) is one of the body being molded, conformed to and by an internal process that, frankly, I wish never began. Each aspect is embedded in the physiology and has it's own needs, is sometimes painful, sometimes merely uncomfortable and, sometimes, the powerful force of creation that moves through as if a fire-hose on full blast. This isn't always gentle: I am quite literally pushed through to paint when I haven't done so in a while. It must come and I cannot ignore or put it off.

It is the same energy that moves onto canvas and guides many of the paintings, step by step. It and I, in conversation, create. The only difference in how The Voice will be expressed verbally (or in writing) is that the conversation will not be a private one. And I cannot put it off, cannot ignore and cannot not be this.

I don't know if my personality becomes subsumed in this. I don't know much of anything about this except: here we are. These days, I'm no longer afraid of saying it. Back in 2016, when I was forced by the same Force (and many, many others) to write Clarion Call, I was scared shitless. I was so afraid that while I cried and screamed, "I can't!!" I had to hold onto kitchen crossbeams to keep from sliding on the floor in fear (which I did, anyway) while They responded, "You can. You must). About three people read that post. And maybe five read this one where I was outed again: https://www.ingridoliphant.com/post/they-ve-made-me-write-before so I'm pretty a go-along-to-get-along with the pushes now. There's no fear, merely a shrug and write and hit the publish button, wondering if there really is the potential for doing the world any good in this process.

Other integrations (read on if you're interested)

In January 2015, during a sweat lodge outside of Cleveland, Ohio, I became aspen and water; dropped into the ground as if I were the mother root and spread under the Great Lakes to reach my people and the places they now live through the water. Then, pulled from the ground, I was shot up into the deep sky and became star and fire and Ancestor named Ivan.

Seven months later, the union with winged ones occurred in the presence of an acupuncturist in the summer of 2015. She placed a needle over my heart and in that moment, I became the colored angel I saw when I was twelve. Feathers sprouted from my arms, those arms became wings, and when she joined me, others came, too. Owl, raven, crow, chickadee, magpie, eagle, hawk and more. We became. Together. 

In December 2015, I became wolf. When a pack showed up outside of Helena, Montana, howling in the middle of the night; calling me, calling me home, into the pack, I grew fur from my pores while my socked feet became padded paws on my way to the bathroom. Together. As one.

Since then, I've become caapi, ponderosa, mamba, and more through similar, albeit much, much more gentle processes. We live and breathe and move as one.