This is the story of how and why I came to channeling Eagle and offering psychic readings…

Growing up, I retreated often into my imagination. I was the one chastised for having my "head always in the clouds." Those flights into my imagination might have rattled the nerves of my grade-conscious parents who viewed doing well in school as the passport to nirvana, but from where I view my life today, "daydreaming" has served me well. Although I can operate well enough in the "real world," I know my true home is elsewhere.

I am amazed at how I have unwittingly created a life supported by these journeys to "elsewhere!" Fiction writing was my first love, and I spent my twenties and thirties in pursuit of novelistic success. And I succeeded. I am well-published and received impressive advances, all of which began to pale as the creative journey began to unleash its magic on me. It was a character in a novel I wrote who actually started me on my spiritual journey. And as I followed her, I began to understand that writing was just the tip of the magic mountain. The creative act of writing, successful or not in the outside world, became a passionate journey in the discovery of me, my true voice and ultimately, my true self.

At the same time, my writing led me to teaching. I needed to be in community with other creative people, and I didn't know how to find them. There was no writing workshop in Hudson Valley town where I lived, so I started one. To my amazement, people signed up! Although I was "teaching" writing, I was passionate about the creative process, and unleashing the writer's creative passion became my calling card. This led to my week-long Writing, Creativity and Ritual Retreats held in such places as Glastonbury, England, and Florence, Tuscany.

My vision in creating a weave of writing, creativity and ritual was that each woman, by the end of the retreat, would experience her creative self free from the baggage of the Inner Critic. And I believe I succeeded. As each retreat built, it became a metaphoric dance of creativity.

For me, creativity is the key. It is a powerful path to soul. It is how I opened to and embraced Eagle when I was in my mid-forties. And it is through this opening that my career as a writer, a teacher and now a healer, a gardener on the path of spiritual growth and healing, finally emerged. My relationship to Eagle is an integral part of this journey.

Perhaps because my primary residence for much of my life has been the inner world, I embraced channeling a spirit with relative ease. This was in the late 1980s, when I was passionately opening to my spiritual journey. At first, however, channeling was a curiosity, an entertainment introduced to me by a friend.

It didn't take long for me to realize this "entertainment" was serious business. I came to look forward to and depend upon my interchanges with this loving, wise, supportive and humorously enigmatic voice inside my head. It wasn't so much a voice as it was a dialogue experienced as images that opened to words that came together to make sense.

One day, I decided I needed a name to attach to this voice, and I told him, "I sense you're there, as in a you, a single person or entity, or whoever you are. Do you have a name?"

"Eagle," came the clear response.

Trying not to appear too surprised, I asked nonchalantly, "Oh, really... interesting. Why Eagle?"

"Why Emily?" he replied, smiling.

How do I know he smiles? First of all, he smiles a lot. And when he does, I sense a certain expansiveness of feeling that takes on the image of a smile for me. It's warm, very reassuring and often vibrant with playfulness. Although Eagle can be very serious, as you will see, he loves to tease and enjoys a good laugh.

"So are you there? Really there?" I asked.

"Are you?"

That stopped me, and I decided to change the subject. "Okay, so how do we do this thing that we're doing? I mean, I like you. A lot..." At this point I felt an unexpected surge of longing. "And... I don't want you to vanish."

"I won't, Dear One. Not ever…" His words sounded like a lullaby.

When I need protection or just a good hug, I sometimes experience Eagle as a huge white bird with the soft wings that wrap around me. This was one of those times. "What do I do with you?" I asked, feeling happy but confused.

"Whatever we're doing." I felt his smile like sunshine.

"Okay," I said.

"Very much so," he replied.

"Eagle..."

"Yes?"

"It, you, we, it's part of the journey, isn't it?"

"Indeed, Dear One. And so it is. And so we are."

I never cease being grateful for having the ability to experience Eagle, who is often a channel for me to remember who I truly am and where my path lies. But I am not in constant contact with him, although he is always there when I call. Nor does he give me answers all the time. Quite often, and more and more lately, he challenges me with a bemused silence, as if to say, "You have your wings, Dear One, don't be afraid to use them. So long as you take off, you will fly, but perhaps not in the direction you're planning. But you'll be fine. Yes, indeed, you are very fine…"

Finally, I don't believe that I and others who channel are especially gifted. Rather I believe we are especially open to seeing with our inner eyes and hearing with our inner ears. We have taken that leap of faith, despite the fear of being ridiculed or challenged or thought insane, that communication with the unseen is more than possible—it is as available as the air we breath. More, it is our birthright, one that has been snatched from us in an all too linear and constricted world where the imagination and the Mystery have been toppled from their home at the epicenter of human existence.

To quote Einstein, "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."

I began this written conversation with Eagle in September 2006. I was sitting with my journal in the garden, basking in the glorious morning light. Sensing Eagle was with me, I told him I was ready to receive whatever wisdom he wanted to impart, something he is always happy to do - and I began to write. When I asked him if he thought it would be all right to post some this conversations to my new website, he was quite pleased. "Yes, yes, by all means," he said. "It is my greatest pleasure to talk to those who wish to receive."

What follows is a series of these conversations that I have transcribed just as they were given to me. You are welcome to ask Eagle questions for this dialogue, but both he and I request that questions of a personal nature be handled in private channeling sessions.