A Brief BIO and HOW IT ALL STARTED WITH CARRUCH 

(originally posted in 2004 -- some light editing since)

Part I

            I was born in a tiny town in Kansas, (population 300, not counting the cows).  My family moved to a booming Kansas metropolis (population 2000) and that’s where I spent the bulk of my childhood. 

            After finishing my bachelor’s degree in a really HUGE Kansas town (population 10,000), I adventured my way to Portland, Oregon at 22 – to give you an idea what a leap this was, I had never seen the ocean before this time.  I lived in Portland for 22 years, and had a pretty “normal” life (at least as normal as can be expected for a lesbian in America).  In my late twenties/early thirties I worked as a social worker/program manager for the Housing Authority of Portland for most of a decade, and later became self-employed, originally as a consultant and grant-writer for small socially-focused non-profits.            

            Tiring of all the “head-work”, I became a licensed construction contractor, and that was my main livelihood for the next twelve years.  I also did side-work as a musician and comedienne during this time (check me out in “Revolutionary Laughter” by Roz Warren).

            Not really much to write home about (Ok, ok, maybe I’m minimizing a bit).

So, people often ask me how all this stuff with Carruch began . . . 

            As is true with many people, my spiritual journey has been a winding road rather than a bolt of lightning.  My first real metaphysical interest began in 1979, when, as I was “busqueing” (playing folk music on the street) at the Portland Saturday Market.  There, I was approached by a street-person.  He wanted some money from my hat – I gave him enough for the pack of smokes he said he wanted, and went back to playing music.  When I finished my next song, I looked down and there was a much-used tarot deck splayed into my hat.  Asking the small group of people who had been listening where it came from, they pointed to the man I’d just given money to – just as he was disappearing around the corner.  I ran to the corner which he had rounded moments before -- to find no one there, on a block that had no doorways to go into.  “Well,” I thought, “Time to learn something about this!”

             I began reading about the Tarot (as you can imagine, a Tarot deck is not something you run into every day in rural Kansas), and found myself immediately engaged by the symbolism of the images, and the meanings of the cards.  As a kid, I had had a fascination with mythology, and the Tarot held many of the same icons and symbols which had held my interest then.  

              I was 23, the big city was unfolding around me, and the Tarot seemed to offer some universal reference point.  I think this was the first inkling I had that the whole world might actually be connected.  I had been raised Lutheran, and had been a religious kid (I actually wept at my confirmation), but had sensed early on that this “little” view on God was pretty incomplete (I was known for driving my pastor crazy during catechism class by asking questions like “If thou shalt not kill, why does God tell the Israelites to smite the Philistines?”).

            It was 1979 and time for me to “grow up”, so I kept my Tarot deck around, but I went to work at a “real job”, working with elderly folks. 

            In 1981, when my much-loved Grandfather died and my nephew was born 5 hours later (that you Grandpa?), I had an interesting experience upon returning to Kansas for his funeral.  One of my friends there took me to a “channeler”.  By this time, I had read “Seth Speaks” (everyone in groovy Portland was doing it), but that felt like something far away and, possibly, fictional.  This channeler was in the room with me, in Kansas, no less.  She gave me a “guide reading”, which at the time, seemed pretty confusing – listening to the tape of this reading now, I realize it was on the button (but I was a pretty dense cookie in those days).

            After that, I occasionally dabbled in things metaphysical, but only if they didn’t interfere with my “real life” (ha-ha!) – the life of work, money, and possessions.  I worked my way up the job ladder working with the old folks, played with my friends, worried about the bills, etc., etc., etc.. 

            Fast forward to 1987.  I had been working as a state employee for six years, and somehow, it just felt like my skin was on too tight.  I was encouraged by a friend (the same one who had taken me to the channel in Wichita) to see a channel he had just worked with in Portland.  I did, and once again, had an experience of slight disbelief – the guy was telling me how I’d been this big healer in Atlantis, and a shaman for the Apaches, and, and, and . . . .  now just as I’m thinking “Oh right. When was I just a scumbag in Detroit?”, he pops up spontaneously with something he could not possibly know.  From that point in the reading, I started listening a little harder.

            I decided shortly thereafter to quit my job and become self-employed.  Originally I made a “baby-step” and stayed in the field I’d been in, writing grants and doing consulting for non-profits working with elders.  However, I had some carpentry experience, and had worked with a friend on a few little construction jobs.  She was now in California, and asked me to come down and help her do a volunteer job for the “Women’s Spirituality Weekend” (nicknamed “Psychic Camp”).  They needed a "handicap ramp" built so they could do their retreat in a new space.  They couldn’t pay me, but I’d be welcome to take any of the workshops offered during the weekend.  I arrived in Modesto with my toolbelt, built the ramp with my friend, and camped among the eucalyptus trees in the midst of 300 psychic people. 

            On a whim, I attended the “Akaashic Record Reading” workshop.  It was a lark really – I had no faith that I’d be able to actually do it.  To my surprise, the amazing technique taught by the presenter (the incomparable Rae Amour, to whom I extend my eternal gratitude wherever she is) was simple, reproducible, and consistent (it’s provided the base technology for what I teach people in Channeling class to this day).  I flew home to Portland where I resumed my “normal” life, having no idea how profoundly that serendipitous weekend would resonate through my existence.

            Still, I didn’t exactly "pick up the work".  I would occasionally channel for friends, more for amusement value than anything else, and even taught a couple of people the technique, always carefully teaching them the ethics and principles that Rae had insisted were so vital to using this tool for the benefit of beings.

            In 1991, my “normal” life came apart.  My seven-year relationship ended, my residence changed, my work shifted – everything changed drastically and suddenly as we entered the 90’s.  My interest in things metaphysical had been growing since 1988, and now I was looking carefully at how to weave spiritual essence into my daily life.  I began reading voraciously, practicing various techniques, and opening myself to a much wider view of the Universe.

            One day, as I was cleaning someone’s house, I noticed that I was having a conversation in my head with someone – and it didn’t seem to be me.  Having been taught by Rae Amour that channeling required a high degree of discernment, and that it wasn’t necessarily safe, or wise, to just let anyone walk in and start talking in your head, I questioned this voice rigorously: 

“Who are you?” I asked. 

“My name is Carruch,” was the answer.  

            I continued questioning him for months, asking about his intentions, his origins, and what he wanted from me.  This process was intensely personal, mostly confined to my journaling, and although I told a few very close friends about what I was experiencing, I remember that I always did so with a bit of dread, worrying that they would think I was “crazy”.

            At that time, Carruch simply said that he wanted “to be with” me.  He encouraged me to test the information that he gave me, and see what was produced in my life if I used techniques and understandings he imparted.  

            When asked what he looked like, he indicated that I would probably think of him as an “angel” if I could see his physical form.  He told me that he “came from” the Pleiades – a constellation I knew in the sky as the “Seven Little Sisters”.   

            I had always been drawn to this constellation, even as a child – it was the first one I could pick out of the sky when doing star-gazing in girl scouts.  Naturally, at this point, I thought “I’m just making this up – projecting my own stuff onto this so-called cosmic being.”  Imagine my surprise when Carruch said “You’re from there, too.”  As in the experience with the second channeler, my internal response was, “Yeah, right”.  (Strap yourself in, there’s a lot of this kind of response from me as the story goes on.)

            I did test Carruch’s information out, despite my skepticism.

            I also found him incredibly respectful of my sovereignty – if he made a suggestion and I said “No”, he just went “OK” . . .  and that was the end of it.  (Remember, at this point, I have not channeled him directly at all – to me, he was just a voice in my head, which sometimes made me question whether he was “real” or not.)

            So, in the following months, I’m traveling in Arizona.  A friend of mine has shown me the book “ET 101 – The Cosmic Instruction Manual – An Emergency Remedial Edition” – a very humorous and important little book about how beings from other star-systems have come to do service on earth but don’t remember who they are.  

            It was funny, and fascinating.  I decided, while traveling, to visit Sedona, Arizona, and try to visit the author.  The author was pleased when I bought five of the books (they had been hard to locate), but didn’t seem interested in discussing it with me.  So, I trotted off and dropped into one of the (many) local “woo-woo” bookstores.

            This place was HUGE!  I love books and bookstores, but had a weird experience in this one.  Here were thousands of books, many of which were about the type of experiences I’d been having (I was astounded that there was this much material about all this stuff!) – and I couldn’t find a single book I wanted to buy.  I did pick up Jose Arguelles’ “The Mayan Factor” and leafed through it, but found I had a kind of second-grade response “This book is too hard for me!”  Which, indeed, at that time, it was.

            So I approach the clerk, and I say, completely on a whim, “Do you have something that’s been on the shelf for a while but hasn’t been selling, and you’ve wondered why?”

            She cocks her head for a moment and says, “Let me think . . .”

            “No, don’t think.”

            “Oh!  In that case, yes . . .”

            She guides me to a case that I haven’t looked at, pulls out a book, and puts it in my hands:  Bringers of the Dawn: Teachings from the Pleiadians, by Barbara Marciniak.

            “Hmm,” I say, “I’m supposed to be from there.”

            She shivers and says “I just hate it when that happens.”  Then she laughs.

            So, as I drive back from Sedona to Portland, winding my way through Southern California and up the coast, I am reading this book, which is blowing my mind.  For starters, it validates everything Carruch has been telling me, which I have been fastidiously recording in my journals.  AND, it gives techniques for aligning with this new energy that’s arising on the planet.

            I start practicing some of these techniques – and that’s where the real “fun” began.

HOW IT ALL STARTED WITH CARRUCH – Part II

            As I began practicing some of the techniques I was reading about, it became clear that they were raising my resonance.  Books and concepts that had been difficult for me to grasp in the past were coming more easily, my communication with Carruch became more seamless, and the things he had told me in the past were now taking on a context that helped me fit the pieces together.

            However, this resonance shift was also bringing up material within me that I had long since buried – it was as if the change in my resonance were “stirring the pond”, and any muck at the bottom was being brought up into my consciousness.  This wasn’t a “bad” thing, but it was also not very comfortable.  I began remembering childhood abuse incidents which had I had completely forgotten, dysfunctional aspects of my new partnership relationship became visible to me, and as I began to attempt to shift these dysfunctional patterns, my partner became deeply resistant and aggressive.  These revelations seemed overwhelming at the time – they seemed to come “out of the blue”, and although I had a greater understanding that my life was a series of “soul lessons”, it was an entirely new way to live, one I had no previous experience with.

            In the course of all this, my prosperity as a contractor suddenly seemed to dry up, my new relationship ended with a lot of strife, I found that I would have to move (the second time in a year), and I was dealing with an entirely forgotten and traumatic episode of my life.  I became severely depressed, ended up in a full-on nervous break-down, and was hospitalized for suicidal depression.

            Previously a stellar member of my community -- prosperous, independent, highly active and well-respected -- I suddenly found myself broke, unable to work, taking anti-depressants, and relying heavily on the kindness and support of my friends (who, literally, saved my life).

            For any of you who are interested, this is why I insist that people attend Psychic Hygiene before taking other classes with Carruch and me – I firmly believe that people do not have to crack up to raise their resonance – but I believe they need the information and techniques to handle the changes that arise when resonance shifts occur.

            Through all of this, Carruch was with me.  I vacillated between understanding that this was a soul journey I had chosen, and weeping and wailing a good deal about all the “bad luck” I was having.  Poor me.

            I spent the next six years putting my life back together.  I did intensive therapy, got off the medications (which didn’t help anyway, except that sometimes they allowed me sleep in sleepless times), moved to the country for three years and lived in a women's community outside of Portland where I reconnected with the earth, and was blessed with love and support from my friends and loved ones. 

            It wasn’t always a straight line to wholeness.  I dipped and swung and thrashed and trod the path to figuring out just who-the-hell-I-was.

            While I continued to work with Carruch internally, he slowly revealed the nature of our connection – that he was not, in fact, a separate being from me, but was my Oversoul (a term I understood from Jane Roberts' Seth materials).  He said that his greatest desire was to integrate with me completely. 

            I had some trepidation about this.  In my mind, Carruch’s arrival seemed synchronous with the enormous change in my life and my consciousness.  There were times that I “blamed” him for my breakdown.  However, I tried the concept of integration on from time to time (I was even was called “Carruch” in the community I lived with for three years  -- many of those women still refer to me as Carruch).

            In 1996, a close friend became ill with a very virulent form of breast cancer.  She was slated for several rounds of chemo-therapy, then stem-cell replacement treatment.  She asked me (and Carruch) to help.  Carruch instructed me to simply visit her at the hospital every day – to hold her feet, provide a grounding cord for her as she flew around wherever she needed to go.  I would go to the hospital, hold her feet, play the guitar and sing songs to her – she was out of the hospital after only 3 weeks (the expected hospitalization duration for stem-cell replacement therapy was 5 weeks), and she never went off solid food (which was very unusual).  The oncologists were sidling up to me and her acupuncturist, asking what we had been "doing".

            "OK, alright", I thought -- so maybe I needed to do this work.  I began channeling Carruch – not through my body, but he would speak in my head, then I would speak to the person involved – but only for special cases – only under certain circumstances.  I was a carpenter, not a channel, after all!

            As I continued on the journey of my own emotional healing, gradually piecing myself back together, my life began to take on a more "normal" pattern, although I knew that I would never again feel like a "normal" person.  I began to channel for others more, and even allowed Carruch to speak "through" me on occasion.  Originally, his transmission was stilted and slow when I channeled him in "full body" mode, but I did find that channeling in this way (directly, through full-body work) tended to minimize my "interpreting" of his information, and allowed it to flow directly to the person I was working with.

            In the Spring of 1998, I was washing my socks out in the laundry room (why do these things happen at such times?), and casually asked Carruch, in my head "What is the deal with humans?  I mean, they can be so great, but they seem so screwed up!" In response, Carruch began telling me "a story" (what is now known as "The DNA Talk").  

          Over the next three days (as I was trying to paint someone's house) the story flowed on -- I would paint, paint, paint, then I'd have to scramble down the ladder and write in my journal -- the information just kept flowing as I asked more questions.  

          It was a wild story indeed, and I was, at first incredulous.  

         As always, Carruch simply encouraged me to check it out in my "real world" understanding (in this case, through archaeological and scientific records).  I found that hjs story explained a lot of things that I had always wondered about  -- the "missing" link in human evolution, the meaning of the biblical story of the garden of Eden, even the prevalence of flying dreams.  After days of painting, writing, painting, writing, I finally said to Carruch:  

"Great story.  But what do I do with it?"

"We want you to tell the story," he replied calmly, "Once a week.  Just invite others to join you and tell the story.  Don't write a book.  Don't go on Oprah.  Don't charge money.  Just tell the story."

"Whoa!  Wait a minute!  No way!  That's a crazy story!  I've already been a crazy person.  There is no way I'm telling this story!"

 "OK", Carruch said.  

And that was the end of it.  Until . . . . 

            About four months later I received a call.  My friend, who had been in remission with her cancer, had recurred -- suddenly, and seriously.  I was told that if I wanted to see her, I should come tomorrow, as the cancer had metastasized to her brain.  I went to the hospital next morning, very shaken.  

            She had decided that she wanted no further preventative treatment, and was talking to her doctor about assisted dying (legal in Oregon).  I felt called to simply remain in presence with her through the process.  I had experienced death in many forms, in my work with the elderly, the passage of family members, the death of acquaintances or associates --  but I had never had to face the passing of a friend so young and with whom I had shared much.  

            She chose that afternoon to go home, which was unexpected, and we (her circle of friends, family, and caregivers) saw to the details.  She came home and we sat for three days in vigil beside her hospital bed, now set up in her living room.  

            I had no idea how I would respond to the experience.  

            It was the strangest gathering imaginable -- me, the lesbian trance-channeler/carpenter, my friend's lesbian partner, her by-the-book Christian parents and brother, another channel that she had been working with, a friend who was a hospice nurse, and a gathering of other devoted friends.

            These three days were full of incredible experiences, as my friend drifted at the doorway between the worlds.  Most striking was the amazing love and connection that was in the room -- everyone got their personal agendas out of the way and became present for the transition.  It was a shining example of what I had talked to Carruch about -- human beings and their potential for splendor.  When my friend passed, we all found ourselves in an almost exultant energy --our tears and laughter mixed -- it was clear that she was not gone, just changed.

            That night, as I drove home through the city, I felt more alive and aware than at any time in my entire life.  I could actually feel the people in the buildings I was driving past -- my "city filter" that kept me separate from others was suddenly gone!  I heard myself say in my head:

"I want to live this way for the rest of my life!"

And a moment later I heard myself say in my head:

"I'm gonna have to tell that crazy story."

            Within the next three months, I started doing just that:  I sat in a room once a week, told others I'd be there, and began channeling Carruch, who delivered the DNA Talk.  Soon, I was channeling for people, teaching classes, and every week, we sat to tell the story, the tradition which has now become "Open Circle" (although the "story" is now only retold a few times each year).

            I can't begin to describe all the changes that have unfolded from there.  This work is now my primary life focus.  All I had to do was become willing to tell the wacky story.  To this day, Carruch tells me things that I initially doubt, then I find these things synchronistically proven in my day-to-day existence.  

            I have to say that his batting-average has been so consistent that even I, a previous skeptic, must admit that I think his information is right-on.

           Currently, I do individual session work as a private psychic and channel, and I provide teaching and group channeling work on a volunteer basis as an ordained minister for the Society of Conscious Service.  I still occasionally play music in public, and I feel completely and truly blessed by the work I have been given the opportunity to do and the amazing people and beings I have met, and continue to meet, as I bring this work into the world.

            It's the year of the Fourth Chakra, when Carruch says everyone will be revealed, and the whole world will fall in love.  This little history is my nod to voluntary revelation.  Hope you enjoyed it.

If you would like to read more about who I am now, and what is going on in my life, please check out my personal blog.

Light to you

Carol Steinel