Greetings, dear readers! It is rather odd for me to be typing and speaking to you as Edna Frankel, rather than as a channel in channel receiving material from the Brotherhood of Light. Yes, the word "odd" could very well define my life (chuckles). I was born in Cairo, Egypt to a middle-class Jewish family. My Dad was Romanian, blond and blue, quiet and loving. My Mom was Greek-Turkish, hard of heart, hand and temperament. Though they have both crossed over, my Dad is still with me, proudly carrying a pile of books I haven't written yet. They would have both been delighted that I not only found my niche after years of writing, but that I have also been published in French, the main language of our family.

We were evicted from Egypt in the Suez Crisis of 1956, escaped in 1958, arrived in America in 1960. I was six years old and all I could say in English was, "I like cream cheese, please." I was raised in New York City, teased all through school for my homemade clothes, had no friends, and was berated by Mom if I got an A-. I became a voracious reader because it was more fun than going out to play. Mom would hide my library books between the sheets in the linen closet to force me outside. I don't know if she ever realized that I chose small books with small print, so I could sneak them one at a time under my sweater when I went out for "air and sun."

I had no religious training, since my parents were too proud to take charity and too poor to pay synagogue dues. They were soured on religion because it had ruined their lives and torn them away from all they knew. All I knew about Judaism was that once a year we went to the house of Egyptian friends nearby in Jackson Heights, sang songs from a book I couldn't read, and drank sweet wine until everyone was red in the face. Once the hosts started talking about marrying me to their youngest son, I would escape down to the basement and hide until it was time to go home. That memory is from when I was about ten.

At the age of fourteen I had emergency surgery for appendicitis, and suffered what is now known as "anesthesia damage." They intubated me, shoved the breathing tube to the left and left it there for the whole surgery. My left jaw joint was stretched and torn, and when I awoke I couldn't open my mouth. Once home from the hospital, mom almost beat me out of frustration, since my incision was abdominal and she couldn't understand why I wouldn't eat. After two days of starving, she finally consented to blend something and feed me through a straw. Yes, my mother put me through a lot of lesson, but I was able to forgive her negativity and learned to treat people better than she did. That's one lesson I saw and optimized at a young age. Other lessons, not so much yet.
In high school I picked up "Seth Speaks," and suddenly found God in a way that made more sense than any religion. I read and reread it, just to taste the energy of "Home." The purple cover was scary, with Jane Robert's thin, skeletal face twisted in a grimace that could never be a smile. She wasted away and died young, consumed by the energies she was transmitting. I saw and learned that lesson, too, but never thought it would apply to me. From that time on, I read every metaphysical book I could find, not realizing that I was already in training for my soul's intended work.

I graduated high school at seventeen (skipped third grade) and escaped to college at Washington University in St. Louis. I had gone to the United Nations International School, since both my parents worked for the U.N. My extra credit from high school put me right into sophomore year of college and junior-year French. I graduated with two degrees at twenty (French and Psychology) and had no clue what to do with myself. St. Louis had no hold on me, New York was an asphalt jungle, my parents had retired to Florida, so I followed my boyfriend back to Philadelphia and was married by twenty-one. Lo and behold, his family was really Jewish, kosher Jewish, so I was still odd man out. I had no Jewish training, couldn't speak any Hebrew, didn't know the Friday night prayer (or any others), had no idea what to do in synagogue except stand up and sit down when everyone else did.

Once we were married and joined a reformed congregation, there was wonderful music with a big-bellied cantor, an organist, and a choir. Though I didn't know the Hebrew melodies, they touched my heart with very strong "deja-vu" that somewhere in my gut, my heart, my cells, I knew all those songs because they made me teary and weary. When the rabbi started talking, I got lost in the beautiful colors of the stained glass windows all around the back of the synagogue. When that got boring, I studied the women around me to see what clothes they were wearing. I had a lot of trouble shopping; since my mom had made all my clothes I never learned how to choose clothes for myself. Apart from that, going to synagogue was a big waste of time for me, since I already spoke to God in my head and didn't need anyone to act as a translator.

By my mid-twenties, the headaches started. My doctor said the pain was coming from my neck, gave me chiropractic adjustments and told me not to wear a heavy shoulder bag or hold the phone tucked into my shoulder and neck. I was referred from doctor to doctor; nobody could identify the source of my pain until my sister, a dentist in Michigan, took a course in sports dentistry and figured out I had severe TMJ. Then followed thousands of dollars of dentistry to adjust my bite, which only helped when I was wearing a big plastic mouth guard that I could only spit around, but not talk. Wearing that thing 24 - 7 did not endear me to my family or anyone else, and only helped the jaw pain when it was in my mouth.

After years of one doctor giving me one medication and another doctor giving me something else, I ended up with conflicting medications and severe gastritis. Finally, an acquaintance invited me to a homeopathic meeting in 1985, at which I met my first Reiki teacher. I also got a referral to a sweet little Indian doctor who weaned me of all the medications I was on. He put me through rounds of homeopathic remedies that were so intense I got cavities on the inside of my front teeth from putting the sugar pellets under my tongue. That was the old way, and I have since learned that over the tongue will not only prevent cavities, but there are actually more mucous membranes above the tongue than below. So it's better all around to put homeopathic remedies on your tongue to let them dissolve.

Where was I? Oh, 1985. Back then, the Traditional Usui Reiki required a year or more between each level, so I drove back and forth to Delaware for five years of training, then more training in Florida, until I became a Reiki Master. My family decided I was crazy to think I could radiate healing through my hands and muttered things like, "Who does she think she is, Jesus Christ?" The only way I could keep studying and justifying the money I spent was to say, "It's more Reiki training," no matter what I was studying. I let them make fun of that, while I was out learning band after band of Reiki, then Master Angelic Alignment, Reconnective Healing, and whatever else came into the area. I studied with Gregg Braden starting with the Zero Point work, went to Lee Carroll "At Home" channels every time he came east since the early 90's, attended Caroline Myss seminars and anyone else holistic that came to teach within driving distance of Philly.

By 1990, I was meditating daily because it was the only way to keep my jaw pain at a manageable level. I read the Pleaidian works, and called them in. Not much happened. I read Emmanuel, Lazaris, Claire and Mark Prophet, Solara, Sonaya Roman, and not much happened. Finally, I found "The Book of Knowledge, the Keys of Enoch" by J.J. Hurtak. It is a big heavy book, with a white leather cover and gold edging around the pages. To me, it is the "White Bible" of the New Age, so different from the black and red version of the past. I had an instant recognition of "the Brotherhood of Light," once I realized they were the same Brothers as the White Brotherhood and Great White Brotherhood. They came in so loud and clear that I cried for months at the beginning, I had been so lonely. From 1990 - 2000 I spent at least an hour a day in meditation with "my Bros," and kept asking them to teach me how they do healing work. No matter what modality I studied, it only seemed to be a part of the puzzle. No "one" modality addressed all the issues I had, or relieved my jaw pain and headaches except temporarily.

At first, the Brothers bathed me in waves and waves of energy, then sent burning lines down my arms and legs that disappeared and recurred, over and over. I kept asking them to speak more clearly, give me better understanding of what they were doing, ring a bell, something! I was amazed at how patient my Bros were, since I was a real pest. What I didn't realize back then was that my asking to connect better, to hear them better, to teach me so I could spread their knowledge, were all requests that gave them leave to prepare my body and aura for channeling. All I knew was that it took them ten years to teach me the Circle of Grace. Since I am a writer by nature, I tried and tried to write it all down in a coherent fashion. I made three attempts to write a magazine-length piece, which took a whole weekend. Sitting at the computer on Sunday afternoon, I was so frustrated that I said out loud to my empty healing room, "Hey, Bros, this is your work, you write it!"

Instantly into my head, clear as a bell, came, "Greetings, from the Brotherhood of Light..." I started furiously typing, and six hours later had a five page piece that became my first Sedona Journal article. When I re-read it I was amazed at what I had typed, it was so different from the attempts I had made on my own, in linear mode. So began my career as a writing channel in March of 2001, which really took me by surprise!

This type of behavior doesn't go over too well in a staid Jewish household, nor did talking to Jesus out loud in my office, though I pointed out that he was Jewish so what was the problem? That answer fell on deaf ears, though I found it funny. My then-husband was a good man, bright and witty, loyal and dependable, a lawyer and golfer. In other words, he was and still is entrenched in 3D. He protested that I was working for no pay, that I needed to go out and get a real job. He also thought that a shrink and some medication to make the "voices" stop was a good idea. Once the word "schizophrenia" came up, I realized that he was asking me to choose between my 28-year marriage and the Brothers. At that point, I was 49 and heartily sick of living everyone else's lives and being told what to do, no matter what was important to me.

I asked him for a divorce in 2002, but the separation took another two years. By then, I had been living against my heart for so long that I took ill. As soon as I began channeling, I began losing weight. Colitis also hit about then, which the doctor said was common in divorced women, it was an emotional thing. What he said without knowing it was that chakras one and two were very involved in creating this illness, due to the stresses in my life. Root chakra is survival, Sacral is nuclear family and close relationships. Basically, I had such bad cramps that often I could not stand up straight. Taking a shower was an exhausting event; I had to lie down afterwards for an hour in my wet robe, too tired to get dressed.

A holistic friend of mine had gone out to California to study with a new teacher, but we kept in touch. When he heard that I was down to 106 pounds he insisted that I fly out to California so his group could take care of me. Well, pulling myself together to fly across the country was a huge endeavor at the time, but I managed it, I don't know how. The trip was a blur, the rental car had bad blind spots, and I was petrified of traveling alone (an old fear, going back to my childhood). My friends took one look at me and put me to bed. For two weeks they came and went, working on me, feeding me, and then parking me in a chair, wrapped in a blanket, facing the beach and the great expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

I sat there every day, far away from my family and all that I knew. I remember the incredible sunsets, the occasional big ship going by like a tiny toy against the horizon. It seemed as if I were at the horizon of the world. I felt that I was slipping away slowly out of my body, becoming transparent and then gone, because I couldn't take my old life any more. I sat there for so long, just sitting and staring, that I created a stretched-out memory of that decisive moment. When I asked the Brothers what to do, for the first week they said, do nothing, just sit. When I asked them if I was dying, they said yes, I was. They reminded me of the "shadow termination" that Kryon had explained would affect many lightworkers. Because of our free-will zone I had to choose, in that beautiful empty beach-space that seemed to me an alternate reality, whether to stay or go.

Lucky for me, I am an Aries. Aries are pioneers, the ones out front risking their behinds before everyone else. OK, I had been a doormat-wife for 30 years, but I had it in me to change that. I guess my anger got stirred up by the second week (I had a lot of that repressed over the years!), but in my weakened state I had no clue what to do. I asked Spirit again and again, what to do? How to choose? The answer finally came back one day as I sat there. The Brothers asked me to choose between a future I could see (staying married) and a blank future that I could create if I were on my own. Those two weeks in California, one of the most beautiful places on earth, became the site of my painful, gut-wrenching resurrection. I knew that if I stayed married, I would end up dead of something within five-ten years. Yet my marriage was the only security I had ever known, and I had two children to think about. Even at 20 and 23, the divorce would really hurt them. Yes, the Bros countered, but losing their mother at an early age would hurt them more.

This decision I had to make for myself, by myself, was so heavy to bear! I had been an "enabler" all my life for those around me, so it was difficult to think of my own life coming first. Yes, the Bros said happily, a change of perspective can heal you! It was so hard to let go of the only life I had ever known for that blank life I could create, a void I would have to fill on my own. I was so spent, so tired and burned-out, how could I ever manage to create anything? When I was alone I cried a lot, amazed at the outpouring of grief coming out of my body, but I knew that I was meant to stay.

My healer friends helped me every day, Gold Bless them all, whether with body work, talking if I wished, or just sitting with me, watching the waves hit the beach. They plumped me up with good food and good company, and I owe them my life. Also, the Bros helped. Near the end of my stay, I put on shoes and put down the blanket. Walking was slow, my body thin and stiff when I bent to pick up a few sea-smoothed rocks. Since I hardly ever get to an ocean, I decided to take off my shoes, roll up my pants and walk a few steps to get my feet wet. The cool water was a lovely sensation, and my heart rose as I asked out loud, "Hey Bros, I think I'm going to live. Send me a sign!"

I stood and I stood, feeling the sand around my feet recede and return with every little wave. Finally I turned away, disappointed by the silence, only to trip over something stuck to my foot. It was a cobalt-blue balloon, ocean-torn and twisted into a length of green kelp. I plopped down on the sand and started laughing hysterically. It was the exact color of my website, the color of the Bros when they envelope me in their beautiful energies. What were the odds? I was feeling better and decided to stick around, at least through the Shift. Synchronicity was around me once again, in that little twist of kelp and plastic. I kept the torn balloon. I left the kelp behind, and with it my former life.

During the two-year separation before my divorce, I wrote my first book. Truly, writing was the only thing that kept me sane. Then I spent part of my savings on creating a website and self-publishing the book. Of course, the family thought this was my crowning idiocy, spending money on "that" rather than going out to look for a job. What they did not realize was that I had to create something tangible for my new life, and I was investing in myself instead of letting those savings sit. The work kept me busy and gave me a foundation upon which to build. Staying home allowed me to slowly heal, but when my ex moved out, I found that I still had a lot of clearing to do. When we are caught up in drama, negative or positive, we keep "looping" through it, over and over, which creates more etheric debris that needs to be cleared.

I was, for the first time in my life, completely alone, and responsible for the house, the bills, everything. Some days I just curled up in bed and cried. When I had the energy, I put on my Shrek CD (the first one) and danced around the house in a long dress, practicing my spinning. Why? Because it felt good, and there was nobody around to see me or stop me. I started eating whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, because I didn't have to cook for anyone else. Slowly, the weight came back on, but the real amazing thing was that as soon as my ex moved out, my work took off and I got very busy! Verbal channeling followed writing channeling, and within the year I was doing private sessions, writing in my spare time, and managing to cover the bills. Every time something went wrong, Spirit found a way to send me money. A word to the wise: when asking for abundance, say, "...with no harm or foul to anyone or anything."

In 2005 I traveled to Atlanta to teach, and my house got robbed. Anything with a gem in it was gone, all the jewelry from my marriage and the few pieces I had inherited from my mother. They also took my change jar and all the pain meds from the medicine cabinets. Kids, the police decided, no fingerprints, no leads, no closure. But my home insurance paid enough to carry me for three months! I would much rather have kept the jewelry, for it was irreplaceable, but so it went. The next year, somebody rear-ended my parked car while I was off visiting someone. The body damage was extensive, but oddly enough did not affect my driving. The insurance money carried me another three months, and now three sides of my car are dented. What was wrong with this picture?

I decided to have a long talk with my Bros, standing alone in the middle of my healing room where years before I had created a huge vortex pillar of light. (I created it by learning Sufi spinning, but that's another story.) I thanked the Universe for the quick abundance, but I was not comfortable with how it was coming in. The Brothers (laughing, of course) told me to add "No harm or foul to anyone or anything" to my prayers. I'm glad to say that no more thefts or car accidents have occurred. I also learned to add "or something better" to every prayer, which gives the Universe leave to bring in even more, or something else that is better than you even hoped for.

For example, I came face-to-face with my new partner six weeks after my ex moved out. It was a slam-dunk type of a thing, thank you Spirit, 6 1/2 feet tall and handsome, five years younger than me, and a computer expert. What a fit! I guess I cleared a pretty big space, huh? (Chuckles.) When he moved in a year later, he took over all the linear-life things I had been struggling with, the website, the taxes, all the red tape of functioning at the 3D level of life.

God Bless him, I am so grateful for all of my many blessings.

In 2006, a badly-adjusted night guard made my jaw became severely dislocated. It actually jammed under my skull for weeks at a time, only to release with grinding noises and sharp, shooting pains radiating from my jaw joints. My family doctor kept insisting it was muscular, that I didn't need pain medication. After a few more weeks of absolute agony and missed work, I figured out the culprit when my Brothers made that night guard disappear. Though I searched everywhere, even the trash, I never saw it again. (Yes, it is true that a channel can read for another person, yet has trouble getting personal guidance.) It was too late, though, for the added damage done to my jaw.

I had severe pain in both sides of my face, though the left side was much worse. My ears would burn and then go numb, sometimes one or both, which was a symptom I did not recognize as nerve damage. What I did know was that I couldn't help grinding my teeth at night (Bruxism, you can look it up) which caused me to wake up with my jaw aching, my ears tender, and with my neck and shoulders in knots. Each day I managed to get three to four hours of work done before the sharp shooting pains behind my left eye would kick in, which meant that another headache would hit by 3 pm. Since my biorhythms drop at that same time, I would lie down on my healing table, sink into a Circle of Grace session, and let my Brothers pull out the pain.

My sister advocated for me at a time when I couldn't think clearly, and convinced me that what I really needed was a new doctor! I got a referral from a friend to an osteopathic M.D., who quickly put it all together and labeled it nerve damage to my face, ears, neck and upper back. Isn't it amazing how far body damage can travel? I didn't realize that my back pain was part of the jaw damage. I thought (silly me) that it came from hours of sitting in front of the computer to write.

So, I got a great lesson last year in chakra pair 1 and 7 (ref. to Sedona Journal Article, "The Chakra Pairs," January 2007). About the same time that the new jaw damage hit, I slammed my left knee into a trailer hitch (not looking where I was going), and split my knee cap right down the middle. Energetically speaking, a channel who can't talk is afraid to speak their truth, and damage to the legs means that you are afraid to walk your path, or have blockages about moving forward in life. My reaction was - oh, that old stuff again! I continued to write as I worked with both my doctor and my network of healer-friends, who have all done a wonderful job of supporting my recovery.

We all have up times and down times, all of us who are in bodies. Our bodies are a miracle of biological intricacy, yet also quite fragile. Once I started to feel my aura around me, my life began to change in another way. I can't quite describe it in words, but I am in light connection all the time with the Brothers. All I do is "think up" and I get an answer. Though I have been clearing my body since 1990, there's always current stress to clear, chronic stuff to clear, and past life stuff to clear. I am still working on my jaw and my left knee. I had to put aside my spinning for awhile, since the left leg (for me) was the standing leg, and the right was the moving leg. Once again odd man out, I can only spin counterclockwise!

Even though there is still drama in my life, I have developed enough detachment to deal with it calmly. That really bugs my kids, when I don't react in anger to their anger. I have to choose, in each moment, where to put my energy. Letting them "push my buttons" doesn't work any more, because I have worked hard to disconnect them. Both my children are learning that when they calm down, Mom is glad to sit and talk. We now have better communication since the divorce, and more ease between us. They are young adults now, and we are building a new relationship based on friendship, acceptance, love and support that we could never have done in the old 3D way.

I constantly pray for my whole family to be happy. That is slowly coming back to us, in new roles, but always connected by love. I wake up each day, grateful to be alive, grateful to have my work, and I spread that rush of gratitude from my heart all around the world. And so it is, life ongoing.