What does it mean to “spontaneously channel”? Could you clarify this term?
Nice question. I looked up "channel" in an 1889 dictionary I happen to have. It said nothing about receiving information beyond the 5 senses from unseen sources. Although "channeling" as I understand it has apparently been done for ages, is this a relatively new application of this term? What terms were used in the past? What if the current concept of 'channeling' is only one specific form of cosmic communication and the term restricts understanding of the multitude of ways people engage and participate in Awareness, Consciousness, Divine Reality and Knowledge?
An author I know (who also "studies the scriptures") told me about the Aramaic Lamsa Bible. She said the Aramaic word for prayer is
slotha which means 'setting your mind like a trap' so that you may catch the thoughts of God. So prayer could be "channeling?"
In Buddhist literature, there is an "activity" that consists of 'a calm lake on a windless night which reflects the moon without distortion, so that it glows from the lake' (apparently a state of not thinking, not petitioning, not anticipating, not doing anything except managing one's own consciousness and being receptive). Could that be "channeling?"
In a Zen story, a meditating student exclaimed, "The bottom of the bucket has broken through!" This was explained as all her mental content was expunged, her bucket/mind had become a funnel (which lets things through while holding on to nothing) and she was now available to inspired wisdom reaching her from Cosmic Mind. Is that "channeling?"
I have read one notion of what might be called "channeling" as "being a Place where Cosmic Mind reveals Itself as omniactive Love-Intelligence." It requires receptivity (setting onself as a trap) and discernment (what is one being receptive to? "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?...... by their fruits ye shall know them." [MT 7:20]). If this is so, and Love-Intelligence is both the source and the fruit, I'd guess there is a certain amount of that happening here.