*Channeling - Your Questions | Maya Tevet Dayan | 6 Minutes on Friday | September 5, 2025*
A few hours after last week’s column, about how to talk to the dead, was published, I got a message from R. She used to be my daughters’ caregiver. We hadn’t spoken in at least ten years. She wrote that two weeks ago, my mother had appeared to her in a dream and delivered a message for us. It was a powerful message, and R told her she couldn’t just reach out after ten years with something like that, and asked my mother to send her a sign. If she received a sign, she would call and tell us the dream. On Friday morning, she received my column on WhatsApp, about how I talk to my mother after her death. For her, that was the sign.
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R called me and said that my mother, who had never appeared to her in a dream before, sent us all a huge hug and immense love. In addition, she had a very specific message for one family member, urgent and deeply personal. She used certain words that we struggled to understand. But when I passed the message along to that family member, he immediately recognized the expression she had used. He knew exactly what she was talking about. He took it seriously. And there it was, another successful conversation with the dead.
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All week long, your stories came pouring in. A therapist who could read her patients’ thoughts, down to names and dates. Stories of people who communicated with spirits as children but were frightened and stopped, only to return to it as adults. One reader said that on the very day she received the column, her brother died suddenly, and since then she’s been hearing him answer her questions. Stories of women who communicated with their unborn babies during pregnancy. Stories of grandmothers who came in dreams with messages that changed reality. One woman, who hadn’t been able to conceive for a decade, told of a dream where her grandmother instructed her to simply choose a name. She did—and in the dream, her grandmother said, I’m sending him to you as a gift. Nine months later, she gave birth.
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It reminded me of how I once saw my grandmother in broad daylight, on a drowsy afternoon, 3 years after she passed, and she announced that I was about to give birth. I wasn’t even pregnant, or so I thought. My grandmother was wiser than I was.
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The sheer volume of letters I received this week showed me just how many people regularly engage in mediumship or spiritual communication in their daily lives, but our society still doesn’t allow us to talk about it freely. At best, it scares others. At worst, it’s mocked. And since many people are preoccupied with what others might think of them, they shut down the channel in advance.
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But in my experience, the moment you begin to pay attention to signs, to dreams, to numbers, to answers you receive when you pose questions to someone who’s gone, life begins to flow more easily. So if you can put aside what others think of you, and instead focus on what you want to think about, I wholeheartedly recommend this path.
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In any case, I’d like to answer a few questions you sent me.
*Can anyone do it? * In my strong opinion, yes. It’s not some rare talent reserved for a chosen few, and you don’t need to be born into a family of witches. I was born into a family where, when my grandmother once said she had electricity in her hands, my grandfather told her to go wash them, and that was the end of that conversation and the witchy lineage that had barely even begun. Haha.
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*Where can you learn this?* Unfortunately, I don’t really know. I learned it in Canada, from a teacher whose name I’ve forgotten—it was so long ago. But I’m sure there are online courses and instructors here in Israel. Start asking around and searching online. The real secret is to stop being ashamed and start asking questions.
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*What else are you learning around this topic?* Personally, I’m very interested in neuroplasticity, the science of how the brain can rewire itself throughout life, forming new connections that change our reality and even our biology. For several years I studied with Dr. Nader Butto in Israel, he works with frequency medicine. More recently I’ve been learning from Dr. Joe Dispenza. He teaches about neuroplasticity and explains scientifically how our brains, when in delta waves (which are also channeling waves), can more easily activate change in reality.
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*Have you seen results from the communications you’ve done?* Yes, many times. I’ve received very precise information at crucial decision points. I consult with my dead loved ones when making both personal and professional decisions. Often, they suggest courses of action I hadn’t considered. They also help accelerate things that matter to me. Joe Dispenza teaches that synchronicities are one of the proofs that you’re aligned with the informational field of the universe. I’ve experienced some amazing ones. Once, a bottle of olive oil materialized in my kitchen in the middle of the night—I even wrote a Facebook post about it.
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Anyway, shifting to another topic, this week I listened to another interview with Dr. Tara Swart, the same neuroscientist who inspired last week’s column. This time she explained why it’s important to surround ourselves with beauty. Philosophers East and West have long debated beauty’s role, but her answer, as a brain scientist, was surprising: she said that engaging with beauty helps us feel safe and secure. It signals to the brain that we’re not in survival mode. It’s the opposite of fear, the opposite of war. We’re immersing ourselves in things that are pleasing to the eye—and that affects our nervous system, our stress levels, and our health.
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I remembered how after my mother died, I went out and bought myself beautiful things. As if they were medicine for grief and sorrow. And this year, just before the start of the school year, I took my daughters shopping—not for textbooks, but for beautiful things to put in their school bags. Because we’re all still traumatized by the missile strike we went through, it was clear to me that feeling safe was crucial. I asked them if they thought their backpacks were beautiful. And whether, when they opened them, they found beautiful things inside. So we bought things that were totally impractical for school. But completely practical for the soul: dolls, keychains, glittery wallets. Things that, whenever a big emotion took over, they could open the bag and flood their eyes with beauty.
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And it turns out, that’s scientifically proven too. Beauty heals.
And I think we’ll end here.
Because that’s just… beautiful, isn’t it?
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Wishing us all Shabbat Shalom, and that even in hardship, fear, and sorrow, we always manage to find some beauty.
*Maya Tevet Dayan*