I’ve been seeing a lot of conscious channelers* lately giving New Year’s predictions for…I’m not sure. Their audience? The world? The universe?

“Hear what your angels have predicted for the coming year!” they all proclaim. And that honestly didn’t make sense to me, knowing what I know about free will, and how much my guides and others’ guides with whom I’ve spoken have stressed the importance of free will.

The future, they say, is never absolute. There is no way to predict a future with any certainty, because every choice you make, every choice those around you make, alters possible futures.

Imagine you are rafting along a river. You had the intention, when you started, of rafting to a pleasant picnic spot, having lunch, and then continuing downstream until you get to a beach, where friends are waiting with a vehicle. But along the way, you see something interesting that you want to check out, and that means taking a left at the fork in the river instead of a right. You’ve now changed the future you had planned. And depending on whether you have mobile phone reception, and whether or not your phone is water-resistant, and whether or not you call your friends on the beach to let them know you’re taking a different direction, you may have altered your friends’ future too.

But, I thought, maybe I’m missing something. I never actually asked my guides if they had predictions for the coming year. And since assuming things without asking them has historically gotten me into plenty of trouble, I figured I’d ask them.

“So, any predictions for the coming year?”

“Which new year do you mean,” Dresden asked. “The Jewish new year? Chinese new year? Zoroastrian and Baha’i new year? Islamic new year?”

“Um…secular?” I said. “I think. Does it make a difference? I live in the United States, but I don’t presume that everyone reading this does.”

“Okay,” Dresden said. “Which calendar? Gregorian? Julian? Hebrew? Lunar?”

“Uh…”

“And which culture?” Dresden continued. “Which society? Please be more specific with your request.”

“The calendar,” Michael broke in, “is an inefficient method of marking time that the human mind can parse. Holidays are for your benefit, not ours.”

“Inefficient?” I said. “I’d say it works pretty well, all things considered. Except for when I double-book myself. Or when I can’t remember what day it is.”

“What do you gain by placing more significance on one day of the year than on any other day?” Michael asked.

“Just that we’re all on the same page, I guess. Except since there are numerous new years, I guess we’re really not.”

“There really is no such thing as a new year,” Dresden observed. “While incarnated, you exist within space and time, but back Home, we are outside of it. Really, there is only Here and Now.”

“I’m not sure how helpful that is,” I replied.

“And global predictions are useless on an individual level, especially when humans won’t listen,” Michael added.

“Maybe if we knew what we could look forward to—or avoid—we might make different choices,” I said.

“We can show you patterns,” Dresden said. “Especially on an individual level, we can point out what is likely to happen if you continue to follow the same patterns and make choices along those patterns.”

“What about just giving us an idea of what might happen with the 2020 US election if we follow the same patterns?”

“Those patterns are changing,” Michael said. “They’ve been changing for a while.”

“So no predictions?” I asked.

“I predict you won’t be asking us this question again,” Dresden said.

*Conscious channelers are people who channel soul guides (spirit guides, angels, animal guides, guardians, etc.) while still being conscious as they channel. While they may not remember the content of what they’ve channeled (especially if it’s for someone else), they maintain full control over their mind and body.