At several points in EotW, after Rand channels, he is shown obviously doubting that it's mere luck, saying things like (paraphrasing, listened to it like 2 weeks ago) "it must be the light, it had to be" etc.
I'm wondering, did his strength in the Power allow him to be more 'attuned' to it? Is this why he was already knowing what he was doing, albeit subconsciously, and why he didn't get a block like most wilders?
Well, I think a lot of the reason he didn't develop a block had to do with his already understanding the Flame and the Void trick so he was already consciously doing the first steps of learning to Channel. This becomes really obvious as TGH progresses and he starts to actively seek the Source.
Interesting thing I read on my way to work this morning is that Rand at this stage notes that he "embraces saidin" ... another small but significant change RJ made to the OP system later is the entire concept of men must seize saidin (i.e. much more aggressive than what women do). Despite Moiraine's constantly bugging him about learning control or he would likely die, Rand was well on his way to control from before he ever started to channel thanks to Tam's meditation trick!
I agree with you that he probably had some level of knowledge that he was using the Power, but given the consequences for men channeling his mind was likely searching for other explanations.
I always just figured that Ishy was using the True Power to Travel in that scene, and that he didn't show us LTT Traveling due to either now knowing the specifics of it, or it just not being important to the scene.
This was my initial thought too, but then I remembered that we also see Moridin use the TP to Travel later in the series and it's much more like Gateways than what is described in the Prologue.
Again, I figured this was less "Healing" and more "healing". We know the corruption was not a physical illness, but a spiritual one, so I figure this "healing" was more of a purification.
It wasn't really shown again (except early in tDR), because nobody else was corrupted in the same way. (I actually have a pet theory about Shadar Logoth that, one day soon, I'm actually going to post on here, and it kind of ties into this.)
I'm sure there is more going on with Mat's "healing" too ... but given that Rand's wounds were ALSO related to Shadar Logoth and essentially ended up being bottled up in a similar way to what Moiraine did to Mat in EoTW I found it sort of odd that the Yellows and Cadsuane (who seems to know everything) wouldn't attempt this and seemed so shocked by Flinn's work.
Would love to read your SL theory!
