The Mature Soul

The largest change in perception we make during our time on the planet is when we move from the Young Soul Age to the Mature Soul Age. Fairly suddenly, we move from looking forward and outward [‘How can I get ahead?’ ‘What do I need to do to get a leg-up on the competition?’ ‘How do I keep up with the Joneses?’] to looking backward and inward [‘What’s it all about?’ ‘Why does it matter?’ ‘WHAT matters in the larger scheme of things?’ ‘In 100 years will anyone care?’]

Along with these questions comes a deepening of relationships. People are no longer seen as competitors or barriers to be overcome but as companions— other entities to share experiences with, fellow-travelers, people to work in cooperation with [rather than to compete against.]

All that said, the personality can have its own agenda [see a later post for the creation of the personality]— so it may still want things like money and/or power over others.
Having access to those skill-sets through the Soul, the personality can pull off such an approach but it won't have the Big-Push from the Soul to achieve those goals that it would have had back when the Soul was Young. Once the lessons concerning money and external power have been learned, the skills are inherent but future personalities can remain poor as church-mice and unable to have any influence whatsoever on large numbers of people for all the Soul cares.
If the personality does pull off those objectives, Mature Souls are more likely to carry them through applying a more Mature moral sense to that lifetime than a Young Soul would. [Think Robert Redford and Sally Field who obviously value their relationships and have managed to acquire major amounts of influence and money. ['You like me! You really like me!' is an obviously Mature statement.]
Likewise, the more liberal politicians may acquire external power and their approaches include such moral matters as caring for the poor, pushing educational issues, working for civil and women's rights, seeing to it that our troops can access health care or education, etc. etc. [Think Barbara Boxer, Bella Abzug, Robert and Edward Kennedy (JFK was late Young).]

Right now, though, the primary goals the Soul wants to develop are relationships, cooperation and emotions and the soul will be gung-ho to work with the personality to pick its way through that formidable maze— which is plenty to tackle during any given lifetime or set of lifetimes.
In fact, the Mature Cycle takes the longest of any Soul Age to move through for almost everyone.
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After the years of youth and early adulthood comes the time of middle age. Much of what can be said about Mature souls is what would be said about people in middle age. They are at the peak of their lives: beyond the folly of youth, yet before the decay of old age. Like people in their 40’s and 50’s, much of their experience is behind them. That is, they have subconscious access to depths of experience not present in younger souls. They constantly evaluate whether their life goals are being achieved, and what they would do differently if they could start again.

Matures have a strong tendency to be introspective. This incessant self-evaluation can lead to psychological difficulties. They are in the "mid-life crisis", so to speak, of the Maturation scale. These souls seek to comprehend everything and there is very little that escapes their scrutiny.

One place for Mature souls to seek out knowledge is in such places as libraries and colleges. Mature souls are great believers in education. They go to school for different reasons than Young souls do. Young souls get educated to further their careers. Most Mature souls, on the other hand, seek knowledge for its own sake. They truly want to understand.
They often pursue knowledge on their own, reading widely or taking night-school classes on whatever subject is of interest to them. They often do this rather than seeking a formal degree. The courses that Mature souls take are less likely to further their occupations and more likely to be for personal improvement. Mature souls care more about what they are learning than about the grades they make or how it can further their status or financial goals.

Mature souls are in a searching mode all their lives. Personal fulfillment is their constant quest and they never quite achieve it to their own satisfaction. Mature souls are complex — the most complex of the entire cycle. There is so much going on in their psyches other people cannot fathom it and even they themselves do not fully understand what is going on. The Mature soul Age is the most challenging of the Ages. Mature souls are agitated, sensitive, and touchy.

Another phenomenon of this age level is that of angst. Soap operas as shown on TV may be the products of Young Souls but Mature Souls are living them. The fact that their relationships matter deeply to them brings with it the ability to be hurt by the people they are relating to—this can take an enormous toll on a person.

Since Mature souls are relatively evolved in their consciousness, their behavior is, generally, very ethical. They are working on the finer points of human relationships. They value the feelings and opinions of other people. It hurts them when others do not think well of them. Even so, they can be somewhat nonconformist and even a little bit rebellious in their natures.

As a result of all of the above, Mature Souls are the most likely to seek psychological counseling. They truly want to grapple with their problems, their emotions, their relationships. Likewise, the majority of psychologists are themselves Mature Souls — and they probably have a lot of psychological churning that they themselves are working through. They want to understand the significance of everything, and why people do what they do.

Earlier Soul Ages just aren’t into this mindset: Infants are too busy simply surviving to bother. Babies can’t stand the idea that they could, possibly, be wrong about something; the stigma is too great for them to handle.Youngs are both too busy and perceive such a need as a ‘sign of weakness.’ For the first time, Mature Souls begin to recognize the true strength self-examination requires and throw themselves into such endeavors.

The 1960’s and 1970’s had a mature flavor about them as pop psychology took off in the US and Europe. Recently it has waned but, I predict, it’s still being practiced at a quieter level and will return to public awareness in the near future. Meanwhile, the stigma is steadily shrinking as more and more people seek to understand their own inner feelings more fully.
If their difficulties cannot be dealt with through counseling, people may turn to alcoholism or other drug abuse as a form of self-medication. This method of anesthesia is more prevalent in this Soul Age than any other. Mature souls will not often allow themselves to do physical harm to other people, like younger souls might, so they turn their frustrations concerning others upon themselves.
Young Souls supply the drugs [both legal and illegal] making heaps of money [and karma] in the process. Not exclusively, but to a great degree, Mature Souls consume them.

More than any other Age, Mature Souls care — care about the problems of the planet and want to correct them, care about other people and want to help them, care about their own well-being and want to improve it. Mature Souls are open to all experiences, and are prone to try pragmatic solutions to their difficulties, rather than using canned Establishment (Young soul) methods. So, while the few Young Souls who recognize an emotional problem may ask a psychiatrist for a pill, the Mature Soul will, more likely, seek out a ‘talking cure’—most likely one of a psychodynamic nature. Gestalt Therapy or Psychodrama are more likely choices than Behavioral Therapy would be.

Though relationships, cooperation, knowledge and emotions are their primary concerns, Mature souls do work for a living. However, they don’t approach their careers with the gusto of a Young soul. There is not the willingness to put everything on the line and rise to the top. When Mature Souls do become employers, they tend to regard the well-being of the individual as more important than the well-being of the company.
Not for them the dodge Young Souls use of 'protecting the share holder' at the expense of the workers. Matures attempt to find creative solutions that can protect both groups and will, if they find it necessary to choose, most likely side with the workers.

Think about the CEO of the fleece company who, when the corporation faced financial difficulties, vowed not to lay off any employees and to forgo his own salary in order to pull the company through its slump. Though I don’t know his soul age, I doubt you would find a Young Soul taking that approach.
Another Mature approach is that of some of the software companies that have made the news by offering on-site child care, gymnasia, flex-time and zone-out time for creative thinking and accepting t-shirts and jeans as daily office attire.

Mature Souls care deeply about the state of the planet. The current jump in awareness concerning global warming, air and water pollution, nuclear waste, the need for alternative energy sources and the willingness to fund efforts to solve the problems related to them are all Mature Soul matters.

Mature souls dislike disruption and disturbance of the natural rhythm of things.
Mature souls are psychologically attuned to other people enough that they empathically experience other people as they experience themselves. As a result of this intuitive perception, Mature souls are choosy about whom they deal with. They are easily upset by the "vibrations" of people that they are not in harmony with. If there are uncomfortable feelings with another, they will likely leave if they do not feel some obligation to stay.
Mature souls need a sanctuary wherein to shield themselves in times of psychological stress. It might be a calming place that they withdraw to, or to the companionship and comfort of an intimate friend.

There is often involvement in metaphysical endeavor, practice, or knowledge. 'Metaphysical,' in this case, means anything from psychology to religion to the psychic.

In contrast to Young souls who tend to regard their career as paramount, Mature souls often value their relationships as the most important thing in their lives. They may find innovative ways to combine the two as they build their lives around social contacts and friends who have similar interests.
Family members, in the sense of blood relatives, which are very important to the three younger soul Ages, are not as important to Mature souls as good companions are.
Mature souls seek mates not for status as Young souls often do, but for love. Mature souls want someone to whom they can relate meaningfully, rather than just someone to fulfill the stereotypical role of a mate ordained by Young-Soul society. A good place for Mature Souls to meet others for companionship or mating is in school or at the library. Second choice would be informal and loosely organized singles groups where they can get to know others as friends before they become lovers. The bar scene does not appeal to them.

Mature Souls have a highly developed sense of humor and they laugh easily. The type of humor they prefer is "situation comedy" involving social relationships. They like to tease and joke with their friends and their teasing is rarely hostile or denigrating like it can be with Young Souls.

The acting profession is full of both Young and Mature Souls [Pat Boone is the only Baby Soul in show business I’ve ever heard of.] Mature Souls [and the few Olds you’ll find there] are noted for their long marriages and their generally positive relationships with their kids. Both will likely own ‘get-away’ ranches in Idaho or cabins in the Adirondacks while the Youngs are making the rounds in Hollywood and New York to stay near the glitz and the cameras.
Both actors and directors of the Mature Soul age will hold out for the movies and plays that deliver a message rather than the action or adventure types more likely to be produced by Young Souls. Likewise, the audiences for these shows will be, primarily, Mature and Old Souls.

In terms of religion, if the Mature Souls are so inclined, they prefer a liberal church rather than the mainstream churches. If they go for organized religion at all, it is in the undogmatic and quiet faiths such as Unitarianism, Unity and Quaker.
At the extreme, they may explore a Wicca viewpoint or develop a private seaside or forest ritual rather than follow any professed religion, per se.
Mature souls have a strong sense of morality and ethics, but it is of the situational ethics and moral relativism variety. This approach disgusts younger souls, particularly Baby Souls who don’t perceive it as morality at all.
The Mature soul is the most likely to profess Atheism as a viewpoint. Younger souls are likely to recoil in horror because they can't understand how a person can be moral without having a deity to enforce that morality.

In political philosophy, the Mature soul is liberal — "left-wing" — perhaps even to the point of being socialistic. The idealistic hippie era of the 1960's had a Mature Soul flavor about it. Often they lived in communes or even further off the radar in a migratory lifestyle in brightly painted buses or on fairly primitive farms. They withdrew from the mainstream.
The souls who went into the Hippie movement for the short term then returned to the mainstream with a vengeance becoming Yuppies were, most likely, Young Souls going through a temporary rebellious phase. They were the ones that earned the Baby Boomers such labels as the ‘Me Generation’ and were labeled as selfish by the MSM.
The Souls who remained within the original Hippie mindset were, almost without exception, Mature and Old Souls. Babies were never drawn to it as it departed too far from the Established Rules for them to handle. And the extremely rare infant who became involved were thrown off the deep end by the absence of overt rules [think Charles Manson.]

Mature souls are reluctant to fight in wars because they regard all of humankind as their brethren. For this reason they also tend to be pacifistic — though not in a militant way like a Young soul might be. During the Vietnam war, as a general rule, Matures held candle-light vigils while the Youngs joined organizations like the SDS or the Minutemen.

Mature souls are the avant-garde of society. It is they who make the genuinely novel contributions to the advancement of the culture they are living in. They are the inspired visionaries. Whatever field of endeavor you might name — whether scientific, religious, political, technological, artistic, philosophical, humanitarian, or economic — it is the Mature souls who are in the forefront, at the leading edge, on the frontiers.

Mature souls often campaign for reforms in society. They form the core of the environmental movement, the peace movement, the women’s movement, the civil rights movement, the anti-nuclear energy movement, the ban-the- bomb movement, and other such improve-the-world endeavors. They are beyond the Young soul in perception of the value of the spiritual aspects of life, but they are nevertheless entangled with the affairs of the world to such an extent that they think the planet is worth the trouble of saving.

Even though they love freedom, Matures usually prefer to submit to domination rather than fight for that freedom. A clear example of this can be seen in Russia today. The Mature souls who form the majority of the populace submit to the domineering Young souls who control the government.
Likewise, the Mature Black population of South Africa submitted for years to the Young Whites who led the government and kept the majority Black population down until the world-at-large stepped in and put an end to Apartheid.
In the US, think of Ben Franklin who, until he was forced by Parliament to change his allegiance, was a Loyalist. After he reluctantly switched sides, he became such a fervent Rebel he lost his son as a result. That loss haunted him for the rest of his life.

In fact, I’ve read some interesting statistics:
In the US, most Blacks were Mature Souls before the Major Tip-Over noted below.*
Likewise, in South Africa, most of the Black population was Mature before the majority of the planet made the move while most of the White population has, traditionally, been Young. At least this was so during the ending of the Apartheid Era [which was the time I read that statistic]. That was why that horrible experience ended as well as it did. The Mature Black population was, generally, willing to listen when the Old-Souled Tutu counseled against revenge. That willingness kept the situation from turning into a bloodbath.
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*Very recently [about 1986, I think it was] the planet as a whole tipped over from a majority of souls living in the Young Soul Awareness Level to the Mature Soul Awareness Level. On the positive side, more people are becoming aware of the sad state of the planet and are willing to do something about it. On the negative side, more people are becoming [per my perception, anyway] busy bodies who believe they know what is best for everyone else. This isn’t an entirely new phenomenon—Babies and Youngs engage in it too, though for different reasons.
Babies crave safety-in-numbers—the more people there are who agree with me, the more likely it is that I’m RIGHT.
Youngs [at least among humans and in a Capitalistic society] want to create lots of consumers—and the way to do that is by telling people what they SHOULD want—then supplying them with it.
On what I consider to be a more negative side of the Mature mindset, some Matures want to tell people what they should do ‘for their own good.’ So, not only are recycling, littering, second-hand smoke, stopping the pollution of the planet, saving the rain forest, etc. important for the planet’s sake—but people should be involved in these endeavors because it’s the moral thing to do. Of such perceptions are Crusades created—and the results may not be what we had hoped for. [Tree-spiking is an extreme example of this mind-set. That group may be Young Souls—though I would expect Youngs to be more interested in clear-cutting the forest—not saving it. Which is why I suspect Earth-Firster’s to be, primarily, Matures hell-bent on saving the planet no matter the cost.]

Next up: The Old Soul