All that Is

AtI

2009-07-07T11:59:00.001-04:00

Imagine a universe that is breathtakingly beautiful.
Imagine a universe that is so complex that the human mind cannot begin to comprehend it.
Imagine a universe that is so simple that it and everything in it is composed entirely of vibrating strings.
Imagine a universe that is surrounded by a Void so all-encompassing, so all-pervasive that no-thing, not even space or time exists.
Imagine that the universe is expanding INTO that Void and, by so doing, is bringing into being all that is wondrous, amazing and beautiful in the universe within what had once been the Void.
Imagine an infinite number of universes—similar to ours and not so.

Then, know this:
Whatever you can comprehend, whatever you can understand, whatever you can imagine about this universe and all those others, the All that Is has imagined more.

2009-07-06T18:52:00.003-04:00

Just a note about the blog's setup:
Some months ago, I arranged things here so it reads from front to back - with the simpler concepts on top and the deeper stuff further in. So you'll find that the blog reads more like a book than most do.

I'm not posting much new material at the moment [I just ordered some new books so maybe I'll be inspired once they arrive and get delved into - we'll see]. If/when I do, I usually post the new stuff on top and leave it there for a week or so then place it where it seems, to me, to fit into the overall narrative.

So if you read the blog from top to bottom it should make sense - at least I hope it does. :)
Two Crows

It happened AGAIN!

2009-07-05T12:51:00.000-04:00

Blogger booted me off. Again.
At least that got me off the dime and I've finally finished transferring everything I want to keep over to WordPress.
So - again - here's the link:
http://twocrows1023.wordpress.com/
Please drop by.
Hopefully, that site will be more stable and you can continue without further interruption.

The Seven Planes of Existence

2009-07-04T11:58:00.019-04:00

What follows is my interpretation of what I’ve read from several sources—chief among them being The Michael teachings [see the sidebar for several books in the series.]

The Tao or All that Is has divided itself into layers of existence. According to Michael, Cayce, Seth and others, there are 7 Planes:
The Ordinal Planes
1] The Physical Plane
On the Physical Plane we experience separateness in all its variety. We descend into the belief system that we are separate from one another, from animals, from rocks, from plants, from the table where I’m typing this, even from the All that Is itself.

Before we come to the planet for the first time, we spend time and energy checking out several planets. We can cohabit within several species of plants and animals—even rocks and mineral formations.
In fact, one reason for the widespread beliefs among virtually all primitive peoples regarding sprites, elves, ogres, leprechauns, fairies, totems, furies, various gods, etc. etc. etc. is a recognition, at a deep level, of the presence of these pre-infant souls investigating the planet. These new souls also help the planet rejuvenate itself and recover from problems brought about by the beings already inhabiting it.

Just about now, however, new souls are looking elsewhere for planets to move onto.
About the time a planet moves into the Mature Soul Level, most new souls lose interest in it. It’s not much fun playing catch-up when almost everyone on the planet is well ahead of you. It’s also no fun at all to get left holding the bag when the planet has been pretty well screwed up before you even got here. Someone is going to have to undertake a massive cleanup if the planet is going to survive—and the infants don’t see why they should have to do the cleanup if they didn’t participate in the mess-up. And, who can blame them?
The good news [for the planet] is that this will accelerate the growth of the population as the average soul age increases more rapidly as newer souls don't continue arriving. This means that the souls that are here will become more and more willing to accept responsibility for things like the environment generally, global warming, pollution, etc.
And here’s the bad news: since those very young souls aren’t here checking us out and, meanwhile, helping with rejuvenation and recovery behind the scenes, that leaves the rest of us on our own when it comes to cleaning up the place. Ruh-roh.

Anyhow, we’re here, we’re all pretty familiar with the physical plane already.
So, I’ll move on.

2] The Astral Plane
We go to the Lower Astral Plane every night when we’re dreaming. There we can confer with our Spirit Guides—friends we left behind when we entered this lifetime. We can also meet friends who are on-planet and are engaged in dreams of their own. All of these folks help us make sense of any knotty problems we’re currently dealing with in our lives in progress. And, of course, we return the favor to those who are currently earth-bound like us.
Those of us who learn how to travel out of our bodies also land on the Lower Astral Plane.

After we die, we return to the Lower Astral and hang out with friends. We assess our most previous life along with numerous earlier lives examining patterns we’ve developed and deciding if we want to continue down those paths or reassess and choose other, possibly more productive, methods of progress.
Those of us who are more developed might take on a job of some sort—helping younger souls reorient to the life between incarnations, say. Or working with those souls who are in something I’ve heard called The Intensive Care Unit. This is an area reserved for folks who have committed acts that are deeply evil. They need ‘time’ to recognize what they’ve done, assess their actions, comprehend the fact that they’re going to have to go through karmic reckonings, etc. Though I haven’t read that this is so, I would imagine that these folks might fall into despair and need help to get through it. After all, you can’t commit suicide after you’re dead. You have to face up to your actions. So, older souls work to help them do that.
I’m sure there are other jobs I’ve not heard of that souls engage in, as well.

After we’ve cycled off the planet we move on to the Mid-astral Plane. Here we hang out again waiting for the last souls of our Entity [a loose grouping of souls who split off from the All that Is at about the same ‘time’ (sorry about the references to time, here, but I don’t know how else to talk about this stuff. Please bear with me.)]

Our Essence Twin is probably cycling off at about the same ‘time’ and, soon after we both arrive at the Mid-astral, we fuse our two souls together. We don’t lose our separate egos yet, we’re each aware of our selves—but we’re also fully aware of our Twin’s being and of its experiences on the planet and on the astral plane during the time we’ve been separated.
When all the souls from the Entity arrive, we move to the Higher Astral Plane and continue fusing. Again we don’t lose our selves, but we do become aware of all the experiences of these entities.
At about this time, we’ve fused with about 1000 souls [what Michael calls ‘fragments’].
Then we move on to the next Plane.

3] The Causal Plane
Here we teach souls on the Astral Plane and, as mentioned in the post on Off World Soul Ages, at some point we send a representative back to the planet we left behind. There, the representative soul teaches what it has learned. It may lead a nation out of bondage as Mohandas Gandhi did—or it may act as a neighborhood organizer—or it may work to enable a group of people to assert its rights.
During a transition period like the planet is traversing now, many Causal Plane representatives come back to prepare the way for the Infinite Soul.
But, every Causal Entity sends at least one representative to its previous planet. So there are at least a few present on the planet at any given time.

Unlike the Infinite Soul manifestation, this Transcendental Soul isn’t self-aware. It doesn’t know that it is different from the other souls on the planet. It lives its entire life within the body, doesn’t perform miracles [other than those similar to the ones Gandhi was able to pull off when he convinced Hindus and Muslims to work together for their common good. Even those, though, were a major struggle—depending as they did on the good will of human beings.]

The Causal Plane is the level Michael is at now. It is at this point that we begin letting go of our egos.
In all the books, Michael is referred to as ‘they’. This is because they haven’t yet shed their egos enough to begin to think of themselves as a singular being. I find it simpler, here, to refer to Michael as ‘it’—but that’s a matter of my preference and isn’t the norm in any of the books I’ve read.

At the Higher Causal, we connect with one other entity [an entity generally consists of about 1000 souls or fragments] and begin the process of fusing. Often this is an entity with which we share a lot of Essence Twins. As this fusion begins becoming complete, we start moving toward the Mental Plane.

Michael apparently hasn't begun this process yet. First, as I said above, it hasn't yet begun thinking of itself in the singular. Also, I've read that Michael consists of about 1000 fragments. So it hasn't yet begun fusing with its twin entity.

The Neutral Plane
4] The Akashic Record
It is at the Causal Plane that we first begin to interact with the Akashic Record. Maybe that’s why teachers like Gandhi, Seth and Michael teach from the Causal—after they have made contact with the knowledge it contains.

We don’t exist on this level. Instead it is essentially a library that contains all the information in the universe. It neutrally observes all that has gone on within the universe from its inception to its completion. When the universe has completed its course and is ready to spin off a baby universe, it gives a copy of this record to the new universe.
This may not apply this time though. Michael says we’ve decided not to play the physical game again—at least for the time being. But, maybe the Akashic Record will still be needed for whatever the next game will be. Who knows?

Scholars [see the posts on the soul’s Roles] dump their accumulated knowledge into the Record when they cycle off their respective planets. Other souls or entities may do this as well if they’ve a mind to, I don’t know.

The Cardinal Planes
5] The Mental Plane
On the Mental Plane you have direct intellectual contact with the All that Is. You keep on combining with other essences and entities. At this level you grasp, at an intellectual level, the infinite universe and the All.
Lao Tsu taught from the Mental Plane of Existence.

6] The Messianic Plane
On the Messianic Plane you experience agape [complete, total love for all beings]. At this level you comprehend the oneness of all and recognize that love for the other is, in fact, love for oneself. You have direct emotional contact with the All that Is and grasp, at an emotional level, the Infinite.
You continue blending until you have enfolded about 100,000 souls.
The Christ Soul taught from the Messianic Plane of Existence.

7] The Buddhaic Plane

At the lower levels of the Buddhaic Plane, you merge with all other Essences, Entities and Cadres of sentient beings. As you rise higher you join with non-sentient beings—animals, plants, minerals, planets, suns, the space between all the matter in the universe. Here, you comprehend at the instinctive level, the infinity of the All that Is and, in the final levels, you combine with the total consciousness of the All that Is and your journey is complete.
The Buddha Soul taught from the Buddhaic Plane of Existence.

You may remain within the All that Is for as long as you wish [although here, again, language fails as you are no longer ‘you’ but are one with the Infinite]. At any time, any fragment may splinter off and begin a new journey. Or, any fragment may choose to remain within the Whole and never leave again.
If a fragment does choose to cast itself off and make the circle again it will, almost without exception, choose a new Role, a different male/female energy, a different frequency, a new Essence Twin, go to a different planet from the last time [or choose not to take the physical route and remain separate from the universe], and on and on. In this way, we continuously bring back a wide variety of experiences adding breadth and depth to the Whole.

Michael says that, on average, the souls on this planet are experiencing their third walk-about.
xxx
The entire universe, according to Michael, is based on the number 7. It also says that the number 3 is a significant number. That is why, so says Michael, people empower those two numbers. We instinctively know that they are important.
I’ve begun to wonder, lately, if this has anything to do with the discovery, by Einstein, of 11 dimensions in the universe. 7 + 4 [3 spatial + time] = 11.
Just wondering along.

Ideas of the Mind

2009-07-01T23:59:00.002-04:00

Back in the 1960’s, Bill Vaughn, a humorist with the Kansas City Star, published a collection of the pieces he had written for the paper over the years. The first essay was simply one of his compiled pieces. The second was entitled: ‘On Second Thought: An Introduction.’

All this is to say that I think I missed a spot. So, without further adieu—The Genesis Story—or, if you prefer, The Big Bang from the Spiritual Perspective:

This came from the Seth Material. If memory serves, the book is, ‘Seth Speaks.’
The All that Is is, so far as it knows, the only one of its kind. It continues to hunt around to see if it can locate any others but, so far, hasn’t found any [I sometimes speculate about that and wonder if it is a lonely existence.]

Before the advent of other beings [of which we are one form] the All that Is, being alone, began to dream. By their nature, the dreams of the All that Is began to move toward conscious existence. Over time the dreams began to become aware that they were actually simply dreams and began to clamor to exist in their own rights. The All that Is had to find a way to let go of its creations or go mad. The fate of any future existence hung in the balance as the All that Is grappled with this dilemma. If it had failed it might have created a universe that had no laws— that was, by its very nature, Chaos.

It succeeded, however, and a Big Bang occurred on the metaphysical level which was manifested on the physical level, as well [and who knows how many other levels?] In that instant every particle, every wave, every bit of energy—in short—every bit of string in the universe was created. In fact, the 11 physical dimensions and the 7 levels of the All that Is also sprang into existence.

According to Michael, our particular physical universe is in its 3rd incarnation at this point and the strings [which might coincide with what Michael calls the 'fragments' (in other words, us, the 'All' in the All that Is)] within it don’t plan to go for number 4. Maybe previous incarnations did result in Big Crunches followed by Big Bangs numbers 2 and 3, I don't know.
This may account for the fact that the quantum physicists claim that there are stars within this universe that are older than the universe itself. And, maybe, that’s why they say the Big Crunch won’t happen [this time around] but what I call the Big Drift will be the fate of this universe.
Again, according to Michael there are whole other adventures out there waiting to be discovered and we've decided to stop playing with the physical—at least for the time being.
**sigh** There I go using language loosely again. But how do you talk about this stuff without using words like 'time', anyway?
xxx
So, what's your take on all of this? What are your thoughts on Seth's explanation of the Big Beginning?

The All in All that Is

2009-06-29T23:58:00.000-04:00

4/23/08
God is sitting in Heaven when a scientist says to Him, "Lord, we don't need you anymore. Science has finally figured out a way to create life out of nothing. In other words, we can now do what you did 'in the beginning.'"
"Oh, is that so? Tell me..." replies God.

"Well, " says the scientist, "we can take dirt and form it into the likeness of You and breathe life into it, thus creating man."

"Well, that's interesting. Show Me. "

So the scientist bends down to the earth and starts to mold the soil.

"Oh no, no, no. . ." interrupts God. "Get your own dirt. . . ."
xxx
Down through history, we humans have been very Human-centric.
Every culture from primitive times even until the present has perceived itself as central to the Universe and, somehow, more favored in the eyes of its Deity[ies] than all other cultures.
This is evidenced by the fact that those cultures we’ve been able to check on, at least, had a word that meant, ‘People’ and the same word meant their own personal tribe. Many, if not all, of those same tribes had another word that meant ‘Other’ and, almost universally, that word translated as something akin to ‘Barbarian’ or ‘Savage.’
Well into recorded history, it was a criminal offense in some cultures to suggest that humans weren’t the center of everything.

Little by little, however, science has shown us that that is, in fact, not the case. It turns out that we live on a small rock circling a nondescript sun in one arm of a not especially distinguished galaxy.
Our only claim to fame is that we are at the center of the Universe. But, since the universe is expanding in all directions at once, even that’s not special—every point in the universe is the center.
Heck, it even seems as if there’re an infinity of universes, fergoshsakes!

Even today, though, read most natural history books—watch almost any nature program on T.V.—and you will still find allusions to the idea that humans are at the top of the heap among all the species on the planet. It is assumed that that is our rightful place.

Now, enter the story of the All that Is that dreamed us into existence. It’s tempting, when we envision the dreaming All that Is whose dreams are becoming self-aware, to assume that ‘self-aware’ means what we think of when we apply it to ourselves. It doesn’t.
As the story above illustrates—the All that Is dreamed dirt into existence at the same nano-second that it dreamed us. Not only dirt. Hydrogen, too. And helium. And protein. And DNA. And bacteria. And termites. And dogs and cats and fish and birds and . . . . but you get my point.
Of course, we can argue, those things didn’t exist in that first nano-second. But, then, neither did we. At least not in the sense of fully-fashioned-entities-made-in-the-image-of-God. The potential was there but the ‘finished product’ had yet to emerge. Or, more accurately, our bodies didn’t exist then. We [along with every other particle and wave and string] in the universe were there all along waiting for the universe to settle into a level that could support life/reality as we know it. In fact, we were helping that to happen. Not only the human-potential was helping the potential-that-was-the-universe during its plasma phase right on down to this nano-second [and beyond] every possible creation was there right alongside us helping to create the NOW.
I have to admit, I like this story better than the Six Day Story, myself. But that’s just me. Other people’s reality is the one about Six Days—literally. And their reality is every bit as valid as mine.
After all—What do we know, for sure, anyway?

It’s About Time—

2009-06-26T23:57:00.002-04:00

As I said in the 1st post, the quantum physicists and astronomers tell us that the void outside the universe is so complete it doesn’t even contain space/time. This is a concept that I simply cannot wrap my mind around—so I have to just take their word for it. [We’re going to be running into a lot of those as this blog progresses, I imagine.]

Closer to home, there’s another instance when time ceases to exist:
According to Einstein, the faster we move in space, the slower time goes. So, it would seem to follow that the slower we move in space, the faster time speeds up, right?
So, what would happen if we could literally step off the planet and stop moving altogether? If Einstein is right, I would guess, all time would flash by in an instant.
According to Seth [see below], that is precisely what is happening: All space/time is occurring simultaneously—it has simply been slowed down so we perceive the universe as if time exists within it and events seem to follow each other in orderly progression.
xxx
The metaphysical teachings that I’ve studied in the most depth [The Michael Teachings and The Seth Material] tell us that the Astral Plane [aka Heaven] exists all around us—we simply can’t, as a rule, perceive it.
If they explain WHY this is so, I haven’t found that explanation in any of the books I’ve read yet—and I freely admit there’s lots and lots of stuff out there that I haven’t gotten around to—with more being written all the time.
So, here’s my latest theory:
Maybe the Astral Plane [and the 5 other planes beyond it] not being a physical plane, doesn't move in space. If that is the case, we could be sitting in the same chair occupied by Aunt Tillie, who came by for a visit this afternoon, and we would have no way of knowing it because Aunt Tillie is outside of time as we perceive it.

My theory doesn’t explain why, as Seth has implied and as has been outlined in yet another book [Life After Life by Raymond Moody], people who have died can see and hear us. They have even told Moody of feeling frustrated when they couldn’t comfort their loved ones or explain to the medical personnel that there was no need to keep trying to revive their bodies—they were doing just fine, thankyouverymuch.
Moody, who interviewed people who had had near-death experiences, gave the clearest account of this of any source I’ve read. The folks he spoke with hadn’t crossed completely over to the Astral yet [or they wouldn’t have come back.]
Maybe having one foot in each camp, so to speak, makes such perception easier for them. I don’t know.
xxx
Interestingly, I had already had the beginnings of the idea in my head for this post before I got word that my mom was dying—the morning of the day the phone call came, as a matter of fact.
I might just shrug that off as coincidence if my cousin hadn’t told me, later, that my mom’s sister had been saying all week that she was sure that, ‘Something is the matter with Rie [my mom].’
And that gets me to wondering: Was she telling us she was packing her bags for the trip? And maybe already getting a glimpse of what lay ahead?
xxx
All that said—
What do you all think? What ideas do you have about Heaven or the Astral or whatever you choose to call it? And, what thoughts do you have about time and space, while you’re at it?

A Book List

2009-06-23T23:57:00.001-04:00

Mauigirl gave me the idea to post a list of books on the sidebar that I'll be drawing from as things go on.
I listed them in approximate chronological order as I found em and/or in order of difficulty. For instance, the Seth Series was harder [for me] to comprehend than the Michael Teachings have been -- so they're listed later although I found them first.

I know there are more around here somewhere, too. As I find those, I'll add to the list, add authors' names, etc.

Why I Was Ready

2009-06-20T23:56:00.001-04:00

When I was a small child in a Southern Baptist church in Louisiana, my Sunday School teacher told me, with a perfectly straight face, that Catholics didn’t go to Heaven. She never could explain why. I don’t think she even tried.

My teachers taught me, too, that hell was the fate of anyone who didn’t believe ‘Jesus Christ’ was the Son of God. But, what about people in jungles and out-backs who’d never heard of Jesus? Would they go to hell? How could a God who loved 'His' children consign people to hell in such a scenario?

Meanwhile, back to those Catholics: I had very close friends who were Catholic and I knew they deeply believed in the Divinity of Jesus. So why would they go to hell?

And, if Jesus was the “Son of God” what about me? Didn’t God make me, too?

My questions met with blank stares most of the time—along with a change of subject and a steadily decreasing tendency to call on me in class.

Fairly quickly [while still in elementary school] I solved the Catholic Problem: I recognized the blatant bigotry for what it was and dismissed it.

Then, some years later, I learned that the Southern Baptist Convention splintered off from the American Baptist Church because of a fundamental difference of opinion. The Southern Baptists stated that the practice of slavery was ok. Bringing people to our shores against their wills—tearing families apart, subjecting people to all the cruel practices inherent in the institution, the whole nine yards—were just fine because the 'enlightened Americans' were teaching these ‘savages’ about Christianity and how much God loved them.
And these people had a problem with Catholics?

Still later, I learned other historical facts that did not sit well with me either: The Witch Hunts of Medieval Europe. The Inquisitions that stretched well into the Renaissance Period. The forced conversion of the the Jews to Christianity. The Pogroms. And on and on. Oops.

So, on the fateful day when, wandering around a used bookstore, I picked up a book by Ruth Montgomery [A Search for the Truth] that spoke of a different way of looking at God & Stuff—I was enthralled. I couldn’t put it down.
Here, at last, I could see a way out of the quandary I still carried around with me about the fates of people who didn’t believe in Jesus because they’d never heard of Him. Reincarnation solved that problem neatly, for me. People had more than one chance! Salvation was no longer a case of geography and luck.

Karma explained most if not all of the cruelty I saw down through history as well as all around me in the present day. Grace was present in these concepts, too.
It turns out that being truly sorry about things we’ve done in the past can, in certain circumstances, change the way karma works. It’s complicated and I’m not sure I understand all the dynamics. That’s one of those things that’s simmering on my back burner—maybe I’ll go back and stir that pot one day.

This one example I do understand: Suppose you and I meet in an alley. There is no karma between us, no tie of any kind, but suddenly I get a wild notion and I slice your face open. Karma calls for you to meet me in an alley and give me the slice-&-dice in your turn. In fact, if our souls are young enough, we can go on tit-for-tatting each other --and escalating-- for centuries if we choose to.

But sometimes, something else happens. Many lifetimes have intervened before we get around to balancing this experience. We may even have tried, and failed, several times. But now, we’ve both matured since that first chance meeting. You and I came to an understanding long since about that encounter and I’m really, really sorry for having started the ball rolling.
So, the next time we meet in the alley, someone else is threatening you with a knife. And I have the chance to save you from this person [a colleague who agreed to act as mediator for us.] If I rise to the challenge and risk injury or worse, the slate is wiped clean and balance is restored in that corner of the universe. No one gets cut and no new karma is created.

The rest of the Grace concept is, as I’ve said, still out there awaiting my next attempt to comprehend it. No problem—it’ll be there when I get around to it. :)

Grace Revisited

2009-06-17T23:55:00.000-04:00

OK, here we go again:
I’d like to share a case of something that I think MAY have been the Karma/Grace principle at work.
First, allow me to say there was much about parenting her children that I disagreed with my mother about. There was one matter, though, that I could not fault her on: she was a scrupulously careful mother who never put her small children at risk of physical injury. She always made certain that child-gates were in place, that pot handles were turned inward on the stove, never left her toddlers unsupervised, etc. etc. etc.

So, on the afternoon I came home from school and found my mother talking blissfully to my younger brother while she did her ironing, I was stunned. My 2 1/2-year-old brother was sitting in an open window with his back against the window-screen. This was one of those old-fashioned screens that was stapled to a wooden frame and tended to rot around the edges over time—and this one was pretty old. Beneath that window was a 1 3/4 story drop to a concrete walk below.

I was only ten years old and I could see the danger immediately. So why didn’t my mother see it? Yet, here she was standing across the room, looking right at him with a hot iron, an ironing board and a clothes basket between her and her son who could, conceivably, go out that window at any moment.

Again, I was only ten, but I was also aware of something else: my brother was an obstinate brat who had a tendency to challenge me if I told him to do anything. He was, after all, traversing the terrible-two’s [though I didn’t know about that concept at the time.] Still, I did know that he would, almost certainly, stomp his foot at me and shout ‘NO!’ if I told him to get out of that window. And, that would increase the risk.

Add to that the recognition that pointing out to my mother the fact that, ‘We have a problem here,’ would not be a good idea, either. She would likely become defensive and argue with me. My brother might become upset and push against the screen without even meaning to. It would use up valuable time that we might not have. Etc. Etc.

All of these thoughts ran through my mind in much less time than it has taken me to type them here. Almost instantly I knew what I had to do: Drawing as little attention to myself as possible, I walked over to the window-seat and sat down within arm’s length of my brother. I didn’t say a word. I just sat there—tensed like a spring. Sure enough, within a couple of minutes [at least that’s how it seems in retrospect] the screen gave way, my brother lost his balance and went out the window head-first and backward. And I grabbed his ankle and hauled him back in the window.
xxx
Now, this whole scenario may have been one major coincidence. In fact that is exactly how I viewed it [if I thought about it at all—which I very rarely did] until I began to learn about Karma.

As I have thought it through with that concept in mind, though, I’ve come to other conclusions:
The most astonishing part of the situation is the fact that my mother allowed it to happen in the first place. As I’ve said, it was totally out of character for her not to see the danger and tell my brother to get down from there. And she didn’t. Why not?

I guess a second point is the fact that I was, after all, only ten years old. How did I see a danger my mother didn’t see and figure out a way around it?

And, why did I walk into that room at that precise moment, anyway? Almost every other day, I would run into the house, hurl myself upstairs, change my clothes, grab my skates and take off for Jane’s and Mary Dey’s house without a thought for where my mom and brother might be. Why did I change my pattern that day?

I’m sure you see where I’m going here.
Here’s where the speculation begins:
What if there was karma between my brother and me? There often is karma of one sort or another among family members.
[That’s why they come back together—to see if they can work it out this time.]

So, suppose for a moment that, in some previous lifetime, I threw the two-year-old ‘fragment’ who would one day be my brother off a cliff onto a rock and broke his skull. I did it maliciously and on-purpose.

Given the way we chose to work it out, it was likely a long, long time ago and my brother didn’t want to go the route of revenge [if he had he would have thrown me out the window].
So, between us we worked out a scenario, instead, in which I could save him from a similar fate this time around. Our mother had to be included in the plan by 'not seeing' the problem so that I could solve it, myself.

One other thing leads me to think this was Karma: the aftermath. Knowing my mother, she probably went into hysterics after the incident. Almost certainly she came across the room screaming, grabbing my brother and me, crying uncontrollably, the whole nine yards. I remember none of that—although the earlier part of the memory is completely clear in my mind. But, once the karma was complete, the rest was entirely unimportant and I have no recollection of it at all.
xxx
So, what do you think about my conclusions?
And how about you? Do you have any ‘coincidences’ lurking in your past you’d care to share?

Repost 1

2009-06-15T12:55:00.003-04:00

I'm posting this at intervals throughout the blog in hopes that those of you who log in where you left off last time will see it - even if you don't often visit the top page these days.

Just so you know, Blogger booted me off - A SECOND TIME.
At least that finally got me off the dime and I've finished transferring everything I want to keep over to WordPress.
So - again - here's the link:
http://twocrows1023.wordpress.com/
Please drop by.
Hopefully, that site will be more stable and you can continue without further interruption.

Introducing Seth and Michael

2009-06-14T23:54:00.000-04:00

I just realized: I’ve been running on some assumptions, here. Sorry.
I have studied Seth and, later, Michael for SO long, I just assumed everyone knows who they are. And—I know that isn’t true, really.

So —Meet Seth—
There’s a whole book dedicated to nothing more or less than introducing Seth [The Coming of Seth] so this is going to, of necessity, be a very rough thumbnail sketch, indeed.

Seth burst upon the scene in the early 1960’s, so far as I recall. Jane Roberts, her husband Robert Butts and some friends were messing around with a ouija board just for fun and, suddenly this entity started coming through. It said it had been trying to contact Jane for quite a while and, when this opportunity came along it jumped at it.
Meanwhile, as you can imagine, Jane was jumping out of her skin. She didn’t WANT to be a medium. She had never in her wildest dreams thought of doing anything of the sort. She simply wanted the whole thing [including Seth] to just go away. Seth told her that the choice was hers but strongly urged her to continue channeling as doing so would help her progress and help the world at large move toward its Mature Soul Manifestation.

Robert added his voice to Seth’s [I can just hear Jane saying, ‘Easy for you to say!’] and slowly, reluctantly she began to let Seth come through.

Over time there were numerous experiments with consciousness, physical body distortions and contortions with Jane saying, DO YOU SEE THAT??? [as her hand grew to 4 times it’s normal size then shrank back to normal in a matter of moments, her hair and eyes changed color then returned to normal, etc.] and Robert describing the phenomena to her. The physical manifestations COULD be seen by others—which was SOME comfort, at least, to Jane.

Very slowly, Jane began trusting the information that was coming through her—first through the ouija board, later through automatic writing and still later by voice with Robert taking down the material as dictated by Seth [Seth’s handwriting was atrocious].
She continued, for much of the time she spent channeling Seth, to hold doubts as to its origin — wondering if it was simply a deeper part of her own personality. Seth denied it but refused to argue — allowing her to hold this view if it made her feel more comfortable.

Before her death, there were 10 books co-authored by Seth and Jane though Jane is the only author acknowledged on their covers. The last two seem to be incomplete—probably as a result of Jane's illness.

I’ve read 3 of the books cover-to-cover and dipped into a fourth—but they are very heavy going and, when I discovered Michael [easier, by far to comprehend—at least for me] I kinda jumped ship and have been happily engaged in wading through those teachings instead with occasional forays back into the Seth books just for the heck of it or to see if the two agree with each other.

The Seth books that I’ve read are: The Coming of Seth, The Seth Material and Seth Speaks. I’ve dipped toes into The Nature of Personal Reality but I hit “TILT!!!” pretty quickly, there. To be honest, I don’t recall the names of the other books by Seth.
xxx
And, now, meet Michael:
Again, there was the introduction via ouija board:
One night, at a party, several people were clustered around the board when Michael came through. To make a long story short—two people had the easiest time making contact [I don’t recall their names] and the rest of the guests soon lost interest and drifted away. Those two, however were alternately freaking out and becoming more and more enamored of the material coming through.

One interesting note: Though Seth seemed to find no trouble in giving itself a name when Jane asked for one, Michael found it very hard to do. It just kept saying it didn’t have a name. The people involved were adamant, though. They didn’t want to call the entity ‘Hey You’. So, finally, very reluctantly, it named itself Michael because its final incarnation, in a village near ancient Babylon, had had a similar name. It said it wanted to emphasize the fact that speed isn’t as important as humans seem to consistently believe it to be. [Maybe, as we move further into the Mature Soul phase, we'll let go of that viewpoint.]

Over time, a larger group developed. They began calling themselves Michael’s People and a book by that name was, eventually published. LOTS and LOTS of books have come out of several collaborations between Michael and various people.

Michael explains the different approaches [between itself and Seth] this way:
The Seth entity is, primarily, a Server/Scholar entity.
Servers often follow the lead of someone else—not because they’re weak but because they need and want to be accepting of and caring for others.
Scholars tend to be solitary beings. They can immerse themselves in one field of study to the exclusion of all others for anywhere from 1 to several lifetimes. They’re more comfortable dealing with other people on a one-to-one basis—so Seth tends to work that way even though it has been off-planet for a number of what we would call centuries. In fact, each fragment maintains its Role until it rejoins the All that Is.

Michael’s entity is a King/Warrior entity.
Both of these Roles tend to deal with large groups of people more easily than Scholars and Severs do.
So, Michael has attracted lots and lots of mediums or seers or whatever you want to call them and BOY! have they churned out the books!!! I’ve probably read about 10 of those cover-to-cover and peeked into several others. I quit buying them about 8 years ago because I had plenty to be going forward with.

The titles and authors are included on the sidebar along with several other books. I’ve loosely grouped them based on when, chronologically, I discovered them and/or how difficult they were [for me] to grasp.

Beyond the published books, I’ve got massive loose-leaf binders of verbatim channeling sessions that I pick up and wade through randomly from time to time. Probably 6 to 8 of those.
See what I mean about lots of stuff here? And I’m sure there’s more out there that I haven’t yet discovered.
xxx
Now, as I promised earlier, a word about the makeup of both these entities.
As I read back over this post before launching into this explanation, I saw that I’ve already explained part of it along the way—but I’ll try to clarify the situation a bit further:
You and I and almost all humans on the planet are made up of a single fragment [soul] that, prior to birth, created a body and a personality for use in a one-time shot [one incarnation] on the planet. Consider the soul as the ‘body’ and the personality and the body as the ‘clothes’.

Between lives we go to a level just beyond the physical [the lower astral plane] where we engage in work [I have no idea what kind of work we do, but I’ve read about it in several books—not all of them written by Seth and Michael] spend time with friends, play with various forms of reality and prepare for our next lifetime.
After each of us reach the end of our last lifetime on the planet [at the close of the 7th level of the Old Soul Age] when we’ve probably lived, on average, about 200 to 350 lifetimes or so, we cluster with a bunch of old friends we started out with [picture your high-school graduating class] on the lower to mid-astral plane while we wait for the last of our graduating class to finish up.

After we’re all assembled we hang around together for a while in the mid-astral till we feel ready then we begin assimilating and moving higher in the astral. The group of fragments slowly becomes one entity and moves into what is called the Causal Plane.
Now, don’t panic, we don’t lose our selves—we simply merge with several hundred other fragments or souls and we do it when and as we’re ready to do it. For some time after this merging, we continue to think of ourselves as ‘we’—not as ‘I’.
Over ‘time’ [gosh, language can be so limiting!] we begin to assimilate further and further and eventually, the entity does begin to think of itself as a single being and moves from perceiving itself as ‘we’ to perceiving itself as ‘I’ and the first step back toward the All that Is or the Tao [as Michael calls it] has been completed. This step takes a LONG time [there’s that pesky word again! :( ].
Both Michael and Seth are engaged in this process ‘now’. Michael tend to talk about themselves as ‘we’ while Seth seems to feel more comfortable with the 'I' identity. So, it would seem that Seth is somewhat 'further along' than Michael is. Maybe that's why I tend to find Seth's information more difficult to comprehend.

Anyway, at the end of every milestone along the way a similar merging of entities occurs with the group incorporating more and more fragments [aka souls] within its ranks until it merges with the All that Is [which is where we all came from before the whole game began and is our eventual destination.]

Then, if/when we want to, we can take on another Role and start the whole process over again. AND we can choose [as you and I did this time] to take the physical route [more demanding—but ‘faster’] or the more leisurely route which doesn’t include a trip through physical reality.

An entity that falls into that category has, in fact, written at least two books [The Lazeris Teachings in case you’re interested.] I’ve begun those but haven’t spent too much time or energy on them.
My frame of reference kind of parallels the ex-junkie who prefers to learn from a counselor who was previously addicted to drugs—‘How can Lazeris, who has never inhabited a body, have a clue as to what I’m going through here?’ So, I tend to listen a lot more closely to Michael and Seth who came up through the physical ranks—but that’s just me.
xxx
So, there you have it in a nutshell—
Where Michael and Seth came from and a sense [I hope] of who they are.

The Soul Ages: The Pre-Infant Stage of Development.

2009-06-14T23:52:00.001-04:00

According to the primary source I’m studying at the moment [The Michael Teachings], among others, there are seven soul ages—five of which we complete on the physical plane. These make up the levels of development we move through as we make our ways back toward the All that Is.
First, a little background:
When each of us splinters off from the All that Is we begin what I call the Walkabout. First, we decide whether we will include the physical dimension in our itinerary. The downside to that route is the fact that it’s lots harder to traverse the physical than it is to steer clear of that course. The upside is that it’s ‘faster’ than taking the more leisurely route that doesn’t include the run through the physical realm. So, those of us who are impatient tend to choose this track—even though it’s harder work.
Once that decision is made, we tour several planets. We can hang around on each one for as long as we wish just checking it out.

For what it’s worth, the planet Earth doesn’t have many of these new ‘fragments’ checking it out these days.
Once the general population reaches a certain average age [about the age we, collectively, are now] most fragments lose interest in joining the game-in-progress.
The planet is looking tired—there’s a massive clean-up that needs to happen—and folks who didn’t have a part in making the mess generally aren’t interested in cleaning up after the rest of us.
Also, it’s not much fun playing catch-up when almost the entire planet’s-worth of souls are so far ahead of you. So, the odds of a new infant coming here are pretty remote at the moment.

Anyhow, once the fragment has made the decision to go physical and chosen a planet, it needs to slow w-a-y down — lowering its vibration to a level that can be contained in a body. If it didn't do this it would tend to burn the body out within a very few years—maybe sooner.
Then, it hunts around for a body that isn’t spoken for already. It spots a pregnant female and begins hanging around her. At this point, there’s no accumulated karma, so any pregnant mother will do. Depending on how impatient the fragment is, it may jump right into the body and remain with it throughout the pregnancy. A far more common option, though, is to touch base with the growing fetus occasionally—just to check on its progress. Otherwise, the fragment goes on about its business of checking out the planet, hanging out with friends, giving its personality its final tweaks [more about how we build our personalities and so on in later posts].

Actually, any fragment can opt out at any time during a pregnancy and, in fact, has about two years after birth to make its final decision about whether to remain in the chosen body. So, even after birth, if the fragment finds that the situation it has been born into isn’t what it had in mind after all, it can bail out. A number of re-absorptions, miscarriages, stillbirths and crib-deaths can be accounted for by fragments deciding that they had made a mistake and starting over with a new body [often even with a different family]. This is true at any soul age—not just during the first incarnation on a planet.
Once the fragment has committed itself to its first body, it is on its way and, most likely, will complete the physical incarnation cycle and will do it on whatever planet it started out on.

Next post: The Infant Soul.

The Infant Soul

2009-06-11T23:51:00.000-04:00

By the time the infant appears on a planet for the first time, it has been on its own in the universe for a while. It has spent ‘time’ considering several planets before settling on the chosen one. Then, it has examined the planet of choice and may have investigated several different animal or even plant species [by cohabiting within several varieties, for instance] in it’s analysis before settling on the planet it will inhabit for the next few thousand years.
By the way, this 'cohabiting' is not the same as transmigration—though it may seem to be so. However, karma cannot be collected at this point and such cohabitation is purely research-oriented in nature—it has nothing to do with the development of the soul. That is what differentiates it from transmigration as such.

The soul is, after all, making a big investment here— committing itself to numerous lifetimes over several hundreds of years as a sentient being on the planet and, unless it is a very rash soul, indeed, it wants to be certain this is a good fit. As a result, when it finally takes it’s first human body, it has probably moved into a fairly instinctive mode of existence. This comes about as a result of the choice of forgetting where we came from.
This choosing to forget comes in handy as remembering previous lifetimes would be cumbersome at best. I'll go into that more in later posts. For now, suffice to say, would you really want to know about crimes you committed in medieval times [and the resulting karma you have or have not paid]? My answer to that question is a resounding, 'NO!'

The Soul has also chosen its ROLE [more on roles in later posts] and spent 'time' creating its first body and its first personality. If it is wise it will take counsel with other, more experienced souls as these are all daunting tasks—particularly for an inexperienced, relatively new soul still learning the ropes.
xxx
The early Infant Soul is somewhat raw and non-defined when it arrives on the planet as a fully sentient being for the first time. It can look fairly primitive and not-quite-pulled-together. The individual often looks furtive or frightened.

The lessons for the Infant are primarily those of physical survival and, as a result, Infants tend to cluster near the equator where the weather, at any rate, will not increase the difficulties involved in survival.
However, because infants tend to cluster there, they are easy prey for unscrupulous older Souls and dictators—not to mention wild animals and diseases. Lives can be brutish and short with Infants experiencing every type of survival test imaginable.
Infants learn how to find food and water, build shelters, and the very earliest lessons in collaboration with other people. They haven’t yet learned how to work cooperatively with others and any favors they do for others are strictly of the tit-for-tat variety. They may be loners as this method of meeting the new environment tends to feel safer than spending a lot of time with other people.
Eating is a matter of survival and has nothing to do with pleasure beyond the sensation of a full belly—something which is, in fact, not often achieved.
Similarly, sex is practiced as a survival mechanism. Sexual pleasure is not yet attainable—only the assuaging of lust.

On the positive side, infant souls can be very attuned to nature. They resonate closely within their own small group—family or small tribe—and experience the group consciousness more clearly than they will again until they have graduated from the planet. They have the ability, all too soon forgotten, of living in the moment.

Old souls sometimes will opt to go to these equatorial zones to help the infants there learn the basics. They may take on the roles of shamans and healers and will be venerated by the trusting Infant Souls in residence.
Unfortunately, sometimes Young Souls [see later post] will incarnate there and take advantage of the population. That is often the case when dictators take over and terrorize the general populace. [Think Saddam Hussein—a young soul in the currently transitioning (infant-to-baby) country of Iraq. Or, for that matter, GW Bush (a mid-to-late Baby Soul, I'm almost certain,) in Iraq.]

The conscience is not yet fully integrated in Infant Souls and, in the rare instance when an Infant takes on a life in a sophisticated country like the US, for instance, it is likely to run afoul of the law due to this lack. Although these souls may inflict great pain on others [usually on a one-to-one level—not one of brutalizing large groups of people—they’re generally not sophisticated enough to pull off a major crime spree, yet], their actions are often brought about by fear rather than true malice. Even so, this is a time of opening and creating karmic ties of the violent variety whether as victim or perpetrator.

Next post: The Baby Soul

The Baby Soul

2009-06-08T23:50:00.001-04:00

Within each soul age there are seven levels [more about those in a later post] so, by the time the soul reaches the Baby Soul Age, it has lived at least 7 lifetimes and probably more like 20 to 40. The Infant stage is, often, fairly long because so many of its lives are short. Therefore, it takes more lives to learn the Infant lessons than it takes to learn later ones as the soul matures.

When the soul moves from the Infant level of consciousness to the Baby level, it has its survival skills down pat. Now, it’s ready to get civilized. It wants to know the rules of society and will move into more and more sophisticated communities around the planet in order to learn how different cultures organize themselves.

Baby souls go through a lot of changes in their growing-up process. This is an energetic and exploratory period. Baby souls are like adolescents: eager to get out into the world and demonstrate that they know how to ‘do it right’. There is still a basic lack of understanding and they have an immature perspective. They are almost, but not quite, ready to make the big leap to independence and self-regulated behavior.

The Baby soul age is like the stereotypical pre-teen/early teenage know-it-all stage. Babies, having less understanding and insight than older souls, tend not to see the bigger picture. They are likely to dismiss the ideas or suggestions of those older ones and cling fiercely to their views of us-vs.-them, for instance, or the zero-sum-game.

The Baby soul often thinks and acts in ways dictated by his or her peers. S/he is putting limited experience to work and, therefore, is pretty narrowly focused—especially if s/he is surrounded by Baby Soul peers.

Babies tend to live in small towns where there are, typically, lots of other Babies to pal around with. This way, they can live fairly comfortably without feeling too threatened by all those older souls in the big cities who WANT to deal with the bigger picture. Babies are usually perfectly content with the smaller picture, thankyouverymuch.
The cop walking his or her beat is often a Baby learning about law-and-order. The same is true of the prostitute turning a trick. Or the mayor of a small town [Babies like to be big fish in small ponds].

Another way to learn about the legal system is to commit crimes—sometimes violent ones. When they DO land in a large city, getting involved with a gang works well for getting this perspective. Commit a crime, get caught, go through the legal system including the prison hierarchy. Get out of prison and go through the parole system/halfway-house. Repeat.

It’s all good [although from the earth-bound perspective it doesn’t always look that way.] The perspective from the Causal Plane is different from that of earth, however [Michael exists on the Causal Plane.] From there, every earthly experience is perceived as valid—as in: an opportunity for learning.

Many, many Babies live in small-town-America. Many [though by no means all] are upstanding members of their communities. One motto often adhered to is, ‘Do it right or not at all.’ Their lawns are weeded and watered; their homes are clean; they don’t want your car parked in front of their homes and they certainly won’t park in no-parking zones, themselves. They are proper and mannerly, following the rules of etiquette.

The "do it right" attitude extends to the area of sexuality, as well. More often than not, Baby souls approach sex prudishly both in public expression and private practice. Moralistic in their value system, Baby souls regard the missionary position as, of course, the right way to do it, and only within marriage.
The current focus on condemning such practices as condom distribution—even in an effort to control the spread of deadly disease—is distinctly a Baby point of view being manifest. This can extend to the vengeful viewpoint: ‘those people [people with AIDS, for instance] deserve what they get anyway. I’M not going to give out condoms to keep “them” from getting sick.’ [The US VS THEM dynamic is a very Baby perception.]

They see moral issues as black/white—either/or, with no shades of gray, and of course they identify themselves with the white—good. Anything they do not understand they identify with the black—evil.
Even the idea of other people having a different opinion from their own will puzzle the Baby Soul and, if they perceive the issue as important enough, may bring out a tendency toward violence. Think about abortion-clinic bombings, for instance.

They borrow simple concepts of right and wrong from the rules of society, or better still, from what they perceive to be the laws of God, and then stick doggedly to them all their lives. They tend to blame the world when things go wrong: attributing such occurrences to "evil forces" at work. They find it difficult to accept the error of their own ways, since they believe they are doing what is right. Self-righteousness is a common personal viewpoint.

As to religion, Baby souls tend toward fundamentalism or an evangelical point of view. The personification of the deity is more natural to this Age than any other. To them God seems anthropomorphic —like one of them: more knowledgeable and powerful to be sure, but still merely a glorified human being— and a male human because males are perceived in the majority of earthly institutions [and certainly by the Babies within them] as the primary authority figures.
Babies believe in the forces of evil, and these forces are also typically personified as an anthropomorphic "Satan" figure.
The "Word of God"—whatever sacred text the individual’s religion follows—is interpreted literally.

When their children get into trouble at school, no matter the circumstances, the typical Baby Soul parent will side with the authority rather than their child and will work to make their child acceptable to the authority figures of the school.

But, Babies are more complex than the simple statement, ‘What are the rules? Ok, that’s what we’ll do.’ Hitler, for instance, was a 5th level Baby soul. Richard Nixon, too, was a Baby [7th level, I think though I’m not absolutely sure of that.] And, though I’ve never found any reference to him, I’m almost certain G. W. Bush is a Baby.
On the rare occasions when Babies get into lofty authority levels they tend to 1] go overboard and 2] believe that they are free to create the rules they would be slavishly following if they weren’t in positions of great power.

From their limited perspectives, they don’t perceive the principles more mature souls are following when they create social rules. They simply see the end results. So, while an older soul may create workplace safety rules that actually help the people they are regulating, Babies are more likely to make rules they, themselves, don’t have to follow. Or create rules designed to give themselves the edge over other people within the society they are regulating. Or create rules that oppress others rather than help them live more fruitful lives. When they do this Babies are, generally speaking, creating lots and lots of karma they’ll need to balance at some later date.

The political perceptions of the Baby soul are quite conservative, if not downright reactionary. An excellent example from current history is "The Moral Majority" in the U.S. which was led by Jerry Falwell. I think you could tell simply by looking at the man’s physical characteristics that he was a baby soul. He looked every inch the self-contented toddler, didn’t he?
And the members of the church in Topeka who have been issued a court order to stay away from military funerals because they were haranguing mourners with their condemnations of gay people personify the Baby perception.
They want to impose their strict and narrow standards on everyone else because they regard the perfect society as an obedient society—faithful to a righteous law. There is little room for individual liberties and free expression.

As Michael says, the Baby soul sees itself as "me" and other people as "many other mes". The meaning of this is that Babies expect others to be like themselves, and are surprised and bewildered when this proves to be incorrect. They don’t know how to deal with the differences they see in other people. They avoid people not of their own race, nation, tribe, culture, religion, socioeconomic status, political party, special interest group, etc. Baby souls, of all the soul ages, feel most comfortable with their own kind, whatever they perceive that to be. Their sense of identity is reinforced by the groups they belong to. They perceive the differences in others as evil and distance themselves from any perceived ‘otherness’.

Baby souls are "uptight" about life in general. Who wouldn't be under the stress of always having to be right? They live by popular stereotypes and standard clichés. Baby souls have very little sense of humor.

When they seek employment it will be as followers. You won’t find Baby Souls setting up their own businesses. They much prefer to be told what to do—and then they will do it without questioning the rightness or wrongness of most business decisions unless those decisions go against some moral conviction taught them by some ‘higher authority’ such as the minister in their fundamentalist church. Even then, they will likely seek counsel from their minister rather than make a decision, on their own, to ‘blow the whistle’. Almost always, Baby souls will leave all decisions to Young Souls who will be more than happy to make those decisions as we shall see.

Next Post: The Young Soul.

Preface to the Young Soul post

2009-06-05T23:49:00.000-04:00

If what follows looks and sounds depressingly familiar, there’s a reason for that:
The planet as a whole and the US have, very recently, moved from a position of being populated by a majority of Young Souls toward a majority of Matures. And Youngs have held the planetary majority for the last 2,000 years.
Of course, all the physical Soul Ages are represented both in the US and on the planet as a whole— but any nation or planet will be more heavily influenced by the age-level of the majority of its residents than it will by other Age groups.

The Young Soul

2009-06-02T23:48:00.003-04:00

I’ve got news for everyone here. If you’ve completed your Young Soul incarnations, you’ve spent at least one lifetime filthily, obscenely RICH, RICH, RICH.
We all have to learn the lessons that go with money and the way we do that is by 1] being born into families that have enormous amounts of it when we arrive, 2] starting poor and making mammoth amounts of it while here, 3] starting out poor and struggling to make money and failing or making some and losing it in catastrophic ways, 4] starting out rich and losing everything —and any and all variations of these scenarios on the theme of money, money, money.

Likewise, and probably during the same set of lifetimes— since the two so often go hand-in-hand —you’ve also all held huge amounts of power over other people’s fates.
Again, most likely, we do that during our Young Soul lifetimes though a few people will jump ahead in the game and start this process late in the Baby Soul period [Hitler did it, Nixon did it and, my guess is, Bush II is doing it, too— though Hitler and Bush allowed puppet-masters (almost certainly Young Souls) massive amounts of the power they ostensibly were wielding (Hitler’s physician, who fed him all those drugs, was one— Dick Cheney, obviously, is another. Karl Rove may well be a Baby— content to be Kingmaker this time around though he's just as likely to be a Young Soul exercising his Power-over- Others muscles.]

So, Young Souls seek and manage to acquire, by hook or crook, power over others. That is the name of their game.
Sometimes they’ll use their power for good [most likely, they’ll do that during the late phases of their Young Soul cycle— when all other ways of demonstrating how much power they’ve got have been exhausted. Mostly, they’ll use the power they garner to further their own ends.
xxx
After going through the teenage years and then leaving parents and striking out on one’s own, the young adult is in the process of building up the foundations of career, home, and family. Young people are finding their places in life, establishing successes, and making their marks on the world. This is a very challenging phase. The same can be said of the Young Soul.

As you can see, the Young Soul period is an energetic, lively time to be on the planet. Of all the soul ages, Youngs are the most comfortable here. They will find their own place in society and can’t understand those others who question such things as the meaning of life. To them it’s obvious: the meaning of life is to aquire things and power for their own sakes. The bumper sticker that was so popular during the 1980’s tells it all: ‘He Who Dies With The Most Toys Wins.’
For the Young Soul, winning isn’t the Big Thing. It’s the Only Thing.

Youngs seek to tame the world at large. Young Souls are the architects of civilizations, the builders of empires, the leaders of businesses and economies. Their basic motivation is materialism, and they will work unstintingly for their material achievements. They are the most likely of the ages to be "workaholics", constantly in a state of unrest, seeking their materialistic goals. More than any other soul age, Young Souls feel at home in the physical body. They really like it here on the planet and they chafe at inaction.
Popular interests are mundane things such as government, business, lawyering, sports, and policing at the higher levels. No walking the beat for the Young Soul—except when just getting started—and then only if they were born into a family that doesn’t have the connections to jump them ahead in the system. Being the Police Chief in a large city is more to the Young Soul’s taste— and then, most likely, as a stepping stone to higher political office.

This is also a time of conformity. In this way Youngs are similar to Babies. My Way or the Highway is still a credo during this period of soul evolution. People who don’t toe the line deserve no sympathy and will receive none. The 3-strikes-and-you’re-out prison system stems from a Young Soul philosophical viewpoint. If you’re not just like me, there’s obviously something wrong with YOU.

Youngs may love being on the planet, but they’re not content with their bodies as they are. This is particularly true of women but more and more men are becoming obsessed in this way, as well. [Probably because the Young Soul plastic surgeons and hair restorers have noticed there's another whole, new untapped market out there— and are working to exploit it.]
Ken and Barbie bodies are seen as the norm and no expense will be spared to acquire them. Physical health, in order to create an attractive body, isn’t seen as necessary at this stage. A good plastic surgeon is sufficient. Keeping up a young appearance is where it’s at— not good health. [Dodie Fields, a comedienne during the 1960’s who, despite her diabetes, had one plastic surgery after another and finally died as a result of them, demonstrates the Young Soul’s body-style viewpoint.]

Sporting an eye-candy spouse is important now. The husband is worn like another diamond bracelet on his wife's arm and the wife is expected to throw those lavish parties Youngs are so well known for where contacts are made or paid off for previous support of business ventures.
The children of Young Souls are status symbols, too.
Small children are wheeled about in Aprica strollers by their nannies—often ‘undocumented aliens’ who are being paid under the table and are off the radar.
Older children are rushed from T-ball game to soccer to ballet class to gymnastics class and are expected to make top grades so they’ll qualify for top-notch middle- and high schools. They’re expected to enroll in Ivy League colleges and become movers and shakers, just like their parents, when they graduate.
Woe betide the Baby, Mature or Old Souls born into a household headed by Young Souls. They’ll be labeled ‘lazy’ and become the black sheep of the family because they don’t fit the mold and aren’t comfortable in the tightly scheduled, whiz-bang family lifestyle dictated by their Young parents.

Youngs join lots of organizations — again in order to get a leg-up on the competition. Middle-of-the-road churches [Episcopal, Methodist, etc.] are comfortable places for Youngs. You’ll find the Babies sitting quietly in their pews as they wait for the service to begin. Not so the Youngs. They’re out in the lobbies and the cloak rooms, making contacts, button-holing parishioners, signing others on to finance or otherwise back up their current schemes.
They’ll also join lodges, unions, Elk’s Clubs, Chambers of Commerce— not, as Babies do, in order to feel the security of safety-in-numbers —but in order to be seen in the ‘right’ circles. Doing the right thing is not the issue for the Young Soul. Being seen to do the right thing is the point.
So, when the Shriners distribute circus tickets to organizations that help needy children or when the Lion’s Club gives out free glasses, Babies will be going door-to-door to solicit glasses or donations, Matures will be working behind the scenes to coordinate the efforts and Young Souls will be front-and-center heading up the operations, arranging the publicity, making sure the media are in attendance when the donations are parceled out, etc.
Young Souls aren’t innovators. They’re the vendors of the tried-and-true products that have already been shown to have a market. They’ll let the older souls create the products and do the test marketing and they’ll hire the Babies, the Youngs who are less financially well off [after all, there’s not room for everyone at the top during every lifetime] the Matures and Olds to manufacture them.
Youngs at the top will swoop in with the cheaper knock-offs and hammer them into the ground until the market dies out—then they’ll move on to their next project.
It doesn’t matter to the Young Soul what impact the product will have on the consumer, either. Bank on it, all those execs who swore before Congress that cigarettes weren’t addictive—all evidence to the contrary—were Young Souls.
Scratch any large business scandal and you’ll find a Young Soul behind it. The CEO who walks away from a failed business with millions after the pension is gone and the employees have all been fired is a Young Soul.
Find a person dumping toxic waste into the nearest lake—it’s most likely a Baby acting on the orders of a Young or a Young Soul just getting started in the business world doing whatever it takes to get ahead. Getting caught is part of the game—and it won’t keep a Young Soul down for long. Their good contacts are likely to help them find good lawyers and they’ll manage to slip away with minimal or no prison time while the rest of us gripe about their ‘luck’ or their corruption and greed.
But, if we’ve completed the Young Soul cycle, we’ve all been there/done that.

In the world of entertainment, soap operas, comedies that use humiliation of the ‘other’ as humor, the competition ‘reality shows’ like ‘Survivor’, all have the Young Soul flavor about them. Competition and conformity will be the norm here, as well as other areas of life. And voting others off the Island is absolutely the Young Soul’s mindset.
xxx
The Young soul wants to organize people into a society, a civilization, or a company. They believe in what they’re doing so much that they are willing to fight to convince others to do it their way.
Wars are mostly Young Soul phenomena. Nationalism and imperialism are rampant in this stage of maturation. If they don't conquer you in the business or economic world, Young Souls will conquer you using the military. Young Soul American leadership wants to make the world safe for Democracy. They call it the struggle to maintain freedom and liberty, but what Young Souls really mean by this is that they don't want others telling them what to do— you do it my way instead. Since they want this liberty for themselves, they'll champion it for others so long as it doesn't interfere with their acquisition of power and wealth.
On the other hand, Young Soul Russian leadership wants to bring the whole world around to its Socialistic point of view, professedly for its own good.
Both of these supposedly noble ideologies are just excuses for "Do it my way," taken to the extreme.
The popular statement among Conservatives about ‘getting government off our backs’ has nothing to do with individual liberties. It’s about allowing corporations the freedom to do whatever their executives want to do— and the heck with the rest of the population. That’s why the same Conservative who champions ‘getting government off our backs’ will be just fine with taking away reproductive freedom from female individuals, refusing the right to marry to Gay individuals, curbing the right to a good education to poor individuals and making it more and more difficult to qualify for Food Stamps. So long as the Young Souls can afford to go to another state or country for their abortions, marry whom they please, send their children to private schools, and eat well, who cares what those other people need? Obviously, THEY’RE less deserving or THEY would be filthy rich just like ME.
Obviously, this can be a time of great learning as well as a time of creating lots and lots of karma.

As this exciting and materialistic set of lifetimes starts to wind down, the Young Soul begins to look around and, for the first time, ask the questions that would have seemed heretical a very few lifetimes ago: Is this all there is to life?
The soul is now getting ready to enter the Mature Soul phase. And that’s where we’ll be going next.

The Mature Soul

2009-05-31T23:47:00.009-04:00

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.
xxx
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.
xxx
*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

The Old Soul

2009-05-28T23:46:00.004-04:00

Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt Therapy, coined a statement that was later named “The Gestalt Prayer” and was widely quoted during the 1960’s and 1970’s:
"I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
and you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you and I am I
and if, by chance, we find each other
it's beautiful.”
The conclusion of the original statement: “If not, it can’t be helped,” was quoted less often—no doubt because it didn’t have the same flavor of idealism and poetry as the first part.

This viewpoint— including its less popular conclusion —is, by its nature, that of an Old Soul. Old Souls will welcome those they feel an affinity with. If the connection is not perceived to be present they will simply go their own way.
Olds don’t try to convince others to live as they do. Likewise, if other people attempt to force their values or ways of living on the Old Soul, they’re likely to find themselves talking to a closed door.
xxx
Much that can be said about an Old Soul is what would be said about an old person.
They are storehouses of knowledge and understanding but, in spite of that, they do not usually accomplish very much. To the other soul ages they probably appear lazy.
In fact, they’re just tired. World-weary. Tired of having bodies to care for. Tired of fighting against the odds and losing.
You'll find Old Souls quietly recycling or giving food or money to organizations that fight hunger. You’re unlikely to find them marching for either cause. It’s not that they don’t care. They do. They’re just tired and, possibly, a bit cynical. They’ve seen it all before —the marches and the demonstrations — after which everyone went home and nothing changed.

At the moment, as the world emerges from the Young Soul cycle, the Old Souls on the planet have much to feel tired and cynical about. As the Mature Soul era gears up, Olds might become invigorated as they begin seeing accomplishments in caring for the planet, for instance, or more personal [as opposed to corporate] matters beginning to be addressed. Check back in a few decades or centuries as the Mature mindsets take hold of the planet as a whole.

Old Souls often have difficulty with self-esteem because their perceptions and values are not shared by the rest of society. They are out-of-step with the majority and they feel it. They are likely to sense how different they are from the norm and may even think that perhaps they don’t belong on this planet.
At the moment, they are fairly rare, comprising about eleven percent of the population. On the fringes of society, they obey the rules of their cultures only as required to get by without causing trouble.

It is rare for an Old Soul to make a great contribution to society. They have largely given up on the world and it just doesn't seem worth the effort to put a lot of energy into things that won’t last anyway. Material things just decay, so why invest in that?
Obviously, Young Souls and Old Souls are direct opposites. In fact, Olds are far more similar to Infants than they are to Young Souls.
If they do make themselves noticed, Old Souls are perceived by most of the 3 younger soul ages to be ‘far out’ or eccentric. So, generally speaking, the Old folks do not even try to communicate with them though they may spend time with Infants teaching them the rudiments of planetary life.

Often, Old Souls can feel so tired that they're ready to just lie down and die. Like a person in the last decade of life, the Old Soul is "winding down", preparing for death, settling the estate, and tying up loose ends. The Old Soul is clearing the way for its final break with the physical plane.

In their social lives, Old Souls are often loners. They go their own way, caring little for societal norms. They have very little interest in casual relationships, such as coworkers and neighbors. Even their sense of connection to blood relatives is not very strong.
When they do get involved, it is often because there is a strong spiritual bond. Either there is a karmic attachment (past-life association), or an agreement — a contract made between lifetimes — to conduct a relationship.

When Old Souls do seek companionship, they often do so in metaphysical groups — astrology and tarot classes, psychic endeavors, and so on. Here they will be most likely to meet those with whom they have spiritual connections. They seek out the few others who are like themselves and share similar interests. This is not usually for the purpose of business advancements like Young Souls, or for psychological comfort like Mature Souls, but just to share being with other Old Souls.

If the basis for psychological intimacy is not quickly apparent to Old Souls, they will not put themselves through much trouble to develop it. It is difficult for Old Souls to create unions with people that they have not known in numerous past lifetimes.

Old Souls are individualistic — they believe that people can do whatever they want to do, so long as they don't hurt anyone else. Olds do not want to change the world — they want to just let it be. You might say they have the ultimate "laissez faire" (leave it alone) attitude — let nature take its course and don't interfere with the system.
One reason for their loner behavior is the fact that Old Souls are careful about creating new karma of any sort. Anything that will encourage a continuation of involvement with the physical plane is to be avoided. Old Souls are in the process of removing themselves from entanglement with the usual affairs of life.
As a rule, Olds just want outta here. They want to move off the planet completely and ties to other people can slow that process down.
As occurs with all soul ages, the personality can have its own ideas on this and other matters. So, an individual can seek relationships with others, even now. But, the personality will be on its own and won't receive any help from the Soul in forging such ties. It can be done but it will be much more difficult than it would have been at any earlier age except the Infant level.

Like Infant Souls, it is unusual for Old Souls to pursue a career as such. Of course, they take on occupations in order to make ends meet, but these are not the main interest in life. Most often a job will be sought which does not overly challenge the Old Soul. This leaves the soul with enough spare energy to pursue its real purposes: resolving karmic entanglements and pursuing truth.
Check out the gardener puttering on the Young Soul’s gated estate. You might find an Old Soul quietly contemplating the meaning of life while pruning the roses.

Old Souls have very few psychological problems to deal with. Presumably, they’ve mostly been worked through in previous lifetimes. But Old Souls do have one significant problem: they are subject to depression. All the Soul Ages can experience depression— but especially the Old Soul. To them, life seems contrived. They sense that it is all a game and they no longer want to play.
The material pursuits of Young Souls seem quite futile to them. Even the Mature Soul's excitement about newfound truth seems passé. In short, Old Souls may suffer from boredom. This ennui can severely limit an Old Soul's happiness, and be a source of misunderstanding for younger Souls who are enjoying life. Whether he understands it consciously or not, the Old Soul simply wants to graduate from the physical plane.

Old Souls are typically easy for other people to get along with. They are usually agreeable. The worst that can be said about Old Souls is that they are often detached. Younger Souls do not understand this, although they may admire the fact that an Old Soul can remain cool in situations that younger Souls might find upsetting.
There is not much in an Old Soul that can offend a younger Soul, though there is much that can be misunderstood. To some it may seem that Old Souls do not care. It is more accurate to say that they are aloof. They do not make much input into what is going on around them, and do not have a strong investment in any particular outcome.

At the instinctive level, Old Souls understand the big lesson of the whole maturation cycle: ‘Be nonjudgmental’. What they cannot abide, Old Souls simply avoid. Rarely do they seek to change things.

Old Souls tend to follow the path of least resistance. Younger Souls regard this as sheer laziness — a lack of drive and willpower. This trait has its advantages and disadvantages. The positive side is that Olds are gracious when it comes to dealing with other people. The disadvantage is that they may lack the initiative to accomplish things that could be done. They often come up with innovative ideas because of their previous experiences, but they lack the energy to bring them to fruition.

All this is not to give Olds an excuse for laziness. Once an Old Soul realizes the cause of this condition, it can take steps to mitigate it or direct it wisely. In fact, this can help the Soul move toward its goal of moving off the planet as it begins to accomplish some of the tasks it may need to complete prior to leaving.

Old Souls are, generally, ethical. They do not have to be taught right and wrong by parents or society. There is some socializing to be done when they are children of course, but the programming for integrity is inborn. It is as if they are grown-up even when they are children.
They feel, to themselves and to others, as if they are older than their chronological age. They are conscientious. They are not usually jealous, envious or possessive — any one of which would involve attachment to other people. They are usually gentle toward the faults of others. The harsh perceptions often present in younger souls are absent. They rarely perceive actions as being truly evil. Rather, they regard things that cause suffering as foolish and immature and they seek to cure the cause of the problem by educating and gentle persuasion.

The nations primarily populated by Old souls—Switzerland, Holland, and Iceland, for instance—value their independence and neutrality on political issues. Switzerland plays host to the Young Soul nations at Geneva peace talks, but does not get involved in their Young Soul do-it-my-way games.
If Old Souls care anything for politics, they will be pacifists. Most often they are simply apolitical — they do not get involved at all.

Old Souls are casual and easygoing about almost everything. Not much is a big deal to them. Almost never are they outrageous or outlandish. They are rarely concerned with outward appearances. They’re unlikely to follow [or even know] the latest fashion. In extreme cases they can even appear sloppy. They rarely care if they’re perceived by others as strange in dress or mannerism.

Old Souls pursue education with the same casual attitude as they do everything else in life. Grades are of very little value to them. Even the learning itself isn't all that important unless it furthers a specific life task. They concentrate what little energy they have on understanding the reasons for things being the way they are.

Old Souls rarely participate in organized religion. They are often drawn, instead, to metaphysics, mysticism, philosophy, and the occult in their quest for understanding.

At the moment, it can be said that Old Souls are at the most difficult Age. The difficulty isn’t caused, as it is for Mature Souls, by angst and psychological turmoil. Rather it occurs because they don’t seem to fit in with the rest of the world:
In the first place, they are definitely out of step with society and don't really care about formal institutions. Often the Olds, themselves, do not understand why this is happening and it can take a toll on them.
In the second place, they are often too world-weary to do what needs to be done to solve their own problems. Since they tend to follow the path of least resistance, unless they feel internal and external forces pushing them, they don't go anywhere or do anything. They may be able to help others solve their problems but be unable to have much effect on their own. This can lead to loneliness.
In the third place, there is a certain arrogance in Old Souls who may feel they cannot learn from younger souls. They are aware of their maturity, even if only subliminally, and regard younger souls as foolish. This isn't all that wise, really. There is always much to learn, including from one's juniors.
In the fourth place, there is very little left that Old souls want to experience in life. They feel like they have done it all — so why bother to do more? This contributes to the boredom and even the depression mentioned earlier.

Even sex is not highly prized by Old Souls. They are usually competent, but a lack of interest in it, and the lack of passion for it can be disconcerting to younger Souls who still pursue sexual experience avidly.
Old Souls are often hedonistic and sensual, however, and can have a bawdy sense of humor.
Olds are often androgynous (having balanced masculine and feminine characteristics), and bisexuality may be a part of their lifestyle. Gender identification is often weak at this age because of subconscious contact with the whole psyche, which includes both masculine and feminine characteristics.
What Old Souls seek in romantic relationships is a "soul mate" — someone to whom they can relate on a soul level.

Most of the tasks that are left for the Old Soul to complete have to do with being, rather than doing (like the Young Soul) or feeling (like the Mature Soul). The Old Soul just is. Olds simply experience life as it passes through their consciousness. Not unlike the Infant Soul, this can lead to a simple life lived simply.

2009-05-27T23:40:00.000-04:00

Given our planet's perception level at the moment, it is easy to conclude that, 'Older is Better.'
That's not how the game works, though — and we perceive it that way only out of some sense of competition [a Young Soul way of looking at things.]
Picture a circle outlined by dots rather than an unbroken line. No one of those dots is any better or worse than any other dot. Each is necessary in order to complete the circle.
Each Soul is exactly where it needs to be along the path leading back to the All that Is.
jfwiw.

The Progression of the Personality

2009-05-25T23:45:00.003-04:00

There are two more Soul Ages —called Transcendental and Infinite— They are experienced after we leave the Physical Plane. But, before getting into those, I’d like to address a couple of other topics.

The first is that of the progress of the personality through its lifetime:

Each personality has a single lifetime. After the body dies, the personality is absorbed into the Soul and its experiences become part of the Soul’s structure.

What follows is a general guideline of the progress of the personality through the Soul Ages up to a particular Soul’s current development level.

Just as individual children progress along somewhat different timelines, each personality develops at its own speed [as does each Soul, for that matter]. Still, these age-levels act as a broad baseline for the development of the personality within its individual lifetime.

*_*_*

When any personality is born on the planet, it begins at the level of the Infant Soul. Survival is the basic issue.

The instinct to suck is, almost certainly, accessible to the infant personality unless the body is born so prematurely that even that resource is not available. In that case, if major medical intervention is not on hand, the body will die and absorption of the personality happens immediately.

Likewise, the aborted fetus’ personality is immediately absorbed as was the personality of an infant who was exposed in ancient times or any child who dies prior to or during birth. [This is assuming that a Soul had spoken for the body in the first place. In the case of abortion or exposure, no Soul may have taken on that particular body if it was understood that the body was not going to be used, anyhow.]

Furthermore, if the Soul decides to opt out of a given situation [which can happen till about 2 years of age via crib death, most likely] absorption occurs and the Soul simply tries again.

Recent research has shown that even the youngest infant [24 hours old] is able to mimic faces — in slow motion — it takes a while to process the incoming information and respond.

Furthermore, the ability to take in nurturing from the primary caregiver is crucial. Autism MAY be more common among Infants than other soul ages — I don’t know.

Sucking is certainly a basic skill necessary for survival. The ability to mimic is, apparently, helpful in this endeavor, as well—or why did it evolve? Whether autistics have this mimicking skill is anyone’s guess. _I_ certainly don’t know whether it is present or not.

In any case, let’s assume the child survives the birth process, is healthy and the Soul decides to go through with the lifetime it has just embarked on.

If the Soul is experiencing the Infant Awareness Level, development stops here and the personality remains at the Infant Level throughout its lifetime as the Infant Soul continues learning survival skills.

The exception to this rule is the fact that the Soul can reach the end of a specific level or even Soul Age during a particular personality’s tenure and graduation to the next level of awareness can occur at that point during any personality’s lifetime.

xxx

If the Soul is older than the Infant Soul Age, the toddler moves into the Baby Awareness level when it is about 2 years old.

At this stage the child is learning to get civilized. It’s a sponge, absorbing everything it can about ‘getting it right’. The personality is learning everything its caregivers are teaching it [and the Soul already knows unless it’s learning the Baby lessons, too] about germs, right and wrong, how best to be accepted by others, and the basics about living in a civilized society.

At this stage you can see the developmental level clearly. Watch any young child whose sense of justice has been crossed. You’re likely to witness a full-blown tantrum as the child voices its displeasure.

If the Soul is experiencing the Baby Soul Awareness Level, this is where the personality arrests and the process of the development of the Baby Soul takes over.

xxx

If the Soul has reached the Young Soul phase, the personality moves into this developmental stage at about 6-8 years of age. Stop by any playground and you’ll see this level of development being played out: “Watch me!” “Look! No hands!” “Tick, tock, game’s locked, nobody else can play.” “My daddy can beat up your daddy!”

Ridicule of the ‘other’ because of perceived differences is an important distinction of children at this stage of development.

Again, if the Soul is currently at the Young Soul Level, personality development stops here and the Young Soul starts its work of developing further.

xxx

If the Soul has progressed to the Mature Soul phase, the personality will enter that level of awareness between the ages of 18-25.

The personality that is coupled with a Mature Soul begins asking the hard questions at about the time the individual completes high school and either heads off to college or begins moving out on its own, getting a job and building its own life: “What’s it all about?” “Why are we here?” “What’s the Big Picture?” “How come?” Lots of angst. Lots of emotion.

While personalities that have rested at the Infant, Baby and Young levels don’t become so embroiled, personalities whose Souls have reached the Mature Soul and Old Soul ages are the most likely to grapple with identity crises as young adults because they have the most access to the emotions that accompany such soul searching.

The personality’s relationships take on new and deeper meaning.

And the Mature Soul begins its work here to develop further.

xxx

And, if the Soul has progressed to the Old Soul level of development, the personality will enter that level between the ages of 32-40. Now, the Personality begins to slow down, to stop and smell the roses, so to speak.

Spiritual matters push to the front of the personality’s consciousness and other needs recede. Ennui increases. The personality may begin to ask, “What was I so excited about before?” “What was the big deal back when I was [pushing to get ahead?] [agonizing over that relationship?] [worried about my health or my retirement finances holding out?] Everything is fleeting anyway — so why was I so apprehensive? It’ll all work out in the long run.”

At this point, the Old Soul takes over and continues development toward closure and graduation from the physical plane.

*_*_*

As I said at the beginning of this post—these age milestones are general guidelines and there are plenty of reasons why any given Soul will arrest at an earlier stage and not manifest its full developmental level:

For one thing, souls can get lazy and procrastinate. Even the most advanced soul can pull a “Scarlett O’Hara” during a lifetime or series of lifetimes, for that matter.

In fact, living as we are at the tail-end of the Young Soul era of the planet, we could all do with a refresher course along the line of, ‘Speed isn’t everything’. It’s not about how fast we get through the journey, anyhow. So, it’s perfectly all right to take it easy for one [or several] lifetime[s].

In fact, given how often the Soul DOESN’T manifest at its latest developmental level, it’s a good thing that it’s an OK thing to do. From what I’ve read, we generally manifest our full Soul Ages during about 1/2 to 2/3 of our lifetimes.

Alternatively, we may manifest our Soul Age in one area of development [relationships at the Mature Soul level, say] and not reach our full potential in another [emotions, for instance] during the same lifetime. This may occur out of procrastination [the soul finds relationships easier to handle than emotions] or because the Soul has decided to concentrate on relationships during the lifetime in question.

Another reason for stopping off at an earlier level is as a result of an agreement with another Soul.

One instance I’ve read about is the case of a Young Soul who was anxious about entering the Mature Soul level and had been hung up for several lifetimes at the end of the Young phase afraid to take the plunge. So, a friend who had developed to the Old Soul Age agreed to hang back at an early Mature Soul level. They returned together as father and daughter, Dad showing his daughter the ropes and teaching her that “Mature Can Be Fun.”

Still another reason could be related to karma. If an old karmic experience between two or more Souls needs to be played out at a previous level [suppose the original debt occurred at the Baby Soul level, for instance], anywhere from one to all of the souls involved may need to return to the Baby Soul level in order to complete the karma and close that chapter among themselves.

I'm not certain but it seems to me as if it would be possible to split the awarenesses in this situation: the souls may interact with the world-at-large at their respective Soul Ages while interacting with one another at the Baby Soul level at least until the karma is completed.

And then there's imprinting. If a Soul is born to someone who is younger than it is, it can take on the energy of the younger parent's Soul. Sometimes [though not always] the child's development may be arrested at the younger Soul Age.

I’m sure there are plenty of other reasons I’m not thinking of at the moment, but you get the idea—

Still, by and large, the Soul tends to advance based on the number of lifetimes lived and the intensity with which it approaches each lifetime. Intensity is the more important factor and, generally, progress toward closure and graduation from the physical plane moves inexorably forward as the necessary lessons become incorporated into the individual Soul.

Soul Age Levels

2009-05-22T23:44:00.005-04:00

OK, just one more post on the earthbound Soul Ages and we’ll move on to the Soul Ages that happen after we’ve completed the Physical Plane.

Within each Soul Age there are 7 levels.
So a person can be said to be living at 5th level Baby, for instance—or 1st level Mature—or 3rd level Old, etc.

First Level
At this level of development within any given Soul Age, you’ll feel timid. You’re just dabbling your toes in the water’s edge of your new awareness. You will, on average, spend about 2/3 of your time at the previous Soul Age awareness.
So at 1st level, Young, you’ll spend a great deal of time back in the comfort-zone of 7th level Baby perception.
You’re likely to still seek out Babies to pal around with, attend churches, temples or mosques that teach a more fundamentalist, judgmental, us-vs.-them viewpoint than you would ordinarily seek out at later levels.
Other organizations you’ll join will tend toward the suspicious, xenophobic variety, as well. You may join the KKK and rise through the ranks to the level of the Grand Poohbah or whatever the top official's title is.
You’re still seeking approval from higher authorities as you begin to experiment with the idea of heading out into the world on your own ticket. This is the time when you’re most likely to become Mayor of anything from a large town to a fair-sized city.

As a First Level Mature you’ll spend a lot of time at 7th level Young. You’ll probably find yourself in highly visible professions like show-business, politics, etc.
These MAY be the politicians who bring a slightly more liberal viewpoint to their politics while, at the same time, trying to keep the status quo going when it comes to funding their campaigns — thereby giving their constituents whiplash.

One exception to this rule MAY occur for some people at the bridge between the Mature and Old Soul awarenesses. The Mature experience is so uncomfortable that some Souls may catapult themselves into the Old Soul awareness [spending more than 1/3 of their time there] just to get away from all the angst of the Mature awareness. One way to do this may be by seeking out Old Souls to spend time with. This would certainly have a calming affect on the newly minted Old Soul and, since many Olds are agreeable to teaching a few willing students, this sort of arrangement may be fairly common.
I don’t know this for sure, it’s just a scenario that makes sense to me.

Even 1st level Infants will spend much time at the instinctive level they experienced before they took on their first sentient lifetimes.

Second Level
A bit more confidence is beginning to be experienced now. You’re becoming more accomplished with what you can expect to encounter at the new awareness level. Now, the percentages of experience begin reversing and, by the time your Soul has moved a fair way into its 2nd level lifetimes, you’re spending about 2/3 of your time in the new awarenesses and 1/3 back in the old comfort zone.

Third Level
At the 3rd level, you’ve got the basics down as far as living this new level of awareness. So, most likely, you’re experiencing your current level all or almost all the time. But, you’re pretty much keeping this new knowledge to yourself.
You’ll spend a lot of time alone—contemplating your navel, so to speak. You’re still not entirely comfortable or confident in your new development stage. So you're taking the Soul Age apart and putting it back together in as many ways as you can think of as you puzzle out all the new concepts.

Fourth Level
BINGO! You’ve got it now. You know what you’re doing and you’re ready to show the world what you can do with your newfound knowledge and skills.

At the Infant 4th level, you’ve got the hang of survival and your lifetimes are probably getting longer. You may even move to a harsher climate and a more complicated society. And now you’ll really get down to creating some heavy karma.
Since your conscience isn’t yet developed, as an Infant you'll be among the majority when it comes to joining gangs and becoming serial rapists and/or killers, doing drive-by shootings and the like. You may grab a rifle, climb a tower and kill people you've never met because of some imagined slight.

As a Baby, you’ll be out there making sure everyone else follows the rules [YOUR rules, of course]. You’ll push your Fundamentalist religious viewpoint. You might bomb an abortion clinic or two. And you’ll make damned sure everyone knows Gay Marriage Will Destroy Society As We Know It.

As a Young, the world is your oyster. You’ll push for clear-cutting old-growth forests; you’ll be indignant at the idea of saving endangered species; you’ll be all for burning out the rain forest if you can supply one more cow to Burger King, etc. etc. Whatever your hobby-horses are, you’ll ride em hard and put em away wet.
You’ll have the bestest eye-candy spouse money can buy and your kids will be the talk of the PTA with the best grades and the most after-school activities in the district.

As a Mature, you’ll likely march against all the things those pesky Young Souls are doing [and that YOU were doing not all that many lifetimes ago.] Save the forest, save the owls, save the whales and do it all without smoking.
If the government of your country does something of which you disapprove you'll be out there protesting it. You'll make sure everyone else knows about it, too. You'll chain yourself to a fence and you'll go to jail to make a point.

As an Old, well, what can I say? You’ll be watching all those youngsters from your easy chair with a quizzical look on your face. Then you’ll pull out your philosophical tome and try to forget all about them.

Fifth Level
Now, things may start to get uneasy again.
On the one hand, you can pull out all the stops and become eccentric. Other people might look at you scratching their heads in wonder at how way-out you are. Your friends might tell you to your face that you’re weird — and you’ll take it as a compliment.

On the other hand, you’ll begin to catch a glimpse of your next level of development. So, Babies start to get a sense of the Young Soul Age and Matures start to look ahead to the Old Soul viewpoint. It’s kind of like getting to the top of Mt. Everest only to discover that there’s a whole mountain range ahead of you still to climb.

The later levels can be downright dangerous — to everyone else.
On very rare occasions a Baby may reach for extreme power and the world will find itself faced with someone like Hitler, Stalin or Nixon. Or G W Bush.
I’ve read that Hitler was exceptionally precocious in that he pulled off his rise to power at 5th level Baby. I believe Nixon was 7th level Baby and G.W. Bush is, I’ll bet, a late Baby — though I don’t know that for sure.
Such inexperienced Souls will hand much of their power over to someone who is already firmly entrenched in the Young Soul awareness — that’s when we see the puppet-masters like Cheney, maybe Rove and, possibly, Kissinger.

Sixth Level
If you’re one of those Roles that enjoyed the eccentricity of the fifth level, you aint seen nuthin yet. Now, you’re going to get REALLY busy.

Remember all that karma you’ve created along the way? Now’s the time to clean it up. Even Souls that prefer to sit by the fireside will find themselves driven to be out and about in order to find those folks they owe restitution to.
Particularly if you’re one of the mid-level Soul Ages, you’ll have a hard time settling down — but everyone will get a case of the jitters at this stage. Youngs and Matures find it difficult to slow down and care for themselves anyhow and Sixth Level makes it even harder than usual to find time to do that.

And Olds have to clean up ALL the karma they accumulated and didn’t mop up at the ends of all those Soul Ages that lie behind them. After all, even souls can procrastinate, and most of us pulled a Scarlett O’Hara every so often along the way. So Olds will probably have a fairly hard time at 6th level, too.

Toward the end of Sixth Level you’ll begin hunting around for someone to teach as you prepare for what’s coming down the pike.

Seventh Level
First of all, 7th level is the time to rest on your laurels. You've completed an enormous task and you're feeling pretty proud of yourself. You can recognize the folks who are traversing the 7th level by their smugness.

Infant's have survival all figured out and might start to swagger — maybe taking more risks than they used to.
Babies have the rules down pat now and very well may spend a lot of time trying to convince everyone else that THEY'VE cornered the market on how to live, how to get to heaven, how to raise the best children, that they have the best morals, etc. etc. etc.
Youngs probably have more money and more power than anyone else in their spheres. They're convinced that THEY'RE at the top of the heap and nobody's going to top them. Ever.
Matures are similar to babies in a lot of ways and they, too, are likely to see their morals as the ones everyone should share — or, at least, aspire to. They're likely to look at the Youngs of their acquaintance and marvel at their shallow lives [little guessing that they shared those exact values not all that long ago.] Emotions and relationships are what it's all about. Period.
Olds will be pretty worn out by now but even so, they are likely to compare themselves to people of other soul ages and perceive themselves as above all that 'pettiness', 'anger', 'angst' or what have you.

Secondly, now is time to settle down again and teach someone what you’ve learned as you’ve traversed your latest Soul Age. This is one of the more enjoyable levels [or so I’ve read—though having spent my life teaching and feeling a bit burned out on it at the moment, I’m not so sure about that—but that’s for another post].

Anyway, at the end of each Soul Age, you seek out at least one student and teach them about the Age you’re wrapping up. So, a Young might do a series of seminars on how to make bundles of money; a Mature might do couples’ counseling; and an Old feels compelled to teach at least one person everything it has learned throughout its tenure on the planet.
The Old Soul can take its time about it, though. It gets to keep coming back at 7th Level Old till it feels ready to cycle off the planet. There’s that, at least.

Off-world Soul Ages

2009-05-19T23:42:00.016-04:00

Between lifetimes we hang out on the lower Astral Plane where we spend time with friends and mentors; look back at our most recent incarnation focusing on lessons learned during it; go to school in preparation for our next lessons; and, as we get older, begin working at various jobs [mostly focusing on helping others in some way], etc.

At some point, when we feel ready, we begin preparing for our next incarnation: We create a new personality, plan any special lessons regarding the next body we’ll be inhabiting [we may choose to create a body with some birth defect or infirmity for karmic reasons or if we have lessons we need to learn about being different from others, for instance].
We may discuss karmic lessons with our chosen future parents or other relatives, people who we’ll be involved with as spouses, bosses or subordinates, friends or even ‘enemies’ [Souls we have negative karmic bonds with], etc.

After we cycle off the Physical Plane of existence for good, we’ll congregate at the second-level Astral plane while we wait for the rest of a loose group we started our physical incarnations with and, after this group has gotten together, we move ‘up’ to the third-level Astral Plane where we assemble and meld with a very close friend [our Essence Twin].

We rise further to the higher Astral levels and merge with more and more Souls from our own Entity. Finally, we have immersed ourselves within our own Entity and we're ready to graduate to the Causal Plane where further mergings [with other Entities] will continue. By this point we are fully committed to the Transcendental Soul Age.
xxx
The Transcendental Soul Entity may decide, for teaching purposes, to send a representative to the planet. In fact, every Entity does this at least once. Because of the consciousness levels obtained by the Entity the Transcendental Soul shows up on the planet as a balanced being with easy access to higher centers and states of consciousness.
The teaching of the Transcendental Soul, whether verbal, by example, or by action is centered on the greater connectivity of the universe. Note Gandhi's message of the unity of all religious teachings.

There are always some Transcendental Souls on the planet. At a time of major change like the present there are many. Some, like Sai Baba, Meher Baba, Yogananda, Babaji, Rumi, St. Francis, Pope John XXIII, or Mohandas Gandhi obtain wide recognition for their teachings while others are monumental influences in their individual communities but do not receive global recognition.
These Souls are not totally self-aware. As a result, although they are likely to make huge differences in their societies or in the world, they do not consciously realize that they are outside the norm on the planet.

On rare occasions, Transcendental Souls lose track and become enamored of the adulation of the masses but most stay amazingly clear, centered and conscious.
Through their teachings, particularly during a time of great change on the planet [as is happening now], they act as precursors of what is to come———
xxx
Infinite Soul is the manifestation of All-That-Is.
During any Planetary Shift—the process of moving from one level of awareness to the next— and, particularly as is happening now, from the Young (outward-looking, materialistic consciousness) toward the Mature (inward looking, emotional/interpersonal level) [the biggest leap any individual Soul or any species makes during its development] the Infinite Soul appears to help the planetary evolution occur.

The 1st Awakening of the Human species on the planet Earth [the move from the Infant to the Baby Awareness] is lost in the mists of time. So far as I can make out, it began about 6,000 to 8,000 years ago and was presaged by numerous teachers [mostly women because they were more revered than men during that period and were more likely to be listened to].

The 2nd Awakening [from the Baby to the Young Soul Consciousness] was ushered in by Lao Tsu [b. 604 BCE], Siddhārtha Gautama [the Buddha—b. 563 BCE], Confucius [b. 551 BCE], John the Baptist [b. about 6 BCE], the Christ Soul [b. about 4 BCE] and, finally, Mohammed [b. 570 CE].

Though I don't remember reading that he was included among them, I've wondered if Pythagoras [b. about 530 BCE] belongs on this list. Miracles have been attributed to him [having a golden thigh and being seen in more than one geographical place at once, for instance.] His followers certainly revered him deeply and his teachings covered much more than mathematics. To my mind, the fact that he had to flee persecution on at least 2 occasions lends credence to this idea.

Male bodies were utilized almost exclusively by both Transcendentals and the Infinite because the people of the time were far more likely to listen to men than women.
Look at what happened to Mary Magdalene, for instance. Only today are we beginning to recognize the distortions of her role made over the course of the development of the Christian discipline either consciously or unconsciously. Whether she was a Transcendental Soul or an Old Soul, I don’t know.
In any case, she was certainly not a prostitute. Even now there is a tendency to cast her as a wife/mother figure by those who try to place her as the wife of 'Jesus' following her husband rather than a woman making her own choices. More and more scholars, though, are recognizing her for what she almost certainly was: a strong-willed woman—a disciple in her own right. It has taken us 2000 years to come to this realization.

My understanding is that most of the folks listed above were Transcendental Souls though Krishna, Lao Tsu, the Buddha and the Christ were of the Infinite Soul. Others on this list may have been Infinite Soul, as well—I can’t say for sure without delving into my stack of books [and delaying this post.]
And there were probably other teachers, beyond those listed here—though I don’t know that for sure.

This 3rd time around, men such as Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and others who haven’t yet become well known [or even been born yet—after all, it took about 1000 years for the last batch all to get to the planet] and including women [it’s supposed to be about 50/50 this time] are due to be bringing in the next phase of enlightenment. Gandhi and, possibly, King were Transcendentals. So far as I know, no manifestations of the Infinite have yet arrived. I expect if any had, we’d all know it.

The Transcendentals help us get ready for the arrival of the Infinite which then helps the entire species keep our footing as we traverse the changes and bring new awarenesses to the forefront [as the last group introduced the idea of a loving, caring Deity and more effective ways for humans to interact than the old eye-for-an-eye method, for instance.]

The Infinite Soul is, in fact, the entire universe consciously encompassed in one body. The Infinite soul is completely self-aware and has the superhuman abilities noted in the Christ Soul of the New Testament.
This Soul usually enters, by prior agreement, into the body of a person who is seventh level Old or Transcendental who then may cycle off the planet [as occurred with the Christ and the Buddha or alternately cycle in and out as happened with Krishna and Lao Tsu.
The energy of the Infinite Soul is so intense that, were it to be born into a human body and dwell consistently in it, the body would quickly burn out. This Soul is always noticed, and always teaches oneness and love.

Today, Earth is set to be visited by four or five manifestations of this incredible Soul over the next few generations. They will have the same message: love one another and the Earth. Because at least parts of the planet's population are ready to heed both men and women, they will manifest as both sexes this time around and they will appear as different races in several geographical areas.

The Planetary Shift

2009-05-16T23:41:00.003-04:00

The US recently [about the mid 1980’s] moved from a majority of Young Souls to a majority of Mature Souls. In fact, the planet as a whole did, too — at just about the same time. This isn’t to say that all continents or all countries are now Mature. Nor even that all regions of Mature-majority countries are Mature.

Just as the Old-Soul countries [primarily Iceland, Holland, Denmark, Switzerland] have plenty of Mature, Young, Babies and even a smattering of Infants within their borders, Mature countries have representatives of each Soul Age, too. Every country does.

Small Town America is still chock-full of Babies feeling smug in the fact that they understand the rules and know how to apply them. You'll find some Infants hanging out there, too. Mostly later level Infants who are starting to explore what's coming next.
Such towns can feel very optimistic and high-energy. Their Independence Day parades are exciting as the whole town turns out to celebrate the birth of a nation. Go to the local high-school for the Friday night football game and feel the vitality—it’s downright palpable—with most of the town’s population in attendance.
Matures and Olds who pine for a slower pace have begun migrating back to these small towns as telecommuting makes such moves practical.

Large cities in the US still tend toward Youngs [and will continue to do so for some time to come] Matures and Olds but you’ll find pockets of Infants and substantial numbers of Babies within them.

So, just because Matures are on the ascendant doesn’t mean the whole world is suddenly going to be plunged into emotional angst and marching to Save The Environment or stop ALL wars [unfortunately].
Still, you can see the wave of the future in the movement to ban smoking in more and more places.
And in the entreaties to, 'Talk to your kids. They'll listen.'
The fact that landfills are overflowing isn’t the ONLY reason corporations are learning how to tap these sites for energy and that recycling is on the rise.
Alternatives to wholesale logging aren’t being addressed ONLY because we’re running out of trees.
The yearly competition in Washington D.C. to design the most energy-efficient home [and it has to be aesthetically pleasing, too] isn’t being held ONLY because we’re running out of the old stand-by fossil fuels.
At the disappearance of the honey bee, the realization that we don't know how to pollinate our own crops doesn't account for the fact that we're looking to environmental factors for the causes and for possible solutions. If Young Souls had the control they did a generation ago, we'd simply be developing robotic bees.
Likewise, the current rise in awareness of Global Warming hasn't come about SOLELY because of the steady breakdown of the glacial shelves.

We merely have to look at the horribly blighted areas in Eastern Europe that just kept getting worse and worse for decades to see that the fate of the Earth isn’t the ONLY reason these matters are now beginning to be addressed. Ditto for Los Angeles' smog problems. And acid rain over Europe and the US.
The rise of the Mature Soul is at least as much a causal factor in the change in how these concerns are being addressed [and plenty I’ve not listed here]. A major change in how we perceive the planet is underway—and the reasons for that are at least as much subjective as objective.
The recognition that we are the major factor in most if not all of these crises is coming about because Maturity brings with it the acceptance of responsibility. Bit by bit, denial of responsibility [the Young Soul mindset] is becoming a thing of the past.

If the Young Souls had it all their own way [as they have for the last several thousand years], we’d be carrying on with business-as-usual [and, in fact, it’s going to be quite a while before true quantitative differences will be felt by the majority of the Earth’s population] but change is in the wind and, I imagine, most of us feel it.
Even small towns in the US are getting a dose of Mature Awareness as can be seen in Greensburg, Kansas which, after a devastating tornado, opted to rebuild Green. Unlike most Baby communities [and even most Young ones], they haven’t forced everyone to comply with the green codes. But many are doing so to the extent their pocket-books allow. And the Town Square and management are going Green with a vengeance.
xxx
Another part of this movement into a new awareness can result in panic mode by folks in the Old Guard:
A rise in violence among the Infants around the world has certainly been detected. Everything from Going Postal to Columbine to Tower Shootings in the US to the poison gases released in Britain's and Spain's subways and bombs in Paris to beheadings in Iraq and 9/11 itself which, although it culminated here, had its roots in the Infant and Baby Souled countries of the Middle East were, likely, the results of the panic of Infant Souls as changes in the status quo made them uneasy and frightened.

Meanwhile, lots of Babies are becoming more shrill in their absolute certainty that going to church is the be-all/end-all of religion; patriotism is a matter of waving the flag harder, faster and higher than your neighbor does and wearing your flag lapel pin EVERY day; and everyone had better acknowledge that being different from the majority is the kiss of death [Gay Marriage Will Cause The End of Civilization As We Know It, for instance. And keeping immigrants out is the only way to be safe within our boundaries.]

The panic the Young Souls experience will probably be somewhat less shrill than that of the Infants and Babies [they’re closer to the norm, after all] and many folks in the latter levels will find themselves being dragged along into the early Mature Soul awareness levels—which will accelerate the evolutionary process.
Still, those Youngs in the earlier levels will protest that the Earth is a treasure trove to plunder and we’d better get cracking to chop down those forests, get the last drop of oil out of ANWR and make damned sure every acre of the Amazon basin is turned into grazing lands so that McDonalds has all the cows it needs to turn into burgers. Who knows WHAT will happen if the status quo is upset?

But the Matures are having more and more to say about such views. After a long bout of silence, they're taking on the title, 'Progressive' and even unashamedly reclaiming the labels, 'Liberal' and 'Humanist' that they'd been shamed out of using for so long.

Beginning in some pockets in larger cities and fanning out, some marches to protest the status quo are beginning.
And Congress' approval rating has fallen into the single digits—even below that of Bush. Matures are telling Congress [and presidential candidates for that matter] to hold to their convictions or face being sent home in November.
The fact that most governments are still dominated by Young Souls could slow the process at the top and may make a massive house-cleaning unavoidable—but both US parties may get a shock. The Green party is, for the first time, optimistically looking toward a 5% vote this November. Even they may be surprised at the results and the Green Party may well replace the GOP within a generation or two while the Democratic Party takes on the old, 'Hang onto the status quo,' mindset the GOP has held for so long.
xxx
While I can’t be certain, of course, my intuition is telling me not to panic. The Mature Soul awareness will be too massive to ignore and, eventually, the planet will settle into the new consciousness just as happened 2000 years ago when we evolved from the Baby into the Young Soul awareness level.

Just in the nick of time, we’re being ushered out of the mindset of, ‘Kill the Planet for Short-term Gain’ into the sense of ‘Save the Planet for Long-term Sustainability.’
Along with that is coming a sense of, 'You Don't Have to be Wrong for Me to be Right.'
And our ace in the hole is a half-dozen manifestations of the Infinite Soul [see previous post] riding to the rescue like the cavalry in all those Wild West movies I saw as a child.

Repost 2

2009-05-11T13:01:00.001-04:00

The Seven Roles// #1 Scholar

2009-05-10T23:39:00.001-04:00

When we leave the All that Is we are ‘fragments’. Picture a spark of pure white light. One of the first things we do is choose our ROLE. Picture the white spark passing through a prism and becoming one of the 7 colors within the white.
Throughout our entire walk-about—from the time we set out, well before choosing what [if any] planet we will inhabit until we complete the circle and return to the Is, we will maintain that Role.
Since virtually everything else about us will change as we evolve— from our Soul Age, through the overleaves we will take on during each lifetime on the planet [more about those later] to which Plane of existence we reside on, and on and on—it’s rather nice, actually to have something that remains stable throughout the journey [at least, that’s my take on things.]
xxx
SCHOLAR [15% of the population]
I’m going to start with the one I know and love the best of all—my own Role.

As the name suggests, Scholars want to know. They have this deep need to know and understand the world and the universe around them. The word ‘Curious’ pretty well describes them. They love to take apart and put together the pieces of the universe till they understand it fully. They ask the question, ‘What would happen if. . . ?’ and then do whatever it takes to find the answer.

Their broader function is to bring knowledge back to the Akashic Record [see the post on the Planes of Existence.]

Each of the other Roles is one of a pair [the Cardinal and the Ordinal] and manifests a different aspect of the inherent perspective they present to the universe and that they view the universe through.
The Scholar, though, stands alone [ask any of my friends—they’ll probably tell you that one is PLENTY. :) ] Picture a 6-spoked wheel: the other Roles are the spokes and the Role of Scholar is the axis—and is considered neutral.

Scholars don’t stand out so much as some of the ones I'll profile later, particularly the Cardinal Roles, do. You’re more likely to find other Roles out there doing things. Scholars tend to hang back and observe those other Roles as they do what they do.
If they’re particularly interested, Scholars may tend toward staring. Otherwise, they don’t draw a lot of attention to themselves.

Scholars tend to dress in neutral colors—to better blend in with the woodwork.
Back when I was in my teens, long before I’d heard of Michael or Seth or reincarnation or any of it, I discovered that my favorite color was brown. I felt weird about that at the time—here were all my friends voicing a preference for blue or red or pink or yellow—and I liked brown. During the stereotyping late 1950's early 1960's, for a girl to like brown was not all that acceptable.
Still, to this day, I’ve surrounded myself with antiques [which tend to be brown] and have been known to wallpaper entire rooms in brown [though I hate wood paneling and won’t have it in my home. Go figure.]
And, yes, my wardrobe tends toward [but isn’t exclusively] neutrals. Lots of black and brown and gray and heather and sage with the occasional ‘splash of color’ as the decorators call it. But those are reserved for days when I feel like struttin’—which don’t happen all that often.

Scholars are one of the more ‘grounded’ Roles. You’ll rarely see them out there struttin’. More likely you’ll find them in front of a computer or with their nose in a book. But, lots of times you WILL find them out and about as they hunt down entirely new information that no one has discovered yet. Think Margaret Mead and Galileo.

Each Role has it’s positive and negative poles. For the Scholar the positives are: thorough, observant, logical, integrating. The negatives are: bland, reclusive, one author went so far as to call the negative Scholar ‘a dull and dusty museum piece.’ Gee, thanks. :)
As those of you who’ve been around a while know, I have described myself as a hermit—and I certainly can tend in that direction though I’ve been working to get out and about more since I moved to Florida—with mixed success.

Some Scholar politicians are: Edward Kennedy, Richard Nixon, George Washington, George H. W. Bush, Lloyd Bentsen, and Michael Dukakis and hanger-on Joan Quigley [Nancy Reagan’s astrologer] in the US. Then there are Chairman Mao, Margaret Thatcher and P. W. Botha.
Others are: Heraclites who noticed that you can’t step twice into the same river, Admiral Perry, Joseph Smith, Steven Jobs, Beethoven, Joseph Campbell, Paul Simon and Mr. Rogers.

When I was hunting for the first pic above, I happened upon the Lego Sculpture, above, of the Thinker. First, I thought ‘Scholar’ – then I thought ‘Artisan’ though a Warrior’s organizational skills could certainly come in handy.
[Artisan will be the next Role profiled, fwiw.]

The Seven Roles // #2 The Artisan

2009-05-07T23:38:00.002-04:00

When we leave the All that Is we are ‘fragments’. Picture a spark of pure white light. One of the first things we do is choose our ROLE. Picture the white spark passing through a prism and becoming one of the 7 colors within the white.
xxx
ARTISAN [18% of the population]
Back in Kansas City [where I used to live] I have a friend — a psychologist who works from his home. He didn’t leave the decorating of his home solely to his wife but had a hand in it as well— particularly his office, the kitchen, a great custom-built closet of his own design and some custom-built pocket doors the likes of which I’d never seen before. They’re so perfectly balanced that, though they’re quite heavy, they slide open and closed at the touch of a finger.
Little touches in his personal space abound— like the small wooden hand-carved train in his office with old-style locomotive and caboose. He loves to do gross-pointe needle point [he’s too impatient for petit-pointe] and there are several pillows of his own design scattered around his office.
He dresses casually and wears brightly colored shirts at work and when relaxing around the house. He jokes that he at least matches his socks to his shirts—but that’s not always the case.
He was active in the raising of his children long before it became accepted practice among the male population generally.
He plays the guitar in coffee shops on the weekends often singing songs of his own composition.
He has been known to give home-made plywood doll houses [each one is different] to his friends for Christmas. I have one, and he and I spent lovely afternoons scouring flea markets for furnishings for it. He’s also made furniture for the houses.
When I looked for gifts for him, I would hunt for art supplies, unusual pottery or big, floppy hats.
He has an amazing, though dry, sense of humor.
For all that, he can be quiet and contemplative—often allowing his wife, a Sage [more about Sages later] to take center stage during group therapy while he hangs back and observes.

After I started studying Michael, I had a reading and asked about him. Though I hadn’t really thought it through, I wasn’t surprised to learn that he’s a second-level Old Artisan.
xxx
The Artisan is the ordinal half of the pair of Roles that are the most creative [the Cardinal side is the Sage].

Artisans can be flaky, outrageous, like to wear bright colors [and often, these days, their hair is brightly colored (turquoise or purple, say) as well] and they make things. Oh, Lordy, how they make things!
Look around you: everything you see—your computer, your phone, your furniture, your clothes, the ceiling fan that keeps you from fainting in the heat, the furnace that keeps you from dying from the cold, your bathroom fixtures, your kitchen appliances, your vehicles, and on and on and on—an artisan had a hand in designing, building, repairing, updating, rethinking and refining.
Artisans are innovative, spontaneous, eccentric, scattered, imaginative, clever and creative. If they’re not careful, they can slip into their own delusional worlds—so they need to stay well-grounded, something that doesn’t come all that easily to them.
The real world may not hold the attention of an artisan all that long. They may see an object and immediately begin fantasizing about how to make it better. If the object of their magpie interest happens to belong to you and you value it, get it out of their hands FAST—before they start taking it apart to 1] see how it works and 2] figure out how to make it more efficient. On the other hand, if you leave them to it, you just might come back later and find your friend, all smiles, holding an improved version.
You’ll find Artisans in the fields of the fine arts, literature, computer programming, mathematics, engineering, and quantum physics. They may excel at philosophy, psychology, sociology [Why do people act as they do? Why are they different when alone as opposed to when acting in groups?]
Those with an engineering bent may turn their hands to designing, repairing and making innovations to the engines or interiors of automobiles, for instance. Or bicycles. Or robots. Or solar panels. Or airplanes.
Those old films of the first attempts at heavier-than-air flying machines probably feature lots of Artisans.
Artisans often have an inventive, fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants style of creativity that allows them to create remarkable things out of limited resources.
I used to watch a T.V. program [is it still around?] in which two brothers would pick up stuff left at the curb for the large-item pick-up to haul away. They would take such items to their workshop and create something entirely new, return them to the original owners, ring the door-bell and run away. The unsuspecting home owner would open the door to find their renovated microwave-turned-aquarium, for instance—or two or three wooden doors that were reincarnated as an entertainment center [I wish they lived in MY neighborhood!] Anyway, any guesses what Role at least one of those brothers was likely to be?

Like Scholars, Artisans want to know stuff— but their focus is narrower: ‘How are things put together?’ is the question. From the atom to the space station, the Artisan is insatiably curious about what makes it tick. Why must it be designed THIS way as opposed to THAT way and would THAT way work as well?

Many great baseball players are Artisans; the geometric principles of the game fascinate them.

Artisans can be the moodiest of the roles. Often introspective, they may become depressed and can bring down an entire roomful of people. On the other hand, a happy Artisan can change a roomful of sour dispositions into a joyful celebration.
The Artisan can also be the most likely to descend into chaos and become the craziest of all the Roles.

Physically, Artisans are often attractive. Women may be described as anything from ‘cute’ to ‘cuddly’ to ‘adorable.’ Males tend not to have the ‘rough hewn’ or ‘hatchet jaw’ face but be predisposed toward softer features.
Many of the fashion models in the haute couture world are Artisans. So are many of the designers of the clothes the models display.

Being an Ordinal role, the Artisan is generally not comfortable in large groups of people, gravitating to the intimacy of the one-to-one connection. [My psychologist friend often hung back and let his wife run the group therapy/training sessions— though he thoroughly enjoyed the individual therapy side of their joint practice.]

Artisans greatly value their alone time. This is especially true when their creative juices are flowing and there is a new and exciting project in the works.
It can be downright dangerous for an Artisan to get blocked. An Artisan will always find ways to be creative, even if it means creating an interesting disease.

Day to day living is often a bore for the Artisan. The monotonous grind of the 9-5 workplace is decidedly not to the Artisan’s taste. Acting, dance or the other performing arts, are more to their liking—even though accompanied by the inherent risks that go with such occupations. As mentioned earlier, several of the truly great baseball players are Artisans. Scientists out in the forefront of theory [though probably not behind the podium at the conferences], are Artisans. Musical composers or members of the orchestra: yes. Soloists? Less likely. Music conductors? Even less so. The spotlight would shine too brightly for the Artisan to be comfortable in it.

Often fiercely innovative and ahead of their time, they find themselves out of step with the rest of society. This may account for the fact that the Artisan can feel out of touch with the world and, on occasion, move toward a neurotic or even psychotic viewpoint.

Their world is often littered with a number of unfinished projects, sometimes literally strewn everywhere. In fact, while the Artisan might see this type of system as being completely logical and ordered, the other roles may see only chaos. The Artisan and his or her spouse will need to come to some agreements about how their space is ordered or divided just in order to continue speaking to each other.

Whether as artists, performers, craftsmen, engineers, writers, composers, surgeons, carpenters, or philosophers, Artisans can make almost anything a canvas for their creations, and in their own inventive ways, make the world a better place.

Some well known Artisans are: Meryl Streep, Michael Jackson, Claude Monet, Mozart, Vincent van Gogh, Debussy, Walt Disney, Renoir, Elvis Presley, Albert Einstein, George Lucas, Steven Speilberg, Richard Gere.

The Seven Roles // # 3 The Sage

2009-05-04T23:37:00.004-04:00

The class clown; the con-artist; the fun-loving cut-up; the teacher who inspires by eloquence and example: there’s a really good chance you’re seeing the multi-faceted Sage in action.

Sages are the Cardinal Emotional Spoke on the wheel of the Roles [Artisans are the Ordinal Spoke]. It’s a good thing they're only 8:92— otherwise, the rest of us might not get a word in edgewise. :)

xxx
Back in Kansas City, the other half of that husband and wife team of psychologists [see previous post] was a Sage. He [the Artisan] often hung back during group therapy and training sessions while she [the Sage] carried the ball.

The fact that she's 7th level Mature while he's 2nd level Old also assured that she was likely to take center stage. Give her a couple of more lifetimes and she’s likely to be a 1st level Old soul and starting to hang back a bit herself while she puzzles out her new level of awareness.

Meanwhile, though, she’s pretty smug and absolutely certain that emotions and relationships are the be-all/end-all of the reasons why we’re here. She’s quite outspoken about this viewpoint.

She's as creative as her husband. Together they've created a unique home. She, too, does meticulous needlework, making large pillows for friends, crocheting rugs, blankets, hats, scarves, jackets and even winter coats. She does leather and bead-work. Her friends tend to emulate her and those therapy/training sessions were full of heads bent over textile projects while people listened to the processes going on around them.

It was she who, when a member of our extended community was diagnosed with leukemia, organized 3 teams to help our friend as she went through her ordeal [emotional/medical, legal and physical (taking care of her home while she was hospitalized).] She also organized fund-raising.
She built another set of such teams, years later, when another friend was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease.

All in all, this friend is a human dynamo who can be formidable force to be reckoned with no matter the cause she's working for. In the process she’s always teaching the rest of us how to be better therapists, how to meet any crisis, how to rise to any occasion and how to do it all with flair, verve and find fun in the doing.
xxx
Like Scholars, Sages love to learn. But, while Scholars learn for the sake of the learning itself and in order to store the knowledge to dump into the Akashic Record [though we’re happy to tell you whatever you want to know if you ask nicely], Sages learn in order to teach others what they've learned. They simply want to disseminate knowledge, understanding and, if we’re lucky, wisdom.

Friendly, outgoing, colorful and downright outspoken, Sages teach. Their goal, in most instances, is to make the learning fun so you’ll keep coming back for more. They relish the spotlight. They need to be the center of attention.
They’re clear communicators who want to be certain you comprehend what they’re telling you and can become quite upset if you misunderstand what they’re saying.

They gather in communication centers like Los Angeles, London, Paris, Sydney, Moscow, New York, and Amsterdam— anywhere that has a thriving theater district. You’ll find lots of actors, news anchors, the more colorful news reporters who make names for themselves with their commentaries. They’ll boost Sage populations in those cities to 15%.

They’re so pro-good times, Sages can be among the slowest to mature to their true soul-age during any given lifetime. Like Artisans [the ordinal emotional pole] they add spice wherever they are and the world would a much drearier place without them. And, like Artisans, they can bring joy to a roomful of sad faces or, if they're unhappy, bring a whole room down.

During their earlier lifetimes, they may play fast and loose with the truth. During the Young Soul phase, for instance, they can become con artists, used car salesmen or ambulance-chasing lawyers. It all goes with the territory: they’re great communicators and, at times can embellish the truth to the point where it barely has a nodding acquaintance with reality.
Even when they stick with the facts, they’ll milk those facts for all they’re worth. They exaggerate to make a point.

During later lifetimes they can, as my friend has done, use virtually ANY situation as a platform to teach life’s lessons to the rest of us. They can, as she has, teach by example and by being extremely articulate and gifted linguistically. They can provide comic relief. In fact, they can lead by example here, too. Sages look to be thoroughly enjoying their lives—and urging the rest of us to do the same. They understand intuitively that life doesn’t need to be a vale of tears and spirituality can be fun. They work extremely well at the emotional level. They have enormous amounts of charisma and draw others to them like moths to flame.

The positive pole of a Sage is expression. The negative is oration.
So, the positive Sage will enlighten, bedevil [but it’s all good], enthrall, tell great stories, create and draw you into their creations. The negative Sage will drone on and on and on until you just wish s/he would GET TO THE POINT, ALREADY!

They’re a dab hand at acting as a bridge among the other roles, too. They like to surround themselves with lots of people and will make sure that communications within the group are clear—interpreting all those other Roles to each other.

Do you see why my 7th level Mature friend feels so at home being a pshrink? And why she’s surrounded by such a large, extended family of people who aren’t related by blood?
xxx
btw—
My Essence Twin [more about those later] is a Sage, as well. This fragment isn’t on-planet at the moment—so it bleeds through pretty strongly, or so I’ve been told. Maybe THAT’S why I’ve spent so much time teaching during this lifetime though I’m not NEARLY so flamboyant about it as my Sage friend is.
xxx
There’re lots and lots of famous Sages [as you might imagine]. A very short list includes: Gary Hart, Mikhail Gorbachev, Anwar Sadat, Robert Kennedy and Harry Truman among politicians. TV personalities are: Oprah Winfrey, Jim Lehrer, Mike Wallace, Barbara Walters, Jessica Savitch. Actors such as Richard Burton, Michael J. Fox, Harrison Ford, Cher, Marlo Thomas,—though, generally speaking, actresses tend to be the softer Artisans and Priests [who will be profiled later.]
Authors include: Stephen King, Rita Mae Brown, Lee Iaccoca, Ruth Westheimer, Alice Walker and Shakespeare.
Funny folks Johnny Carson, Sammy Davis, Jr., Billy Crystal, Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, Chevy Chase.

The Seven Roles// #4 The Server

2009-05-01T23:36:00.001-04:00

When we leave the All that Is we are ‘fragments’. Picture a spark of pure white light. One of the first things we do is choose our ROLE. Picture the white spark passing through a prism and becoming one of the 7 colors within the white.
SERVER // 30% of the population
In the early 1990’s the Server population in the US was down to 10% overall and even fewer on the coasts. This has made for a callous and calculating “What’s in it for me?” feeling in this country.

With the conventional viewpoint of, ‘Every man for himself’ that has long been the tradition here, Servers haven’t felt particularly welcome— so they’ve tended to go elsewhere— choosing, instead, to congregate in China to help nurture it forward [at that time, a whopping 50% of the Chinese population were Servers. That’s a LOT of nurturing!]

We all like to gravitate to places where we’ll be valued. This is as true at the Soul level as it is at the personality level. And, in China, the energy of the Server has long been venerated.

So, until recently, the US has made do with women from other Roles taking on characteristics that Servers truly enjoy embodying. So our Grandmothers, who may have chafed at the confinement, took on these attributes even though they were not inherent in their natures. This may have accounted for the 1960’s rise of the women’s movement.

Luckily for the rest of us, though, the population of Servers began to increase around the early 1990’s with more being born here— mostly in male bodies. If we haven’t reached it yet, we should soon be back up to the normal rate of 30% here. Looking at our current situation— it’s not a moment too soon. We need those Servers and they know it.

Maybe now, as the balance is restored, those other Roles can return to their own being-ness and leave most of the nurturing to the Servers. It may help lessen the sense that serving others means self-sacrifice and even a sense of martyrdom accompanying the “serving” which would have been, at best, a going-through-the-motions that most of us could probably feel underneath the caring.

**Whew!** We may just be saved by the skin of our teeth, here!
xxx
The Server is the Ordinal spoke of the Inspirational Role dyad. [Its related Cardinal end is that of the Priest—which will be profiled next.]
Everybody loves the Server [originally, Michael called this role ‘The Slave’, but that has such negative connotations from our viewpoint it was quickly renamed.]

Servers truly want to nurture the rest of us. They look out for the common good. You can tell a Server by their welcoming presence and a look of approachability in their eyes. The Grandma with the biggest lap is the Server.

Like Scholars, Servers tend to dress in muted colors. Not for them the bird-of-Paradise colors of the Artisan or Sage.

They truly enjoy helping others. They look for what needs doing and quietly make sure it gets done. Being Ordinal, they’ll take care of the nuts-and-bolts of day-to-day living—leaving the Big Picture stuff for the Priests to handle.
Servers create cozy environments where the rest of us can relax and regroup.

If you were lucky enough to have a parent or grandparent who was a Server, you knew that, when you got home from school, there would be a cup of cocoa waiting or a big glass of milk and warm cinnamon toast on the table.
And you could expect help with your homework. But s/he wouldn’t do it for you. Servers know that doesn’t truly help—and they have the patience to prod you along while you work out the answer for yourself.
Do you see why you would, if you came from that environment, feel nurtured, cared-for and cherished?

They want you to feel valued as they do what they do for you. They’ll be behind the counter serving coffee at the church social or playing the organ during the service. And, they’ll carry out these roles with such grace [if they’re in the positive pole] that most of us won’t even notice that they’re the last to sit down at the pot-luck dinner.

They’re very sweet though they’re less likely to shout their love from the rooftops. They show their love by what they do for you rather than by showing ardent affection. They don’t wear their love on their sleeves.

Server’s communications tend to be more muffled because confrontation can tend to create storms. Accommodation is the name-of-the-game.
In fact, it can be difficult to discern just what they want. Their style is to drop a hint, wait a while and see what happens. One of the problems with this communication style is that it can require the rest of us to develop the ability to mind-read—and, since we often don’t have as much patience as the Server, we may tend to give up before figuring them out.
With so many of them in the population, they lend the entire planet a sense of: ‘What do you want to do?’ ‘Oh, I don’t care, whatever YOU want,’ that can make communication difficult at times.

While Servers are great at the supportive role, you won’t find them out in front leading the way, all that often. Leave those aspects to the Priests, Warriors and Kings [all to be profiled later] and the Sages.

Servers may, particularly if they’re in the negative pole, get themselves into enslavement to a cause, a spouse or family member, a boss or co-worker. Martyrdom, anyone?

They may also meet with resistance for reasons not of their own making: The rest of us are so used to waiting for the other shoe to drop we may not trust the sincerity of the Server— especially in this country which has made do without the normal numbers of Servers for several generations, now.

In the early lifetimes [Infant and Baby], Servers will march off to war to support their countries, create large families, care for farm animals and create warm structures in small towns and villages around the world. As they mature they may begin moving into larger cities and develop a penchant for pushing various causes though they’ll still tend to work behind the scenes rather than be out front and center as promoters of BandAid, for instance. They'll often still tend toward producing fairly large families as they continue to wish to care for lots of other people.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama, and Bishop Tutu all used religion and a certain fervor to push their causes.

Florence Nightengale, Queen Victoria, Jimmy Carter, Albert Schweitzer, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles can all be seen, even as they rose to visibility, to hang back and not take center stage. This has caused problems particularly for Carter, Q.E. II and Prince Charles as the rest of the population don’t quite know what to make of them in our media-driven world.

The only show business personality I’ve found [and he was decidedly at the quiet end of that noisy group] is Phil Donahue. And his style [racing around the room with his microphone, making sure that everyone got to have a say in the discussion] was certainly the hallmark of the Server.

The Seven Roles// #5 The Priest

2009-04-28T23:35:00.002-04:00

When we leave the All that Is we are ‘fragments’. Picture a spark of pure white light. One of the first things we do is choose our ROLE. Picture the white spark passing through a prism and becoming one of the 7 colors within the white.
Priest // 4 to 5% of the population
The Priest is the Cardinal pole of the Inspirational Roles [the Ordinal pole is Server.] Priests are the heart of humankind.
The Priest is a channel. S/he lifts others up, inspires them to higher aspirations. Using causes, symbols and optimism, the Priest provokes noble virtues and raises the consciousness of the rest of us. We owe them our utopian visions, our spiritual awakenings, our aspirations toward the light.
*_*_*
In the Positive Pole of Compassion, Priests feel sympathy for others and seek to alleviate their pain by encouraging them to discover a way out of whatever misery they find themselves in.
These extremely high-frequency folks can live lives of such agape [unconditional love] and compassion that they tend to cycle off the planet much faster than the rest of us do.

Often impulsive and quick-thinking, Priests can overreach, though.
In the Negative Pole of Zeal, the Priest crusades to reform the perceived wrongs of the world.
In fact, numerous Baby and Young Priests were, literally, instrumental in sending those Medieval knights on their Crusades against the ‘Infidel’ in Jerusalem—something no Mature or Old Priest would ever do. Older Priests recognize that the ‘Other’ is every bit as human as ‘We’ are.
Younger Priests, however, can make much negative karma for themselves and lead others to do the same if they’re manifesting their negative pole of zeal.
On the other hand, the Priest in its positive pole can help save us from ourselves in the right circumstances.

Many Priests literally fulfill the name of their Role type, of course. They pursue a career in the field of religion. It might be as sheikh in a temple, rabbi in a synagogue, priest in a church, or minister of a congregation.

Historically, Priests have served in the capacity of tribal shamans or holy personages, temple priests or priestesses in ancient nations such as Egypt and Babylon, as Monks in monasteries and nuns in convents. Their role was to initiate people into the mysteries, to reveal higher truths, to lead in the worship of God or gods, and to speak for the deity. Wherever and whenever there has been pious activity, there has been a Priest.

Priests may find their calling in the medical profession, healing bodies rather than minds, although this is more often the province of Servers. A Priest in this role will usually be more aware than the Server of the psychological components of healing. The Priest/Server pair can make a great all-round healing team. The Priest wants to heal the spirit, the Server wants to heal the body. Still, on occasion, physical healing can be every bit as much a natural function of the Priest as the Server.

Priests are not always blatantly pious or religious. Another favorite life role can be psychology, covering every activity from counseling to psychiatry. Here they can apply their natural desire to heal to the task of healing the minds and spirits of their clients. Priests are very big on mental health— fulfillment, positive attitude and joy.

One problem Priests experience is an inherent sense that they are enlightened — even when they're not. This can translate into a mistaken feeling of superiority. It is in fact this very feeling which causes them to presume that they know what to do to help other people out of their problems. So, they can be guilty of offering unsolicited advice.

The old joke about the Boy Scout who spent all afternoon helping the old lady cross the street could describe the overly zealous Priest: When asked why it took so long, the Scout answers: “She didn't want to go.”

Priests can be very moralistic and self-righteous in their attempts to show people a “better” way of living. An arrogant Priest might be guilty of "helping" people who didn't ask and don't want that help. He might say within himself, "They don't know what they need, but I do." Priests can be preachy, evangelistic, and fanatical about their righteous cause.
The recent spate of ministers in the US and Sheikhs in the Middle East, in particular, who have presumed to tell us what God wants us to do or who God loves or, even more ominously, who God hates may well be Priests in their arrogant, overzealous negative poles. This can lead not only the Priests themselves but their followers into creating karma that can take generations to balance.

They can crusade zealously for reforms. They can be so overly optimistic about their own ability to transcend limitations, and so hopeful for others, that they tend to overestimate the amount of progress they can effect. They have a difficult time with the concept of leaving well enough alone, since they are always trying to improve things.

In their highest expression, Priests give advice tactfully, and only at the request of those needing assistance or advice. Older Priests have learned that they have limitations, and that other people do, too. They eventually learn that it is best not to try for too much too quickly.

Even though they can tend to be moralistic and self-righteous, one of the nice things about Priests is that they tend to forgive easily. If they ask too much of you, they’ll accept the fact that you can’t ever quite keep up with them.
Likewise, if you snap at them for intruding too far into your life, they’re likely to back off—at least for a while—and give you some breathing room. Their forgiving natures will ensure they’ll be there when you ARE ready for that next step [maybe even before you’re quite ready.]

Priests have the feeling that they have a Mission in life — a cosmic or divine Destiny. They sense that they are guided by the hand of God [whether they call it that or not] to show others the way to Truth.
The more downtrodden and wretched a person is, or the more destitute of hope the situation, the more fulfillment the Priest feels in tackling the problem.

It is not uncommon to see a Priest, especially a female one, marry some down-and-out ne'er-do-well with the hope of changing him. It might be an alcoholic or a drug-addict that she intends to save. It fulfills her Priest nature to try to rescue him from himself. "What does she see in him?" people might ask. What she sees is an opportunity to exercise her Priest essence and save a soul.

Priests can be so sure of themselves they try to live other people's lives for them.
Not having health insurance, I go to a free health clinic once a month for checkups and free meds. The staff volunteer their time.
I think one of the doctors may be an over-zealous Priest and a reformed smoker. He has used guilt, deceit and other manipulations to try to get me to quit smoking. I'm sure he's trying to 'do the right thing' as he perceives it. But, my view is that my life belongs to me, darn it!
The result is that I simply dig in my heels and avoid the clinic when he is likely to be there. Over-zealousness can backfire.

We all probably, at one time or another, act like priests when we feel high, or need a priest when we feel low. We reach down and take the hand of those we perceive as a step or so behind us in order to pull them "up" with us as we seek to transcend our human limitations. We also reach toward those who are a little “ahead of” us, to be pulled along with them as they strive to excel. Priests just do it all the time.

One of their favorite sayings might be, “You can do better than that.” If the Priest isn’t behind the pulpit, he or she is up on a soap box— preaching, exhorting, campaigning, crusading, proselytizing, provoking, and evangelizing.

Priests look on the bright side, and see the world as miraculous or what it can become. A phrase that describes the viewpoint of the Priest can be found in the Desiderata: “Whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” You don’t get much more optimistic than that.

Even though they make up a miniscule part of the population, Priests, by their very natures, tend to become well known pretty often:
John Calvin (Protestant Reformation), Saint Dominic (founder of the Dominican monks), St. Francis of Assisi, Joan of Arc, Jesse Jackson, Carl Jung (psychologist and mystic), Abraham Maslow (psychologist), Oral Roberts, Carl Rogers (the founder of Client-centered Psychology, Rogers seems to have mastered the idea that he cannot effect change faster than the client wishes), Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King Jr.

Nancy Reagan, Ayn Rand and Richard Bach [all of whom are sure they know best and can become preachy about it].

Adolf Hitler, Ayatollah Khomeini, Jerry Falwell, Sun Myung Moon and Charles Manson are all obviously young Priests, currently very busy creating karma they’re going to spend a fair amount of time balancing out later. [I’ve read that Hitler was 5th level Baby, fwiw.]
*_*_*
Not to belabor a point TOO much, but G.W. Bush’s assertion that God wanted him to be president suggests that he might be a Priest—and he certainly seems zealous enough to fit the Role.
No, I haven’t read what Role he may be—this just seems a logical conclusion, given his history. Furthermore, he seems to be manifesting at the Baby Soul Age [see The Baby Soul post above.]

The Seven Roles// #6 The Warrior

2009-04-25T23:34:00.001-04:00

When we leave the All that Is we are ‘fragments’. Picture a spark of pure white light. One of the first things we do is choose our ROLE. Picture the white spark passing through a prism and becoming one of the 7 colors within the white.
xxx
A very solid Role at the opposite end of the vibration spectrum from Priests, Warriors currently make up 30% of the US population [or they did during the early 1990’s, at least]. This fact along with the recently low number of Servers here [down from 30% overall to 10% during the early 1990’s] explains a lot, I think.
I think we’re presently headed back toward more balance with the rest of the world which could soften the way the US both perceives and presents itself to the world as a whole.

The Warrior// 20% of the population
The Warrior is the Ordinal pole of the Active Roles [the Cardinal pole is the King and will be profiled next]. Warriors are the powerhouses. Often choosing rather large, solid, chunky bodies, Warriors generally enjoy the physical plane immensely, thus they are among the slowest to cycle off. Unlike the zippy, zingy Priests, they don’t see any need to hurry.

Straightforward, candid and less complicated than some of the other roles and with, usually, high moral viewpoints, Warriors generally make not-so-good liars or dissemblers. This fact, along with their strong personal principles, will usually keep them honest. They also will, generally, speak truth to power. Therefore, other roles are likely to go to them when they want a frank assessment of a project to be undertaken or a second opinion.

Warriors love organization and will arrange their lives for peak efficiency. When you’re driving down the street and see lots of lawns punctuated by one yard with a concrete patio covering the front yard—the Warrior lives in the house with the patio. Utilitarianism is the name of the game—aesthetics definitely take a back seat.
The recent penchant in this country for cookie-cutter housing developments that consist of 3 or 4 designs with 3 or 4 color schemes were designed by Warrior architects. They don’t see a problem with the idea of the homeowner needing to check the address on their own house before getting out of the car.

Warriors manufacture our goods, fill our construction crews, act as road workers, staff our fire departments, do all sorts of manual tasks necessary to create a functioning society.
Colleges are filled with a higher percentage of Warriors getting their MBA’s than their numbers in the general population would predict. Our accounting and billing departments are chock full of Warriors doing their organizational things.
xxx
During their earliest lives, Warriors become pirates, gang leaders, robbers, muggers, raiders of other tribes, etc. The rest of us do these things too, of course, but Warriors are particularly drawn to them.
In their later lives, Warriors have to deal with their ingrained tendency toward violence and root it out. As they mature, their flair for organization can move them toward the top in any enterprise they undertake.

From the mid-Baby through the mid-Mature phases, you’ll find Warriors in the police forces, the military hierarchy, in the FBI, the CIA and, these days, Homeland Security.
College and professional football teams, wrestling tag-teams, the martial arts and so on are perfect venues for Warriors.
Chunky Mary Lou Retton certainly stood out in the lineup of gymnasts where the tiny, slender body build is the norm. But notice who it was who not only won a gold medal but did it with a broken foot. And, just to prove her point, after scoring a perfect 10 on her final vault, she did it AGAIN! That’s a Warrior for you.

They march off to wars on a regular basis, too. In fact, I’ve read that Kings and Priests commit a country to its wars—Warriors and Scholars fight them. That’s an oversimplification, of course, but you get the idea.

Warriors become CEOs in large corporations and go into higher politics with high principles, organizational skills and a strong sense of purpose in tow. Many of those large numbers of Warriors the US has recently boasted are women and, as a result, the women’s movement has gotten a huge boost. Warriors aren’t likely to sit quietly and look up at that glass ceiling for very long.
xxx
During their earliest lifetimes, Warriors wage wars, start [and finish] blood feuds, live lives that can be dramatic and leave a fair amount of carnage in their wakes.
A little later, as they work through their organizational phase [mid-Baby through much of the Mature period] they probably spend a fair amount of time in the law-enforcement and political end of things as well as filling the ranks in company after company from mail room clerks to CEO’s.
Later still, as doctors and social workers, they clean up a lot of the karma they created early on. As doctors they tend toward surgical practices which they appreciate for their manual applications. As social workers they’ll tend to gravitate toward government work rather than building private practices.

They’ll also organize everything from Social Service organizations at the national and international levels through local food pantries in their efforts to clean up after their war experiences and other karma-producing activities from their earliest lifetimes.
But, you’ll rarely find them taking advantage of all those safety nets they’ve put in place—even when they’re eligible for the services. Warriors would rather make their own ways in the world. They don’t go in for buying Lotto tickets for the same reason. They prefer to earn their wages—not have windfalls land in their laps.
xxx
My sister is a Mature Warrior who never sits still for long. She has been known to breed dogs, keep a large house going, take that house through several major renovation projects, own a thriving real estate firm [no mean feat in southern California’s cut-throat business climate] and has taken the extra steps necessary to become a broker as well as a realtor.

And she has not sat idly by during these difficult times, bemoaning her fate. Instead, she has branched out into the eco-friendly endeavor of selling solar panels as well as real estate. This is a decidedly Mature Warrior way of meeting the housing crisis.

She has always been far-and-away the most physically active member of our family, exercising daily though she didn’t, so far as I know, attend any classes or follow a specific program.

She lives near the Pacific Ocean and loves to water ski and water-board. She’ll hop on a plane at a moment’s notice to jet off to Hawaii or wherever her fancy takes her or take long, week-end getaways up to Big Sur where she hikes nature trails, goes back-packing and camping. She doesn’t go up there to lounge under a tree with a book.

When our mother was ill, my sister took her into her home and cared for her for several years [some of those home renovations were taken on in order to make our mother more comfortable.]
I get tired just THINKING about her whirlwind life. I could certainly never keep up with her. :)

She has made that oh, so difficult move into the Mature consciousness Soul Age. I can vouch that she is decidedly uncomfortable there. She is to be highly commended—she made the leap and has plowed halfway through that set of lifetimes. She’s at that even-more-difficult point —4th level Mature— the most challenging set of lives for anyone and it must be hell for a Warrior.
Touchy, taking offense easily when others show their feelings too blatantly, feeling decidedly uncomfortable with her own emotions—she tends toward panic attacks when faced with the angst that can accompany the Mature awareness level.

Our mother is a Warrior, too—just entering the Mature phase. My theory is that Jen took on the mission of helping our mom navigate her way through her earliest Mature awarenesses. That, all by itself, would be enough to occupy a person throughout a complete lifetime. Leave it to a Warrior to take on that challenge as well as everything else she has done.
xxx
In the positive pole Warriors are productive, filled with energy, protecting, reliable and practical. They make great parents. They’re also highly principled and honest.
In the negative pole they can be ruthless, coercive, narrow-minded and unforgiving. Not the greatest when compromise is called for, the frustrated Warrior needs to be careful not to become bullying, intimidating and intolerant.
xxx
Warriors often take on the task of managing the planet’s nations—whether as elected leaders or not. The most recent Warrior President of the US was Eisenhower, and that was in a simpler time. Today’s world requires more diplomacy and adroitness than most Warriors can muster.
Nevertheless, Geraldine Ferraro gave it her best shot with her vice-presidential bid and came pretty close to taking our country into new territory.
Golda Meier has managed to pull off that difficult feat though she admitted to preferring to wash dishes rather than govern “because then, at least, you can see something being accomplished.” That is very much the Warrior’s point of view.

George Patton, L. Ron Hubbard, Clint Eastwood, Alexander Haig [“I’m in charge, I’m in charge!” after Reagan was shot], Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Barry Goldwater, Ralph Nader, Fidel Castro and Oliver North have all shown themselves to be unafraid of a good fight.
Jean Harlow, Lauren Bacall and Mae West were Warrior actresses better known for their blatant sexuality than their acting skills though Jane Fonda and Bette Davis have been acknowledged for both.
Warriors produce spiritual leaders, too. Yogi Bhajan of the disciplined Sikhs is an Old Warrior. Ken Keyes, good Warrior that he is, organized Buddhism into a step-by-step program for the busy American taste. Sun Bear is both learning and teaching that, “In gentleness there is great strength.”

The Seven Roles// #7 The King

2009-04-22T23:33:00.001-04:00

When we leave the All that Is we are ‘fragments’. Picture a spark of pure white light. One of the first things we do is choose our ROLE. Picture the white spark passing through a prism and becoming one of the 7 colors within the white.
xxx
Another solid Role, the King embodies mastery and occupies the cardinal end of the Active axis.
Since there are always more collars than crowns, there isn’t a huge need for them worldwide at any given time. If there were more of them we might experience ‘more chiefs than indians’ more often than we already do. I think we all know how uncomfortable that can be.
Still, Kings are certainly handy to have around when we need someone to see the big picture and tell the rest of us what we need to do to accomplish our next goal within a schoolroom, a corporation or a nation.
xxx
The King //1 – 2% of the population
‘Mastery’ is the name of the game for the King. Whether learning to tie one’s shoes, making the best grades, climbing the corporate ladder or seeking spiritual fulfillment, you’ll find the King out in front.

It’s a difficult Role because the individual will not rest until mastery of whatever task s/he has set him or herself has been accomplished. Kings are easy to spot because they will be perfectionists in all they do — whether they are drug addicts or CEO’s.

When they are children, they can often be seen as the Little Tyrant [the negative pole of the Role] as they struggle to learn everything they need to know about the world extremely quickly — and become frustrated in the process.
Still, they simply will not stop until they’ve learned the lesson. Even then, they’re the least likely Role to stop and rest on their laurels for more than an instant. They’ll just move on to the next life goal.

Just as every Artisan isn’t an artist, every King doesn’t have a throne. They do, though, tend to command respect when they walk into a room. They generally like having fairly large, powerful bodies — most often male — in order to stand out from the crowd more easily.

Unless they’ve set themselves a specific karmic lesson, they won’t be bothered by timidity or any sense of hanging back, as the rest of us might, when faced with a new challenge.

Their self-karma often includes arrogance and big egos. Their natural role in society is, generally, that of leader and others will, instinctively, follow. Except in their earliest lifetimes, they tend to exert a gentle benevolence. They don’t need to bully in order to lead. They tend to easily see the big picture and their advice is often sought by others.

During the late 20th century, large numbers of Kings and other exalted Roles were being born into minority bodies here in the US in order to get things moving in the areas of civil rights and economic fairness.
[Though I don’t know his Role, I had noticed that Obama tends to hold his head with a somewhat regal bearing and had wondered if he was a King — long before beginning the review of the material for this post. Having read, today, that they tend to have wedge-shaped heads with long, aquiline noses has reinforced the idea, for me. Assuming I'm right and assuming his win, that could be good news for us as we need someone, right now, who can command respect, see the big picture and delegate effectively.]
[Addendum: Since I wrote this post, I've read that Obama is a Priest.]

Generally upright and reputable, Kings tend to rise to the top early in life. They’ll be quick studies, rapidly assimilating the information they need in order to accomplish the tasks at hand.
They’re good at delegating authority and, generally, don’t surround themselves with yes-men because they don’t need to require people to agree with them. They’ll seek advice as necessary, assimilate the facts and respond to the big picture instinctively. And, generally speaking, the rest of the population will trust their judgment and, therefore, follow them pretty willingly.

Kings, though, won’t all be kings, politicians or CEO’s. There are plenty of restaurant managers, department heads, lead guitarists or managers of rock bands, heads of school boards, etc. etc. etc. The ideal job description for a King is, ‘Person required to see the big picture and delegate work to employees as needed. Supervise subordinates without losing sight of the details. Responsible for the smooth flow of work.’

Kings tend to look more august and refined than Warriors do. They often display a regal bearing [note reference to Obama, above.] Katherine Hepburn and Madonna have also displayed these characteristic looks.

As would be expected, there are plenty of Kings to choose from when compiling a list of notables: both JFK and Jacqueline Kennedy, Aristotle Onassis, William Randolf Hearst, J. Paul Getty. The CEO’s of ABC, CBS, Safeway, ARCO and The Limited [back in the 90’s when the reference books I’m taking this info from were being published] were Kings.
C. Everett Koop is also a King.
[I don’t know if it’s just coincidence or what, but note how many of these folks tend to go by three names and/or initials.]

Refining Ourselves [Part 1]

2009-04-19T23:32:00.000-04:00

I’ll bet I know what you’re thinking right about now: ‘Hold it! Even among my circle of friends, there’s a lot more depth and variety than just seven types of people!’ And, of course, you’re right. There is. That’s where the refinements come in.
Soul Age, of course, colors how we view the world, how we act and how we’re perceived by others—but even adding that to the mix would only give us 343 varieties—if we take each level of each age into account— it certainly wouldn’t account for the astonishing diversity on the planet.
So, how does Michael account for that?

Well, there’s imprinting, for one. That happens after birth —most likely during childhood. We’ve all said something or done something, stopped in amazement, and said to ourselves: ‘Oh, my God! I’m my mother!’
That’s imprinting at its most obvious level.
There’re more subtle ways we’re imprinted, as well. During our early growing up times, we take on subtle qualities that emanate from the Role[s], Soul Age[s], actions or words of one or more of our caregivers. Or we may take on world-viewpoints, ways of meeting the world, etc. that go back for generations of ancestors. We incorporate these into our personalities as we’re growing up. Some of them we may find useful. Others we may not like so well and spend time and energy letting go of in a determined effort NOT to pass them on to our children.
[Although I’m an Old Soul, as a child I felt a fair amount of body shame — it may have simply been a result of my personality’s developmental levels at the time — or it may have been imprinted from my (Baby) father, I’m not sure. I did, though, work to let go of that viewpoint during my teens and twenties and, I’m pretty sure, it’s no longer part of my makeup. If you check back, I’ll bet you’ll find similar experiences in your background.]
xxx
Then, there’s Centering: a characteristic we do choose before birth.
Again, there are 7 Centers—3 of which are most commonly used by people on the planet, 1 we may enter a few times each day and 3 more that we can, on occasion, enter into by focusing on them.

The Intellectual, Emotional and Moving Centers are the ones most of us use most of the time. They are the ways we respond to the world instantly. The 3 main Centers are equally distributed worldwide at any given time though different cultures tend primarily toward one or two. For instance, the US is, right now, primarily Intellectually Centered [50%] though Emotional Centering [40%] is a pretty close second and only 10% of the population is Moving Centered.
We each have a preferred Center and a secondary one we use as backup.

Here’s how Centering works during a crisis: Say a loss of a job occurs— people who primarily operate from the Intellectual Center stop and think about why it happened.
The Emotionally Centered folks will first respond with hurt, anger, grief, even fear at being suddenly unemployed, etc.
The Action Centered person will be up at the crack of dawn and head out in search of a new job.

The person in Emotional Center [of which I’m one] will process incoming information the most rapidly because, for better or worse, the intellect isn’t being used to dissect the data they’re processing before they respond. The Emotional Center gives a deep sense of knowing and intuitive assuredness. The process occurs much faster than the logical process does.

[Just for what it’s worth, about 2 or 3 months ago, I pulled almost all my money out of my bank accounts—leaving just enough to live on so checks wouldn’t bounce.
Against everyone’s advice and amid dire warnings about lost interest, etc., I piled it into a safety deposit box. Now, those people who warned me against doing that are seriously asking me if I’m psychic. I don’t think I am— I just pay attention to what is happening around me.
While I don’t know that any reliance on my Emotional Center was behind my choice, I don’t know that that isn’t why, either. It just felt like the right thing to do and I didn’t apply logic [even though that is my secondary part] —I just acted on my feeling.
And, just this weekend, my bank made the news. It looks like it might get gobbled up by a bigger bank. Who knew it was holding a bunch of sub-primes? Not me. . . .]

The person in the Intellectual Center will think through the data they’re processing. They’ll likely make lists of pros and cons when approaching a decision, for instance. They’re more linearly oriented —a way of meeting the world that is highly prized in our culture. The kids who make straight A’s and do well on IQ tests [even if they’re not the ‘smartest’ kid in their class] are operating from their Intellectual Centers. They can be scintillating conversationalists and deep thinkers.
Those in the Emotional Part [their secondary center] will bring their feelings into the mix—thinking their feelings through thoroughly or feeling through their thought processes until they feel almost dizzy from the effort.
The people in the Moving Part will not ‘get’ emotions all that well. Being intimate with such folks may require spelling things out as they are unlikely to be able to tap into the nuances behind the emotions involved. Remember Patrick Swayze’s character in Ghost? His fiance says, ‘I love you.’ He says, ‘Ditto.’

The Moving Centered person doesn’t stop to think or emote about what’s going on around them too much. Their favored way of meeting the world is to act. They’re balls of activity—always on the move. They’re so in touch with their bodies that they can feel what is going on around them before either emotion or intellect kicks in.
They’re the most likely to jog every morning before work and favor careers in aviation, construction, postal work, anything that lets them be out and about. They’re likely to pace, fidget and jump from one project to the next—often before finishing the last one. These folks may miss lots of deadlines —not because they’re lazy— in fact just the opposite is the case. They were too busy to finish on time.
If using the Emotional Center as backup, they may choose a career in dance— bringing a great sense of feeling to the movement.
In our society that favors intellectual pursuits, it can be distressing to live in the Emotional Part of Moving Center. These folks feel themselves to be out of touch with most of the people around them.
Princess Di described herself as being, ‘Thick as a plank’ although she was certainly smart enough to live a full life.
Those in the Intellectual Part of Moving Center may take on a career in acting or mime, automobile or computer repair.
Fred Astaire brought a very refined, intellectual feel to his dance style. And we can all see how Paul Newman never stopped moving— going from acting to racing to his philanthropic work without pausing to breathe.

We tend to be not-so-good at using our secondary, backup center and, as a result, tend to use its negative pole more often than its positive pole. For instance, I’m primarily Emotionally Centered with the Intellectual Center as my backup. And, I’m here to tell you, I used to think a feeling to death. An emotion could stop me in my tracks while I thought it through from end to end— ‘Why am I angry? [hurt? scared? worried? etc.] sometimes I would start going in circles.
It could be decidedly uncomfortable and took years of therapy to move past. I’m better, now, at just allowing myself to experience my feelings—but it has taken a lot of work and, when I’m under stress, I can still fall back into that pattern till I catch myself and consciously make my way out of the maze.

Likewise, a person with the Intellectual part of the Moving Center might become agitated or go off half-cocked when they experience stress. They can stall out as they try to bring logic into the process—thinking their recent actions through until they become thoroughly confused.

Or person in the Emotional part of the Moving Center may become frenetic during a crisis as the emotions get in the way of approaching the problem with the ordered application of appropriate action.

A person in the Moving Part of the Emotional Center may respond to a problem with the ‘Ready, Fire, Aim’ approach —doing exactly the wrong thing and failing to plug the brain in at any time during the process.

The way out of the trap is by bringing in our 3rd center. So, someone who operates from the Emotional part of the Intellectual or Intellectual part of the Emotional can most easily move away from feeling blocked by going for a brisk walk or run.

I worked with a client at a drug treatment center back in the 1970’s. He was what I would refer to as a Bantam Rooster. He wasn’t a large man—in fact he was about 5’4”. He would walk into a bar and pick a fight with the biggest, baddest, meanest, scurviest character in the joint—who would promptly mop the floor with him.
He desperately wanted to stop this process but just couldn’t do it. He would steel himself before going into the bar. He would talk logic to himself—ahead of time. But, once he’d had a beer or two, he was off to the races.
When he brought this problem up in therapy, I asked him what he liked about it. It took him a while to work it out but, it turned out, he thought [at such a deep level that he didn’t know it was there] such behavior impressed women. As soon as he uncovered the motives he had hidden even from himself, the urge to commit suicide-by-Hell’s-Angel evaporated. My guess as to his centering? Moving part of Emotional Center or vice versa.

Interestingly, long before I’d ever heard of Michael or Centering, I brought logic into the formula. In fact, this young man had already begun the process by attempting to apply logic to the problem prior to going into bars—even before he started therapy. At some instinctive level, we seem to understand that applying our least-used method of operation is the way out of our problems— whether or not we can effectively apply the approach.

The fourth most commonly used center is the Instinctive Center. We each tap into it from one to several times per day when we are showering, toileting, gardening, practicing meditation or yoga, cleaning the kitchen, jogging or walking [if we are in the habit of doing it daily and no longer really think about it] doing those things we don’t need to think about and those things that lend themselves to quiet, repetitive motion. These actions can lead us into a reflective mode which can, in turn, lead us into the higher centers.

A very few people spend their entire lives in the Instinctive Center. Charles Manson or other criminals who demonstrate the crazed stare are often living within this center constantly.
People trapped in a war zone such as Darfur or Zimbabwe are likely to devolve into this Center because their lives are at such high risk that they retreat deeply within themselves.
Likewise, schizophrenics and other psychotics may retreat to this Center, as well.
Hitler lived primarily in the Instinctive Center and, as a result, descended into his deep sense of xenophobia.

Sometimes, we can tap into it when we use deep forms of therapy such as Rebirthing, breath work or Rolfing.

If we become so ill we experience a high fever or severe pain we may descend beyond our usual centers and drop into the Instinctive level. We may, then, emerge with a new-found insight we hadn’t known was there because we were forced to face some reality we had buried at a very deep level.

As mentioned above, the Instinctive Level can be used as a doorway to the Higher Centers. We don’t choose these prior to birth but can, with discipline and focus, learn to tap them.
Yoga can, on occasion, be used for this purpose. I have used the deeper forms of therapy to reach them.
The Higher Intellectual Center allows you to glimpse the meaning of life and to fully understand why you are here.
The Higher Emotional Center lets you truly feel Agape for all creatures. The drugs ecstasy and ADM provide a shortcut though the actual goal is to be able to tap into it without the use of drugs.
The Higher Moving Center may, on occasion, be experienced while making love. It can also be tapped into when seeing an extraordinarily beautiful sunset, focusing on a single flower, etc.
These centers always leave one with a sense of peace and a wish to return to that state.

Refining Ourselves [Part 2]

2009-04-16T23:31:00.000-04:00

Overleaves: An Introduction

OK, the Role stays the same from the time we cast ourselves out of the Is till we return. The vibration of our individual ‘string’, being related to our Role, remains the same, as well.
And, while our Soul Age does change as we grow, it’s a change that takes from 1 to about a dozen lifetimes—just to move from one Level of a particular Age to the next.
The Overleaves, though, are chosen fresh prior to each lifetime. Depending on the lessons your Soul wants to learn or gain insight into during a given lifetime, it will choose the Overleaves most likely to help you get there.

As with so much of the system, there are seven Levels of Personality: for the purpose of perceiving our personality, the Role is included in this list although it doesn’t change as the others do.

So, the Overleaves are:
Role— the essence of who we are
Goal— the primary lesson we’re looking to achieve
Mode— the primary method by which we seek to achieve our Goal
Attitude— the primary way we perceive the world
Centering— [covered earlier]—the place from where we respond to the world
Body Type— a method of helping us achieve the basic plan
Chief Feature— a stumbling block we set up for ourselves [it keeps things interesting, I imagine, though I can’t say I’m all that fond of making such an arrangement for myself.]

Some Overleaves are rarely chosen because they are so narrowly focused or because they can be troublesome and difficult. Each Soul, though, gets hands-on experience with every Overleaf [some more often than others] prior to cycling off the planet. Altogether, the Overleaves smooth out our edges making each of us into a well-rounded Soul before the curtain falls on our physical lives. The percentages included in the outlines of the Overleaves indicate both how many Souls are engaged in the use of that particular Overleaf at any given time and how many times a particular Soul chooses that Overleaf over the course of all its lifetimes.

All the Overleaves, though, add intensity and propel us toward learning. Before we arrive on the planet, we each have the underlying goal of ‘Learn, learn, learn’—and our Soul wants to go there. But, often, we’d like to run the hell away—[it may be completely new territory that the Soul wants to explore and we’re scared to take the leap (even Souls can get scared when faced with new experiences); we may have attempted to reach it before with disastrous results; it may mean teaming up with someone our personality would rather avoid, etc. etc.] So, our Soul, oh, so thoughtfully, gave itself these Overleaves ahead of time, to propel us forward, whether our particular personality wants to go or not. Gee, thanks. :)

Here’s an example of a full personality:
A Young Souled King chose Dominance [Goal] in conjunction with Power [Mode] and Greed [Chief Feature]. Realist [Attitude] helped him stay focused on where he wanted to go along with Moving [Center] which kept him heading in that direction. (I wonder if this guy slept at night.)

This combination turned Alexander the Great into a human dynamo that no one could stand up against for long. So, he went on to found one of the largest empires the world has ever seen—and he did it within only a few years of a single lifetime [seventeen, if I remember correctly]. Whew!

Refining Ourselves [Part 3]

2009-04-13T23:30:00.002-04:00

The Overleaves: The Goal

The Goal is the primary area in which the Soul wants to learn the lessons of any given life. Your Goal is the bottom-line your Soul has set up. Your lifetime will bring you face-to-face with different goals that will, together, embody your lifetime Goal so that you can research it repeatedly from many different aspects.

Some Goals are chosen rarely because they are so narrowly focused and/or troublesome.
Again, there are 7 Goals:

The Inspirational Goals
Re-evaluation [1%]
The person who chooses Re-evaluation as a goal may be contemplating, at the deepest levels, many lifetime’s worth of major issues that proved so difficult to face that they just got swept under the rug for lifetime after lifetime. These issues can be buried so deeply in the instintive center, the Soul has to take a lifetime or two just to dig down far enough to find them. People who are severely retarded, autistic, so obese that they can’t lever themselves out of bed, quadraplegic, etc. may well be living lives based on Re-evaluation. You can see how lives lived from this perspective would necessitate slowing down.

Usually, the individual is not evaluating problems on a conscious level but, instead, simply ruminating at a deep level without a clear focus. This catch-up is, generally, not easy to accomplish and can appear very self-limiting. The ultimate goal here is, ‘Let’s learn from past mistakes and do better next time.’

In the positive pole, such people look rather artless and innocent to others. Deep below the surface they’re puzzling through all those matters they’ve pushed aside, like Scarlett O’Hara, until they are finally forced to confront them whether they like it or not.
In the negative pole, the person may become stuck, internalized in the extreme, not completely ‘here.’

Surprisingly, there is a handful of people with the Goal of Re-evaluation who have risen to enough prominence to become at least fairly well known: the head of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker, George Wallace, authors and introverts Stephen King and Edward Abbey. George Schultz, Reagan’s Secretary of State had resolved enough of his issues to begin moving into Growth [see below] on occasion though he still tended to hang back and observe. Joseph Campbell who received recognition posthumously for his work on mythology was a Scholar in Re-evaluation as he contemplated his move into First Level Old Soul Age.

Growth [40%]
Here we go on a rollercoaster lifetime with your soul pushing you to gain as much experience as possible barely pausing to rest and breathe [pant, really] between experiences. People, underneath all the whirling dervishness they’ve chosen, can look a little tired as they strive to confront themselves with learning experience piled on top of learning experience. They don’t tend to choose their encounters based on ‘is it fun?’ or ‘is it interesting?’ or ‘is it a good career move?’ but, ‘can I learn from it?’

Just look at Bette Midler, Whoopi Goldberg, Pee-Wee Herman, Billy Crystal, Lucille Ball, Frank Zappa, Steve Martin and Charlie Chaplin and you can see speed balls propelled from within to get out there and LEARN, GOLDARN IT!
Given the nature of Growth, there are a good number of well-known people to choose from here and when they’re being interviewed by Barbara Walters or whoever, you’ll often hear them say, ‘I learned a lot from that experience,’ or ‘That was very enlightening for me.’

In the positive pole you’ll see eagerness to embrace the next episode in their tumultuous lifetime. Very dynamic and outgoing, setting challenges and meeting them and moving on to the next barely pausing for breath.

In the negative pole, people will manifest lots of complications—getting in their own ways. They may look driven but confused or absent minded. They may be self-absorbed and appear callous when confronted with the needs of another person. [any experience, even Growth, can have its negative side—especially if the person becomes overtired.]
The simplest way out of the negative pole [and this holds true for all the overleaves], is to move into the positive pole of its paired goal [in this case, Re-evaluation] where the person in Growth can experience a well-earned rest and spend some time contemplating all that Growth that has just occurred.

The Expressive Goals
Discrimination [2%]
Often chosen after a number of lifetimes of Acceptance [see below] and being, perhaps, too much the door-mat, Discrimination can help the Soul sort through what one does and does not want to accept. It’s a way to develop a backbone.

These folks are selective. They are likely to hold well-thought-out opinions and will happily tell you exactly WHY they’ve made the choices they have.
They may pursue careers as critics whether of restaurants, plays, art, architecture, fine wines and beers or what-have-you. They can focus in on every detail, dissecting the object of their perusal and detailing for their audiences all the finer nuances.

People in the positive pole look sophisticated and refined, discerning and meticulous. They take pride in their exacting standards and, in fact, may find it difficult to relax and enjoy an experience unless it is up to their own level of sophistication.
In the negative pole, people may become fussy, closed-off snobs. Never satisfied, they can look at a Renoir painting only to find fault with it. These folks can drive others away with their nit-picky hair-splitting. Again, the easiest way out of the negative pole is to slide into the positive pole of Acceptance.

The typical facial expression is pursed lips and the arched eyebrow. This facial type has become so well recognized its stereotype is often used in advertising to suggest that this car or that salad dressing is, undeniably, the best on offer.

Fred Astaire, Bob Dylan, Orson Welles, Richard Gere, Steven Jobs, Dick Cavett, William F. Buckley all embody Discrimination. Simone de Beauvoir wanted to eliminate the female sexual sterotype and managed to propel us all along the way.

Tasters of fine wines and chocolates, four star chefs and sniffers in the perfume industry are, almost unanimously, in Discrimination.

Acceptance [30%]
The idea here is to accept life and the other people in it. The person wants to accept others and, likewise, wants to be accepted by them.

Generally, people in Acceptance display good spirits. You see warmth and approachability in their eyes. Very popular with Old Souls, since the over-arching Goal for the entire species [and all sentient beings] is agape—that is, unconditional love—Acceptance can feel very spiritual in nature.

In the positive pole you’ll find warm, self-accepting, agreeable, kind, friendly people. If they’re really clicking, they’ll radiate bliss and everyone around them will feel appreciated.

In the negative pole people can be ingratiating, insincere, overly fearful of rejection, doormats and flatterers. They may even look two-faced and hypocritical as they attempt to agree with everyone around them simultaneously—no matter how different those people may be.
By trying to be too accepting they’ll wind up pushing others away as no one likes being around such a wuss. This person may become so fearful of rejection that they’ll unconsciously slide into the negative pole of Discrimination in order to reject another before that person rejects them.
On an inner level, they may experience an inability to decide what they want for themselves [the opposite of Discrimination] and lose focus in the steering of their own lives.

As you may imagine, Acceptance can be helpful in the field of politics: Ronald Reagan, JFK and Bishop Tutu all used it to great effect.
G. H. W. Bush, though, experienced difficulties with it when he attempted to follow two opposing pieces of advice and first told the Kurds the US would have their backs if they stood up to Hussein—then failed to deliver on his promise—with the predictable, disastrous results.
Robert Redford, Stevie Wonder, Sally Field [“You like me! You really like me!”], Brooke Shields and Bill Cosby all show the classic ‘Acceptance Face’.

The Action Goals
Submission [10%]
Often chosen after several lifetimes of arrogance and self-centeredness or in order to follow a guru or serve a cause, a person in Submission may feel cheated if she or he hasn’t yet found a suitable person or cause to serve. Servers rarely choose this Goal as it is so intertwined with how they live their lives anyway. Notice how two Warriors [Dwight D. Eisenhower and Pope John Paul II] look almost like Servers rather than their true Role. Submission can be a very strong Goal, indeed.

Such causes as peace, the environment, caring for the sick, the hungry, the poor, and so on are all appropriate ones for the person practicing Submission.
It’s trickier to find a person to serve as there are plenty of undeserving gurus out there who may be on the prowl for people who are willing to turn their lives over to them.

In the positive pole, people in Submission will be pretty tireless—first in their quest to find a cause to serve and, later, to serve it selflessly. A major key to maintaining oneself in the positive pole is to find an appropriate calling. Therefore, it behooves one to choose carefully—not just jump at the first opportunity to serve. [Using Caution MODE (to be outlined in the next post) may help one look before he or she leaps.]
In the negative pole, a person may feel unworthy if temporarily without a cause to serve. Further into the negative end of things, a Submission directed person can feel overwhelmed by the cause, completely out of control of his or her own life. Feeling the victimized martyr feels really awful and, hopefully, will urge the person to slide into Dominance [the paired goal] in order to balance the experience and find fresh direction.

Notice how Ralph Nader, Jane Fonda, Mother Theresa, Deng Xioping, Lech Walesa and Mr. Rogers all found causes to which to devote themselves. Paul Simon and Joan Baez have used their music to further the things they believe in.
Nancy Reagan, Pat Nixon and Kitty Dukakis all devoted themselves to their husbands.

As can be seen, there are a myriad of causes for the person in Submission to serve.

Dominance [10%]
In the English language, the word ‘dominance’ can take on negative meanings. As Michael describes it, though, it is a positive quality when used appropriately as the person in Dominance wants to create Win/Win situations as it’s just so much easier to ensure that others will allow them to dominate the situation if everyone wins.

People in Dominance will always be motivated to get things moving in their own direction by jumping in to fill any void left by others. Even as children, they want complete control of themselves and their environment and will let their families know it.
From adolescence onward, individuals in Dominance will likely be allowed to take over by those around them because it just feels good to let someone else make decisions, delegate tasks and move any group toward its goals.

In the positive pole, you’ll find folks who have the natural skills to make others feel appreciated as they follow the Dominant’s lead. They’re energetic, dedicated, determined and capable people who tend to rise easily to the top. They easily take charge of their own lives and, usually, will take charge of any group they find themselves in— be it a PTA committee, a social club, a corporation or a nation.
In the negative pole, the Dominant can be dictatorial, demanding, overbearing, insensitve and controlling. Most Dominants don’t tend to stay in the negative places too long as they’re blowing it if they aren’t creating the win/win situations they are justly famous for. If they start getting into the territory of ‘Winner Take All’ no one feels good— even the Dominant her or himself.

You’ll find lots of lots of natural leaders here: George Washington and Winston Churchill, for instance. Mikhail Gorbachev and Ho Chi Minh.
Madonna, Sean Penn, Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver, Cher, Mae West, Jodie Foster and Katherine Hepburn all used Dominance effectively to forge their careers. Lee Iacocca has used it to run a corporation and go after our political leaders—leaving no doubt in their minds that there are real people out here in the hinterlands who deserve to be governed well.
Carl Jung broke with Freud to develop his own brand of psychology.
Charles Manson used it to get whatever he wanted and Robert Bork was one of the few who couldn’t seem to master the win/win outcome [and it’s a good thing he hasn’t yet developed that skill, imo.]

All these folks, no matter the effect they’ve had on others, are strong-willed characters intent on getting things moving in their direction.

The Assimilative Goal
Flow (aka Stagnation) [7%]
[Michael initially called this goal “Stagnation” but it was soon changed to “Flow” because of the negative connotations of the word.]

The people in Flow are often recuperating from trying sets of lifetimes and are taking a well deserved break to just kick back and relax for a while. If these folks can allow themselves to simply let go, things should just fall into their laps easily. These are the individuals the rest of us envy because of how easily things move in their direction.
Their lives aren’t set up to present a lot challenges or lots of activity. Smooth sailing pretty much embodies the entire lifetime. The goal here is to learn to let go. If the person fights the flow they’ll begin to flounder and struggle and relaxation goes right out the window. So, the folks in this goal become adept at becoming magnets—just breathing into whatever their short term goals are and letting those goals find them.

In the positive pole, they resemble Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds as she floats downstream. Looking rather dreamy, coasting along and feeling pleased with themselves, they’ll barely leave a wake behind. Tranquil pretty well describes these folks.
In the negative pole, they might appear inert, lost, drifters without any direction at all. Even deeper into the negative end of things they may struggle against the current tiring themselves out rather than allowing the relaxation to simply occur.

There aren’t too many famous examples because the Goal of Flow doesn’t lend itself to the work usually associated with developing fame and fortune. Still, take a look at George Hamilton and Ringo Starr for a couple of folks to get a sense of what they look like.

Being the neutral, assimilative Goal, Flow can also flow right into any of the other six Goals when action is called for. Most people have one or two favorites they land in more often than others. So, someone in Flow might pick the Acceptance Goal in order to feel good about oneself or others or Dominance if he or she feels a need to handle a short-term goal.

Refining Ourselves [Part 4]

2009-04-10T23:29:00.001-04:00

The Overleaves: The Mode
Your Mode is the way in which you are most likely to approach your Goal and, in fact, the rest of your life as well. It’s one of the most visible Overleaves because it determines how you meet the world most of the time—so it’s a primary face you present to the world.
You might, most commonly, meet the world passionately—diving into your experiences without hesitating to assess what might happen next. The upside is an exuberance noticeable to you and others. The downside is that you may get in over your head on a regular basis.
Or you may meet the world cautiously—stopping and looking before you leap. The upside is that you are less likely to run into unforeseen consequences. The downside? You could freeze—becoming phobic.

When we SLIDE from one Mode to its pair, it can be quite noticeable to others—so someone in Passion Mode can easily be seen, under certain circumstances [when faced with an entirely new experience, for instance, or after a disastrous consequence] to shift gears, slide to Repression and self-correct.

Again, there are seven Modes:
Inspirational Modes
Passion [10%]
Passion is the cardinal end of the Inspirational axis. Souls rarely choose Passion Mode two lifetimes in a row because of its intensity. It can be wearing. The personality tends to lose itself in the emotionality of the moment. These folks are outgoing, enthusiastic and energetic. In other words, if you know someone in this Mode, you probably KNOW it.
When faced with virtually any situation, people in Passion will express their reactions immediately. They live very close to the surface. They live their lives from very, ‘Isn’t life wonderful?’ or ‘Isn’t life horrible?’ places and spend considerably less time than the vast majority of the population in any neutral position.

Because emotions are so important to them, Mature Souls are among the most likely to choose Passion Mode.

In the positive pole, these folks have a sparkly energy about them. They experience life to the fullest, throwing themselves into projects with enthusiasm. Especially when going after their goals, they’ll bring all their focus and energy front-and-center and, likely be able to achieve them with energy to spare.

In the negative pole, people in Passion may over identify with their goals and emotions. They’re likely to decide, in advance, how things MUST work out and drop into despondency if they fail to achieve their desired ends.
Although none of the books I consulted said so out loud, one could infer that lots of folks who choose Passion might manifest Bipolar Disorder at least fairly regularly as they swing from excitement to despair.

As you might guess, there are a number of well-known people who have chosen Passion — in fact, more than one would expect given the fact that it is chosen pretty rarely. Notice how all these folks affected their worlds: Joan of Arc, Martin Luther King, Jr., Pope John Paul II, Vincent van Gogh, Albert Einstein, Ralph Nader, Dustin Hoffman, Jane Fonda and Tom Hanks. Chopin, Mozart, Liberace, Carly Simon and Beverly Sills all used Passion to serve their music well. And Lee Iaccoca has used his passion to lead a corporation and goose political figures to do better.

Repression [2%]
Repression is the ordinal Inspirational Mode.
These folks get out their buffers and use Repression in order to learn to hold their emotions in check. Repression can look like Caution Mode [see below] except that it is used to add polish and refinement to a lifetime. It’s another difficult mode because the personality needs to learn a refined way to experience and express emotions.

Repression may be chosen after a number of lifetimes of excess and gluttony in order to get civilized and sophisticated. These folks will take on an air of reserve. You won’t find them expressing their emotions out loud or wearing their feelings on their sleeves. They’ll HAVE immediate reactions to their experiences—but the people around them are unlikely to know it.

If you were around back then, I imagine you well remember Lloyd Benson’s perfect understatement when addressing Dan Quayle: “I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”
While many of the rest of us were aching to jump into the TV and dope-slap Quayle, Benson’s response was the perfect riposte, delivered with poise and dignity. It quietly put Quayle in his place and I doubt his career has ever quite recovered from it. Repression can come in quite handy on occasion.

In the positive pole, these people will display dignity, restraint, tact and grace.
In the negative pole, they can become listless with overly damped-down emotion. Others may experience them as too cool to downright cold emotionally. While someone in the negative pole of Passion may become Bi-polar, a person in the negative pole of Repression may descend into a heavy depression.

People displaying this refined tastefulness include: Katherine Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Prince Charles, David Niven, Nancy Reagan and Fred Astaire, Catherine Deneuve, Merril Streep and Marlene Dietrich.
People in Repression often choose occupations in fields such as gourmet cooking and interior design, fashion design and diplomacy. You’ll also find people in the spheres of classical music and dance.

Expressive Modes
Power [20%]
Other people will certainly know when they’re in the presence of someone in Power Mode. It feels like a person with the Goal of Dominance only more showy. Also more difficult for others to get along with.
While the person in Dominance tries to move toward a win/win situation, people in Power Mode are less likely to pay attention to such niceties [unless pairing Power Mode with Dominance—a fairly common combination—making for COMMANDING personalities who are likely to accomplish whatever they set out to do].

People who thwart a person in Power are likely to feel themselves to be under a dark cloud when they experience the displeasure of the person they’ve crossed. Power Mode people can become domineering and be clueless about the way they come across to others—even after having had it pointed out to them time and time again.

In the positive pole of Power, the personality will be experienced [both internally and externally] as influential, authoritative, commanding and confident.

In the negative pole, others are likely to draw away as the personality inspires fear in them. The individual may become pushy, insensitive, bullying, high-handed.

Rupert Murdoch, Robert Kennedy, Orson Welles, Chairman Mao, Madonna and Norman Mailer are all examples of folks in Power Mode.

Caution [20%]
People operating from Caution Mode approach life carefully. This mode may be used to offset previous lives during which they had cheerfully jumped from the frying pan into the fire on too many occasions with catastrophic results. So, now, it’s time to practice a bit more wariness.

This mode is popular with Infant and Baby Souls to help them approach their new environment with a degree of circumspection rather than react instantly to events.
Youngs may use it to keep them on the straight and narrow after having pulled off a recent scandal-ridden lifetime or two.
Mature Souls may use it to help them damp down a series of soap opera lives while Old Souled Servers may find it useful for learning not to agree to participate on every committee that comes along—no matter how noble the causes they embody.

This is the deliberative, look-before-you-leap crowd.
In the positive pole, these folks are risk averse—unlikely to run up huge credit card debt or let their insurance lapse. Good diplomats, they’re likely to be tactful simply because it’s easier to avoid problems in the first place than to fix problems after the fact.
They’re also less likely than other Modes to wake up the morning after to discover they’ve made irreversible commitments the night before.

On the other hand, in the negative pole, these folks can go overboard, becoming frozen, unable to leave home without a lucky rabbit’s foot, 6 locks on their doors, even practicing particular rituals. They may become so phobic they can’t leave home at all.

Even if they don’t become fixated in this way, the word “hermit” may describe them fairly well. Caution can become self-karmic introducing little life-lessons—in this case, making the point that there are more interesting things to do in life than skulk in one’s living room with drawn blinds or hide out behind the computer.

By its very nature, Caution won’t produce lots of famous people but there are a few. Note George Washington’s carefulness when leading his army. Not for him the idea of throwing his men into battle willy-nilly. He often used fog and night to cover his advances and, on more than one occasion, strategic retreat was his choice.
Paul Simon shows a deliberateness whether he is choosing the right word for a song or the right cause to get behind. Queen Elizabeth II rules with quiet reserve. And Casper Weinberger was absolutely certain we needed both a huge arsenal AND the Star Wars defense system.

Action Modes
Aggression [ 4%]
Aggression, at the Cardinal end of the Action Axis, is the more visible of these two Modes and is manifested by behavior.

Again, Michael uses a word in an unconventional way. In its definition, personalities in the positive pole of the Aggressive Mode live dynamically actively pursuing their goals. Where others might hesitate, these personalities will step forward and take command. They’ll take more risks than most people. Aggressive Mode can be an effective way of balancing recent lifetimes during which the personality was too passive and acted like a doormat.
Even the physical bodies of people with the Aggression Mode are, more often than not, vigorous and active.

In the positive pole, these personalities are vibrant, daring, forceful and won’t back down no matter what. These folks can’t be rocked back on their heels for long—they’ll just jump up and keep-a-goin.
In the negative pole, you’ll see inflexibility, antagonism, obnoxious, belligerent and confrontational behaviors and attitudes.

A number of our funny people use Aggression Mode: Lily Tomlin, Lenny Bruce, Robin Williams, and Mel Brooks all use it well.
Ronald Reagan, Fidel Castro, Moamar Khadafy all used it to run countries.
And, speaking of using the negative side: John Hinckley and George Wallace have shown us the paths this sort of go-gettum Mode can lead someone down.

Perseverance [4%]
On the ordinal pole of the Action Axis, Perseverance manifests itself through behaviors but is less visible than Aggression. Even so, it is extremely helpful when facing long-term tasks or karmas that are going to take lots and lots of determination and sticktoitiveness. Endurance, stamina and fortitude can be seen in large measure in personalities using Perseverance. It is often chosen in tandem with being Moving Centered [see post on centering].

Perseverance chooses interim goals and, one-by-one, takes care of each before moving on to the next step.

In the positive pole, these folks are determined, disciplined, unwavering and steadfast. Able to complete tasks effectively no matter the hardships and difficulties they must overcome to get there.

In the negative pole, they can appear unchallengeable, fixed, rigid and dull. Once a goal has been set, this personality can stick with it even if the objective is no longer a reasonable one.

Mother Theresa, Phil Donahue, J. Edgar Hoover, Khomeini, P. W. Botha, Manuel Noriega, Eddie Murphy and Robert Redford have all used persistence—maybe with a bit of sliding over to aggression for some extra oomph periodically.

Neutral Mode
Observation [50%]
By far the most commonly used Mode, Observation allows you to look before you leap. The personalities with Observation will, most likely, approach just about any situation with a deliberate, moderate pace.
It’s the most serene of the Modes in that it neither moves the personality forward nor holds it back.

A major advantage of Observation is that, because it is in the neutral position the personality can easily slide to ANY of the other modes.
So, half of the people in the world walk into a room whether they’re entering a board meeting or a cocktail party and pause to assess the situation before diving into the middle of it. Then, they have 7 choices: they can remain in the Observation mode or slide to any of the other six and approach their situation in the Mode that is most appropriate under the current circumstance.

Do you have a major project in the works? You can move into Aggression and/or Perseverance to get the job done.
Have you been in this sort of position before and gotten egg on your face? You may move to Caution or remain in Observation to get more information before committing yourself.
Are you in a situation that stirs emotion? You may move toward Passion or, in rare circumstances, Repression.
Most people have one or two favorite Modes they slide to from the neutral Observation position.

In the positive pole, the personality looks thoughtful, attentive, alert and aware of what is going on around it. It’s a great place to learn lots of stuff from so Scholars love it.

In the positive pole, the person exudes precision and insight. Need clarification? Observation is a great place to be.

Those who move to its negative pole may appear a bit dull. Scrutinizing, hunting for other people’s motives [in the negative sense of the words] these folks can descend into searching for the sinister.

Whoopi Goldberg, Jay Leno and Billy Crystal all use observation to great comedic effect. William F. Buckley was the Observer par excellence. David Attenborough, Barbara Walters and Margaret Thatcher all demonstrate different aspects of this versatile Mode.

Refining Ourselves— The Attitudes [1]

2009-04-07T23:27:00.003-04:00

The Action Attitudes —Cynic and Realist
There are seven attitudes— I'll profile them here according to their Centers.

Our Attitude is our primary life-outlook. It colors how we perceive the world and our place in it. It influences how we respond to life. Though primarily an intellectual perspective, it affects how we respond emotionally, as well, and what we are most likely to do in response to our perceptions.

Having a ‘good’ attitude is as important as everyone says it is. Your life will actually go more smoothly if you stay in your positive pole than if you move into the negative pole of your Attitude [just as happens with the other overleaves— in fact, the Attitude affects your outcomes more often than your other overleaves do.] And being in the positive pole of your Attitude will help you stay in the positive pole of your other Overleaves, as well.

The truth is, though, it is inherently easier for people with the Spiritualist and the Idealist Attitudes to stay upbeat and positive than it is for the Cynics and Skeptics to do. But, Michael reminds us, we all choose our Overleaves for a purpose— so, what is important is to stay, as much as we can, in the positive pole of our own Attitude, come what may.
Besides, being an Idealist isn’t perfect, anyhow. They have a tendency to put on blinders and be naïve.

It’s easier than with the other Overleaves to ‘borrow’ from the other Attitudes. So, someone in the Expressive Attitude of Skepticism can, on occasion, slide into Idealism but also into any other of the Attitudes such as the Moving Attitude of Realism, for instance. In this case, the Skeptic who borrows from Realism will kind of ‘stack’ the Realism on top of the Attitude of Skepticism the personality uses primarily: seeing reality clearly, but through a lens of skepticism— being skeptical about the motives of the other people involved, for instance.
xxx
Cynic [5%]
While rereading this material in prep for this post, I was struck by something: There is a comedic novel series written by Donald Westlake. Called the Dortmunder Series, it’s about a gang of thieves that can’t shoot straight.
The primary character, John Dortmunder is the classic cynic.
He’s a brilliant strategist who can plan a burglary to the finest detail. And, he can pull it off—up to a point. And then it goes wrong— in some hilarious way. John doesn’t see the humor, of course. But the reader does. =D

But, here’s the point: John just plods along through a gray lifetime in a gray world always expecting the worst. He distrusts everyone; he even distrusts good fortune when it [rarely] puts in an appearance. He’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop. When it does he’s likely to say something like, “Oh, yeah, that’s right,” and then just go on as if nothing had happened. He’s not at all surprised that, in the end, it all went wrong.
Even so, he never gives up— as in THE HOT ROCK when he steals the same emerald 5 times [along with a few other crimes thrown in for good measure] before finally getting his hands on it—only to lose it again.
[After noticing how well Dortmunder is outlined here, I began hunting for the other characters in the books to see if I could pinpoint their Attitudes. Where I can, I’ll profile them as well. If anyone else is familiar with Dortmunder and his gang, I hope you’ll add your views to mine.]
xxx
Galloping back to my primary point here, the Cynical Attitude is chosen for protection during a highly karmic lifetime. Cynics distrust the motives of others and expect life not to work out— no matter how hard they try. Life is a bowl of cherry pits, anyway. The only thing worth focusing on is the negative.
Expecting the worst anyhow, the Cynic isn’t disappointed when it comes.
The classic ‘yes-but’-ers, Cynics will find fault with any suggestion you put out there. They will always find a reason why your idea won’t work.
They are unconventional: they disregard social institutions and will always find sufficient reason to disregard conventional wisdom.

In the positive pole, Cynics tend to root out stupidity before it goes too far. Believing that, "If anything can go wrong, it will," they’ll at least try to come up with a fool-proof plan because, according to their viewpoint, everyone is a fool, in any case.
They are not easily conned. They don’t take people at face value and are always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
In the negative pole, Cynics will scoff and jeer. Preoccupied with the negative, they become caustic and will argue for argument’s sake. Preferring to gripe rather than try to make things better— they can look pretty miserable.

Realist [30%]
Realists pay particular attention to the action going on around them.

Among Dortmunder’s colleagues, there’s a guy named Andy Kelp. At the drop of a hat, Andy will launch into a long, drawn out anecdote about a mutual acquaintance. There doesn't need to be any point to the tale— that it happened is enough to justify its telling. He may get to the end of a story and then just gaze off into the distance— barely even being aware that he has come to the end. It will take an impatient, “Get ON with it, willya?” from John to get Andy to come back to earth.
If John then brings up another topic or person for consideration, he’s likely to launch Andy into yet another yarn about the new person or topic. And John just patiently waits for Andy to wind down again.
And Andy goes in for fads. He was the first kid on his block to get a fax and a cell phone. He has managed to shoplift lots of phones and has one in every room of his apartment--even the bathroom and the hall closet. None of these phones look like your standard phone, though. Each is unique.
Andy has tried to get John to install more than the one phone in the kitchen. After all, Andy will shoplift it for him--he won't even have to pay for it. But John will have nothing to do with the idea. Once, when Andy wouldn't lay off about it, John threw the phone out a window. And Andy finally got the point.
***
There’s another character who may be a Realist: Stan Murch— the driver. Ask Stan how he got here today— if you have no other plans this afternoon. Because he will tell you— in the minutest detail —the route he took and why, what streets were torn up along the way, what alternate routes he took as a result, etc. etc. etc.
xxx
Realists are concerned with the behavior and activities of other people. They also like to be up on the trends and fashions— whatever is new on the world scene. This makes them rather conventional people, who conform to social norms and institutions [but not Andy and Stan who are, after all, petty crooks. But that’s another matter.]

Realists are also often news-hounds.

Where Cynics put a stop to what is happening, Realists are unable to put a stop to anything. Instead, they are carried along by events. If a Cynic and a Realist are discussing something, the Cynic will be brief and negative and the Realist will be verbose and positive.

Realists ramble aimlessly when they talk — they cannot come to a conclusion, or get to the point, or make a concise, definitive statement. This is a dead giveaway for detecting a Realist.

Cynics see what is wrong with the world, Realists simply see things the way they are.

The Positive Pole of the Realist Attitude is Perception. Events in life seem transparent to these folks. They see things exactly as they are, so their vision is not distorted. They regard the world as a continually interesting series of occurrences of unending variety, and they approve. If there is a meaning or a mood within the action, it is not as important as the bare event itself.
Because they perceive external events neutrally, they are rather experimental in their own lives. They also readily go along with the proposals of others. This can of course work to their detriment if the suggestions are stupid or harmful.

In the Negative pole the person assumes that everything is OK, and I do mean EVERYTHING. Since such a person sees all sides to every issue, there is little understanding of a current situation. People in this pole are unable to come to a conclusion. Every alternative is seen as equally viable, so they can be wishy-washy.
Such people are uncommitted to any particular action, so it is possible for them to be easily persuaded. They will go along with just about anything. If you ask a person in the negative pole of Realism a question to which you expect a simple yes or no answer, you will likely get a lengthy, roundabout discourse that explores every aspect of the question but which arrives at no answer.

The simplest way out of the negative pole, here, is to apply the Positive Pole of the complementary attitude of Cynicism: Contradiction. Use the inherent process of elimination to arrive at a conclusion. Start looking for things that are wrong instead of always seeing everything that is right.

Refining Ourselves— The Attitudes [2]

2009-04-04T23:27:00.003-04:00

The Inspirational Attitudes —Stoic and Spiritualist
The Attitude is our primary life-outlook. It colors how we perceive the world and our place in it. It influences how we respond to life. Though primarily an intellectual perspective it affects how we respond emotionally, as well, and what we are most likely to do.

Stoic [5%]
Stoics can be described as the pessimistic Attitude. It isn't that Stoics perceive everything as contemptible like the Cynic does, or that they perceive everything to be questionable like the Skeptic does. It is that there is very little that is of much importance. A Stoic finds the world bland, uninspiring and drab— "Things are tough all over".
Stoicism lends patience and forbearance to the personality and can be helpful during especially trying lifetimes.

The advantage here is that Stoics are not easily upset because they can put up with much negativity. It is as if they were insulated from it. Nor are they deceived by false hopes. On the other hand, there is the disadvantage that Stoics do not "fight the system" when it is in need of reform. They may not see real dangers to avoid.

Stoics hold a certain insensitivity to what is happening around them — "Who cares?". They are psychologically "nearsighted", so to speak.
They are unaffected by things that provoke others, and indifferent to things that draw others— "So what?"
Because they tend to minimize what they see, it often takes the proverbial two-by-four hitting them between the eyes to get their attention. Only in severe trauma do they realize that something serious may be wrong.

Stoicism isn’t chosen in order to change the world. It’s chosen in order to get by. Often the choice of people born in Asia, these days, imagine how much of a help it can be in China where things have been changing so fast that, for several generations now, the only safe topic of conversation has been the weather.

The idea here is to accept what is with tranquility rather than to attempt to change things. Stoics reserve their feelings— even from themselves.

In the positive pole, you find tranquility and reserve. The underlying statement is, ‘Whatever,’ or ‘What will be will be.’ Stoics make a virtue out of necessity.
It may have been a stoic who coined the phrase about making lemonade out of the lemons life hands you.

In the negative pole, the stoic can become more and more resigned to a terrible situation. They tend to hang in there— never attempting to make anything better. They may become so exhausted they simply plod along, granite faced.

John Dortmunder MAY live constantly in the negative pole of Stoicism, fwiw.

Spiritualist [5%]
Tiny Bulcher— a monster of a man who can pick up a small car and walk away with it or grab a growling rottweiller and toss it into a closet without a second thought may be a Spiritualist.
On the other hand, he MAY be a Realist in that he tells stories though they’re more likely to be about his own actions rather than those of others. Mercifully, the reader usually comes in at the tale-end of the story —just when he is wiping the blood off the hatchet and putting it back where he found it [at the Girl Scout camp] or just after he has shown that cocky guy who swore that you can’t kiss your own elbow— how he could, after all.
But, Tiny has certain principles that are extremely important to him. Politeness, for instance. He will explain very patiently, while holding someone by the throat, exactly WHAT the guy did to merit such treatment—and, often, it’s because the guy was impolite in some way.

And, 2nd, there is a friend of Kelp’s [he has lots of friends] named Wally Knurr. A little butterball of a guy who is slightly taller sitting in a standard-sized chair than he is standing up and about as wide [Tiny has been known to say he might be fun to play basketball with—but no one has asked him precisely what he means by that].
Wally sees the best in everyone. He knows that Kelp is a thief but also understands that Kelp is, at heart, a good person. So, being the geek he is, he will, on occasion, use his computer skills to help Andy figure out how to get something he needs.

And Wally is unfailingly polite [Tiny will never need to explain that to him]. He always calls John's girlfriend 'Miss May' and says 'Thank you' when she gives him cheese and crackers.
xxx
Spirituality is the optimistic Attitude. Remember that Attitudes reveal what perceptions people project onto the world, or what part of reality people tend to see.
Spiritualists typically see the world as improving, evolving, developing to a higher plane. They have high anticipations of it, so they tend to get upset when it does not live up to their expectancy [note Tiny’s disappointment with impoliteness]. They want to see it fulfill its highest potential. They hope there is a steady stream of progress in the future. A person in Spiritualism perceives the world as evolving toward higher realms.
Spiritualist's are far-sighted visionaries. They look down the road a long way, to see where it is all leading. They expect things to head toward a better world, a more highly evolved society, a finer place to live, a happier place and with fewer problems. Obviously there is a degree of distortion in this, because the world is at times a dreary, depressing place [just ask John], and situations often get worse rather than better.

The Spiritualist Attitude is the complement of the Stoic Attitude. That is, Spiritualists tend to lack Tranquility and Resignation. Whereas Stoics tolerate suffering well— they regard it as an inevitable part of life in the world —Spiritualists cannot understand why it exists. They hide their eyes from it when they can, and if they can't, they beseech the Deity to heal it.

Because Spiritualists tend to be hopeful and optimistic, they are subject to turmoil when reality does not live up to their expectation. Spiritualists do not easily resign themselves to reality. Instead, they tend to resist destiny/fate when it is not as noble, virtuous, or as good as they expect.
They do not tolerate bad fortune well. They will anguish in their minds and scream in their hearts— unable to serenely go along with an inferior reality. Spiritualists are the most likely to blame God for making a mistake in creating an imperfect world. [And Tiny will seek revenge against the person who brought it to his attention.]

The biggest problem of Spiritualists is that they lack peace of mind, whereas Stoics tend to have it too much of it. The world with it's many imperfections so often disappoints. Reality itself is a letdown to Spiritualists, because it does not live up to their vision of how things could be if only people would let go of all the garbage.

Spiritualists really enjoy comedy and fun. They are not always able to produce it but they do like it. And, just as they look for fun and enjoyment in the world, they also look for religious feelings.

Spiritualists have a difficult time with emotionality. They regard their feelings as part of their "lower" nature. If they have strong Emotions which include moodiness, for instance, they try to "rise above" it.

Often this Attitude gives a person an inherent interest in religion or spirituality of some kind. From an early age Spiritualists tend to have a sense that there are realms beyond the physical. Or the person may be interested in psychology— the "spiritual" aspect of people.
Another major factor among Spiritualists is their interest in ethics or morality. This comes from their perception of the world as becoming a better place, and out of their own noble aspirations. This can make them difficult to be around, as they will examine the ethics of every situation. They want to do what is "right"—and they expect the same of others. They can be surprised when other people do not share their ethical sensitivities. So, those others can perceive them as moralistic and self-righteous— Little Goody Two-Shoes.

The Positive Pole of Spirituality is Verification. This means to authenticate the truth. This is not to be understood in the sense of Investigation, the Positive Pole of the Skeptic Attitude, which means to seek out the facts. Verification means seeing the truth among the lies.
Spiritualists look for transcendent factors at work in the world. They see these grains of divine awareness among the chaff of falsehood and, in fact, ignore the lies. They focus instead on the part of the universe that is in fact evolving to higher realms. The whole cosmos is a "morality play.”

The Negative Pole is Faith. The meaning of this word should not be confused with the meaning in Christian theology— trust in God or belief in Christ or anything like that. It does not concern adherence to religious dogmas. Nor does it concern unproven beliefs of any kind, for those are more a factor of the Intellectual Centers.

This sort of Faith is a felt thing, not a thought thing. This Faith refers to wishing and hoping in an emotional sense.
As indicated above, people with this Attitude are optimistic — they expect things will turn out for the best, no matter how bad it seems in the present. If they are being unreasonably optimistic, having no cause to be so, they are denying reality and deluding themselves.
Whereas people in the Positive Pole see what is true and good in the world, People in the Negative Pole get their hopes up that a miracle will deliver them. Thus they continually set themselves up for disappointment.

To see what their fate may be, they consult astrology, tarot, psychics, tea leaves, the crystal ball, the I-Ching or whatever. These are exhibitions of Faith motivated by fear.
People in Faith may develop their own collection of superstitions. People in Faith may look to omens to foretell the future. There may be attempts to influence destiny through magick rituals, or through charms such as the rabbits foot or a Saint Christopher medal.
The passive person may just hope and wishfully think that things will turn out OK— cross your fingers and look toward the heavens.

The way to overcome the Negative Pole of Faith is to consider and apply the Positive Pole of Stoicism: Tranquility. Don't let the setbacks in life get you down. Realize that the world is not really becoming a better place. It just grinds on inexorably with both ups and downs in the process. Do not expect things to always get better or worse in the long run, because it is not the way of the world.

Refining Ourselves— The Attitudes [3]

2009-04-01T23:26:00.000-04:00

The Expressive Attitudes —Skeptic and Idealist
The Attitude is our primary life-outlook. It colors how we perceive the world and our place in it. It influences how we respond to life. Though primarily an intellectual perspective it affects how we respond emotionally, as well, and what we are most likely to do.

Skeptic [5%]
Tiny Bulcher has a girlfriend named J.C. Taylor. She can give a guy who sees himself as a pretty good con-artist one look from under her furrowed brow and he’ll collapse immediately. J.C. sees through anything life has on offer— probably because she has already thought of the idea and either rejected it outright or incorporated it into her own life long before you came up with it.
xxx
Skeptics are the people who go through life with a penetrating stare — literally and figuratively. They will not believe anything until they have checked it out for themselves. They are the proverbial "doubting Thomases" who must see it with their own eyes. They are unconvinced until all the facts are in, and they dislike forming theories until the evidence has been thoroughly examined.
Once the proof is in, however, they are firm believers. It is difficult to shake a Skeptic's belief system, because, once conviced, they require another mountain of evidence and logic to overthrow their belief. The symbol for Skeptics is the question mark — they question everything. They are the scoffers, the agnostics of the world.

This Attitude limits the sphere of knowledge. Skeptics believe, but the only way they believe is by proof. Only objective knowledge is allowed. Subjective insights are not permitted — the subjective insights of others, that is. Their own subjective insights are permitted.
Theology and philosophy are not within the objective realm, for instance, so they are not considered valid unless the the Skeptic has had a convincing experience. To pure, extreme Skeptics, only scientific, physical evidence is considered valid, and only the material realm is considered real. The formal philosophies for these attitudes are called "empiricism" and "materialism".

The Skeptic is analytical. Skeptics see themselves as alienated from the world, and the world as forever separate from themselves. They regard others as strangers, and it takes a lot of time for them to befriend strangers.

Skeptics are particularly lacking in imagination. They may in fact disdain it. They think it is foolish to live in one's "dreams", preferring rather to live in the "real world". But, Skeptics do have projection — they see their illusions in the world rather than in their heads.
All the Attitudes except Pragmatism and Realism give their owners distorted perceptions of the world, and Skeptics are the most likely to see in their world only what they want to see — they "project" their perceptions on the world.
Skeptics usually regard philosophy as a waste of time, since it is largely theoretical and not at all practical, scientific, or provable. If Skeptics do investigate philosophy, it is in order to pick it apart.

The Positive Pole of Skepticism is Investigation. This is characterized by investigation of everything ("Where's the evidence?"). There is much curiosity here, inquiry of the scientific kind rather than the theoretical.

Skeptics make good researchers: they have excellent powers of scrutiny to dig out the facts or to devise tests for ferreting out the laws of nature. They assume nothing, but check out everything.
It bothers Skeptics to discover that they do not know something, so they seek to know it. If you want to tantalize a Skeptic, just give them part of the information, and watch them search for the rest. If you are talking to a Skeptic, better count on being interrogated and cross-examined — this is a part of their way of relating to others. It might seem that Investigators are approaching things only in order to examine them. They are, but they get just so close. Skeptics maintain a certain distance while they dissect. They never join with the object of their inquiry.

The Negative Pole of Skepticism is Suspicion. There is plenty of evil and ugliness in the world to be sure, but people in this Pole see evil and ugliness even where it isn't— they invent a supply of it to fulfill their demand for it. Anything that is not understood is regarded as evil. They believe that evil is insidious and pervasive, and will prevail.
They regard cooperation between other people as a conspiracy. They do not "give the benefit of the doubt", but rather hold others guilty until proven innocent. Such people are often unfriendly upon first meeting, and it takes a long time for the other people to clear themselves of the mistrust. They do not take anything at "face value", but instead see sinister things in it ("What's the catch?"). They look for ulterior motives.
When the personality is aggressive, the extreme expression of this Pole is hostility. Such people want to place the blame. The accusations might be directed at television, government, religion, or anything.
When the personality is passive, the extreme expression of this Pole is nihilism — belief in nothing, or the belief that life has no purpose or meaning. When combined with the Negative Pole of the Caution Mode, Phobia, there may be some paranoia.

The way to overcome Suspicion is to consider and apply the Positive Pole of the complementary Idealist Attitude, Coalescence. Begin to look for the unifying factors in the world, such as the fact that the universe runs quite smoothly according to law, not chaotically, and that society does manage to act coherently in spite of differences, and that most people, though often foolish and ignorant, are nevertheless well-meaning, and certainly not evil. If things have got by this long, trust that they will continue.

The advantage of this Attitude for the person who has it is that they are not easily taken in by spurious claims. There is much sham and trickery in the world, and Skeptics are not readily fooled by it. This saves them some grief. The disadvantage of this Attitude is that Skeptics miss out on much of the beauty and wisdom that is in the world. Not believing in it, they overlook it when they see it. They are slow to believe in truths that are self-evident to others.

Idealist [20%]
Andy Kelp has a girlfriend named Anne Marie [she arrives late in the series—in the 14th book, or so]. She is the ultimate optimist. Nothing surprises her very much— she sees coincidence as having profound meaning.

When her husband abruptly leaves her, she looks around and there is Andy.
Anne Marie doesn’t stop to consider the consequences of speaking to strange men in bars [and you don’t get a lot stranger than Andy, when you come right down to it] she says, “Hello,” Andy says “Hello” and the next thing you know she’s helping him plan his next heist although she has no previous experience as a thief [beyond the fact that her father was a US Senator, that is].

Anne Marie sees in Andy a new door opening just as the door with her husband is closing. That is enough to spur her on to the next chapter in her life. After that, she simply sits back and enjoys the scenery outside the bus window as it hurtles down the hill. After all, she can’t control the bus— she may as well enjoy the ride [please forgive the mixed metaphors—they're lifted from one of the books. :) ]
xxx
Idealists search for meaning in life, and they see it everywhere. They look for connections in time that are meaningful coincidences. When two significant things happen at once in their lives, they believe the universe is trying to tell them something.

They believe the universe is a friendly place, and they are friendly toward it and the people in it. Idealists in the extreme have a utopian view of the world. They see things through the proverbial rose-colored glasses. They see the world as a beautiful place, and they see how the world could be more beautiful, if only more people would get together, work together, and trust.

The Opposite of the Idealist Attitude is the Intellectual Center. Idealists are sometimes anti-intellectual; they regard reason and logic as limited, unable to encompass the totality of existence.
Idealists and Intellectually centered people comprehend reality in quite different ways, both limited. When both are present in the same person, it can create internal contradictions and inconsistencies. The Idealist does not analyze the world— it sees the overall pattern. The Intellectual analyzes data without seeing the big picture.
The two working against each other in people causes them to narrow their interests to something compatible with both, or to switch back and forth between the two.

Idealists are concerned with integrative images and they project their images onto the outer world. That is OK if the images are an accurate representation of reality, but if their view of the world is a fantasy-land, and they make it out to be a wonderful place when it isn't, then they are in for trouble. One of the problems that Idealists, particularly in the Negative Pole, constantly face is that of disillusionment. Since they tend to see the world with the proverbial "rose-colored glasses", their bubble of dreams and illusions may often be pricked by the needle of reality. This can destroy their beautiful imaginings. This is very disconcerting to them, because they need a coherent world-view despite a penchant to live in a dream world

The complement of the Idealist Attitude is the Skeptic Attitude. "For believers, no explanation is necessary. For nonbelievers, no explanation is sufficient" pretty well sums up the difference between the two extremes of Skeptic and Idealist.

Trust is a big issue with both Attitudes.
Idealists rarely check things out or question them. Idealists think they already have all the answers inside themselves, so there is no use investigating the world to discover them. Idealists are rarely suspicious. Rather, they give others the benefit of the doubt and if their trust is misplaced it is because the others proved themselves untrustworthy.
Even then, Idealists are liable to invoke extenuating circumstances so that they can still believe in the goodness of other people generally and in the beauty of the world.

Idealists get the overview, the big picture. Skeptics and Idealists are both concerned with issues of "what is reality" and "what is illusion".
Skeptics see the physical universe as reality and anything else as illusion. They say mind is a product of matter.
Idealists see principles and ideas as the ultimate reality, and everything else as illusion. They see the physical universe as a product of an Infinite Mind.

The Positive Pole of the Idealist Attitude is Coalescence. It means to merge, combine, amalgamate into a single body or group. Idealists see the world and everything in it as becoming more unified. In the most extreme expression of this Pole, Idealists see themselves as one with everything. They take a philosophical perspective on all issues, and try to see the wisdom in every situation. Such people subscribe to the "holistic philosophy" — the idea that the whole world functions like a single organism. All the parts are connected in space and coordinated in time, operated by a single Mind.

The Negative Pole is Naiveté. People in this Pole have taken their trust and innocence to an unrealistic extreme. They see beauty where it isn't, and simply deny that ugliness exists.
The naïve Idealist will tell you that evil is justified at a higher level of reality, that things that seem meaningless have meaning that we cannot fathom, that something that appears foolish has a wisdom that is beyond us, and that ugliness is transformed at other levels of reality into beauty.

People in the negative pole have many illusions, and they suffer when they are disillusioned. They live by platitudes rather than reality. The fear here is the fear of questioning anything — questioning in the sense of both investigation and suspicion. One must question things or one will not be able to distinguish between reality and illusion.

The fear that drives Naiveté is the fear of ugliness and evil, which do not fit into an Idealistic world view. The world just should not be this way, right? It is indeed possible to imagine a better world. But the world is the way it is, and there is no use denying it or dreaming it away. The technique for overcoming Naiveté is to consider and apply the Positive Pole of the Complementary Attitude of Skepticism, Investigation. Get down in the world and get dirty. Open your eyes to the things you would rather turn away from. Stop dreaming of a better world, find out about the real world, and then maybe you can make it a better world in the Positive Pole of Coalescence. It does not solve anything when one justifies ugliness and evil by saying it is reconciled at a higher level of integration. Best reconcile it at this level.

Refining Ourselves— The Attitudes [4]

2009-03-26T23:25:00.000-04:00

The Assimilation Attitude —Pragmatist
Dortmunder’s lady friend, May, is not quite as colorful as the other characters. She knows John is a thief—in fact that’s how they met: she caught him shoplifting at the store where she works. But she took pity on him when she saw him just standing there with a hangdog look and the balogna and cheese falling out of his armpits as he dug into his pocket to produce the boullion cubes she had seen him deposit there. So, what could she do? She took him in—rather as you or I would take in a stray cat. And, on occasion, she has to give him a swift kick to get him out of a mood or to point out a reality to him.

She has convinced herself that the grocery chain where she works as a cashier perceives her as a part of its family. And what family would begrudge a little something to its family member? So, she arrives home from work each day with a couple of sacks of groceries that she didn’t pay for [another reason she didn’t turn him in when she caught him doing what she does every day, anyway.]

When she decides to quit smoking [after chain smoking for years and years] she just does it.
And, when John is backing away from a job that could, if he doesn't take it on, result in the deaths of several hundred people, she makes sure he steps up to find a non-violent solution to the problem.

And she likes to go to movies.

It took several books to build up this much of a picture of May. She’s just a fact of life in book after book after book—rather as the Pragmatist is simply a fact of life among the Attitudes.
xxx
Pragmatist [20%]
The neutral attitude is that of the Pragmatist. This is the attitude that represents the combination of the other six attitudes. All the other attitudes give a person a view of the world which is somewhat skewed — they see some facets of it better than others. Pragmatists have a viewpoint which is relatively free of distorted perceptions, compared to the other Attitudes. This has the obvious advantage that Pragmatists are not misinterpreting parts of the whole picture: they see it all with little distortion. On the other hand, this has the disadvantage that Pragmatists are not as colorful as people with other attitudes, other things being equal. Each of the other Attitudes emphasizes a different "color" in the world, so to speak, but the Pragmatist sees things more in shades of gray. Consequently, they tend not to stop and smell the roses along the way.

Pragmatists see the world as a place for experience of all kinds: initiation and conclusion, optimism and pessimism, subjectivity and objectivity. Pragmatists regard the world as a smoothly functioning system — as organism and mechanism, as spiritual and physical, as living and dying. All of this gives Pragmatists a very "matter of fact" or "down to earth" view of life. Pragmatists deal with things expediently and functionally. They are not hindered by overmuch consideration of beauty or ugliness, happiness or suffering, respect or contempt — they see what works and they do it. Pragmatism is the ideal of scientific neutrality: no bias for any particular viewpoint or preconceived notions. Pragmatists live by their own experience rather than some ideology or morality or philosophy or fad.

The counterpart of the Pragmatist Attitude is the Instinctive Center. These are alike in that they are both aspects of the Assimilation Process — they are each the combination of the other six traits. They are different in that the Instinctive Center involves the internal function of the person responding to the outer world, while the Pragmatist Attitude concerns the person seeing how the outer world functions.

The Positive Pole is Practicality. People in this Pole see the world's six basic facets equally. All the things in the world are appliances for which they find suitable applications. They value things for their utility — things are only so good as they can be used to fulfill a need or function. Pragmatists dislike things that do not work well. Because of their dislike for impracticality, Pragmatists rarely seek experiences which are enjoyable for their own sake. If it is enjoyable AND functional then OK. Poetry is nice but prose gets the job done better in the "real" world, so Pragmatists prefer prose.

The Negative Pole is Dogma. People in this Pole show it by being opinionated — they have an opinion about everything, even when they do not have actual knowledge of it. They perceive the world behaving arbitrarily (since they do not understand its true functions, which are not arbitrary), and they are also arbitrary. When people get set in this Pole, their belief patterns are difficult to change: “My mind is made up, don't confuse me with the facts." They may accept some theory or fringe doctrine about the nature of reality which cannot be substantiated.

The fear that drives Dogma is the fear of being wrong or ignorant. Dogmatic people want to believe that they have correctly understood the workings of the world. Without adequate knowledge, they will nevertheless declare that they have correctly perceived the situation. In order to get out of the negative pole and achieve clear perception, they can apply the Positive Pole of any of the other six Attitudes. If they experiment with viewing life through the eyes of other people from these other viewpoints, they will gain a perspective of what is really going on. They will be able to give up their own pet opinions and perceive reality as it truly is.

Refining Ourselves — The Chief Features 1 & 2

2009-03-23T23:24:00.002-04:00

The Chief Negative Feature[CNF] is, I guess, one way of creating drama in one’s life—but there’s lots to be said for going for b-o-r-i-n-g in that case. Based on our deepest fears, it’s the only overleaf we choose after birth. During our childhoods and, especially, our teen-age years we experiment with several Features settling on one favorite by the time we reach our twenties—or by the age of 35 at the latest. The good news is that, if we work at it, we CAN change or even let go of this characteristic though most don’t let go till they reach Old Soul Age. In fact, some Youngs and a fair number of Matures even have two CNF’s. That certainly will keep life—ummm—interesting.

Just like the other overleaves, even the CNF has positive and negative poles. If we can remain in the positive pole, we can use the CNF to deal with karma, grow and, eventually, move beyond the fear that caused us to adopt the CNF in the first place. If we move into the negative pole we begin a downward spiral that actually creates more fear rather than alleviating it—which was the reason for adopting the CNF in the first place.

The Expressive Axis
Self-destruction— 10%
People with the feature of Self-destruction are always aware of their faults. They might dislike their body: it is too short or too tall, too fat or too thin, the ears are too big, the hair is too curly. They might be self-critical about their work: they are not thorough enough, not fast enough, not accurate enough. They might be displeased with their personality: they are not smart enough, not funny enough, not likable enough. Whatever the current focus, people in Self-Destruction see their flaws rather than their positives.

These folks do not like to be the center of attention— others may notice their flaws. They worry a lot about what other people think of them. Because they notice their own deficiencies, they think everyone else does, too.
They are hungry for compliments to prop up their self-image. But even when the compliments come, they don’t believe them and tend to look for ulterior motives behind them.

They do not allow possessions to accumulate; if they do get a little ahead, they’ll give it away before someone else [who is, by definition, more deserving] takes it from them. They do not feel comfortable with money in the bank. They deny themselves any luxury.

People in the Positive Pole of Sacrifice, think others are of greater merit so they are willing to give so that those others can have. They are very conscious of loss and gain, and see themselves as losing in most transactions. They work hard and give away too much— "what's mine is yours".

The Negative Pole is Self-hatred. People in this Pole see themselves as blemished and cursed. These are the people who hurt themselves when something goes wrong in their lives. They think the universe itself hates them—and rightfully so. They hate themselves for not being perfect; they are ruthless with themselves, showing no mercy.

In many cases Self-Destruction can show up as self-harming. These folks regard themselves as damaged merchandise, and may damage themselves further. Masochism can develop. Pushed to the extreme, it takes the form of suicide, if not overtly, at least as accident proneness: carelessness to the point of hurting oneself, and not seeming to care.

People with this Feature let themselves be used, and hate themselves for it, but keep on letting it happen because it fulfills the self-image of deserving hatred. The lesson to be learned from this Feature is that every transaction between people and with the universe should be mutually beneficial. Neither should gain at the expense of the other. This Feature distorts the perception of love with the lie that one can be of benefit to others at one's own expense. However, self-sacrifice is not noble.

The way to conquer the fear that led to the choice of Self Destruction is to actively seek the Positive Pole of the Complementary Feature, Greed. If the person in Self-Destruction will not worry so much about what other people think of him, but thinks more about his own desires, he can control his fear.

Greed 15%

“What’s in it for me?” is the by-word for someone with this CNF. My guess is we’ve seen a lot of this feature recently—in real estate and on Wall Street. And those CEO's who think they should get those multi-million dollar bonuses even after running their companies into the ground seem to operate from this position, too.

Greed gives one heightened desires for all that life has to offer— then creates the desire for even more. Even allowing oneself everything is not satisfying, though, because Greed is pushy. It itches.

It may manifest in addictions: shopping, gambling, cravings for food, drugs, money, sex, power, fame. Different Soul Ages may handle this CNF differently: Infants and Babies may crave security; Youngs may go after power, fame and money; Matures may crave relationships; Olds may run after one mind-blowing spiritual awakening after another. Passions held at this level are likely to both push other people away and pull them in.

In the positive pole, these folks go for the gusto. They don’t know the meaning of the word ‘indifference’ but grab life and shake it. They’ll feel gratitude for their abundance and manifest lots of energy.

In the negative pole, they can become voracious and insatiable. Fearing that life is a zero-sum game— if you have something, you are limiting what I can get —people can become obsessed with taking what others have. And their desires can become cravings. From here one can easily slide into Self-Destruction.
People can be ruthless toward others and fearful of losing what they have already accumulated. They can become miserly and begin hoarding. As can be seen, this can lead to a miserable existence.

2009-03-20T23:23:00.002-04:00

Refining Ourselves
The Chief Features—3 & 4
Inspiration Axis
Self-Deprecation
Self-deprecation is, for better or worse, a favorite among Old Souls. A tendency to recognize the immensity of the universe can cause Olds to shy away from putting themselves forward. While this Chief Negative Feature helps hold people back from creating karma, it can also keep them from developing relationships or manifesting their true talents. As a result, it can restrain them from moving into the tranquility they seek.

Self-deprecation can manifest among people of ethnic groups that are held in disdain by other groups and in the poorer classes of third world countries, as well. It is adopted among those who are downtrodden in the political systems that create large disparities between the haves and the have-nots. Women in those countries in which they are kept behind the veil often use this Chief Feature. It helps them not call attention to themselves in situations where it could, potentially, be dangerous to do so.

In the positive pole, people who use this Chief Feature are humble about their achievments and feel no need to grab the limelight. They aren’t afraid to admit their shortcomings or lack of knowledge about a given topic. A great modesty is often manifested. This is a gentle overleaf, generally speaking. People employing it are usually unassuming and comfortable in the background.

In the negative pole, constant apologizing, self-abasement and a full-blown inferiority complex may show up. These folks don’t feel sufficient self-worth to allow themselves to manifest talents, wealth, relationships, or spiritual growth. Self deprecation may bring forth sloppy habits in dress as well as diet, exercise and, as a result, poor health.

Generally speaking, this Chief Feature can interfere with reaching out for fame. Woody Allen has based a career on Self-deprecation but he is the exception that proves the rule. Dudley Moore also managed it and George Harrison’s difficulty looking at the camera showed his Self-deprecation in action.

Self-deprecation, though it looks innocuous when compared to Self-destruction [see post of 12/21] or Martyrdom [to be profiled next time], can be extremely self-blocking. In order to loosen its grip, people need to learn to perceive themselves realistically— and recognize their own self-worth. After that, they might get hold of some self-help books and practice self-esteem enhancement. This makes it possible to slide into Pride, the positive pole of Arrogance [see below]. Making this change takes persistence and can be scary—but the exercise is worth it [having practiced self-dep, myself, for a number of years, I can attest to that.]

Arrogance
Often taken on at a young age, people with this Feature, tend to think they are a superior breed of human, not subject to the same imperfections as those other "common" people. They have an exaggerated sense of their own importance, perceiving themselves as noble and grand, and feeling they are beyond the average. They believe they will make a significant contribution to the world, and they have an unrealistic evaluation of their own abilities, talents, intelligence— they see themselves as better than they really are.

Ironically, the person in Arrogance may shy away from attention after spending years and enormous amounts of energy courting it. That’s because the fear that drives Arrogance is the fear of vulnerability. Arrogant people will not admit to themselves that they are imperfect and are terrified others will discover that they are. They are likely to avoid situations where they aren’t sure they will excel. They perfect themselves in private before stepping onto the public stage. They’ll stick to the things they do well, and continue to polish them. They tend to look down their noses at others—both literally and figuratively. Fearing the judgment of others, they tend to pass judgment on others first.

In the positive pole there is lots of pride and self-esteem. They dress and groom well. They do good work. By and large, they are comfortable with the image they see in the mirror. When living in the positive pole, there is no comparison with others, just a feeling that they are good people, doing well. They expect a lot of themselves, and work to live up to their self-image

In the negative pole there can be such a fixation on making a good impression that they can never let their guards down. They can’t simply relax and enjoy themselves.
Vanity and snobbery can crop up with the automatic assumption that others are lesser beings than themselves. Everything they do is geared toward proving their superiority. They belittle others and treat them as inferiors. They won’t be caught dead complimenting another person. To do so would acknowledge the other as an equal or even superior. They treat other people in a highhanded way they that says "I'm better than you, I know better than you and don’t you forget it.”

They don’t apologize for their mistakes. In fact, after making a mistake they will look you in the eye and deny it. If another should point out a mistake or some other imperfection, they will find a justification or excuse for it or even turn the tables and claim that the other person is mistaken in his or her judgment.

The way out of the negative pole is to contemplate the positive pole of Self-deprecation—humility, and strive to achieve it.

Despite the push-pull of the Feature, Arrogance can still propel people forward. People with the Role of King will often use Arrogance to help them achieve their goals and you’ll find it in large measure in the fields of law, politics, medicine, acting and other highly visible occupations.

2009-03-17T23:22:00.001-04:00

Refining Ourselves
The Chief Negative Features—5 & 6
The Action Axis
Martyrdom [15%]
Heavy users of this feature generally have difficulty with positive feelings because they interfere so much with their suffering. They tend to draw to themselves more catastrophes and misery than the rest of us do. But, wallowing in desolation and blaming others tend to drive people away— so they don’t even receive the sympathy they seek. About the best they can often do is to try to get others to feel guilty about the wretchedness they’re experiencing.

This is definitely not a fun Chief Feature to have or to watch.
When people feel out of control— wretched and wanting someone else to blame —what they elicit from others is disgust.
Martyrs may have their crown of thorns but they’re a thorn in everyone else’s side. Spouses desert them, children leave home asap, doctors give them drugs just to get them to shut up, neighbors avoid them, this is definitely a case of misery NOT loving company.

If the person with this Feature manages to remain at the positive pole, he can call attention to a cause or complete difficult karmas. A person in martyrdom may appear selfless— helping others without seeming to give thought to his own needs. This is the soldier who throws himself on the hand grenade.
Mother Theresa, who claimed to want to ‘die on her feet’ carried this Feature to its highest level.
As with most Features, however, staying in the positive pole is difficult and rarely achieved.

The negative pole of Martyrdom does not bring about popularity or even much sympathy. To be sure, when a new acquaintance first witnesses the myriad of problems experienced here, they may offer to lend a hand. But, the person in Martyrdom’s negative pole will “Yes, but,” every suggestion put forth by those who may try to help— and they’ll soon leave to seek out folks who are actually interested in getting out of their miserable existences. Then, when the Martyr whines, “Why don’t you call or visit me any more?” [the finger-pointing, guilt-tripping aspect of this Feature] they’ll break into a run simply to get away.
Self esteem falls below zero as no one’s needs get met.

Not many Martyrs become well known and, for obvious reasons, those who do are managing to stay in the positive pole of the Feature.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King both used this Feature to fulfill their complicated life goals of bringing Blacks forward in this society regardless of the costs to either of them.
John Kennedy, Nelson Mandela and Dian Fossey are 3 others who used Martyrdom to further causes.

Impatience [15%]
This Feature is the product of time-worry. The person using it is frantic that there just isn’t enough time to finish the current project, to get to where she needs to go, to climb to the top of her corporation. It’s difficult to be in the present if the person is constantly worrying about the future. And as for relaxing— fuhgeddaboudit!

As the person in Martyrdom tries to control people by using guilt, the person in impatience tries to control time by becoming frantic. She is the first person to loudly call on the cashier at the supermarket to request that another line be opened.
Impatient folks often feel [and look to outsiders] a little frantic. They always feel as if they’re having to run to catch up— even if they’re out in front of the pack.

In the positive pole, overconfidence is the norm. The person is daring and audacious in chasing down her goals. She’ll plunge ahead making decisions on the fly. The Impatient person can look bold and unflinching.

In the negative pole, she’ll constantly switch lanes on the highway and, in extreme instances, will play ‘leap-frog’ in traffic— thereby putting everyone on that stretch of road at risk.
Unfortunately, these attempts to get ahead of the clock often result in cut corners. Cut corners often lead to sloppy work and disasters can occur. Everything from bridges that collapsed before their materials should have worn out to failed nuclear plants could well be the result of folks with the Feature of Impatience hurrying through the inspection processes.

2009-03-14T23:21:00.000-04:00

Refining Ourselves
The Chief Negative Features— 7
Stubbornness—[20%]
Stubbornness aids in persistence and drive. It makes it easier to get where you want to go. You can pierce through barriers and shout down your opponents. This, by itself, makes it one of the most commonly used Features. Furthermore, this Feature has the ability to slide to each of the other six— another benefit of Stubbornness —I guess.
In the positive pole, this Feature leads to fortitude and determination. It’s users will slog ahead letting nothing get in their ways. Stubborn folks will find their ways through bottlenecks and plow through obstacles. Not much will stop their forward motion.

In the negative pole, however, they find it difficult to change course. They’ll put on the brakes when moving forward would benefit them far more. They can look prejudiced and obstinate, digging in their heels. Being unable to listen to suggestions or advice put forth by others, “I’ll do it my way, myself.” Determination and grit become obstinacy and mulishness. Inflexibility becomes the order of the day and the individual puts on blinders seeing only one possible outcome and doggedly slogging toward it— even if an alternate goal might be better in the long run. Folks in negative Impatience tend to get stuck. Growth can, as a result, grind to a halt.

There are lots of Stubborn politicians. On the positive end, these folks can push their agendas and find the fortitude to plow through the required paperwork. On the negative end [as we’ve seen too often, lately] Stubborn people can refuse to see anything positive on the other side of the aisle and absolutely refuse to work with people who aren’t marching in lock-step with them.

Essence Twins

2009-03-11T23:20:00.007-04:00

This morning, lying in bed, I realized that I missed a spot—in fact a couple of them. This is a continuation of stuff I’ve gotten from the Michael books and is related to how we develop our personalities—and goes a step further.

Before our first birth, we choose our Essence Twin. This is usually a spirit [fragment] from another entity [entities are groupings of fragments, usually about a thousand or so.] More often than not, our essence twin is of a different Role than our own. This adds depth and breadth to both personalities as we unconsciously draw on each other’s energy and diverse experiences as we return to the physical plane again and again.

The very first time we’re born, our essence twin is being born—within a few minutes and just a short distance away. As a result, we will share a great deal of our earliest physical experiences with her/him. As time goes on and as we experience more and more births, this need for close proximity of time and place decreases and we become less and less dependent on each other—though the close bond between us continues for as long as we continue to take on physical lifetimes and beyond.

Over our numerous lives, we take on more and more characteristics that are similar to those of our twin. And, in fact, when our essence twin chooses to remain on the astral plane while the other twin ‘solos’ on the planet, there is even more bleed-through from the astral twin into the physical twin’s personality than when both are on the planet and concentrating on the complications involved in living on the physical plane. During this situation, our twin beams its energy at us and acts as one of our spirit guides—this is, so I understand, a fairly common scenario during our later lifetimes.
Right now, for instance, my twin is off-planet. It is a Sage and that might be one reason why, although I’m a Scholar, I’ve spent a pretty substantial part of this lifetime teaching others about psychological matters, the environment, etc. etc.
And Sam’s [see the entry regarding the Role of Sage] essence twin is a Warrior. This gives her a more solid, grounded feeling than if she were a pure Sage. It also helps her be more organized and practical.
When both twins are on the planet, they’re usually more different than they are alike especially when you take into account all their shared experiences both here and astrally.
First, their Roles are usually different from each other. And, most commonly, they’ve chosen different [possibly vastly different] overleaves.
There are other characteristics I haven’t covered here, so far, like frequency and male/female energy. These, too, may be similar [easier to handle but more boring from the astral plane’s viewpoint] or they may be polar opposites of each other [astrally, more interesting— as they cause a lot of push-pull between the two souls.]
So, despite their common earthly experiences back when both were very young souls and their deeply shared experiences on the astral plane, they’re hardly identical twins. One illustration I’ve read is that of tearing a sheet of paper in half. The two pieces may look similar or very different from each other but, either way, they are a perfect fit.
As a result, of all this, getting together on-planet is not likely to be a bed of roses. Woe betide the fragments who meet their essence twins and try to have intimate relationships on the physical plane. Despite [or maybe because of] their closeness and many common characteristics and experiences, this makes for an overly dramatic and often chaotic relationship. Your essence twin knows you too well, gets inside your skin and doesn’t let you off the hook.
I’ve read that John Lennon and Yoko Ono are twins. We all know how deep that relationship was/is and how much drama it evoked both between the two principals and among the other members of the band.
Even so, when they can pull it off [as John and Yoko did, despite the drama] the bleed-through phenomenon is almost as strong as when one twin is on the astral plane. Looking at the two it may be difficult to determine who is the Artisan and who is the Scholar [fwiw, John was the high-frequency, female-energied Artisan and Yoko was the much lower-frequency, male-energied Scholar.]

Repost 3

2009-03-10T13:04:00.001-04:00

The Task Companion

2009-03-08T23:20:00.000-04:00

[Again, I took this from the Michael Teachings. Almost the entire post came from Joya Pope's The World According to Michael.]
Like our Essence Twin, we choose our Task Companion before we come to the planet for the first time. Unlike the Essence Twin, our relationship, should we meet on-planet, will be much calmer and less chaotic.
Task Companions agree, before a particular lifetime, how they will work together to achieve a common goal, usually a long-standing and probably pretty complicated one. They may start a business together. Or push to accomplish a major task such as desegregation in the U.S. Or a less visible, more personal goal may be undertaken—an increase in self-esteem, say, or self-control.
Or, if one of the pair has a preferred sex, male for instance, and is coming back this time as a female, it’s nice if the Task Companion is along for the ride to help overcome the difficulties encountered in a culture that gives men more breaks than it does women. In this case, the pair may meet and marry in order to carry out this task.
Generally speaking, if they’re going to get together during the lifetime, Task Companions tend to meet later in life. If they come together too early they may become frustrated because they’re simply too young to undertake their agreed-on task, yet. They need to wait until they’re ready to take on the job and the wait can be irritating.
While you choose your Task Companion before your first birth, by the time you’re an old soul you’ve probably picked up a number of minor task companions along the way. These folks are old friends who will help you with other, possibly less long-term, missions you’ve set for yourself.

Often, a mentor who comes along to show a youngster the ropes in a new job or school setting or how to get started in a new community is, all unknowingly, a Task Companion helping to pave the way for getting started on some long-term chore they agreed on before they were born.

This book was written long before Barack Obama became a household name. But it's a pretty safe bet, by now, that we all know that Michelle was assigned to him as a mentor at his first job. And look where they've come to. Makes me wonder if they're Task Companions.
Just sayin.

Seth Vindicated

2009-03-05T23:14:00.002-05:00

Back in the 1960’s, I was reading—um—Seth Speaks, I think it was. Or it might have been The Nature of Personal Reality. One of those Seth Books, anyway, I’m pretty sure.
I read about a sentient species that preceded us on the planet. Well, they didn’t exactly precede us. We were on the planet, too—at least the Homo Erectus model was.

But, this other group was here as well. They were humanoid, I think. They lived underground. They were very advanced and were getting ready, on a species-wide level, to graduate completely from the planet. So, as a species, they had reached the late Old Soul developmental phase.

This relatively small number of individuals [only a few million still existed at the time] had skills humans currently lack. For one thing, they could see auras. So, they could ascertain, without verbal communication, where other people were coming from: the motive behind another’s action. That made lying futile, I would imagine. [By the way, Michael says we’ll reach that level of evolution sometime in the next couple of hundred years, jfwiw.]
They could also see, taste and smell sounds and had entire art forms based on such skills. Likewise, they could hear colors and shapes. Etc.

These people were also capable of flight in ‘hanging baskets’. Using only their minds they could, on the occasions when they ventured to the surface, fly in conveyances designed to hold one to several dozen people at a time. And they could teleport objects—again using only their minds to do so.
xxx
At that point, I hit ‘TILT!’ on a fairly profound level, put the book down and, I think, haven’t read it since. My idea at the time was that Seth had gone into deep waters where I was unable or unwilling to follow.
It didn't shake my belief in the core system, though. After all, I've had the same experience with the books by Stephen Hawking—but I still believe in science.
xxx
Then, during the early 1990’s, I think, I saw a program on The History Channel. A scientist was studying the Sphinx. He determined that it had been carved far earlier in history than the Egyptian period—at a time when rainfall far exceeded the amount the area has seen during the historic period. In fact, according to his observations, the Sphinx had been created at about the time when Homo Erectus was developing in Africa. How could Homo Erectus have carved the Sphinx? [fwiw, the current head and surrounding temple complex were added during the Egyptian period, according to this scientist.]

I was put in mind of Seth’s humanoid species that preceded Homo Sapiens. It was just a fleeting thought, though, and I didn’t pursue it.
In fact, I put this Scientist’s ideas down to the innate bias I’d encountered before: ‘Those Africans couldn’t have created something so beautiful or intricate. So, let’s look for another explanation.’ I thought he might be going to some pretty absurd lengths to feed his prejudice.

Most scientists dismissed his ideas out-of-hand—which led me to keep an open mind about them. We've seen that pattern before—first by the Church and later by the scientific community. And we all know what can follow such refusals to even look at the evidence.
xxx
Then, tonight, I saw yet another special on the Science Channel.
It seems there are people on the planet right now who have abilities I, for one, had never heard of: the program profiled a woman who sees sound. She can listen to a rainstorm and see the color each raindrop makes as it hits the surface.
All music is accompanied by a light show. [In fact, she doesn’t attend rock concerts because the lights in the auditorium don’t match the ones she sees—which causes a cacophony in her brain.] And, each sound has a taste and a texture, as well. Some are crunchy—others are creamy—others are sand-papery—or sour, or fruity, or bitter, or sweet, etc.
As a child she, of course, thought everyone had these abilities. As she grew up she discovered that her sensations were unknown to everyone around her. She felt isolated. But, during the course of the program, she was studied by scientists who mapped her brain and, finally, were able to help her get in touch with a couple of people who had abilities similar to hers. She is no longer alone.
xxx
And, I’m going back and see if I can find those old Seth Books and read them again.
This is one of those times that I love: when science catches up with something my ‘religion’ has been saying for years and years.

Spirit/Body Dyad

2009-03-02T23:13:00.001-05:00

I'm still slow off the mark here--
I have been glancing through Seth Speaks and have one bit to add-- though it's probably not news to anyone who studies these things:
The spirit creates the body -- not the other way round.

Even though, here on the physical plane, we tend to be more aware of our bodies than we are of our souls, when you come right down to it it's worth noting: rather than being a body with a soul inside it, we are a soul that has assumed a body for a short while.
jfwiw.
====
OK, I've been busy what with the inauguration and some community stuff.
I'll be back, I promise.