The Seven Roles// #1 Scholar

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

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

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
Sage [8% of the population]

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

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

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.]
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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

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”