A Book List

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

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

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

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

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.

Rethinking Soul Age Matters

I’ve been reading several Seth books, lately and I’ve come to some new conclusions regarding the Soul Age matters that Michael has outlined.

First of all, as I read the material in the books and as I wrote it up here, I both received and conveyed the impression that the Soul Ages are cut-and-dried. That the Infant cycle ends and the Baby lives begin followed by the Young lives, then the Mature and Old lives. That each sequence of lives is delineated by a boundary of sorts and that the matters being dealt with during each level don’t bleed one into the other. Now, I’m beginning to think, I may have taken the information too literally or not made enough allowance for the individuality of the soul.

Rereading the Seth material [after a hiatus of some years, aamof] I’m starting to rethink that premise.
Although Seth doesn’t speak of Soul Ages per se, it does seem to describe a similar phenomenon but this progression seems to be more flexible than I had interpreted Michael’s delineation as being.
It seems to me, after looking at the idea through the Seth Material lens, that the evolution might occur with more fluidity. The soul might even arrive at the Mature Soul consciousness, say, in the matter of emotions earlier in its evolution while remaining in the Young Soul awareness level when it comes to the matter of the relationships, for instance. Or that it might arrest at the Young Soul level in regards to dealing with money while moving forward with relationship issues [this might be especially true if a soul were to return to the United States or to a third-world country as an overlord-type figure for lifetime after lifetime during the transition period between the Young and Mature phases (or, more accurately perhaps, the soul might choose to return as an overlord or CEO because it isn’t prepared to make the leap in regards to the issue of acquiring money and power-over-others’-lives.)]

I’m not saying that this is necessarily so – but that my interpretation of how souls mature is changing as I merge the two teachings.

So, as you read the following posts, you might keep in mind the idea that things are more flexible than the wording of the posts may suggest.

Just wondering along.

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

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

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