Back in 1979, novelist Chelsea Quinn Yarbro published a little book containing a whole new way of understanding personality and spirituality. This new body of knowledge wasn’t hers, however. In fact, it had been received over several years from a mysterious entity known only as ‘Michael’.
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro‘s book, called Messages from Michael, compiled information that had been gathered by a group of spiritual seekers based in and around the San Fransisco Bay Area.
The group, who had been meeting regularly since the early 1970s, had started using a Ouija board. They weren’t interested in contacting ‘dead people’ however. Instead, they hoped to connect with some kind of higher intelligence who could guide them in their personal and spiritual lives.
— a d v e r t i s e m e n t —
Their wish came true after a dinner party on 12 August 1973. The energy in the room had changed, felt by everyone. And when one of them took hold of the board it spelled out:
WE ARE HERE WITH YOU TODAY
And then the new information started pouring through in torrents.
Eventually someone had the presence of mind to say:
“Before I ask any more questions, I would like our entity to give us a name.”
THE LAST NAME A FRAGMENT OF THIS ENTITY USED WAS MICHAEL
(‘Fragment′… ‘Entity′… These terms are explained below.)
The name ‘Michael’ stuck, purely out of convenience. Over several years, the group went on to ask ‘Michael’ thousands of question. Some questions were private and personal, some were philosophical, some were deeply spiritual. And, rather like a cosmic version of Google or Wikipedia, ‘Michael’ would simply answer every single question — directly, clearly and dispassionately.
Gradually, many others came along to the group sessions to ask their own questions. Some also found that they could connect with ‘Michael’ in a trance state and serve as a live channel receiving the answers.
The Ouija board is now long gone but the questions and answers have never stopped. The same source has continued to give us a detailed, mutli-faceted system of psychological and spiritual insight. It is a body of knowledge that contains just about everything we need to know in order to understand who we are at every level.
The general teachings are freely available all over the internet. If you want a personal reading, however, you must contact of the many channels (see bottom of page). There are now many people around the world who can channel Michael. I’ve even done so myself on the odd, unexpected occasion.
So where to begin?
Let’s start with…
Contents
Exactly who, or what, is Michael?
To answer that we have to start with a fundamental but controversial concept: reincarnation.
When the messages first came through, the source explained that the human soul “enters the physical plane as many times as is necessary to experience all aspects of life.” In doing so, the soul gradually evolves in consciousness, becoming more aware and self-aware, more capable and in control, more loving — and less fearful, less isolated, less unconscious.
To that end, each of us is going through a long and often difficult process of reincarnating, living many different lives in many different circumstances.
At the end of this learning process, when all there is for us to experience as a separate being has been experienced, our soul unites with others — about a thousand other souls who emerged into being at the same moment with us. This is our group of origin, known as an “entity“.
Each of us is a part of a fragmented whole, a fragment of our own entity. As we evolve individually, our entity evolves collectively. Eventually, the 1,000 or so souls making up an entity will form an integrated whole, a far greater body of consciousness and intelligence than any single soul.
After re-integration, our soul is no longer a separate fragment but an integral part of a higher intelligence.
The being we call Michael is one of these—an integrated entity. Not a single being, but a group, a collective. This is why the source refers to itself in the plural: “we”, “us”.
The name we are called is Michael. That is a convenience and not a truth. Only a small fragment of this entity had that name. We are integrated fragments of a larger entity and we come to you from the Causal plane.
To be exact, the group consists of precisely 1,050 souls who have all completed their own process of reincarnation.
We have been artists, bankers, barters, barristers, comedians, cemetery guards, dilettantes, governors, guards in many shapes and sizes, grave diggers, horsemen, jugglers and clowns, lute players, maids, mercenaries, merchants, misanthropes, military strategists, noblemen and women, peasants, priests, prostitutes, rebels, revolutionaries, robbers, students, teachers, temptresses, viceroys, waifs, and witnesses to the most unspeakable acts of cruelty and to the most loving acts of kindness and devotion.
And according to Michael, having evolved beyond the cycles of reincarnation, they no longer reside not on the Astral plane of existence (which is our home between lives), but on the higher, Causal plane, a level of pure thought and intelligence.
Their mission, for now, is to teach souls like us how to evolve — not how to get out of the human experience, but how to get more out of it; how to evolve within it and through it:
We offer a way to human understanding based on our own experience, first as humans ourselves in both tranquil and troubled times and now as the reintegrated fragments of a Causal body no longer alive as you know it but still with keen awareness of what being human entails.
We have communicated this way for approximately 100 years. Our purpose is to teach some understanding of evolution on the physical plane so that a student can reach some insight into human behavior which will enable him then to stop brooding over interpersonal relationships, or the lack thereof, and concentrate on personal life plans.
Michael likes to tell it straight. With impeccable grammar.
A summary of the Michael teachings – key concepts
Perhaps the best way to summarise the Michael teachings is to simply introduce the key concepts one at a time and in an order that makes sense. Let’s start with essence.
ESSENCE
Essence is just another word for spirit or soul; it is the innermost being of a person; it is our true nature. Your essence is your true self; the ego is a false self.
SOUL TYPES (ROLES IN ESSENCE)
There are seven soul types or roles in essence: Kings, Priests, Sages, Scholars, Warriors, Artisans, Servers.
Each has a particular archetypal quality and brings specific abilities or attributes into life:
Warriors: assertive action
(e.g., Julius Caesar, Salma Hayek)
Kings: commanding action
(e.g., Elizabeth I, John F. Kennedy)
Servers: moral duty
(e.g., Mother Teresa, Dalai Lama)
Priests: moral vision
(e.g., Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama)
Sages: communicative expression
(eg., Oscar Wilde, Dolly Parton)
Artisans: creative expression
(e.g., Michaelangelo, Björk)
Scholars: objective understanding
(e.g., Marie Curie, Ken Wilber)
Soul type does not change from one lifetime to the next. From a soul’s first incarnation to its last, the role in essence remains constant. For example, I am a Scholar, I have always been a Scholar and I will always be a Scholar.
See: Soul types: the seven roles in essence.
REINCARNATION
From the soul’s perspective, reincarnation is the process of undergoing life in physical form again and again in order to evolve, becoming increasingly self-aware and a unique expression of divine love.
Evolution of the soul comes about by experiencing life in many different ways, making important choices within those life experiences, and learning from the consequences of those choices. Key experiences and choices are set up by the soul in spirit before each lifetime (see life plan). One life is not enough to experience the full spectrum of life circumstances and choices, however, so an evolving soul will reincarnate many times over (typically 100+).
See: 10 things everyone should know about reincarnation
SOUL AGE
Souls evolve through five stage of reincarnation:
- Infant
- Baby
- Young
- Mature
- Old
Each stage has a distinct focus that requires particular learning experiences:
- Infant souls focus on physical existence. Lessons relate to ‘being a body’ – basic physical needs and drives; symbiosis versus separation; impulses versus consequences; survival, physical vulnerability, safety, mortality.
- Baby souls focus on social existence. Life lessons relate to ‘being one of us’ – conformity to rules, predefined roles, strict moral codes; order versus chaos; morality versus savagery; doing right versus doing wrong; the authority of religion, law and order, crime and punishment.
- Young souls focus on individual existence. Life lessons relate to being ‘a somebody’ with a mind and will of their own – independence versus conformity; individuality versus belonging; asserting personal opinions, persona agendas; competitiveness, self-interest, opportunism; seeking material success, achievement, glory, self-advancement.
- Mature souls focus on co-existence. Life lessons relate to being in ‘right relationship’ to self, others and everything else – interdependence versus independence; heart versus ego; collaboration and compromise versus personal triumphs; positive relationships, self-awareness, sensitivity, integrity, empathy.
- Old souls focus on being – fully being themselves as part of all-that-is while allowing all else to be as well. Life lessons relate to autonomy versus identity; authenticity versus respect; letting go, non-attachment, non-investment; wisdom; self-actualisation and self-transcendence.
Each of these stages actually involves seven levels, from start to finish. And each of those takes at least one lifetime to complete.
So there are 35 “steps” to the whole reincarnation process, from the first level of the Infant soul stage to the seventh level of the Old soul stage. Typically it takes well over a hundred lifetimes to complete the sequence.
(Incidentally, I am a Mature soul, currently at the fifth level of the Mature soul stage.)
Souls also progress through further stages beyond the cycle of physical reincarnation. These involve taking on a teaching role (as is the case for the “Michael” entity). Entities themselves evolve into greater levels of integration and higher consciousness.
See: Reincarnation – the 35 steps
LIFE PLAN
A life plan is the outline plan of key events and circumstances for a given lifetime, formulated by the soul (with its guides) while in spirit, before taking birth. The life plan is designed to ensure that certain desired experiences and choices are encountered during the life, with the agreement and cooperation of other souls involved.
For example, the soul may desire to learn about abandonment, and so will plan an experience of abandonment by a parent in early childhood. Another soul will make an agreement to be the abandoning parent, and will incorporate this event into their own life plan.
Once in physical, human form, there is little or no memory of the life plan. The incarnate soul undergoes a kind of temporary amnesia. This ensures that each planned event (such as early abandonment) is experienced “as real”, with all the shock and suffering that naturally goes with it.
LIFE TASK
A life plan will often include a specific task to be undertaken in the second half of life. For example, mine is “To acquire and share knowledge in a spirit of joy”. This life task is usually the main focus of the life to come, and much of what is set up in the first half of life is actually preparing the personality for this undertaking in the second half.
That early experience of abandonment, for example, might have been chosen to support the later life task of (say) “Healing parent-child relationships” – the early experience would help to instil the developing personality with the appropriate knowledge, intent and compassion.
When a personality begins to search for their “true purpose” in life, typically around 35-45, this is the calling of the life task (see the seven internal monads). Quite often, the pull to realise and begin the life task puts the personality through a crisis.
THE SEVEN INTERNAL MONADS
In every lifetime we undergo a sequence of seven major transition points, or “monads”. Each one involves a significant transformation in the self that is largely unavoidable:
- Birth – from spiritual existence to physical embodiment
- Self-awareness (age 2 approx) – from physical interactions to social interactions
- Coming of age (approx 15-20) – from socially-defined identity to self-defined persona
- Mid-life (approx 30-40) – from false personality to authentic self and purpose
- Retirement (approx 60-80) – from purposeful activity to restful activity
- Decline (terminal process) – from continuity of life to approach of death
- Death – from physical existence to non-physical consciousness
(Note – the ages shown are just approximations.)
Each of the seven monad-transitions is like a mini-death-and-rebirth. On each occasion, the inner self must let go of an old identity and accept a new one. This can go more or less smoothly or it can throw the personality into a crisis and even a rebellion. The outcome can be a successful transition to a new level of being or, at worst, the transition is “abdicated” and the personality remains stuck — a case of arrested development. Even so, the personality will have the opportunity to revisit the abdicated transition in later monads. For example, a person approaching mid-life might suddenly face unresolved issues connected with coming of age or even earlier.
The 4th monad is particularly notorious as a time of inner turmoil, as it may involve undoing 20 years of “hard work” on the false persona as well as 40 years of cultural programming.
A soul “normally” remains with a physical body from its birth to its death. Not all lives include all monads, however. A life that ends in childhood, for example, will pass through the first two monads and then skip to the last two monads.
We often live shortened lives for various reasons – because it is our karma to experience an early death, for example, or because we want to help another soul experience the loss of a child, or simply because of an unplanned accident.
To complete a level of soul growth, however, it is necessary to undergo all seven monads in one life.
(There’s a great book about the seven monads: Spiritual Turning Points by Victoria Marina-Tomkins.)
OVERLEAVES
The “overleaves” are a set of personality characteristics that are adopted by a soul for a particular lifetime. They include a goal (lifelong motivation), a mode (way of acting) and an attitude (way of perceiving).
A person’s overleaves shape how that person thinks, feels and acts in life. They are selected by the soul before birth specifically to help the human personality perform the life task to come. Overleaves are what make up a human being’s true personality.
It is certainly possible to ask a Michael channel to get your overleaves for you. I, for example, was told that I have a goal of growth, a mode of perseverance and an idealistic attitude. Having observed myself (and others) very closely over the last ten years or so, I completely agree with all of these.
See: Overleaves – the Structure of Personality
GOAL
The goal is the personality’s underlying motivation or basic desire in life. There are seven options:
- Dominance: desire for power; drawn to opportunities to take the lead.
- Growth: desire for stimulation and wisdom; drawn to novel experiences and insights.
- Acceptance: desire for communion; drawn to social interactions and loving relationships.
- Relaxation: desire for effortlessness; taking life as it comes (the “goal of no goal”).
- Submission: desire for duty; drawn to opportunities to be of service.
- Rejection: desire for independence; drawn to being ‘different’, highly selective.
- Retardation: desire for peace and solitude; drawn to simple, restricted lifestyle.
Whereas the life task is a specific objective, such as “Learning to run a business with compassion,” the goal is more of a general a direction to take. For example, if the life task involves being in a leadership role then the chosen goal is likely to be dominance.
See: Goal: the driving force of the personality
MODE
The mode is the personality’s approach to life, its way of acting on the goal. It involves the inner or outer use of energy. There are seven options:
- Aggression: acting at “full throttle” with totally externalised energy
- Passion: acting with a sense of vision and emotional charge
- Power: acting with inner confidence and certainty
- Observation: watching rather than doing (the “mode of no action”)
- Perseverance: channelling one’s energy into completion of the task despite difficulties
- Caution: focusing one’s energy on careful prior planning to eliminate problems
- Repression: holding it all in, reserving one’s energy
ATTITUDE
The attitude is the personality’s overarching perspective or way of perceiving life. There are seven options:
- Realism: focusing on facts and likely implications
- Spiritualism: focusing on higher meaning and purpose
- Idealism: focusing on inherent possibilities
- Pragmatism: taking each situation as it comes (the “attitude of no perspective”)
- Cynicism: focusing on gross contradictions
- Scepticism: focusing on subtle inconsistencies
- Stoicism: focusing on absence of meaning
Centering
The personality’s preferred way of processing its moment-by-moment experiences in life, usually set in early childhood (around age 2-3). There are seven centres in all: emotional, intellectual, moving (physical), instinctive, higher intellectual, higher emotional and higher moving (higher physical). In normal life, however, the personality tends to adopt either the emotional, intellectual or moving centre to assimilate its sensory experiences.
In addition, there is a secondary centering by which the personality processes immediate reactions to those experiences. For example, if sensory experiences are processed emotionally and then reactions are processed intellectually, one is said to be operating “in the intellectual part of the emotional centre.” This means that one experiences life, moment-to-moment, with feeling but one expresses those experiences by talking about them.
FALSE PERSONALITY
If the overleaves chosen before birth make up the true personality, the other traits and habits instilled into the person during childhood and beyond make up an artificial or false personality.
False personality consists of two main components:
- Early programming or “imprinting” from one’s family, culture and social environment.
- The false identity (ego, persona) adopted in or after adolescence as a way to break into adulthood.
Whereas the true personality reflects the wise choices and higher consciousness of the soul, the false personality reflects the ignorance and immature perspective of the young person. Whereas the true personality knows no fear, the false personality is riddled with it.
One of the key challenges in life, at the 4th monad, is to overcome your false personality and begin to manifest your true personality—your overleaves, your soul age and your role in essence.
CHIEF FEATURE
The “chief feature” is a false personality trait, an entrenched character flaw driven by fear and illusion. Its purpose is to protect the person from whatever he or she fears the most as a social being, such as a sense of personal vulnerability, inadequacy or worthlessness.
An incarnate soul can have various bad experiences in childhood and may exaggerate or misinterpret their meaning. These can crystallise into a specific lifelong fear, such as the fear of change. The growing child then adopts certain behaviour patterns to avoid or eliminate the thing feared at all costs. In late adolescence, emerging into adulthood, the fear and negativity become cloaked in a false persona.
There are seven possibilities, and we all have one of these as our chief feature:
- Impatience: rushing through life (fear of missing out)
- Arrogance: feigning perfection or superiority (fear of vulnerability)
- Greed: compulsive acquisition/consumption (fear of lack)
- Stubbornness: refusing to accept anything new (fear of change)
- Martyrdom: playing the innocent victim (fear of worthlessness)
- Self-Destruction: compulsive elimination/annihilation (fear of loss of control)
- Self-Deprecation: trying to be invisible to others (fear of inadequacy)
Actually, all adults have a primary character flaw which distorts their goal and related life decisions, plus a secondary one which distorts their attitude and hence internal perceptions of life. If like me, for example, your primary is Impatience, you will be anxious about missing out on opportunities to achieve your life’s goal. And if your secondary is, say, Self-Deprecation, you will tend to perceive your life in terms of your own inadequacies.
Chief features operate as vicious circles, unconsciously creating the very anxiety they are supposed to prevent. Throughout much of life they cause internal conflict, working behind the scenes to thwart all attempts at fulfillment. Learning to manage your chief features is one of the greatest possible achievements in personal growth.
See: Character flaws: The seven chief features of ego.
Putting it all into practice
The Michael teachings give us a coherent framework for understanding the many different ways in which human life unfolds — both on a grand scale (historical, global and spiritual) and at the most intimate level. I for one now appreciate how every aspect of humanity in all its diversity and variety is perfectly valid. Every human being on the planet, past and present, is in exactly the right place for them given their soul type, level of evolution, life task and overleaves.
The Michael teachings explain how the whole of life, in all its ups and owns, revolves around choice. From the private decision to have a baby to the collective decision to go to war, choice is woven throughout every moment of life. The choices we face, and our ability to make such choices, are our reason for being here.
The Michael teachings serve as a bridge between the deepest Truth of our being and the mundane reality we all experience in our daily lives. But given that finding and choosing our own sense of meaning and purpose is precisely how we evolve, taking any of this on faith would defeat the very purpose of the teachings.
The very core of these teachings is:
- All is chosen.
And that includes what we choose to believe.
See also –
- Soul types: the seven roles in essence
- Reincarnation – the 35 steps
- 10 things everyone should know about reincarnation
- Overleaves – the Structure of Personality
- Goal: the driving force of the personality
- Character flaws: The seven chief features of ego
Links to Michael Channels
Here are some channels I have had personal readings from:
Victoria
Marina-Tompkins
Terri Benning
Troy Tolley
There are of course many other Michael channels – I just don’t have personal experience of their readings. See for example:
Shepherd Hoodwin
José Stevens
Talyaa Liera
Stephen Cocconi
J. P. Van Hulle
Mary Jonaitis
- There is also Emily Baumbach (causalworks.com) but she is “taking a sabbatical” at the moment.
- April Crawford (aprilcrawford.com) is a deep trance channel for an entity known as Veronica and uses Michael terminology.
Links to Other Michael Teachings Websites
The Personality Game (itstime.com) – “a fun way to learn about personality types and their unique — and often quirky — traits.” – website of Barbra Taylor, a Management Consultant who works with the Michael teachings with a focus on improving team-work and increasing productivity within a company.
Flight of the Hawk – “Perspectives of the Universe through the lens of The Michael Teachings, Shamanism and Astrology” – Blogsite of Michael channel and Shamanic teacher Victoria Marina-Tompkins
JoséStevens.com – “Insights Into Life, Understanding People” – Website of really nice Michael channel and shamanism-teacher José Stevens PhD. José and Lena Stevens are authors of several excellent Michael books, including The Michael Handbook, Tao to Earth, Earth to Tao, and Transforming Your Dragons
Michael Mosaics – “Personality Profiles for Older Souls” – website of another really nice Michael channel, Terri Claire Benning, an Old Artisan.
Michael Educational Foundation – established 1983, website of Michael channel JP Van Hulle, an Old Warrior.
Summerjoy Press – “Books and Sessions that can Change your life!” – website of Michael channel Shepherd Hoodwin, a Sage-cast Sage! Shepherd has authored several book on the teachings.
TruthLoveEnergy – “Using Truth, Love and Energy to Understand, Nurture and Create Your Life”. Lively website of Michael channel and “goofy man-boy” Troy Tolley, another fun-lovin’ Sage. I have a long-standing connection with Troy; he’s given me some excellent readings, and his freely available library of channelled information is a great contribution! Membership required for some pages.
Septana – German-language website of Varda Hasselmann who, since 1986, has channelled “The Source” – an entity made up of Sages and Artisans – but the teachings are exactly the same. One of her books has been translated into English – see Archetypes of the Soul.
Seele-Verstehen.de [“Soul-Undersanding”] – German-language website on the Michael teachings by Rolf Herklotz.
Listen to Spirit – a blog of channellings from Michael by Barbara Taylor
The Michael Teachings – It’s the website for Michael-related information and resources… but I’ve just noticed they haven’t linked to this site at all. Can’t be that good then! Website run by long-time student Dave Gregg and with lots of material by Shepherd Hoodwin.
Beautiful simply beautiful! Namaskar
I’m confused: I thought there were no “accidents”? And how would dying early be the result of karma, what Karma? Explain?
Thank you
An accident in this context would be an event not planned in the soul’s life plan. The physical plane uniquely makes such things possible. I recently came across a regression case in which the person wanted to know why she had chosen blindness. She was told by her own spirit guides that in fact she hadn’t chosen it but that it had come about at her birth through brain damage caused by the negligence of medical staff. We plan our lives before birth in broad brush strokes, but as they say in the army, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. In other words, once life starts, anything can happen. It’s like a football game – the manager plans how to win, but that doesn’t mean everything will go as planned.
A death is premature from the human perspective. We may naturally expect to live a full life, say to 75, but let’s say we planned before birth to die at 30. The shock and disappointment of such an “early” demise may be an experience we specifically wish to undergo for whatever reason. One such reason could be karmic – that we took a young life in the past.
– Barry
Hi Barry, can you please go into more detail about dying young. I recently lost my 5 yr old niece due to a brain tumor, diagnosed in June & she past away 3 mths later, sept. 11th. Why would she choose to go so quickly? A medium told me she was an old soul, but then again how do I know they are right saying that, I’m skeptic on the old soul part & am having a hard time understanding why she would choose this life. I stayed by her bedside in the hospital 12 hrs straight, a day for 7 days while she was in a coma the last week of her life. For some reason I felt she was gone, her soul was gone, it was just a body laying there on life support. I’m not sure if she was being reborn again or floating above us. I have become less catholic & much more spiritual @ metaphysical since then. I also have to say when I found your site, I’m having a hard time taking a break from reading from it. It’s wonderful insight.
Hi Cristy
First of all, my sympathies for your loss of a niece so young.
To understand why “good people die young”, as occasionally happens, we have to step out of our human perception of things and try to see what goes on behind the curtain, as it were.
What happens to us in human life is like an improvised stage play. Earth is the stage, and we are all actors, more or less ad-libbing as we go along. But behind the scenes there is a rough script and a huge production team. I say “rough” script because if everything were fully scripted, line by line, word by word, there would be no room for free will, and therefore no purpose in us experiencing the “play”.
The rough script is our agreed life plan, laying out approximately what key events and circumstances will happen when (e.g., “At the age of three I shall be abandoned by my mother so that my alcoholic father will have to raise me, and by age fifteen I will want to run away from home.”). As actors on the stage we have no conscious memory of the plan. In this way, we get to experience each event in its full unexpected rawness, and we also get to choose how we react in response to it. Those raw experiences and on-the-spot choices are precisely why we are here. Through them, we find ourselves and unfold as evolving beings.
One of the key events in every life is the manner and timing of death. In some cases, we might leave it open (“I’ll just die of old age at some point”) but in other cases we plan a very specific death (“I shall die very suddenly just after I graduate. A car crash will do.”).
From our human perspective, life is everything and death is always tragic. The death of a lovely young child is particularly shocking and awful because, it seems, she is missing out on so much that the rest of us are experiencing. It seems so unfair, cruel even, that her young life has been “taken away from her”.
But from the soul’s perspective, death is just a swinging door from one place to another. It’s a transition from the physical state (where we experience being separate, broken) to the non-physical state (where we are eternally united and whole).
Death, to the soul, is no big deal. Yes, the process leading up to it can get unpleasant, and once we have passed through the door back into the light we may be disoriented for a little while. Nevertheless, the process is as familiar to the soul as is the process of waking up each morning to us.
Just as we go to sleep at night for a few hours, so the soul voluntarily goes into physical life for a few decades, or just a few years in this case, or sometimes even just a few minutes, and then returns Home again, soon fully awake, surrounded by eternal love and light once more.
So, the chances are that your niece’s early death was precisely what she had planned – not just her alone but also the other souls who would be affected, such as her parents, and probably yourself too. In this life, you knew that soul as a young niece and she knew you as an aunt. Yet between lives, you have always known each other as beautiful beings of light.
There can be all sorts of reasons why a soul would choose to live for just a few years. Perhaps she had one thing left to do with her present family before moving on to something new. She could get it done in childhood, then quickly return Home to prepare for the next life in a different body rather than hang around with this one. Or, perhaps she had no life purpose for herself in mind other than that she agreed with the parents (as souls) to give them the difficult experience of losing a child. The grief and confusion and questioning that such a death leaves in its wake are very often part of the plan, quite deliberately designed to stimulate certain experiences and choices.
It’s usually impossible to see this bigger picture – the higher purpose of such experiences – while we are in the middle of them. It’s like trying too hear a faint symphony while there are alarm bells ringing in our ears.
In your case, though, it is perfectly possible that your beloved niece’s death is part of a plan for you to question everything and become more spiritual at this point in your life – partly through reading websites like this one, asking questions…
I’m really glad you like the site by the way! But I hope this gives you a helpful perspective on what is clearly an emotionally difficult and challenging experience.
barry
Just want to say to Barry what a wonderful thoughtful answer 🙂 I do as well believe your way, is always hard to see the big picture… and I hope this can help Cristy to find some inner peace…
I just found your website and being reading a few things… gosh never met Michael (at least I don’t remember ) but he speak my language.. never thought of all those different stages but all makes so much sense. Thank you for creating this wonderful place, looking forward to read more and participate. Love and light xxx
So glad you like it, Maria.
Thanks
Barry
Hello Barry,
Your web site is very nicely done. My compliments. I just came across it and had not seen it before.
The comparison of President Obama Overleaves is a contribution in channel comparison and information similarity. You mentioned my dear friend and long time associate Holly Coleman in the article favorably. In my experience, she is one of the best, and often least acknowledged Michael channels out there. Her focus has been morphed into GlobalWisdom.com. I am glad you included her.
I wish you well and hope that our paths cross sometime. Your writing is stimulating and clear. As a Sage-Scholar, I both aspire to do it (tough too :-D) but I greatly respect it.
Keep up the good work.
All the best,
Stephen Cocconi – Citizen of Earth
Hi Stephen
Thanks for the great feedback – much appreciated.
I was once told by a Michael channel – about ten years ago – that I have an agreement with the Ms to find my own way to promulgate their teachings. I guess I’ve finally found it, and it fits my sense of purpose. Though it also a challenge, given my high level of self-dep as a secondary CF.
Yes, it was great to come across Holly’s writings, and I particularly liked the piece on Michael Jackson.
cheers,
barry
Truly enjoyed the blog thank you for sharing. Glad to meet another Michael student. I like how you have woven the information into readable clear format.
Looking forward to more
Val
Many thanks, Val!
All I can say right now is “Thank You Barry”. I need to take sometime to digest this right now. thank You
Dear Author,
Thank you.
I stumbled upon this by not chance. It is my soul calling out to be understood. My human personality could not bear life any longer.
For the past 35 years i have struggled w my ego at full play.
And the past 12 years ive dabbled in almost all religions and attracted to spiritual teachers like: Osho, Gary Zukav and Eckhart Tolle.
Now now now, after stumbling upon your blog, all the pieces have come together. That is why I am instantly hooked on all that you write here.
Now I have worked out my whole life and soul purpose.
The soul looking at itself.
Thank you so very much.
Gwen, I am delighted that you have taken something of value from here.
very interesting!
Ihave never heard of the “Michael teachings” before now-even though I’ve researched quite a bit of metaphysical subjects. I just happened accross it on the Internet. Is this subject available in libraries and bookstores as well? I find the teachings very interesting and am quite often in libraries and bookstores. Bonnie
Hi Bonnie
Check out this page:
https://personalityspirituality.net/books/
At the bottom there’s a list of some Michael teachings related books.
Bonnie this was just released earlier this month:
Barbara Taylor started the discussion “Michael Transcripts – Public Domain ~ May 5, 2012” on The Michael Teachings
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This message went out this morning. The formation of a new non-profit was announced at the annual Michael Student gathering at the Seven Oaks Retreat Center in Virginia last week.
———————-
Date/Time: May 5, 2012 5:55 AM Eastern Daylight Time
For the past few years, we have been collecting copies of transcripts from the Michael study group in the 1970s with Sarah Chambers and friends. Most of what we have collected comes from members of that original group.
After consulting with legal experts, it has been confirmed that these original transcripts are in the Public Domain and may be freely shared with Michael students.
We are making these transcripts universally available to help dispel some of the false mystique, mystery and misunderstanding that have surrounded their existence, whereabouts and use before now. It is our intent to make them readily accessible, free of charge, to Michael students and other interested persons everywhere. We encourage you to download these transcripts, in whole or in part, for your own study and sharing with others. Since they are exact copies of the original Michael study group sessions held in Oakland during the 1970s, we believe they are an invaluable resource for expansion of knowledge about the Michael group and its teachings by interested students and scholars everywhere.
The transcripts may be downloaded from https://www.box.com/s/5ce43099329013efbf1d
Included in the file directory (in PDF format) are:
– Dimensions Magazine (April and June 1975)
– A compilation called “One True Teaching” in 2 parts
– A compilation called “A Cosmic Teaching”
– Charts and Graphs that the study group used (TOMG_Misc.pdf)
– Individual transcript sessions from 1973 through 1978 (TOMG_date.pdf)
– A compilation called “The Teachings of Michael”
The link included in this message points to an online file directory where you can download scanned copies of the transcripts we have gathered in PDF format. The files in this directory do contain real names, so we ask students to respect the privacy of the individuals.
At some later time, we intend to release an easier-to-read version (with aliases for names), which will include an updated history of the Michael Teachings that includes interviews with members of the original study group.
Please share this message with other Michael students that you know.
Donations to support our work may be sent via PayPal – using this link
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=T9Y52EFKTG8Q6
Board of Directors,
Center for Michael Teachings Inc.
– a non-profit organization created to support the expansion of the Michael Teachings
5206 Markel Road, Suite 200
Richmond, VA 23230
Michael: “Love is the highest truth. Truth is the highest good.”
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Thanks valorie, you’ve reminded me that I should do a proper post about all this.
Your so welcome Barry, love and present energy with lots of inspiration mixed in for your day.
Val
Don’t give me all this bull shit about spirituality and false ego, i have heard all this from the Hare Krishna’s and they let me down like the Christians. So give me a brake and stop deceiving people i hate you!!!!
Hello to you too.
If you moderate my comment you prove my point ha ha
What was your experience with the HK’s? Personally, I’m allergic to organised religion (not against it per se, but it just don’t suit me at all), so I’m curious.
So what point was proven when he allowed your comment to post?
I always find it interesting when someone finds a site and posts a negative comment or incredibly aggressive comment, “I hate you!!” etc to a complete stranger.
Somehow you found the site and stayed long enough to read it and post on it. But yet you despise it. I know when I really find something that I’m not looking for, I head back to google or close my browser. “Bounce” in analytics. Only when I’m truly curious do I hang out and poke around per se. Playing armchair analyst, I think it says something either about a previous HK experience and bitterness/angst that needs to be worked through to put that anger out on a stranger or it says something about inner turmoil, unwillingness to accept your own spiritual curiosity out of fear. Whatever it may be, it is. … A dear friend said this to me today, “Accept what is and chose again.” Perhaps that’s helpful.
Hi there, the link to the transcripts takes you to a shared file that has since been removed 🙁 Is there a new link by any chance?
Ok I might sound like a blubbering idiot here but I have a question so bare with me 😉
I read quite a bit of this website last night, for like 5 hours I couldn’t put my iPad down. I don’t believe there is a god and the Michael teachings is the only thing that has ever made any kind of sense to me spiritually. Do you think when Jesus said he would come back he meant he would be back in another life and is a lower level old soul so he’ll be back to finish up the levels? Do you get where I’m coming from here?? I’m trying to make sense of how Jesus plays into all this. I guess I believe he was actually alive but don’t believe in him as some kind of god. For ten years I’ve considered myself an atheist but I can’t figure out how I fit into this newfound belief.
My understanding, consistent with these teachings, is that Jesus was a King soul who had long since completed the reincarnational cycle as a human being (i.e., completed 7th level Old), and evolved to a great degree, and then agreed to return to Earth one more time to be born in Palestine as a spiritual channel for the Truth of our ultimate essence – the creative energy of Love (which younger souls personify as God). The channelling did not begin until later in his life. Up to the age of 30 or whatever, he was a regular 7th level Old King. After the baptism with John he “got” who he is and his mission. Towards the end of his life he was a direct channel for God, the Tao, Essence, whatever you like to call our absolute nature. The same story applies to Buddha, Lao-Tzu and Krishna. Our history is punctuated with these rare channels who come specifically to kick-start our evolution every now and then.
PS – I believe the idea of Jesus coming back is just a baby/young soul myth. Not that it is a bad myth – it communicates a sense that Jesus hasn’t gone away for good, which is correct but not in a physical sense.
People imagine the “second coming” as Jesus suddenly appearing from nowhere in the same physical form, a fully grown man, just as he was 2,000 years ago. But the only way that soul (any soul) could return to actual human form (rather than being, say, channelled) would be to be born into a whole new body – and that would not necessarily have to be as a male Jewish baby in Israel/Palestine. The same soul could incarnate as, say, a baby girl in a Japanese Buddhist family, for example. So if “Jesus” were to literally reincarnate again, the field is wide open as to the race, gender and location. The only alternative to full reincarnation or being channelled would be that the soul could arrange a “walk-in”, taking over a vacated adult body. But again, we would not necessarily recognise that individual as Jesus.
More fundamentally, I would imagine that the individuality of Jesus the soul is now integrated into a much greater level of consciousness. The same vast loving presence is there, I believe, more so in fact, and always available/accessible through prayer/meditation, but the persistent image of that beautiful and powerful consciousness as a bearded man in robes and sandals is just a convenience for the human mind/culture.
Thank you so much for answering my questions. Every bit you said helped me understand. I feel like suddenly I see the world in a whole new light, like I’ve never seen it before. Everything seems to make sense now. My husband keeps asking me what I’m so interested in because every night I can hardly pull myself away from your blog. I’ve kind of told him a bit but it’s all so new to me I find myself stumbling over my words. I want to share with the world what I’ve learned but I feel like if I say I’ve got the meaning of life because of this soul through the ouija board named Michael, my family is going to think I went bat shit crazy. How do you explain your belief to others?
Haha! 🙂
Well, that’s still a conundrum for me.
About half the people who know me have no idea what I believe or even that I run this blog. At first I told no-one except my wife. All I knew was, after studying these teachings for ten years and combining them with my own spiritual experiences, it all made sense… this is what I have come to understand and it is completely liberating – and it deserves someone with my writing abilities (setting modesty aside) to do it justice. I also got from a Michael channel that I had made a pre-life agreement to promulgate the teachings in my own style. I have no doubt about that (I am actually weeping as I write this.)
So I started this website as a labour of love and service. At the moment it gets over a thousand hits a day, so it must be right! Anyway, as I say, I kept it very quiet at first – a sort of secret hobby. Gradually, as I have seen people getting benefit from it, I have been more open about it with some of my friends. But there are still some who I will probably never mention this (or my beliefs) to. They just won’t get it and it will muddy the relationship. So … It’s a matter of sussing out who will be receptive to it and who won’t. I don’t waste my time arguing with people, I just offer information to those who want it. (Scholar!)
As usual that makes total sense. I know there are ones who would get it and the ones who would think I lost my mind. What I believe really is only a lesson in this lifetime and what others believe is a lesson in their lifetime and if we all believed this none of us would learn lessons from each other. Keeping this to myself for quite a while sounds like a good plan. I believe you mentioned having a son, have you or do you plan on guiding him in this direction? This is mind boggling to me, everything that has happened to me in the last two days I can relate it back to this. Randomly I have laughed outloud because it’s like wow this is really it, this is why we’re here. I feel like I’m watching a play at times and know its only going to get better. I wish I could bottle this up and sent it to myself in my next lifetime! Do you think since we’ve figured this part out that it will follow us into our next life because we’ve learned it already? Thank you for sharing this, from the bottom of my heart. I’m sure I’ll have many more questions.
We haven’t explicitly taught our son (aged 11) anything spiritual, but presumably it must “rub off”. Our house is filled with spiritual books, he knows about my website and my wife and I run Enlightenment Intensive retreats at least once a year (which means he has to be super-quiet for 3 days while a group of people come and meditate!). Hopefully he also learns from our example – our general pursuit of higher love, joy and truth. When he is ready to start asking questions, of course, we will answer them. But we are just taking it as it comes.
Next life – sheesh, I hope all this stays with me at some level! The thought of having to start from scratch again is scary! But I’m sure it all sinks in at an intuitive level – it becomes part of our wiring, even if we can’t explicitly remember where it comes from. And just as we carry over interests and talents from one life to the next (piano playing, physics, nursing, etc.), I will hopefully carry over my psychological & spiritual interests.
I’m going through the same kind of situation but with many different websites and youtube videos. I was an athiest up until 41 years of age. Now I believe in reincarnation, Ancient aliens, atlantis, lemuria etc. I even became a reiki practitioner and feel the energy of the source. There are not many who I can talk to about these matters. Most of my friends will think I’ve lost the plot if I tell them what I believe now.
Thanks for answering all my questions. I’ve got a few more if you don’t mind. They keep popping in my head. If I’m bugging you let me know.
What’s the difference between a spirit and a soul? Are spirits just souls who want to stick around in their old lifetime for awhile longer even though they’ve died?
I saw you mentioned a certain soul had a male presence, does that mean that all of us have a particular gender soul no matter if we’re male or female in a lifetime? Is that what leads people to have gender confusion here on earth? Or perhaps they are feeling things from a previous lifetime?
A soul is a spark of eternal essence, evolving in self-consciousness. Another word for essence is spirit, and sometimes soul and spirit are used interchangeably, but I see that what you mean here is a ghostly presence.
There are two things that can happen:
1. When a human body dies, there is a sequence of events that follows. The first is the soul (consciousness) exiting the body. The second is the soul moving on into the higher Light (sometimes via a “tunnel”). Sometimes a soul will do the first but not the second, for whatever reason – either not understanding that they have died, or just not being willing to move on – perhaps being attached to a specific place, or concerned about a loved one still alive, or perhaps fearing going to “Hell”. So yes, a “spirit” can be a soul lingering about after death. Friendly souls from the light will try to intervene and encourage it to come along, but if it is consumed with fear or hatred or whatever, it might not listen for a long time.
2. It is said that people’s intense emotions or traumatic experiences can leave behind an energy trace in the physical environment, like an after-image that gradually fades away. Some people can tune in and see, hear or feel these (example – a faint scream is heard in a ruined castle). Although they might appear to be lingering souls, they are not conscious at all – they are little more than “spillages” of emotional energy, just shadows let behind by a former consciousness that has long since moved on.
I can’t remember where I referred to a soul with a male presence… I’m intrigued now! No, souls have no actual gender. There are no male souls or female souls. We all swap genders every now and then. I have recalled being an Irish woman a couple of centuries ago, and also a saucy Chinese concubine.
There are certain energetic qualities that different souls can have which some of us on Earth would perceive as either “masculine” or “feminine”. A King soul has what we would tend to see as a very “masculine” presence (in the sense of being commanding, powerful, masterful). Likewise a Server soul can come across as a “feminine” presence (in the sense of being gentle, caring, nurturing). But these are simply reflections of our human conceptions of gender stereotypes. Male and female female genders do not apply to souls, just differing amounts of yin and yang energy, if you like.
That said, some souls do prefer incarnating into one gender over another, so for example a Warrior who enjoys being in the military might be born male 90% of the time. Other souls are very at ease in either gender. But swapping gender at least now and then is necessary for the sake of getting multiple contrasting experiences. That Warrior still needs to know wheat it means to be sensitive or exploited or whatever.
Interestingly, the development of sex change operations and treatments now allows souls to compare-and-contrast within a single lifetime. I don’t know what is in these souls’ specific Life Plans, but perhaps it might be that one who is very used to being (say) male might reluctantly incarnate as a female but with the option to change if “he” doesn’t like it! Presumably a soul like that has an ongoing “issue” with gender – or on a more positive note, perhaps it is voluntarily helping to change social attitudes about gender.
Most of the things you said were how I saw it my head too especially about the spirits, like they were just imprints left behind.
Here is where I got the whole male presence question –
“At first I could not see them well — I was just aware of their mass of light and presence. They gave off quite a masculine energy, especially the one in the middle who did all the ‘talking’. Later, I came to see that the one in the middle bore some resemblance to the self-portraits of Leonardo da Vinci in his old age with his long white hair and beard.”
You actually said “masculine energy”
So as a soul you maybe give off the vibe of a gender that you prefer?
Insanely interesting about the meaning of gender changes and why people get them. I can’t believe how much more sense the world makes with all this knowledge. I love it.
Again, thank you so much for answering my questIons.
Ah yes, thank you.
Well, there is an added factor here, which is that in the spirit world between lives (otherwise known as “Home”), any soul can project itself to others in any visual form it chooses. Souls don’t have actual form, they are just light-energy and consciousness, but form is a great convenience.
I remember reading in one regression book, possibly one of Newton’s, about a young soul who was very fond of its previous life as a Western cowboy type with a big moustache, and in the spirit world that’s the appearance it presented to others.
A visual form is also useful for projecting a role. My personal guide came across as a regal female that evoked my awe, love and respect. My elders, or at least the one in the middle, came across as what I would intuitively recognise as a wise “authority figure” – a bit like Dumbledore to Harry Potter!
Hey Barry!
I’m back for more! 🙂
What’s your take on people who are mediums or are sensitive to spirits or people who seem to become “possessed” by some evil force? Are they older souls and more connected to the spiritual word? Or is it just another lesson for any soul and chosen when picking a new life?
Hmm… That’s a big topic with no simple answer. There are sensitive/psychic/medium types at all soul ages. I think it’s a talent that can be developed if one so chooses, over several lifetimes, just like music or sport. Generally I would suspect that they are Priest souls, probably with spiritualistic attitude.
Being “possessed by evil spirits” could simply be a matter of culture and perception. An Infant soul in a tribal context, for example, could be the village shaman talking to “the ancestors” or “the trees”. A Young soul with psychic talents would more likely seek personal fame and fortune – those who want to be “TV’s top psychic detective” and so on. Uri Gellar is a possible example. An Old soul could be a direct channel of higher wisdom and healing energy from Source. But in a social context dominated by Baby souls with strict religious beliefs, hierarchies and so on, any one of these might be deemed to be possessed by evil spirits, or satan.
I don’t know if there really are “evil” spirits as such. More likely, there are infant, baby and young souls existing on other dimensions, who might react with great fear-based malevolence if we were to cross their paths in some way.
Thanks for answering my questions. Ever since the first day I read your blog I look at life and death, the way people act good or bad in a whole new light and I love everything about it. I feel like I see everything clearly now.
🙂
I stumbled on this site recently and have been browsing it over the last couple of days. I’m quite intrigued. I’d like to know whether you believe in “God” or a creator. You mention Jesus earlier and so I’m curious about the god connection.
I’m now in my late 50’s and during the last year I’ve become drawn to find out more about mediumship and spirituality. I’ve always considered myself a bit spirit sensitive and now I am full of questions.
At this time, I do believe in a creator (God for lack of a better word). I believe in Jesus, but I don’t believe in the bible. I just think there’s too much room for error being that it was written by man and translated several times (again by man).
Anyway, I’m enjoying your blog and hope to continue to grow and learn.
Thanks for your time.
Hi Simone
My understanding is informed partly by a number of spiritual experiences I have been fortunate to have, and partly by reading absolutely everything I could get my hands on.
I accept the existence of a creative impulse that is not only conscious and intelligent but also omnipresent. Some call it Source, or the Tao. To call it “God” would be to personify it in human terms, perhaps to make it seem more familiar and easy for young children to grasp. But I do not believe in a Creator who is a separate individual being, who makes judgements and demands praise and decides the fate of lesser beings.
My understanding is that we are all extensions of the one creative impulse, consciously experiencing and creating existence in myriad different ways. As such, we are, in a sense, continually creating ourselves. There is nothing that is not a part or extension of this Source. We do not owe anything to our “Creator” because we are, in essence, that same Creator. We are the One undergoing evolution in the form of many. And the underlying relationship between us all is absolute, unconditional love.
I understand Jesus to be a highly evolved soul whose purpose in that life was to dramatically present the truth of unconditional love in a way that would impact human society. I see other figures as having had a similar mission (e.g., Buddha), so Jesus is not unique in that regard – certainly not THE “son of God”.
I believe it is possible to commune with and talk to an intelligence or consciousness that is higher than our own. I also believe it is possible that the presence that was once embodied as Jesus is among such higher consciousness, and is readily available.
There is a stage in our evolution as incarnating souls when belief in a supreme being in command of the Universe makes sense. The Bible, Koran and other scriptures are important tools for (in particular) Baby souls who need fixed absolutes to frame their newly evolving concept of life. Later in our evolution (particularly as Mature souls) we come to question everything and seek our own answers. Then, if we look deep enough within ourselves, or into another being, ultimately we find the Source in all its glory.
When some people have that experience, they conceptualise it as an encounter with a separate almighty being and call it God. I don’t have a problem with that. I just see it differently.
Thank you Barry for your reply.
When I said I believe in a creator, I should have clarified that I also feel we are all part of that creator. After being raised a Catholic and moving away from that as the years past, I came to feel that “God” as a totally separate entity wasn’t right, and the way you describe it seems to make sense. I was also at an impasse on how to figure Jesus into it all, and once again your take on him makes sense.
Thank you again, and I hope you don’t mind if I have more questions as I continue to read along.
Answering questions appears to be part of my present life task, so no problem!
Awesome question Simone! I’ve been wondering how Barry would answer that same question for a few weeks and I was stoked when I read it. I think I read it 5 times this afternoon and it made my day. I attended a baptism last Sunday and was having such a hard time understanding why people think life’s purpose is to serve god and get to a place called heaven. It was neat to watch…over 200 people in a lake getting baptized with smiles on their faces…it gave me a warm fuzzy feeling (I think because I genuinely enjoy seeing people happy) I can’t even imagine how good they felt.
Thanks Imsewhappy. I too have had a couple of questions already answered by reading others questions and Barry’s answers. I’m finding this site to helpful. 🙂
Hi imsewhappy, I am reading all the comments with great interest. I have been researching the Sumerian clay tablets that talk of the “Annunaki” as being our “creator” gods. Meaning other beings not of this world but perhaps of Pliaedian origin mixing the DNA of early hominids with their own DNA to create modern man. The tablets talk about Enki and Enlil as brothers and many others. Enlil is also Yahweh in the hebrew religion and these stories talk about the flood (Noahs ark) and about humans serving them. The bible gets its stories from here as does the Greek, Roman and Nordic mythology. The Hindu vedas also share many similarities as well as “dreamtime” from the Australian aborigines. Plus many more. Anyway, I believe (after much research) that this is where people have come to believe in serving “god” and going to heaven. Our early ancestors were serving these beings here on earth. There is still evidence of ancient superior technology – check out Zacharia Sitchens work… having said that we as souls agree to reincarnate on earth and the above story is a possible story of our human bodies on earth (if that makes sense??)
Thank you so much for this wonderful website! It shows up for me right on time.
Blessings,
-H
Great. Every time I hear this it makes me so happy to know I’m doing the right thing.
B
This is awesome
Hi Barry. I happened upon your site yesterday when searching for Michael’s Teachings. I had never heard about it but found it mentioned on a person’s profile who seemed to have very similar thoughts and perspectives as mine. I was interested in finding out what she’d meant by MT.
I am a spiritual person and have had several spiritual experiences right from my childhood. I am 30 now. Over these years, I have been forming my own theories, reading stuff here and there and very recently came upon Ra’s material and was astounded by what it had to say. Some of it was just as I was guessing things to be and some of it filled the gaps I hadn’t been able to earlier. Some was also new and very little opposed to what I had thought earlier. And now this. A lot of it is similar though I guess I have to read more from both Ra and Michael to see if they are saying the same thing. Either way, it confirms/clears a lot of stuff and makes the world more meaningful and beautiful.
I just wanted to thank you for the wonderful site you’ve got here, for all the effort you put into it and for spreading love. Love and blessings!
Many many thanks, Sai. Glad you like it.
Thank you, I’ve always had a gut feeling that certain cicumstances occur in my life for a reason. i HAVE NOT HAD AN EASY JOURNEY..however, watching and trying to help others has been the only comfort in this lifetime.It does not matter what I SEEM to get involved in / Business,Relationships,or Friendships, …the people i’m involved with have a jealousy towards me, then they use my kindess to thier advantage. I have no money, no assets, yet I sense this JEALOUSY. The comment, ” I wish I had what you have Mike ” has been said to me at least a 100 times. I’m 68 yr.s young and now I find all my purposes so far are been verified. Thank You So Much, Michael [actually my name]
Right back at you – thanks Michael.
Interesting psychologically. Helpful model to assess inner struggles. Seems to be some Aristotle and Plato presuppositions philosophically. Appreciate spiritual emphasis! As far as spiritual models go though can’t reconcile with descriptions of Jesus Christ presented in the the gospels. He’s described as a self-aware adolescent with no masks and as an adult full of grace and truth. As a teacher he reportedly said, “I am the way, the truth, the light.” Expositors note this light references identity as God–hence THE self-aware soul incarnate. Traits of human personality reflect some measure of the character of God, “image of God” is the concept. Restoration to the ideal image requires relationship via His teachings (ie covenant) which he confirmed via death, burial, ressurection. Most significant it appears is the distinction or separation between divinity and humanity. The ultimate goal or joy / blessedness is being brought into His presence rather than cycling through stages of soul growth to somehow become absorbed into it. I probably did not do justice to the soul growth concept but felt inclined to engage. Thanks.
Wow amazing Im 28 and my first born will be 6, I went through foster care, abuse, miscarriages, divorce and now my understanding on life is unfolding to find my purpose who am i really, and also my daughter. Stinks being on the poverty stucken side of economy though im sure with enough reading enough praying and studying I will accomplish the path successfully. Any other helpful links would be amazing help and very much appreciated…my current relationship with boyfriend and my daughter are my purpose my relationship with boyfriend is him virgo and me sagitarrius and my daughter is aries whom is either just strong astrology or maybe a aspergers child still havent been diagnosised never the less succeeding in parenting and my relationship both strong to succeed not enough to make me blind to know what i want and what im seaching for within my own marks to lead me to the Heavens
Hi Barry, thank you, thank you, thank you. I have really been struggling with relationships of all kinds in this lifetime. Family, friends and in particular, the opposite sex. I often say to my friends, I’m here to learn a lesson but I obviously haven’t learnt it yet. This week I met a spiritual counsellor who talked about my “ego” and how I have let it control my life, etc, etc. so, I did what a lot of us do, I put spiritual ego into google and the first link was Wikipedia, the 2nd link was yours. I can’t stop reading. There is so much information I can’t take it all in. I love the questions and answers at the bottom of each page and in particular the lady who nursed her 5 year old niece at the end of her life. We all think God is responsible for very bad thing that happens in life but your readings have a completely different take on things and, to m, make total sense. Like you, I don’t believe in organised religions, most of them are a cover for greed. I have been quite spiritual since my mum loaned me her Doris Stokes books at the age of 13.
I can’t wait to read more. I’d also like to thank Isewhappy for her interesting questions and your replies are so detailed, it’s nice to see someone investing their time into the replies.
Fantastic website. I’ve forwarded it on to some of my spiritual friends and hey are like me, in awe of everything we read
Thank you Ravangel, I really appreciate it. All this information has made a huge difference to me and it’s a pleasure to pass it on.
Barry
Hi Bary,
Thanks for your insight, I’m finding this very calming. I would like to ask a question that has been bothering me. I used to practice lucid dreaming and, at one point, I was flying and I knew I was dreaming. In the dream, I decided to fly to China. Well, I was heading east over the appalachian mountains just about getting to the ocean when another soul/person? starting following me. It was a women telling me to stop. I ignored her first warning but her second warning was very unmistakable, I was not supposed to go so far so, I stopped and woke myself up. Very soon after, I had another lucid dream where my daughter’s sould was hiding in my room but, my daughter is still alive but, my daughter in this dream was much older. She was not supposed to be there but I grabed her and asked her to tell me something I didn’t know. She said “you never saw it coming”. I then woke up and have never had the desire to purposely lucod dream again.
Any insite into the meaning here?
Hi James,
Sorry for taking a while to get back – I have a huge backlog at the moment.
You’ve remind me of a lucid dreaming experience I had once. I was meditating, almost asleep, and went into a spontaneous lucid dreaming state in which I was on a massive plateau overlooking a huge city. I decided to jump over the cliff and enjoyed flying towards the city, like I was hang-gliding. Later I recognised the actual place on TV – it was the Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa. (I’ve never been there.)
Anyway, it sounds like in the first case you mention someone was just being concerned for you – perhaps she was another lucid dreamer, or perhaps a soul mate of yours, or perhaps just some random soul bumping into you. It’s also possible that her concern was unnecessary and you knew what you were doing. I would say if the same sort of thing happens again, try to engage with the other person/soul – find out their concerns and intentions – and make sure they’re not just fooling around.
As for the encounter with your daughter, that is really fascinating and mysterious. Souls can take on any form/appearance they like, and usually will appear to a human being as someone the human will recognise. What often happens is that when an old person (say, a grandmother) dies and then appears to her relatives, she looks like a young adult rather than elderly – souls tend to look the best they ever did on Earth rather than aged and infirm. In the case of your daughter, I am not at all sure why she was coming to you in your room. Was she (in her physical form) asleep at the time? I have heard that many souls do astral travel at night, happily carrying out various little assignments, such as helping those who have just died cross over into the light. Her answer to your question is spooky and I’d rather not speculate on its meaning. But I’m curious as to the quality of her presence, as you perceived it – was she happy or anxious, for instance?
Barry
Most of the information of MT is available in Hinduism’s tenets for a few centuries though Hinduism does not have a central literature like Bible so it has not been in the forefront. You may refer to some of it in’ The autobiography of a Yogi’, The Gita, Yoga Vashishtha.
So, if I’m correct, my goal is Growth, my mode is Repression, my attitude is Spiritualism, and my chief feature is self-deprecation.
As an Artisan, likely cast in the role of either Sage or Warrior, my mode of repression is confusing me. I do reserve my energy a lot, and hold things in (which I don’t believe is altogether healthy), but as a Warrior I can see why that is useful. A Warrior whose purpose in this life is to learn to put down the hatchet and figure out a peaceful resolution to the war would likely do a lot of repressing of those forceful inclinations to throw down in the name of peace.
I think I’m leaning towards Warrior cast. My cause is awakening human beings.
Thanks, barry, once again for the wonderfully helpful information!
Well done for figuring it all out!
Cheers Lola.
B
Hello Barry, I’m 18 years old from the UK. Over the last year I’ve had some fairly big changes happen in my life. There are a few questions I would like to ask as I have read through the micheal teachings and I think they seem to make a lot more sense than any other teachings (I don’t know whether to call it a religion). I have schizophrenia, I think I should say that before asking the questions incase anything seems a little too ridiculous. I have heard various things in my head, whether they’re to do with drugs, schizophrenia or an actual person. Whilst not really linked, the first voice I heard said that they were a vampire (a real vampire not a blood sucking monster) and that I was awakening although I have never met the original source of the voice and so cannot say whether they’re real or not. Do you believe in the existence of the Bigfoot and whether they could be spirit Guides? Do you believe that drugs can cause people to have real spiritual experiences or would you say that it’s more likely for me just to be tripping/ going mad? also do you believe that astrology can tell us anything about our lives and do you know anyone that could help determine my soul type, age, life plan etc. and do you think there is any chance a spirit guide could tell you to prepare for specific tasks? I would like to say I’m being entirely serious and I would greatly appreciate a response.
Hi Ben,
Glad to hear that you are finding a useful perspective in the Michael teachings. (Certainly not a religion, by the way – no commitment is ever required of anyone. The teachings are a framework for understanding human life from a spiritual perspective, to be used or not used in whatever way makes sense.)
Thanks for your patience by the way – as I’ve said, I’ve been having a bit of stress myself. I have a pinched nerve in my neck that is causing agony.
I am really sorry to hear that you are afflicted with schizophrenia – that’s quite a load to cope with, I imagine – but thank you for being honest about it. I know that a lot of sceptics out there actually believe that spiritual/supernatural/mystic experiences are really nothing but psychotic episodes. There are also some people who believe just the opposite. But as far as I can tell it isn’t either/or. There’s a huge grey area between pure psychosis on the one hand and pure self-transcendence on the other. There’s also a growing field of research exploring this grey area.
You might find this person’s blog particularly interesting:
http://spiritualemergency.blogspot.co.uk/2006/01/shamanism-schizophrenia.html
By the way, there’s a huge collection of spiritual experiences at this website which might interest you: http://www.spiritual-experiences.com/
Ok, to your questions.
“Do you believe in the existence of the Bigfoot and whether they could be spirit Guides?”
I have no idea about Bigfoot but I do believe in spirit guides, having met one or two myself! We all have guides, coaches or mentors who are simply souls more evolved than ourselves who take us on as “students”. We meet up with them after every life and we also plan our next life with their guidance. They will have been alive in human form, as we currently are.
I would also add that a spirit guide would NEVER tell you to do something bad or harmful or karmic. Guides care only for our well-being and growth; they are never coercive. If there is a voice telling you to do something you don’t want to do, or that sounds wrong, then I guarantee it isn’t the voice of a spirit guide.
“Do you believe that drugs can cause people to have real spiritual experiences or would you say that it’s more likely for me just to be tripping/ going mad?”
I’m not sure if you are referring to recreational drugs like LSD or medicinal drugs such as anti-psychotics. Either way, I certainly do believe that drugs can cause, or facilitate, genuine spiritual experiences. Of course they can also cause/facilitate psychotic breakdowns. Mostly they open up the mind to different sources of input. And with schizophrenia, it’s more difficult to tell the two apart.
With drug experiences, a lot depends upon SET and SETTING – your mindset as you take a drug and the environment in which you’re doing it. If you don’t feel safe and comfortable to begin with, drugs have a tendency to magnify the discomfort and bring up anything remotely associated with it – memories, stories, random images, etc.
“Do you believe that astrology can tell us anything about our lives?”
I don’t know the first thing about astrology – it’s a whole body of knowledge I’ve decided not to get into. But a lot of people I respect are deeply into astrology and use it to find insights into their lives. There are many different types of astrology/astrologer, however – some more insightful than others.
“Do you know anyone that could help determine my soul type, age, life plan etc.”
If you want to know your soul type etc, there are various methods. The most reliable is to pay a Michael channel to give you a profile reading, either by email or phone/Skype. There is a list of people I recommend at the bottom of my page on the Michael Teachings: https://personalityspirituality.net/articles/the-michael-teachings/
Alternatively, you can just read through all the descriptions on my website (and other websites) and see what resonates for you the most.
I also have a quick quiz here to help people get at their soul type: http://www.quibblo.com/quiz/atufj3C/Discover-Your-Soul-Type
If you go to a Michael channel, you can also ask for your Life Task along with your overleaves. The Life Task is usually summarised in a simple phrase or sentence. I would always recommend reflecting on your innermost sense of purpose, which is how I intuited mine, although I get that with schizophrenia it may be difficult to focus on one thing and there is a risk that it could lead to as much confusion as clarity.
“Do you think there is any chance a spirit guide could tell you to prepare for specific tasks?”
I have heard of such things occurring. Usually it happens as we dream, so we don’t remember it consciously. I guess with schizophrenia the conscious mind is more open to such kinds of input, but at the same time it’s also open to random dream-like connections as well, so it is probably difficult to differentiate the “signal” from the “noise”, or truth from delusion.
One way of interpreting schizophrenia and similar disturbances would be that the mind is unusually (perhaps excessively) open to random input. Most people close and control their minds early in life so that they only ever hear one inner voice, their own. In order to allow in a spiritual insight or mystical experience, they have to learn to quiet their own inner voice and open up to new input, usually through meditation. With schizophrenia, I imagine, there is a constant sensitivity to new input – whether from unconscious parts of one’s own psyche, or from non-physical dimensions of reality.
I hope this helps give you some answers Ben, but feel free to get back.
Barry
It makes my day when I get an email notifying me someone left a comment here. Always awesome to hear what others are thinking about and so interesting to read Barry’s answer. Hope everyone is having a wonderful week!
Hiya! Do you get notified about all new comments on the site or just the ones on this page?
B
Hey hey! I get a notification on any blog post I’ve commented to on this blog, maybe I should comment on them all haha! I just love it, and I usually get sucked in to it for a couple hours re reading things I’ve read or finding new stuff. I was watching some videos on youtube a couple weeks ago and it was talking about the blue star prophesy. Do you believe that stuff? I found myself questioning it and wondering what you thought. Here’s the link to the video if you’re interested in watching it. I thought it was pretty interesting – http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju_eUOe2AXU
Oh my goodness!! I just came across the actual transcripts from the sessions with Michael and the group, holy cow this is so awesome….I’m just getting started and I LOVE this…
” R_____: That still doesn’t answer my question. Simply in the past, love always was directed toward someone; now what do we do, direct it towards God or Jesus?
A_____: [Michael] said direct it to yourself.
R_____: You can’t do that — not a burning love inside yourself.
A deep sense of spiritual satisfaction is the only reward that we know of. You may call it ecstasy or whatever you wish. Stop a moment and ask yourself why it is that you search and for what. [10/06/1973]”
WOW, just, WOW….I think this was the biggest thing I was most confused about since the universe lead me to your blog….I came here (ahhhhhhhhhhhh are you kidding me, I just scrolled up to check and it’s been a year!!) a YEAR ago as an atheist, and the past year considered myself “spiritual” just for a lack of a better word, and all along I had a deep sense of spiritual satisfaction I just had no idea what the heck to call it…turns out it doesn’t matter! I’ll call it whatever I’d like 🙂 woo, sorry for the rambling, I feel like jumping on Oprah’s couch like Tom Cruise right now! 😀
{{{{{ 🙂 }}}}}
Hello Barry,
I’ve just found this website and it is really helping me make sense of “my life so far” — thank you so much! Amongst other things I’ve discovered my life goal is “growth”, which explains so much that has always baffled me about my life. (I have had a button for the last 30 years that reads “This may sound strange, but all I want is a normal life”)
Question: you say about life task: “For example, mine is “To acquire and share knowledge in a spirit of joy”.”
Can you tell us more about how to discover our life task, and how you discovered yours? (other than paying a channel to tell us?) How do we know when we’ve correctly established it?
Hi Roni,
You can find your life task either by asking a channel or simply through meditation/introspection. I did both.
It was in 1998 that I asked a channel and was told “To gather knowledge and then share it in a spirit of joy.” This fits my role and casting very well, as I’m a Sage-cast Scholar, though at the time I was completely out of touch with my Sage-y side so I couldn’t really relate to the task. I understood the words, but they didn’t resonate much.
At that time I was also going through what is known in the Michael teachings as the 4th internal monad. This is the transition period, usually around age 35, where we reach the fullness of our soul consciousness level, drop any false personality and false concepts about life, and begin to look for our true purpose in life. There is an urge to do what we came here to do, manifest our true role, do something that is both truly meaningful to ourselves and truly of value to others. It is often murky and stressful, especially for Mature souls (who tend to live particularly complicated lives), as it challenges your assumptions and achievements so far.
Before that point, my life had been a steady flow of deep insights and learning. Now I just seemed to be treading water, and my goal of Growth hated it. It was as if everything was on ‘hold’ while I looked for my true purpose.
After struggling along for a few years, I then had a bout of serious illness — potentially fatal. This was probably not a coincidence as it prompted me to get to the bottom of my life task once and for all. I thought to myself, “If I only have a year to live, what would I really want to have done in that year?” Not in the sense of being with my family etc, but in the sense of producing something of value.
So I started contemplating these questions — “What do I really want to DO with my life? What am I here FOR?” And one day I sensed that I could get to the bottom of it if I just focused on it intensively for a while, with no distractions. So I found a quiet afternoon at home and sat down and contemplated the questions with total focus, with a determination to get to the truth, and with an open-minded approach (setting aside assumptions and judgements). It took about 45 minutes of gradually zooming in on what felt like the purest and most meaningful truth of the matter. The key is an inner sense of resonance. For me, it’s like a tuning fork. If I’m closer to the truth, I feel this inner harmonic resonance, a sort of comfortable “ah, yes” feeling. If i move away from truth, towards some false concept, I feel a sense of friction or disharmony. So I just use that inner sense as my compass.
And I just kept going until it couldn’t go any further. For example, I might find myself coming up with something like, “I am here to… Inform people… In a way that helps them…”, but then I’d question “inform who? Inform them what? And what sort of help?” I just kept going on like this until I felt I had reached the end, the phrase that absolutely chimed the most in my heart. And it was:
“To find something that I feel is truly worth saying, because it is uplifting and liberating, and then say it to those who are ready for it, and say it with exquisite clarity.”
This was a bit of a challenge as I’m generally quite an introvert and very reticent to express myself. But there wasn’t a single word I could throw out without losing a sense of being true to myself.
And that’s how I started this website.
So while my transition period was grim and stressful and utterly confusing at times, I do feel now that I am bang on track – I can actually feel my true purpose being fulfilled, and that’s extremely satisfying. So all that doubt and introspection did pay off in the end!
Hope this helps,
Barry
Barry’s advice is excellent and I plan on using it myself.
I do want to share with you a book that has really helped me with figuring out my life task/karmic path/destiny. It’s called The Secret Language of Destiny written by Gary Goldschneider and Joost Elffers.
I’d take a look at it if I were you, as it would likely help. I recently lent it to a friend of mine who was lost on her path and confused about which direction to pursue. It blew her mind- she found it so meaningful and applicable to her life situations. Even though it said some things about her personality she didn’t like to admit, she knew it was for her own good and has set to working on them.
I personally like how it validated for me many things I’d always suspected but had doubts about.
I hope you enjoy it if you do decide to look into it.
Thanks Lola
you’re welcome.
Thank you so much for all this wonderful information, you are doing an amazing job! Took a lot of notes while reading! 🙂
Namaskar!
It’s a good thing that the last name of one of the fragments of the 1050 united souls was not named Bozo. Get it? The Bozo teachings. No, that wouldn’t work. Seriously though, my life has been difficult enough without my having to pick apart and codify every little fucking aspect of my persona. Plus, how come none of these followers of the Michael teachings are never infant souls, they are always old or mature souls?
It is simply in the nature of the different stages. Infant souls are fixated on their immediate surroundings, baby souls on social stability, and young souls on being ahead of the game. Only mature and old souls trouble themselves with issues like self-understanding, self-actualisation and self-transcendence.
Isn’t it all spiritual? Even the unpleasant stuff? The ugly stuff? “Nothing is wasted. Nothing CAN be wasted.”
Should I go around ACTING like what I think a spiritually enlightened person behaves like? Or trying to be an old soul, a mature soul. I notice that very few people in these groups ever lay claim to being an infant soul. Some of the readings on these sites can cost hundreds of dollars. But maybe they’re bogus. My mom introduced me to the Michael books. I thought that they were plausible and interesting, but It really didn’t make my life any easier. I still had to do what I had signed up for. I have had an inordinately difficult and painful life but I got a book out of it and I am published.
I worked for a while as a process server:See, I took the job. I had a job to do. I was impervious to threats. The job was really about my transition from nine years of Las Vegas, to the white bread, ham and eggs life I was going to have to adjust to. The job was offbeat enough and unstructured enough so that it wasn’t some kind of living death. It took me years to adjust to a normal and drug free life. I was still drinking in fact. I finally packed it all in when I was forty eight.
Later on I ended up living in Korea Town and working in Northridge, in the San Fernando Valley. I was managing a bakery. That’s when I started getting tattoos. I needed something real to happen, something painful and permanent.
What is it about risk taking, apart from possible genetic motivators? Because risk is what?
What is it about risk taking, apart from possible genetic motivators? Because risk is what? Possibility. That’s where God lives; in the possible. It could be spiritual. You could make a case. Maybe it’s not all light and transcendence. You could find God in the gutter. Maybe.
What soul level do you think Alan Watts was? I’ve been listening to some of his lectures and holy cow, he’s fascinating! I’m in awe. I was ticked when I googled him and found out he wasn’t still alive. And now I find myself wondering what level soul he was, I’m assuming mature or old but wondering what level within the level. And assuming he’s a scholar soul like you. Any idea Barry?
Yeah, I also suspect Scholar! Back in 1973 someone asked:
“Where on the wheel of reincarnation is the enlightened youth culture of today, such as Richard Alpert and Alan Watts? Are they old souls?”
Answer: Alan Watts is an Old Soul, Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) is a Mature Soul.
So, Old Scholar looks most likely, but no idea about the specific level.
B
Thank you for posting so much interesting information. It does make much sense to my mind. And yet I can’t stop perceiving it from the perspective of Advaita Vedanta, for instance, from the perspective of the teachings of a guy named Adyashanti. When we say “our soul” and “us” who exactly do we mean? Are these two separate entities? Who’s “us” then? And who’s the soul we’re talking about? In Advaita Vedanta things looks clear – there’s ever-present awareness, I-am-ness, and there’s everything else happening within awareness, which also happens to be an illusion. But it looks like this illusion also has a purpose… which may also be yet another illusion of the mind 🙂 Complicated…
Hi Sunchild
Advaita Vedanta, to my mind, is one of the purest perspectives and paths out there. I came across it after having had a few flashes of enlightenment, i.e. direct experiences of Being or Truth, through a process known as an Enlightenment Intensive. I had directly experienced “I-am-ness” and “life-is-ness”, and that the essential beingness of not only myself (“I am”) but also of any other (“thou art”) is not a mere thought or concept, but an essential truth, integral to the very fabric of reality, and brimming over with love and joy.
What I have also come to understand is that any direct experience of “I am” is, in essence, an experience of the same absolute being-ness (Brahman if you like, or Paramatman), yet also it reveals a validity to the uniqueness of each individual (Atman, or Jivatman).
I can interpret this as meaning that the myriad souls equate to the consciousness springing forth from the One. Each soul is an instance of self-awareness emerging from oneness, a distinct and unique perspective with which the One can know itself, both as ‘self’ (through introspection) and as ‘other’ (through perception, action and relationship).
The One and the many are one and the same. It’s like two sides of a coin – the individuality of the Self and the oneness of all Being. However, the individual self / soul only realises this when not identified with the illusion of separate embodiment. In other words, the true nature of the Self becomes self-evident in moments of Self-realisation, just as it is all pretty clear to us between lives.
The material world we see before us, with the illusions that go with it (such as “Others and I are separate, unrelated, and in competition”), is a venue for consciousness to express and explore what it measn to be. For example, one inherent quality of the One (Brahman) is joy, but here in this world we struggle to find joy. Until, that is, we discover it as our own true nature.
So, ultimately there is the oneness of all Being. But this Being has myriad extensions of consciousness (souls). Their mission (i.e., the One’s purpose behind all this) is to explore and experience the very nature of Being within one another. They do this by projecting themselves into solid forms (incarnation) where they can forget what they already know and thus experience apparent duality (life vs death, joy vs pain, love ve hate, etc). Then, over many lives, they learn what it is like to choose one over the other. Each life is an opportunity to discover either (a) what it is like to lose sight of our true nature and choose fear/pain/separation; or (b) what it is like to remember, or trust, our true nature and choose love/joy/unity.
Eventually, each soul expresses itself as the One, the infinite source of love and joy within every soul.
So when we say “I” or “me”, we can be referring to different things. Ordinarily, we are referring to the body-personality, or the ego that thinks its is in charge. This is a case of mistaken identity, but it is meant to be – precisely so that we can question it. In momemts of enlightenment, ecstasy, joy or love, we discover that the real I isn’t a separate ego/body thing but a unique being which is also integral to and inseparable from the whole of Being.
Well, that’s about 1,000 words more than I meant to write, but thanks for the great question! What do you think?
Barry
This reply should be featured as a post!
Hello Barry!
Firstly, I want to thank you from the deph of my heart for what you have done here, it was a tremendous help for me (and eventually my closed ones too), and your whole web served as a one of little, extremely valuable stepping stones in my life graduation. One BIG THANKS.
I have started seeing the “roles,” “attitudes,” and other fascets of Michael Teachings in my life, and it gave me a really view-shaking look at all the beauty and nature of this existence.
While creating my own graphs and studies based on your work, I have found a few connections that Could add more colours to Your knowledge or thirst for information (if You don´t know all about it already):
1.
Seven main Chakras. (Each one corresponds to the color of a personality type, e.g. reflecting rainbow)
(Internet is full of this, but I don´t think that anyone before has (on a web) combined these two subjects – which, as I found myself, is genuinly helpful)
2.
4 + 1 elements, as according to Franz Bardon´s books/teachings. Elements are depicted through chakras and vice versa. Elements play a great role in Hermetics.
If this got you interested, I recommend reading 2 books by Bardon:
– The Universal Master Key (attributes of the elements)
– and Initiations into Hermetics
3. The zodiac sign. I wonder – where did it came from? How much relialibily and in what parts of it can we find?
Because there is definitely a kind of another correspondence (life-proven) with the elements, therefore chakras aswell.
As I see it, it is most probably all connected.
What do you think about this?
PS: another literature – The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life (I, II); Quantum Activist Workbook
PSS: When will you update “Centering” from the Overleaves colummn???
Cheers and Thank You.
Hey Laci, have you been spyin’ on me !? 🙂
I have been working this very week on the correlations between the Michael system and the chakras. I read a journal article recently (Journal of Transpersonal Psychology i think) which examined the strong connection between the seven energies (from root to crown) and the stages of human life/development, and I could suddenly see how it easily correlates with the seven internal monads (root = birth, crown = death). Plus the soul ages and the seven levels within each. So those sequences work very well, as though evolution were like progressing through chakras within chakras within chakras, from microscopic to the macroscopic timescales.
I have seen different interpretations of how the chakras might correspond to the Centers (Emotional, Intellectual, etc). For example, some see the Sacral chakra (2nd) as the Lower Emotional Center, while others have it as the Higher Moving Center. To answer one of you PS questions, I have yet to publish my own guide to the Centers precisely because there are numerous discrepancies in the Michael community, and I just want to be sure my version is both valid and consistent with my own experience.
As for the rest of the overleaves (goal, mode, etc), it seems to me that all they map better onto a specific subset of the chakras rather than all seven. That is, the 5th/throat (expression), the 4th/heart (inspiration) and the 3rd/solar plexus (action). So for example, the goal of Dominance equates to a highly active solar plexus while Submission equates to a passive solar plexus. (The person with Submission looks outside themselves for wilful direction and power, while the person with Dominance has it shooting out of themselves.)
Anyway, it is always a delight for me to hear that my writing here has helped clarify things for people, especially in grasping the bigger picture of personality and soul evolution. Yes, once you really get the goals, modes etc and how they operate in yourself and others (especially spouse, kids, etc), and if they are into discussing it, it’s an extremely rich source of insight. It’s truly amazing how many of the issues between my wife and myself were quickly resolved by (a) me appreciating her goal of acceptance, mode of caution and skeptical attitude, and at the same time (b) she appreciating my goal of growth, mode of perseverance and idealistic attitude. It’s like suddenly getting that we really are different people with different ways of doing things, and neither of us is wrong! Now we see our different overleaves as different assets that we bring to the relationship – my positive idealistic vision, for example, and her skeptical need to check the facts.
I don’t really know about Franz Bardon but i’ll take a look.
The zodiac sign is, to my mind, an “early circumplex model”. A circumplex in psychology is a way of repressing two variables (eg, love vs power) interacting as a continuum, with no beginning or end (a circle), and positions within or around the circle have specific meaning. For example, power or dominance would be at the 12 o’clock mark, love or acceptance at the 3 o’clock, and so on. This is another interesting possible correlation I want to look into – the only problem is I’m an ignoramus when it come to astrology.
I like the Flower of Life symbol by the way – seven fits neatly into it.
Many thanks,
Barry
Wow, she’s spying on you barry, eh? 😉 Law of attraction in action. Coincidence means, “Pay attention- you’re about to learn something!”
I, too, would love to see your thoughts on chakras and how they figure into the Michael teachings, once you’ve got it all figured out.
My throat and heart chakras have a tendency to get blocked (I think this must be common among abuse-survivors).
I was directed to purchase moldavite. It’s a stone that was formed from the heat of an asteroid which struck the earth many thousands of years ago in Czechoslovakia. It’s said to open up the heart, throat, and third-eye chakra, amongst other things.
It apparently works. My voice even sounds nicer in tone an quality. I also find myself much chattier and readier to initiate conversations with people. And there are other examples of its working that I wont get into now.
If you ever want any help understanding astrology, barry, I’m a pretty good source. I’ve been known to call someones sun sign within a few tries, or within a few signs, not long after meeting them. I have a good knowledge base about the signs and planets, to say the least 🙂
Coincidences. Hmm. Very soon after reading about the soul stages (which was about an year ago), it occurred to me that these are connected to chakras. I have been entertaining that idea ever since and playing around with a few more theories in my head. Will write them down sometime. I am going to check the article Barry speaks about plus look forward to Barry’s own thoughts on it whenever he is ready with it. This is going to be interesting.
Yolanda, can you please elaborate on what you mean by “blocked” when you say that your throat and heart chakra tend to get blocked? What is the experience like?
I recently came across Moldavite although from a different source (Dr.Eric Pearl – Reconnective Healing). I want to buy a Moldavite too though I find it expensive plus I am not sure where exactly to buy from because apparently there are lots of fakes on the net. Can you tell me of a good place to look into?
Thanks.
Aries,
a blocked throat chakra results in difficulty communicating/expressing yourself verbally. If as a child one was yelled at every they spoke up, then this could result in them shutting down their mode of expression- the throat. The movie The King’s Speech is a good example of this sort of thing.
A blocked heart chakra results in an inability to send and receive emotions like love and compassion.
If you look up the chakras you will learn their meanings, and be able to tell when one is blocked based on whether or not you are experiencing the energies of a particular chakra.
As for moldavite, I bought mine off ebay. You can get a good deal on a raw piece, but you do want to watch out for fakes. A good rule of thumb is only to buy from sellers who send from Czechoslovakia.
Thanks for the reply Yolanda. That helps.
I guess you got lucky with your seller on eBay. 🙂 I’ll try to find a good one too. I know there are lots of them in there who try to mimic the ‘genuine’ signals but sell fakes nevertheless and then disappear after making a few good sales.
Probably true. I did get lucky… you just need to be smart about it. Good luck- hope you find the right Piece!
Hi i would like to know why i would choose to have 3 long term partners cheat on me with their ex ‘s . Once mabey a lesson i needed to learn but 3 in a row its shattering the last one i checked and double checked there was no way possible this guy would cheat with his ex then 2 and a half years later he sleeps with his ex. This is the 3rd partner to do it. What am i missing? What am i not getting? I know the experience every part of it so why does it keep happening? Pls shed some light
Hi Michelle
I get what you’re saying – haven’t I experienced this enough already? What am I missing? Normally I would suggest, “what lesson are you overlooking?” but you’ve been there and back a few times by the sounds of it.
The main thing that occurs to me is – do you experience any sort of subtle “gain” from this? (Probably subconsciously) For example, I have a couple of long-term illnesses and while it gets me down at times I’m aware of “gaining” in the sense of getting time off work and spending more time at home, with more time to do more stuff like this. I would be reluctant to give up the gains, which I suspect is probably why the illnesses are sticking around. What I need to find is a way to have those gains without illness providing the means. So, that’s one thought – is this actually serving you in some subtle way?
Another thought:- what reason or excuses do the men give? Are they expressing any frustration or disappointment with you? (I’m not implying that any such reasons would be valid, just curious to see any underlying pattern on their part.)
I really don’t know, but this is exactly the sort of question that certain spiritual masters answer quite regularly — http://www.mastersofthespiritworld.com
You might have better luck with them!
Cheers
Barry
Thank you i realy dont know what i get out of it excpt hurt. All three regret it and have apoligesed one i never hear from another one wants me back and the most reasent one cant face me or talk to me and is sorri but has cut off my 3 yo daughter who has only ever known him as a father figer and after 2 months still talks about him and wants me to take her to see him i went to go and talk to him about her and he wouldent open the doorand turned his music up my heart is broken but breakes for her more
Hi Barry, thanks for this website.
I’m hoping that you can give me some advice…
I have always been a shy person but was able to come out of my shell and have worked out that I love helping people and of course it’s not always a positive thing. I am REALLY struggling at the moment with life. I’m not sure that what I have chosen in life so far is what I want/ am meant to be doing. what I have chosen fits in with helping people but is it the right kind of helping. I feel like that I can’t talk/say anything with out feeling extremely unconfident even if it is something I know. I have trouble relaxing around people, sometimes even those I am closest to. I also feel that I have trouble ‘thinking’ and just feel really lost in myself. I’m just no sure about much at the moment
Thanks
Nicole
Hi Nicole,
Sorry it’s taken me forever and a day to get back. I’m juggling with health issues at the moment (in fact I’m having a minor operation tomorrow – a regular treatment to keep me breathing!).
Anyway, based on what you wrote I’m kind of looking at you like a jigsaw puzzle at the moment, just seeing what the various pieces might add up to. Let’s see if we can bring a bit of clarity to the bigger picture.
First – you say that you now know that you love helping people… Do you mean helping as in direct, hands-on support, giving basic help to those in obvious need (as in, let’s say, nursing), or do you mean helping in a broader sense, spreading ideas or energies that might inspire many at a time (as in, say, coaching)? Or in some other way entirely?
Where this is coming from is to see what exactly is emerging for you here, seeking expression. It could be that you are a Server in essence, one who lives to help and serve in the most natural, down-to-earth ways. Or it could be that you have reached that stage in life (35-ish?) where the possibility of finding a personal meaning and purpose in life — particularly if you’re a Mature soul — is becoming a desperately pressing concern. And one of the biggest insights that people get in this mid-life transition is that personal fulfilment = serving others.
Whatever it is in life that uniquely gives you a sense of being who you are and doing what you came here to do — be it painting portraits, raising kids, fighting crime, arranging flowers, writing blogs, whatever — it will not only tap into and nurture your particular talents, it will also be of genuine value to others in some way or other. In other words, we resolve our “mid-life crisis of meaning” by finding that thing which is not only something we truly love to do but also happens to be of benefit to others. Not everyone in the world, perhaps, but at least one. There are always others out there who stand to gain from whatever it is we have to GIVE.
I don’t actually know how old you are, so this could be a red herring, but another thing that happens at this transitionary life stage (around 35) is a loss of certainties. Things we had taken for granted about ourselves and the world may no longer seem to make sense. We can feel like the rug has been pulled out from under our feet. (Some people, for example, realise that they have blindly followed a hard work ethic when what really makes more sense to them is to relax and take life as it comes. For other people, what they realise can be the opposite! There is no one “right” way except the way that’s uniquely right for us as individuals.)
But the sense of not being sure about anything anymore is typical of this transition point. The reason is because our innermost being, having got half-way through life, is feeling the pull to drop everything we’ve picked up so far – beliefs, assumptions, habits, attitudes, ambitions – and really focus on whatever we truly came here to do, and thus learn what we came here to learn. So as we let go of all that seemed so certain before, we can feel cast adrift, devoid of meaning.
You say your current line of work is about helping people but something about it isn’t feeling right for you. I take it you mean the urge in you to help is still feeling right, but this work isn’t allowing you to really channel that urge, so you’re not getting satisfaction/fulfilment from it. My impression — and again, correct me if I’m barking up the wrong tree — is that you’re doing something that is ostensibly a helping profession but in practice it doesn’t live up to your expectations, or its own standards. You experience more frustration than a sense of actually helping.
You also say that in this work context, you feel socially uncomfortable, or anxious, and lose confidence in yourself. It sounds like social anxiety has been a lifelong issue for you, but up until recently you were managing it. But now, perhaps, you are in a more exposed position in life, perhaps surrounded by people who are more critical or challenging than you’ve been used to, so unresolved insecurities and anxieties about a strange sense of inadequacy are coming up again, loud and clear.
You might want to look at the page here on Self-Deprecation, which is one of the “dark traits” that holds us up in life. It’s that voice inside us that tells us we’re never good enough, and the expectation that others can see right through us no matter how hard we try to “act normal”. I have a lot of it myself, and I’m constantly wavering between thinking I’m “over” it and then feeling I’m once again trapped “under” it, trying to hide the fact that I feel I don’t deserve to be here. There’s a lot of oscillating in and out of it, for me, but the long-term trend is positive … Touch wood.
Anyway, back to you. There’s always some interaction between personality and environment — sometimes our work environment allows us to stay our comfort zone, sometimes it doesn’t. And in the latter case, there are certain options:
1 – Change the environment, i.e the other people and how they act, or how the organisation works.
2 – Change yourself. Way easier said than done, of course, but sometimes a shift in perception or attitude can do the trick. It might even help to see this all as a learning opportunity – a situation cunningly set up by you at a soul level to get you to take a deeper look into your social anxiety or self-deprecating habits.
3 – End the interaction. In other words, leave and work elsewhere.
There may of course be other choices I haven’t though of, but basically it comes down to being your choice.
No choice is wrong, by the way. We are here to make choices, but not the “right” choices. We are here to make whatever choice feels best to us at the time, from our perspective, according to our own values, and in the long run we gain wisdom and courage from the experience.
Feel free to chat further if you wish (I’ll try to be quicker!).
Barry
Hi Barry, thanks for replying.
I’m 25 and feel that I haven’t been able to find much about who I am yet and this is something that is stressing me out. I am in my final year of becoming an occupational therapist. This is something that I thought I wanted to do in the beginning but have been finding in increasingly challenging due to needing to know exactly what I am talking about when dealing with clients/patients. I guess this is where the social anxiety is coming from – a lack of confidence in not knowing what it is I am wanting to say. Only time will tell if this is the job for me I guess. Like you said, I am a server but it depends on in which way I am suppose to do this. I do find that I don’t have a lot of passion in life for anything, mostly due to depression and not knowing who I am, this seems to be affecting the way in which I feel about helping others. As part of becoming an OT it is vital that I understand who I am so that I can better provide help (hands on) and educate my future clients. the OT world is quite vast so I am sure that with a little investigation into the different areas, I will find something that I really enjoy.
I believe there are several things that I need to change about myself…ie not being afraid of failing or of hard work to get me to where I need to go in life. and there are a lot of things that I hold onto from the past and am unsure of how to let these go fully and to let myself to just be myself.
Nicole
Hi Nicole
Thanks for clarifying (and waiting … again).
So you are highlighting two things here:
1. Lacking confidence in talking the talk professionally
2. Knowing how to be yourself, or true to yourself, when you are unsure of who you are, and are dragging around some “baggage” from the past.
Well, there’s actually a lot there that I can relate to personally from my own experiences at a similar age. (Allow me to go off on a personal tangent here – hopefully it’s relevant to you!.)
One day, aged 19 or so, I was fretting about how to prepare myself for a social event (should I be like this or should I be like that…?), and a friend said “Just be yourself, Barry.” At that instant I realised that I had no idea what “being myself” meant. I had committed myself through my teens and twenties to searching for some well-crafted artificial identity that would allow me to both fit in with my peers and stand out from the crowd. But I was out of touch with my real self, just obsessed with creating the “right impression” in the eyes of others – in fact, different impressions for different “audiences”.
I was also somewhat ashamed of my past – my working class background, dull childhood, lack of sexual experience and so on. So I wanted to reinvent myself (at least as far as others could see) as an intriguing, sexy, cool dude. In a sense, “myself” was the last thing I wanted to be.
I don’t know if this is true for you, but I expect it’s quite a common thing. I have written about a particular negative pattern that can arise out of this – see Self-Deprecation.
Anyway, by focusing so much on being anything but “myself”, i no longer knew how to just be myself. Only once in a while – in critical moments, faced with important life choices – would I reflect on what’s true for ME.
For example, I knew that the university environment suited me, whereas working in a job where I was constantly dealing with members of the public didn’t – it would be overwhelmingly stressful and exhausting for me as an introvert. I could FEEL that these things were true of me, but I was emotionally inarticulate, and lacked the vocabulary (and therefore the confidence) to express any of this openly. I didn’t know the value of personal truths. They were my “shameful secrets” rather than “who I am.”
So, the trick to knowing who you are is recognising and acknowledging whatever is actually TRUE for you, or true OF you. And be willing to express those truths to others.
Know and honour your truth.
And if you don’t know what’s true for you, just decide that it’s now time to start looking – question yourself, reflect – and never stop.
As an individual, you have your own specific quirks, talents, preferences, fears, dreams, drives, memories, experiences, choices — all of which are true “inside” you, but all of which are also easy to hide from others if you want to do so.
But ignoring or hiding our inner truths so as to look and act the way we believe others want us to be, or will create the right impression, creates a split in our identity. On the one hand, there are the masks we wear publicly, and on the other hand there are the “secrets” that we keep private — yet those are who we really are. As we focus more on the masks and less on the inner truths, we no longer know ourselves and feel a sense of alienation, emptiness and depression.
Confidence also comes into this.
I don’t know if your issue here is shyness but I realised at some point that a major component of my shyness was my fear of saying the “wrong thing” – i.e. a fear of saying something TRUE rather than saying whatever I imagined would most impress or entertain others. So in a conversation, for example, I would always pre-run anything I might say through various filters in my head which would check each sentence. I had this “iron rule” that everything I said had to be consistent with whatever mask I was showing AND give nothing away about my true thoughts, feelings, personality, etc. As a result, I found conversation exhausting and stressful, and I came across as tense, absent, and unconfident.
Anyway, I have learned to drop the whole mask thing and just to be willing to say what’s true for me, even though I don’t know how others will react to it. When I was young, getting others to react to me a certain way was the Number One Goal. Now, I don’t try to manipulate how others react to me at all.
There was a time, for example, when I would accept an invitation to a crowded and noisy pub, even though every moment there would be horrible for me due to the sensory overload (I’m highly sensitive). But I thought that to admit THAT would be unacceptable, a sure sign of my inadequacy, so I would just suppress it and go along with the crowd.
Now I just say “I don’t want to go to that pub because I find the noise overwhelming and I won’t enjoy it.” There – just stating the truth. And when you state a personal truth like that, even if it messes up their plans, people respect you for it and see that they can trust you to be open and honest.
So – back to you. Its possible that you lack confidence in talking with clients because you lack confidence in just being yourself, being open and truthful.
But it’s also possible that you are simply not a naturally intellectual person. (This is true of me also, and has nothing to do with intelligence.) It’s all to do with how we “process” life, how we handle our own life experiences. From an early age, some people become primarily emotional and sensitive (like me), some become primarily active and run-around-ish, and some are primarily intellectual (i.e. verbal, articulate, communicative). This is what is known in this framework as “Centering”. It’s how we primarily relate to life as an individual.
(I keep intending to do a whole explanatory page on Centering as it’s quite key to what makes us different.)
To give yet another personal example [ 🙂 ], I am emotionally centered while my wife is intellectually centered. She turns every experience into a verbal description, and always looks for an opportunity to share her experiences in the form of a “story” or narrative. That’s how she makes sense of things. In contrast, I just go through life feeling what each new moment is like – I like this, I don’t like that, I’m feeling better than I was but I want to feel even better, etc etc. Being emotionally centered, I am highly sensitive to both pain and pleasure, which gives me a sense of being in direct contact with life and a degree of intuition, BUT I find it difficult to engage intellectually – difficult to think ahead, difficult to remember past experiences, difficult to verbalise my current experiences, difficult to follow a conversation. Not impossible, just difficult – it just takes a lot more energy and focus, and it feels awkward.
(That might seem ironic given the length of some of my replies here, but that’s because when writing I can take my time. If this were a Skype call I probably wouldn’t have said anything yet!)
So, long-story-short, it’s possible that you struggle to know what to say because your intellectual (verbal, communicative) function is not as accessible to you as say the emotional one. If this resonates for you, then I would suggest either find a way to memorise what you need to say to people at different times, or find a way of using OT that doesn’t require so much intellectual interaction – something more physical or emotional (“touchy-feely” if you will).
OK, Nicole, I’ve gone on a bit but I hope there’s something here that helps. Cheers for now, and I do hope things turn around for you.
barry
Barry,
As a long time student of the Michael teachings, I really appreciate the clarity of the information presented on your site and the insightful answers to commenters questions. Thanks for choosing to commit the time and energy to your agreement with the Michaels to provide this information for anyone to find. Keep up the Good Work and much gratitude to you, sir!
Mike
Thank you so much Mike. I totally appreciate your appreciation!.
Cheers ☀️
Well, well, well, I did not expect this to happen. It has been a long time. Glad to see you are still helping people by guiding them to their truth. Good to know you are still there, but, then, where would you have gone?
Hey Barry, how can I find out in what way I process my moment-by-moment experiences? Could you elaborate?
Great response Barry! It was something I needed to hear too
Hi Bary,
Let me appreciate you first on the wonderful work you have done here. I was not able to stop reading these wonderful articles, and these make my days for a past couple of weeks. But now I am stuck and i need your help in getting a better clarity.
You reap what you sow… for example if you sow a mango seed you reap mangoes. You reap not just one mango,, but a few hundreads of mangoes. This is the essence of law of karma which i learned and understood till now. So if i do a lot of good things i can expect a lot of good things happen to me too.
But after reading michels teacings on karma, things seems quite contracting for me.
1) If i heal a cancer patient, and for karma cleaning, i have to be a cancer patient and the other need to be a healer. So this thought of will make someone not to heal a cancer patient.
2) If i pay for the education of a struggling child, in next incarnation i have to be a struggling child in order for him to payback me.
Yeah, from soul point of view, or from a universe point of view this may be acceptable, but these thoughts do not seem interesting from human point pont of view. Who wants to heal a cancer patient now and want to incarnate as a cancer patient in future lifetimes ?
Also law of karma is taught from a different point of view by buddha, jesus. What they taught was ,do good things and you only reap good. Yeah, I read in michel teaching where if a young soul kills an old soul, instead of killing him back it may transmute in different way like the other being a life saver or a parent giving birth. But again there is no guarantee that the transmutation can always happen. I am not questioning any of the teachings here. I just want to be more clear on this.
thanks in advance.
HI Subeesh
I think there is a simple way to make this clear. Focus less on karma, and focus more on love, or compassion, or humanity.
Example 1 – If you heal a cancer patient today, then either:
(a) you are returning the karma, because that soul already gave you some kind of loving healing in a former life, or
(b) you are now creating fresh karma, and in a future life that soul will come to give you a healing.
I think the most likely scenario is (a). Becoming a doctor who heals many people is a great way to release an accumulation of karma.
But if you resist giving healing because you fear (b), i.e. you fear becoming a cancer patient in a future life, then you are creating the karma of neglect.
Here is the situation: A person has come to you presenting you with an opportunity to show compassion and to use your healing skills. You have nothing to lose, you just have share some of your compassion and skill. But if you choose to ignore this opportunity to heal out of a private fear of cancer coming to “get you” in your future, then you have let fear blind you, and your compassion has been suppressed. You have chosen fear over love, with consequences affecting the life of the other, and thus created “negative” karma.
Consider this: You almost certainly will have cancer in future lives. After all, we all have to die of something, and cancer is pretty common. It’s the slow way to die (as opposed to sudden heart failure which is also very common but very quick). Wouldn’t it be nice if you experienced a healing from cancer because of what you did today?
Example 2 – You pay for the education of a struggling child.
Again, what is your motivation to do so? There are two possibilities:
(a) That soul who is now a struggling child is someone who aided you in a past life, and now you have the opportunity to repay that favour.
or
(b) You have no previous karma with this soul, but he/she is presenting you with an opportunity to do a loving act, an opportunity to feel and express your sincere compassion. In the process you will create “positive karma” – the love you give will be returned. If so, it may be that in a future life you will be (briefly) a struggling child, until one day you experience the love being returned to you from that soul in the form of a paid education or whatever.
There is nothing “wrong” with being a struggling child or a cancer patient. Trying to avoid these future conditions by not helping people who are experiencing those conditions now is an act of ego, born of fear.
Even Ramana Maharshi, a soul in its last life, “struggled” as a child – he left home, penniless, and meditated while bugs crawled all over him and ate into him. And at the end of his radiant life what happened? He died of cancer. It was, he said with perfect acceptance, merely his karma.
The bottom line: karma is just a dynamic for creating and exchanging experiences, and through karma (good or bad) we grow. As we grow, we naturally become more compassionate towards others, and less fearful for ourselves.
Karma isn’t a force that acts against our will. Quite the opposite. If you kill someone, that’s an expression of your will that has impacted on the will of another. In the afterlife, this becomes clear and obvious, and you will naturally want to know what that impact feels like. (You are automatically forgiven – karma is not a punishment.) Karma is like an itch that needs to be scratched. You can’t experience equilibrium until you know from your own experience what you have caused another to experience.
But a better way to think of it is: your will can be expressed in the form of love or in the form of fear. Either way, to the extent you affect another, you will inevitably come to know what that effect feels like through your own experience.
Hope this helps
barry
That was beautiful.
Well said, Barry.
Thanks Barry for answering my question. Very well said. Thank you.
Thanks Barry. I read your website 1 year ago about reincarnation and 35 steps of soul evolution. I just came back recently and found out about other great stuffs 🙂
I could see your writing amazingly personal and spiritual 🙂 I also believe that the only way to truly connect with other souls is to have the courage to open your soul first. And you did that so beautifully.
I wish you good health and happiness.
🙂
Thank you so, so much. I really appreciate your feedback.
Barry
I have lost page 326 from The Michael Handbook, The Overleaf Chart was here, do you have it,, ciao agape amigo Richard
Do I have your missing page? No, but I think I saw it behind your sofa.
Wait, will this do?
http://www.josestevens.com/my_files/Profile%20Chart.pdf
🙂
hey ,
1) i do not know much about karma or philosophy but believe in karma concept. i.e newtons 3rd law or should i say as u sow so shall i you reap.
2) but would like to add some points which decides your karma, soul’s journey. 3) we are average of our ancestors i.e 7 generation from father side, 4 generation from mothers side and our own individual soul’s accumulated karma ( sanchita karma)
1. Sanchita Karmas are accumulated works
2. Prarabdha Karmas are ripe or fructuous actions
3. Kriyamana or Agami Karmas are current works
Prarabdha Karma are the part of sanchita karma, a collection of past karmas, which are ready to be experienced through the present body (incarnation). According to Sri Swami Sivananda: “Prarabdha is that portion of the past karma which is responsible for the present body.
Can we talk to Death Angle??
If Yes, how??
If not, never mind:|
Do you mean Angel of Death?
Sorry, I have no idea.
Barry I experienced I believe what this article described as a personality crash. I was “acting” like a young soul as I live in the USA but I had an emotional breakdown and all my YOUNG soul personality has vanished now im not sure where I am. I feel very withdrawn now and depressed as well as almost as if I am feeling, personality wise, like I am 10 years old. Like I adapted a different personality and lost it to regain back maybe the true/old me.
For example I was clever, witty and over achiever and charasmatic and after the breakdown it all disappeared.
I’m sorry if this is vague but I was wondering if you had any insight into this. Thank you,
Chris.
Hi Chris,
Sorry it’s taken me a while – I have a backlog of questions and comments.
Personality crash: I’m curious to know how old you are. Typically this sort of thing happens around age 35, especially to mature souls. This is the mid-life transition where we feel drawn to find and express our true inner being, who we really are. So our true personality (soul age, essence role and overleaves) seek to break through the accumulated layers of false personality. This is so that we (meaning we as souls, rather than just human personalities) can start working on what it is we really came here to do on this life. The thicker the false layers of personality (i.e. family/cultural imprinting and ego), the bigger the ‘crisis of identity ‘ as these layers are shed. It leaves us wondering “but if none of that is me, then who am I?” And that is precisely the point.
It’s interesting that you say you feel like you’ve gone back to being ten because it’s during adolescence that we tend to develop a particular way of being so as to fit in with our peers and the subculture of our generation. This new way of being could be very different from our true nature, depending upon the cultural expectations and fears we must live with. So I a nutshell, it sounds like you’ve successfully shed your young-souled culturally-defined false identity. Now it’s a matter of looking within to find your own truth. Introspection, contemplation, self-enquiry, artistic expression … There are many ways to go about this.
Let your own sense of truth — what’s true for you and of you — be your compass.
The thing that helped me the most, and I can’t recommend it enough, is going on a spiritual retreat known as an Enlightenment Intensive, spending three whole days asking myself “who am I?”
Hope this helps.