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(Channeled by Shepherd Hoodwin on November 20, 1995 for the client's forthcoming book on service)
MICHAEL: Service is a vast topic. We are going to approach this subject in a variety of ways, from many angles. You are certainly well aware that service can be a tricky thing. Someone awakens to the rightness of seeing the world in a larger way and contributing, no longer being alienated from others and perhaps this person (we will use the pronoun "he" to represent both men and women) perhaps he tries to help a homeless person. He may quickly become disillusioned if the homeless person rejects his help. Why might the homeless reject the help of someone who is well meaning, who wants to help? There are many possible reasons.
The homeless person may wish to be left alone. It may be his path for the time being to live as he is living. Or the homeless person may feel that the person offering help has strings attached that might limit his freedom. He may feel that the one offering help views himself as being better than the homeless person and is getting off on trying to help him. If the homeless person feels that the one offering is doing so to feel good about himself, the homeless person may be perverse enough to take delight in thwarting that, perhaps because of resentments carried from past experiences.
Someone helping might also encounter someone who does want to receive help, but the helper may find that he is in over his head. He does not know how to help this particular person. For example, perhaps the homeless person is mentally ill. And then there is the question of what would really help in any situation. You generally cannot go wrong by offering food but how much does this really help in the long run? Offering shelter becomes more problematic. Again, the homeless person may reject it depending on the conditions; he may not want that kind of shelter, for instance.
Almost anyone would welcome a gift of money but that is not necessarily helping the situation. It may be quickly spent without much to show for it. It may be used for supporting an addiction, for example. This can lead to the person who wanted to help giving up, saying, "I tried, but it doesn't work." We are not implying that one should not try to help the homeless. We are simply seeking to illustrate the issues that arise.
Someone seeking to help under difficult circumstances can benefit from some training. It is not enough to have the desire to help. Someone going into that situation will be more helpful if he knows what to expect so that he will not be thrown for a loop and disappointed. A person going into that situation can benefit from knowing what he is prepared to give and whatever he is prepared to give should be given with no strings attached.
For example, offering food without the condition of seeing a doctor or attending an educational program. If housing is offered, there may be a structure to the situation. There may be, for example, in a particular situation, an agreement that the person moving into that situation would have to make. When we say it is offered without conditions, in that situation we refer to offering it without a condition that the person moving into it would have to do something that for him would be a compromise of who he is.
One might have a particular situation that is structured so that someone can move in and can do a particular job and earn so much money. Well, then you are offering a whole package -- you are offering a job and a place to live, and you offer it freely without any coercion, just making the person know that this is one thing that is available and it is not the only thing that is available.
The essence of service is offering greater choice, particularly to someone who has rather limited choices in life. Often service in a religious context offers expanded choice in one arena and decreased choice in another. "You can have a place to live (more choice) if you believe as we tell you to believe." (less choice) We are not saying that they cancel each other out completely but it is not as high a form of service as one that only expands choice.
Ideally, service does not decrease the choices of the one serving. So your generosity in a particular situation ideally would not cramp your choices in life. For example, you would not give away all of your money so that you no longer have the opportunity to go to school so that someone else can. This may be appropriate in a Karmic payback situation but if someone else wins at your expense, there has not been a net gain for humanity. One win/one loss do cancel each other out. So clearly it is preferable that service occur in a context of abundance, that those serving experience expansion through expanding the choices of another.
At the "Michael Speaks" Friday night we suggested that those in the room send energy to the man with the painful shoulder. It was later said that someone sending energy to this man felt an increase in her own energy. This is a beautiful example of service that works. In opening to give more love and energy to someone else, often you, yourself, feel an increase of energy. You know that there is an abundance. Your experience of it actually increases by serving.
On the other hand, there are those who do forms of healing that are very taxing to the body. Such a form of healing may be very helpful to the person receiving, but after a while it might bring harm to the person offering. In such a case the person offering needs to know what his capacity is and where to draw the line so that it does not begin to be another situation of someone gaining at the expense of another. And, hopefully, the person giving is also receiving so that there can be a replenishment.
This brings up the question of why in some forms of healing work one feels only energized and in other situations one feels drained. For one thing, it depends on quantity. If the woman in the group Friday night was spending many hours a day sending energy in this way it might become quite draining, especially if she was not conditioned for that kind of work. Some techniques of healing require more of the healer than others.
When we do healing work through this channel, we have a very limited amount of time with the client, with the listeners, and we want to make maximum use of that time and so we amplify our effectiveness through pulling negative energies from the client into the channel's body where we can more quickly dissipate them. We do not leave the negative energies in the channel's body at the end. Nevertheless, it is draining for him. He is willing to do this. This is part of his agreement, but he must be very cautious about how much he does. He is trading quality for quantity.
There are certain techniques of healing where a trained person can do quite a bit of it without being very drained and these can be excellent and helpful in service but these are limited also. They do certain things for people and there are certain things that those techniques do not reach. So one cannot judge how much a healer should be able to offer but a healer can feel it when it has crossed the line of it being too much.
The issue of charging for service also might fit in here. Is it service if you charge money for it? It can be, yes. The attitude of wanting to bless, to give something to another person or an animal or nature or the planet is service regardless of whether or not money changes hands. In other words, it is the attitude that determines whether or not it is a service, particularly service that requires a great deal of the one offering it.
If adequate money or its equivalent comes back to make up for the energy that is not otherwise being generated to sustain oneself, that can make it more of a win/win situation. So, to use this channel as an example, since the work is quite potent and exhausting for him, he is not able to do other things to earn money. If he earns adequate money for the work that he does, it keeps a balance in his life so that he does not become one of the destitute who then need service.
In evaluating service you are always looking at the whole picture. You don't ever want to create a situation in which there is a net loss, as in the example where someone offering service to others ends up needing service himself. This does not advance humanity as much as if a better balance were maintained.
We are always in favor of those who charge money for services doing some work for those who cannot afford it at a lesser cost or no charge. If enough is coming in from people who can afford the charge, this can be done. Of course, this would include doctors and other medical practitioners, lawyers, anyone offering a service.
On the other hand, those receiving often benefit more if they give something back. The reason for this is similar to the reason the woman offering healing to the man's shoulder felt uplifted.
Very often people who are in a situation of great need are there because energy is not flowing in them. If they receive, receive and receive and don't give something back, they stop receiving. They may have great needs but if they do not give something, they do not let energy flow. They will receive less. So if someone can give something back, if not money, then time--some help--often they will receive more.
It works whether they give more back to the person who is serving them or whether they give to someone else. But giving something back, although it does not need to be a stringent requirement, can be strongly recommended. Someone who is quite ill may not be able to give much back physically. However, it could be suggested that the person be given the assignment of meditating each day and sending love energy to three other people. Almost anyone could do that and that would facilitate the sick person's own healing.
All things must be in balance for there to be good function. There needs to be a balance between what any individual is giving and receiving. A person who insists on only giving and not receiving soon finds that what he is able to give is compromised. A person who wants to only receive, who is self-centered, can be made sick by what is received, like a balloon that is inflated too much. Or he can become so weighted down that he can't move. There is a right flow. It all boils down to energy. Everything is energy.
You are right when you say that people tend to look at service in a fragmented manner. To give, one must receive; to receive, one must give, because it is one river, one flow.
Your task as someone who is dedicated to teaching service is at first to acquaint those in need with what it feels like to receive. Often there has been a deficit in receiving. But once that is adequately established in the person's life, the task then becomes to teach the person how to give. In a truly healthy person, healthy on all levels, the flow is such that neither giving nor receiving is an issue. It is delightful to give and delightful to receive. What is given is what can be given.
Let's use the example of money. If it's in one's heart to give money to a person or an organization out of love, out of the sense that it would be a joy to support this person or organization, the amount will be what can be given in that moment. It will not cause hardship to give it. It will be simply joy to give it. Someone else cannot judge what that amount would be. It is the amount that would feel right.
If there is fear around money, the person may have a distorted perception about what can be given. Still, if the person gives what he believes he can give and experiences that as joy, perhaps later, because the fear has begun to dissipate, he will feel comfortable giving more. It will also be the amount that can be received. If you give too much money to a person who does not know how to handle money, the excess will simply be wasted.
The same goes for energy. When we channel for an individual or group, we do not give more energy than what the person can receive gracefully. Gradually throughout the session the amount increases as the person acclimatizes to what has already been given. If we give too much, it will either be wasted or it will blow a fuse in the person. Neither do we hold back. We do not judge what we should give energetically. We first seek to establish connection and once there is connection it can be felt what can be given. What is given is received and the person begins to draw forth from us an increased amount.
This same principle is a very valuable one to be aware of in counseling. If you are giving through counseling, it is a good idea to connect with the person and to sense psychically, meaning through the psyche, what can be said, what can be heard. Generally, people do not connect and they do not listen psychically. In most of their conversations they try to give what cannot be heard, what cannot be received--hearing is aural receiving. Then conflicts arise--they hit a person's resistance.
When you do not have an agenda, an ax to grind, when you are truly there neutrally with a desire to serve, you find that there is a flow and you say what can be said and heard. And it is reciprocal. The person then can say back to you what you can hear and receive. Your boundaries are not violated. Boundaries can be violated by giving as well as by taking. If you give more than a person can receive or wishes to receive, this, too, is a violation of a boundary. You know people who have done things for others behind their backs "for their own good"; this is an example.
In an ideal world where energy is not blocked and people are mature in their approach to life no matter what the soul age is, where there is balance, there would be no need for the word "service." Service suggests, "I have something that you don't have and out of the goodness of my heart I will give it to you." In an ideal world, the flow is in place. People are constantly giving and receiving and think nothing of it. Everyone, of course, would have enough food to eat and a place to live. People would be helping one another as a matter of course and not be keeping score, trusting the flow that eventually it would all balance out, which it does if there are no blocks. Such an ideal world, of course, does not exist. On the physical plane, there will always be some blocks. There will always be those who are afraid and who lack maturity in the handling of that fear.
Therefore, the idea of service comes into play, the idea of lending a helping hand to those who need it. At some point every person needs service because this is a very difficult planet and it has hardly ever been more difficult than it is right now. Service is needed now more than ever.
One cannot underestimate how much the experience of true service helps the person who gives the service. If an act of service is not enriching the one offering it, he is probably a little bit off the mark. He may be giving too much or the wrong thing or for the wrong reason. By wrong reason we mean a reason that does not serve him. An example of serving for the wrong reason would be a person with low self-esteem serving to feel better about himself. Such a person may do some good for others but he also leaves himself vulnerable to being quite disappointed and disillusioned because those he serves may not help him feel good about himself.
It is better to serve selfishly. What do we mean by this? To find a way to serve that you know enriches you, not necessarily momentarily and overtly, but enriches you because you know that it fits with what you are here to do and will bring you fulfilment to do it. The act should be fulfilling for its own sake and not for some other reason. That is really the only way we know of to ensure that the service will work.
To illustrate this -- If a person has come in this lifetime partly, at least, to study how it might be possible to end hunger on earth, that person will likely feel quite fulfilled spending time in a kitchen that prepares meals for the hungry. This will suit his task. He will not have to convince himself that he is a better person because he is doing something good for others. He will not be doing it to assuage his guilt that he has money and others don't. If he has found a situation that truly complements his life task, he will likely be content just being there, doing the work. He will find it interesting. He will enjoy being there and meeting people. He may ask some questions of people, getting to know them. Those who come to receive might enjoy his company, his conversation. So it will be a win/win situation.
Meanwhile, on some level, he is taking notes about what works and what doesn't work, and about the psychology of hunger. He may not consciously know that this is part of his life task. He will know that helping at the kitchen or whatever feels good to him--he likes doing it, so nothing more needs to come back to him than that. The greatest service, the most valuable and truest service comes when people are doing what they came to do.
Keep in mind that those who are on the receiving end may well be doing what they came here to do as well. A homeless person, for example, may have had many lifetimes of great riches and may have chosen, therefore, to experience poverty. It may be karmic, it may not be. If it is karmic that he continue to experience dire poverty, he will not let you help him. If he has deliberately undertaken it to experience the flip side of riches, he may benefit much from receiving your help, just as if you are in the right place for you, you will benefit much from giving that help.
This leads to your question about service for those who are nonphysical. We come through this channel because it benefits us to do so. It is part of our development to help those who are physical, directly or indirectly. Therefore, it is an easy and natural thing for us.
Being brought into a physical body to speak and heal is not a particularly comfortable experience for us. Our energy is such that even putting a little piece of it into a dense human body is not exactly natural, not totally pleasant. It would be similar to your going into the squalor of the home of a very poor person: it might not be pleasant--it is not a pleasant environment. However, if you are doing what is in line with what you came to do, you don't mind that so much. The dominant fact would be that you are receiving growth from it, so it feels good--growth feels good. There may be growing pains (although growth does not have to be painful) but even those can feel good, or at least the results of them feel good.
We endure minor discomfort and inconvenience because being channeled in this way is quite exciting for us. In a way it is a selfish act to serve. It fits for us, it fits for the channel, and it fits for those who come to this particular channel. Everyone benefits. Everyone receives something that they want to receive. Energy flows. We both give and receive, and there is no deficit.
One of the blessings we receive from teaching is that we learn by teaching. We have come to understand what people need from us in order to learn. At first we were unversed in this--perhaps you could say naive--so we have been learning about teaching itself. When people ask us questions, we sometimes go to the akasic records; learning how to access the akasic records is also part of our evolution at this time, so it is convenient. We learn about how to find information in the akasic records through answering your questions, which is a lot more sensible than our learning how to do this by picking a meaningless question and looking for an answer. Our work may as well benefit someone who needs it. We also learn things for our own benefit as we seek answers for you. Needless to say, we learn a great deal about the physical plane. Of course, we were physical. However, you get a very different perspective from "up here." So, we give because it fits for us.
Only a very small part of our service relates to being verbally channelled. We are indirectly channelled by many people, including you. You tap into our energies in certain circumstances. We are supporting you energetically and intellectually but not verbally. You get ideas and we help you with them. We are not taking credit for your ideas--we are simply saying that we all put our heads together. It is not so cut and dry as saying that if you are working on an idea, we come and give our opinions subconsciously. That's not exactly how it is. You tune in and you draw intellectual energy from us. You draw from our experience but not because we tell you what our experience was. You plug into our mind.
We are quite involved, as are many other nonphysical entities, with what goes on in the physical plane, again, because it supports our evolution, and for another reason as well: we are all in this together. Many new age folks cannot wait to die and be done with the physical plane all together. They want to wash their hands of it. Well, things are rather stressful right now on earth's physical plane. It is not surprising that people temporarily feel this way.
But you do not wash your hands of the physical plane, either between lifetimes or when you are done with your lifetimes, because we are all part of one ecology. If the surface of the physical plane of earth were destroyed, it would interfere with our own evolution, our own ability to learn and grow and further this experiment called earth that the Tao initiated. Ecology does not end at the physical plane; ecology is not just about physical systems. Those who are nonphysical have always been assisting those who are physical, and sometimes you who are physical directly assist us. In any case, the benefit is always mutual.
So service, in our opinion, does not need to be seen as an onerous chore, as a sacrifice. It should be seen as one of life's pleasures. Eliminating an "either/or" consciousness from this area would require expansion of consciousness. For example, if you are eating an ice cream cone and experiencing much pleasure in this, could this not be seen as another form of service? You are bringing pleasure to yourself and that allows a certain energy to flow, the energy of that experience of delighting in an ice cream cone. When that energy flows, does that not touch others? Does that not bless the whole earth in some way? It would only not be service if there is a wall of fear around the person who is greedily holding on to the experience of the ice cream cone and does not want to share the energy of that experience. But if that's the case, there isn't too much enjoyment experienced by the person eating the cone either.
Sometimes people who are obese do not yet know how to experience true joy in what they eat and there is a wall around them protecting their pleasure, perhaps their guilty pleasure. If you were to look on someone with that consciousness eating something delicious you might not see an expansive energy moving out from the person. You might instead see a contracted, crippled experience of energy. Therefore, the satisfaction is limited and it requires more food to be brought in. If people learned to eat in service, learned to eat in such a way that there was unmitigated joy, delight, pleasure, people would be healthier and would begin to have more joy in life in general. Your joy in eating encourages others to have joy in their eating.
It is the same thing with sex. People who can relax in the moment and really enjoy whatever is being given or received, or both, in the moment have an expansive experience that brings more joy on earth.
This session now is a good example of this principle. We have been letting energy flow to you and you have been letting energy flow to us, so there begins to be a fullness, something that all participating can enjoy. Are we serving you or are we serving us? Maybe a little of both. It is only in the flow that anything happens.
QUESTION: You mentioned that we each have a task to do. Could you expand on how that is determined?
MICHAEL: How you know what your task is?
QUESTION: Right. How is that determined before we incarnate and how does that work? Is there any relationship to the kind of the task to the age of the soul? For example, did Mother Theresa or Martin Luther King's soul age have any relationship to the kind of task they were given?
MICHAEL: If you view earth's physical plane as being like a sprawling university, you can look at souls as being like people who are preparing to enroll before incarnating. However, this is somewhat of a free school. There are certain course requirements, certain monads, but each enrolling student thinks about why he wishes to go to this school at this particular time. There are guidance counselors, let's say, at the high school, who help him plan a course of study that will fit with what he wants to do. It is a self-directed curriculum for the most part. Some people go to school but really just want to party. Some people have very particular areas they wish to study that interests them for some reason or another. Some people want a broad education. Nobody imposes on the right to choose. If the souls of two parents agree to have you as their child, then you are free to come in and make use of this university as you see fit.
Everyone will learn something from every life no matter what the intention was in coming in. Your life task is what you most wanted to learn in this lifetime, or what you most wanted to contribute, achieve or create. But it all boils down to learning. You then make agreements with other souls to help you carry out your task and help them carry out theirs. You set up a framework so that when you come here you have something to come to, just as if you were planning to go to a particular university, you might get together with some of your high school friends who were going to go to the same university--you might plan to live together or have some classes together.
Once you are here living your life, you have to get oriented first. It's like going to your orientation at college. You have to take some basic classes. In other words, you have to go through diapers and learning the alphabet and getting used to being a human being in this particular culture, in this particular body. As you get older you start feeling the urge to do more and more of what you set up to do in this lifetime. If you are at all in touch with yourself, you will have some sense of what you are drawn to do. Some people have some fantasies -- "Oh, I would like to be a movie star," or "I would like to be rich and famous." However, if you really pin them down, they still probably know what types of activities interest them, what they are drawn to, what they realistically believe they could contribute in this lifetime and that is usually in line somehow with the life task.
Some life tasks are site specific, you could say. In other words, some people plan to do very particular things that have to be done in a very particular way. There are those who very specifically want to be a brain surgeon and with any luck the person knows that early on and finds a way to become a brain surgeon. It may be that in another life the person died of a brain tumor and then thought how interesting it might be to learn about how one might have prevented that. So here is a strong interest and the soul sometimes has such a specific life focus.
Most older souls have more general tasks that can be filled in any number of ways. The reason the task is set up to be more general is that as an older soul you are quite competent and you are able to improvise a lot on the spot . You also want to be free to respond to unforeseen opportunities. When you plan your lifetime, you don't really know what it is going to actually be like on the physical plane. You come in knowing in a general sense the lesson that you want to have or what you want to teach to others--what you want to explore--and you plan several different ways to get to that goal, knowing that if one doesn't work, another one might, or if one door doesn't turn out to be open, another one will be.
For an older soul, the life plan is generally pretty vast, carefully laid out in much detail. If you go to one channel, you might hear about one piece of it; another channel might tell you about another piece of it. It would be difficult for you to be told in its entirety your life task (or the life plan, which includes the task) and how you are going to achieve it. You don't have to go to a psychic or a channel to learn your life task, although it can be quite useful, particularly if you are in doubt.
It seems to us that you have been quite clear on what you wanted to do in life and if it were not right for you, you would have felt that a long time ago. However, your actual life task may not be exactly what you think it is. You may be doing your life task, but it may not be exactly what you assume it to be. You may be using the milieu of service, for example, to have an experience that you want to have, which may not specifically be about service--that is how it works.
QUESTION: I actually had a vision within the last couple of years where I was in a circle and I heard a tape recording of my voice telling me what my task was, or what my life purpose was, which was that I want to know where God dwells. So that would be an example of what you just said.
MICHAEL: Right, and exploring service would be a useful way to answer that question.
QUESTION: That's right.
MICHAEL: It is not the only conceivable way, but it works, and if it works, your essence is fine with it. There is no right or wrong way to do your life task. There are usually a number of approaches that are satisfactory. Sometimes your essence isn't even sure if the direction you are going in is going to work or not, and says, in effect, "Let's check this out and see."
The same is true for relationships. You may be considering getting involved in a long-term relationship with someone. He or she may not be someone your essence set up an agreement with before your life began, yet on an essence level you see possibilities in it, so you give yourself the slack to explore that for a while. In time, you both find out whether it is viable or not. Nothing has really been lost if it turns out not to be--it is not a waste. It is always useful to spirit to explore possibilities and see what happens. The whole universe learns and evolves through this.
QUESTION: So many people want to know exactly why they came into this life, for "this purpose," and you're saying that that's not the way it works.
MICHAEL: It may not be so specific and, in fact, they might be actually doing their life task as they are discovering what they think their life task is. Their exploration, itself, may facilitate the doing of the true task. However, it can be a mistake to think that an external activity is the life task because if it is not, but you think it is, and then it does not turn out to be so fulfilling or all encompassing as you thought it was going to be, it can be quite a let down. Just as if you think you are with your soul mate and then it turns out that he isn't perfect and you feel despondent because you thought it was going to be so inclusive of everything you wanted.
The soul is above and beyond anything specific it may be interested in doing in a particular lifetime. The soul is interested in having experiences. All experiences are potentially useful and interesting. Some of the experiences that were not planned turn out to be quite useful to essence. There is a place for spontaneity and much of life is improvised no matter how thoroughly you planned it ahead of time, because you cannot foresee the changing dynamics of the world with five billion plus people each making choices every day. Free will is intrinsic to sentients. If you do not have free will, you do not have the opportunity to make choices, and you do not grow.
QUESTION: Elizabeth Kubler-Ross changed how the world looks at death. Could that have been determined before she incarnated?
MICHAEL: Yes. Her task might have been to change how the world looks at death, or changing how the world looks at death might have given her a context for doing whatever her task was. What her soul got out of doing that may have been different from what it appeared to be on the surface. Or, it could be that she set it up quite specifically so that she would come to a new understanding of death and impart that to others. It can go either way.
If you are in the flow of your life, if you are in touch with your feelings--if you know what feels right and doesn't feel right--if you are moving with your intuition (this doesn't have to be perfect or 100% of the time, but in general), if you are aware of what you want, what you like, what interests you and act on that and you don't sell yourself short, you will probably end up doing your life task. Where people get into trouble is where they talk themselves into doing something because it sounds like a good idea, and it is not what they really want and they know it, and they get sidetracked. Sometimes it still works out, but often it doesn't.
QUESTION: So when it doesn't, then eventually there is a correction?
MICHAEL: There can be one if the person will allow it. Some people get stubborn and say, "Well, I made this choice, I have to stick with it." These are the people who, as they grow older, become hardened and bitter, and they created this themselves, for the most part. Flexibility is an excellent attribute for anyone who seeks to be on the path.
QUESTION: You implied that some of the same principles that apply here continue to apply beyond the physical. For example, you said you were learning as well as serving, too. There are many parallels between the nonphysical and physical planes. Is that true?
MICHAEL: That is very true. What is different, principally, about the physical and the nonphysical is the body. The physical body is the center of physical existence. The mortality of that body and its built-in instinctive traits give you a very specific learning game.
For instance, there is very little fear beyond the physical plane. There is some fear on the lower astral which is a holdover for the most part from the physical. Fear exists as a means to make sure that the body will do what it needs to do to survive. That is the true value and purpose of fear. But when higher consciousness, sentient consciousness, is brought into an animal body, all sorts of other things become associated with the survival instinct. So, for example, if you have a chief feature of arrogance you may believe that if people criticize you, you will die. This is not something animals believe. Animals know that their survival instinct is limited to issues of physical survival.
Your consciousness as a human being springs out of the body. It is attached to the body. You also bring higher consciousness down from your essence, but it does not obliterate the issues that being in the body offers. This is useful because as you advance in the physical plane university you get opportunities to test yourself to see if you can love even when you are afraid. This strengthens the soul's all around knowledge of love, which is carried on to higher planes. Once you are in the higher planes, you don't need that particular lesson any more. You learn about love in different ways but you are still having lessons.
QUESTION: Are there higher planes guiding your planes?
MICHAEL: Yes, there are. However, their guidance is usually less direct because we are able to help each other so much. This is not to imply that you are children and we are adults, but to make an analogy: All children need some older people around to offer them some guidance who have already gone through those stages of development and who understand it, whereas adults are more self-sufficient. However, they still sometimes need support from their peers, just not as much.
QUESTION: I feel that we on the physical plane are also moving in the direction of more peer support rather than from "higher" to "lower."
MICHAEL: We think you are referring to the soul age shift. Currently, humanity is late level young, on average, but you can sense the mature soul cycle approaching. Mature soul planets experience far more community, connection, and support. The young soul cycle is about self-sufficiency, but when it goes to an extreme it becomes alienation, and this has happened. So humanity is in particular need of the balm that the coming mature soul cycle provides. The emphasis will be far more on helping each other rather than doing it yourself because you will have already mastered doing it yourself. You might take a look at mature soul countries that already have a tradition of helping each other out more; they have more family orientation as well. They may not have as much money as young soul countries but they might have a better quality of life all around.
QUESTION: What is a mature soul country?
MICHAEL: Mexico and a number of European countries, for example, are mature. To illustrate, Scandinavian governments tend to be more socialistic. We are not advocating socialism, but they are not adverse to spending money to make sure that everyone gets health care. You notice what a struggle that is in this country. In a mature soul country it would be at least considered more than it has been here. It is not so much altruism; it is simply understanding that we are all in this together and that community feels good. You had more community in infant and baby soul cultures as well. You had the tribe and the closely knit small towns. However, the nature of community then was more either about survival or about the rules, the structure--it was more external. The young soul cycle is also more external. The mature soul cycle and the old soul cycle are more about the internal. Mature soul community building provides not only support for external needs but support for the emotional process by connecting person to person in a meaningful way. It would not preclude creating art, music and beauty for the inner nurturance of its participants. Within 50 to 100 years this will be much more prevalent on earth than it is now. It is quite useful to alert people to the fact that this is coming because they can be ready for it and draw it in earlier.
In the current young soul cycle, particularly with this extreme alienation, people are realizing that they are not getting their own needs met. If people who have more materially than others go out and take care of people without getting anything back from that, it might assuage some of their guilt, but it won't really be satisfying. Community is what is satisfying: people taking care of each other because that is just what you do in community. When you need something, you receive, and when you have something to give, you give it--it is not a big deal, and it feels good. Community will feel better for just about everyone, no matter what the soul age is, because the average soul age establishes the kind of culture you have, so the mature soul culture will be the framework for people of all soul ages.
This is not a utopia because as you begin to establish community, there is a lengthy process of figuring out how you can all work together and still respect individual needs and wants. It might take a couple hundred years to iron all that out before you have something fairly smooth.
QUESTION: When earth becomes an old soul planet, what will it look like?
MICHAEL: The population will probably be much decreased, and chances are that people would live simply. They will perhaps become tribal again but with high technology. There will be a lot of things that people will not need because of advances in technology. Communication and transportation needs will be efficiently handled, and things that are now costly will be inexpensive. Therefore, people will not need to work so much.
QUESTION: The mature soul cycle is more about community and working together, having peoples needs met--their own and those of others. Will the old soul cycle move again more into individuality?
MICHAEL: No, not so much individuality. The community is very important also in the old soul cycle. However, it tends to be more informal because people are at a point where they are able to make a lot of choices and they don't need as much structure. They don't need so many rules to make community work. Community in an old soul culture is especially tilted toward helping each individual flower. There would not be an educational system like the present one in which everyone pretty much gets the same cookie cutter education; it would be tailored to the essence, the needs, the interests, of the individual. The mature soul cycle educational system will become more that way but not as much as in the old soul cycle. Mature soul education will teach how to be a good member of the community in a less stifling way than young soul education, which tries to turn out cogs in a wheel.
QUESTION: So the mature soul cycle, in a sense, is more inclusive as opposed to more dualistic, either/or, or the same linear thinking. It sounds like it is more intuitive.
MICHAEL: Yes. It is beginning to be intuitive at this point but it is still structured. In a mature soul society, there are a lot of utopian experiments: "Let's try living together this way by this set of rules." There are more group marriages, for example, with rules about who can have sex with whom. Old soul societies tend to trust people to just do whatever they feel right about doing at the moment, with a lot fewer rules.
As soul age advances, people are increasingly capable of more responsibility, so societies tend to create situations that foster that. There is nothing more rigid than a baby soul society. Young soul societies can also be rigid where leaders set down the rules--young soul countries are often ruled by dictators. In a republic such as the United States, the majority is the "dictator" but there are still endless rules. Laws are proliferating, everyone trying to tell everyone else what to do all the time.
In mature soul societies, people try to get together and work things out more. They try to give more leeway to the individual but they still are struggling with how they can live together and connect without making the mistakes of the young soul society, in which individuality dominated so community suffered. Community has very much suffered in the United States, although some good has come out of that.
In the mature soul cycle, at least in the beginning, humanity is probably going to swing to an opposite extreme in which people would rather sacrifice the individual's right for the good of the community. Eventually humanity will discover that that is unnecessary, that the good of community is actually served by the good of the individual. However, there is the illusion that the individual must suffer for the good of the community, for example, financially: "You have to have less money individually so that the government can have more money and make sure that the community is taken care of." In the old soul cycle, it is likely that the government will become minor because individuals will know how to take care of themselves and each other in an organic way without all the rules; it just gets done.
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