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NYC Michael Speaks Live: The Art of Discipline [original date: Mar 25, 2012] Channel: Troy Tolley Edited for Clarity Transcribed by Eric Mielke [MEntity] We are here. We may ask you some questions that will ask of you an answer that may contribute to your understanding of the topic. So if there is somebody who wants to help document these responses, organize this now as we’re working to come through. [MEntity] Because of time constraints, we may have to limit our information today to the dynamics involved with the concept of Discipline. Troy has decided to call this the Art of Discipline, which is appropriate as we see anything that is involving a conscious effort or practice that leads to the evolution of whatever it is that you are practicing to be an art. [MEntity] Asking questions of us is even an art. It is something that evolves with practice. And so it is with your efforts toward Discipline. It takes practice and it evolves in terms of satisfactory results. [MEntity] So what we will do first is talk about Discipline and what that means in our terminology so that you can understand it differently – possibly differently – so that you can apply in a more useful way than you might be doing based on colloquial understanding or current societal understanding. But before we go into that we will ask you a few questions so that you can set yourself up for insight later. [MEntity] The first question we’ll ask you is “Who” – and when we say “who” here, we are speaking in terms of anybody, not necessarily someone you know. It could be a celebrity, but it would be somebody active in your life in some way. So first, “Who in your life makes you laugh? Who in your life helps you to laugh at yourself? Who in your life brings levity to your challenges, indirectly or directly?” [Answer] We can say them out loud if we want to for fun. Anybody interested in that? Well, I will pick people from the room, because Troy and Nick both make me laugh very much and at myself quite a lot. Do I…I don’t have to pick one, it doesn’t really matter, right? [MEntity] That is correct. [Comment] Okay [Answer] Oh I’m next? This is so sad, the only thing that makes me laugh is my cat. [Comment] I don’t think that’s sad at all. [MEntity] We will encourage you to think into a human circle of options. This could be a celebrity even. [MEntity] You are not on the spot, these are questions that, if you cannot answer now, or you feel on the spot, you can come back to or think as we continue. [Answer] I have coworkers I guess that, you know, we laugh, and, you know, we have levity. [Answer] For me, it’s my sister. [Answer] I wrote “Cyprus, my mother, Troy, myself, Kathy Griffin and Lucille Ball. Lucille Ball’s dead. [Comment] She is dead. [MEntity] Being dead or being alive is not a requirement, as long as they are active. And in this case, recordings or episodes certainly can still help to fulfill that. [Comment] Lucille Ball does make me laugh. [Comment] I was just saying today that Cyprus makes me laugh. I was telling Mark. Especially when she’s in distress. 6:50 [MEntity] Our next question for you, because we know the time is limited, “Who in your life is there no matter what.” [Answer] I pick the same two people. [Comment] Who are the two people? [Comment] You and Troy. [MEntity] Whether you are on good terms, bad terms, ups and downs, and even if that person is not currently active in your life, it is still someone who is there, that if you had to you could contact. You know where he or she is, you know how to contact them, and you know that you can. [Comment] Well, I may have to take Troy off my list in that regard then. (laughter) [Answer] I would say my father. [Comment] Me too. [Comment] Nicki? Paragraph? [Answer] I wrote “my mother, Cyprus, Troy, Christina, and my sister.” If I needed her, I know she’d be there. [Comment] With a switchblade out. [Comment] Oh yeah. [MEntity] Our next question would be, “Who or what circumstances tend to push your buttons, tend to agitate you?” [Answer] I’m gonna pick Troy and Nick! (laughter) [Comment] Circumstances… [Comment] Oh Mark… [Comment] It’s my turn to write a paragraph. [MEntity] Or put another way, “Who or what circumstances pushes you into discomfort at times.” [Answer] Um, I still might go with Troy and Nick, but also work. I get very stressed at work. But, Nick’s finding humor in my stress level earlier does not help with my life, does not make my stress level better. So, I’m sticking with what I have. [MEntity] Of course, these answers may change as you continue to explore these concepts, but this is a start. [Answer] That would be my job as well; the unstable, disfunctional company I work for. [Comment] Bobby? [Answer] I’m going with circumstances, and I said “being taken advantage of or being manipulated,” pushes my buttons. [Comment] Nicki? [Answer] I’m still thinking. Now I feel under pressure, I’ll just say that I wrote, “the neighbors lack of consideration, things not being good enough, people being really selfish and inconsiderate on the train,” really drives me crazy. That’s just…I’m sure there’s more, but that’s what I thought of. [MEntity] We will move on and we will come back to these. 10:25 [MEntity] First we will talk about Discipline. As you know, we like to share our perspective of concepts as a spectrum from positive to negative in terms of polarities. Discipline can be described as a polarity or spectrum, with polarities of encouragement as the positive pole and reinforcement as the negative pole. [MEntity] Keeping in mind that most of what passes for Discipline in current culture and even in past culture has been on the reinforcement side of things. Often, it is negative reinforcement, such as punishment. But there is also positive reinforcement, such as rewards. If you do something, you will be rewarded. If you don’t do something, you will be punished. Most people tend to then keep Discipline out of their lives, or at least resist the concept of Discipline, because of that emphasis of the negative pole. [MEntity] As you know, the negative pole, for our students who are familiar with our terminology, describes the more limited end of the spectrum, the more restricted end, the more focused end. [Question] Reinforcement is the negative pole you said? [MEntity] Yes. [MEntity] Therefore, when Discipline is being experienced from that negative pole, or taught from that negative pole, or brought into the life from that negative pole, it will tend to be something that you do not enjoy. Not always, some people do enjoy that: the rewards or the punishments. And especially in a Baby and Young soul paradigm, that end of the spectrum tends to work very well. If you are afraid, you will do what you are told to do. If you are rewarded, you will do what you are told to do. And so on. [MEntity] But as the soul grows older, this no longer works, and you would rather just stay away from the concept of Discipline unless you are told otherwise that it can work in your favor from the positive pole. And so what works better for the older soul is encouragement. There is no reward other than the experience itself. You do it because you want to do it. You do it because it evolves you. You do it because it moves you closer to whatever you were aiming for, rather than walking a tightrope between reward and punishment. [MEntity] Discipline is a position in your support circle of twelve, which we will not go into here, but is a familiar concept for our longterm students, and one that can be explored in our recordings or teaching elsewhere. [MEntity] There are twelve positions in your life that are always present as a form of support for you. These positions are played by other fragments who are active in your life. When you resist those positions, when you keep them from being fulfilled, when you do not allow the familiar fragments to step in and play those roles for you, then circumstances tend to fulfill those roles. [MEntity] As Discipline is basically a process of learning how to choose, then what will tend to happen, if you do not have a person in your life who is being encouraging or helping to provide structure, then you will tend to find yourself in circumstances that will push your buttons, that will challenge you, that will push you into a position where you become acutely aware of the process of choice. [MEntity] And we have used a simplistic example of standing in line behind somebody who is taking their time counting out their pennies and their coupons, and the frustration of standing and waiting. In that moment of agitation, you are experiencing the position of Discipline active in that moment. You are now in a position to make the choice to leave the line, to speak up and cause a scene, or to simply patiently wait. So the experience in those instances is an experience of acute awareness of the process of choice. [MEntity] For a lot of older souls, this is the only Discipline they have, because it is a passive form of Discipline. It just shows up, and it pushes your buttons, and it keeps you acutely aware of that process of choice. Those who are the least disciplined tend to have the most agitated experiences. Or those who have passively accepted the negative pole of Discipline will tend to draw those experiences in, so that it is always black and white, negative reinforcement or positive reinforcement. [MEntity] Do you understand so far? [Answer] Yes. 17:35 [MEntity] So to bring your consciousness to the process of Discipline means becoming active in the process of choice. Keep in mind that the whole point of Discipline and its reason for being in your support circle is because it is the very thing that helps to support your experience of freedom. [MEntity] Freedom and Discipline do not exist without each other. There is no such thing as freedom without structure. If you think about freedom without structure, you are thinking about a person free-falling. Yes that person can flail about as freely as they would like, but that is not quite the idea of freedom that most people think of when they are seeking freedom or would like to experience it. There must be something to hang on to, there must be structure, there must be parameters. [MEntity] So Discipline helps to shape the space in which you experience freedom, to shape the space and the time in which you experience freedom. This is why it is so important. When you do not have that structure, then you do not even recognize most of the time that you are so free, that you are capable of that freedom or the experience of that freedom. [MEntity] We will go further in this context to describe freedom as not being a slave to your emotions, not being a slave to time, not being a slave to your environment. In other words, Discipline frees you to make a choice that overrides anything else that you would normally find to be controlling you, such as your emotions or your anxiety. [MEntity] The circuit that must be understood for Discipline to work well in your life, begins by understanding that Discipline is an external process first and foremost. Discipline does not start internally. It works its way inward. Therefore, it takes your active effort in the world external to your consciousness to begin that process of Discipline, to begin that process of shaping the space and the time for your freedom. It is an active process. [MEntity] Once you have put into practice that external component, it begins to then become internalized so that it is no longer an effort. It is a part of you. It becomes an internal process. This is often seen by those who are wishing to become more fit and the process of exercising or putting into effect a routine of exercising. It does not happen from within. You must go to the gym. You must stand up. You must get up and move. You must take those steps first. Then it becomes a part of you. [MEntity] There are some concepts that start from within and then become more evident externally. In this case, it is something that starts externally and becomes an internal reality. But you must take those steps to do as a way of implementing Discipline. And when you do that, in general, it must come through the process of encouragement, not necessarily reinforcement through reward or punishment. [MEntity] However, in the same way that concepts that you would like to bring into your life anew begin internally or externally, so do the negative poles of a concept have to be processed first before moving into the positive pole. So when you begin the process of Discipline, when you begin the effort, you will begin from the end of reinforcement. You will have to have a sense of reward and punishment at the beginning. [MEntity] It usually works better for the older soul to use a reward reinforcement. So that if, let’s say, you are interested in exercising, that if you do your exercises for the day, you get to have a treat. This is positive reinforcement. This is not where you would like to stay, because then if there are no treats for that day, you may not implement the Discipline. [MEntity] So you must move into encouragement. And by encouragement, again we mean doing it for the sake of doing it. It is its own reward. And that means that when you go to exercise, you start to recognize that it is a value in itself. It is the treat, or whatever it is you are disciplining yourself to do. 25:12 [MEntity] Discipline is — we were originally speaking about it as a circuit — a circuit between the emotional and moving centers, or the inspirational and the action. These two components are the energy that must be in motion for Discipline to continue. In most cases, the reason you seek the process of Discipline is because something has inspired you to do so. You would like to lose weight, you would like to become fitter, you would like to whatever it is that would require Discipline. You are inspired to do so, and then you must take the action. And as you take the action, then the inspiration will show up again in different levels. And that cycle will continue. The more you do, the more you are inspired. [MEntity] That is very important to understand if you are going to actually practice the art of Discipline. It does not happen just because you are inspired. You must do. And just because you do, or rather when you do, the inspiration will become amplified. As that becomes amplified, your action becomes amplified and easier. Keeping that cycle going helps you to stay disciplined. [MEntity] This is supported by…let’s use a visual of a triangle so that at the foundation of your Discipline is action. That is the most important element of Discipline is the action. You must do even when you do not want to do. At the top of the pyramid or the triangle is the inspiration, because this is what you are aiming for. This is why you are implementing the Discipline in the first place. However, the sides could be described as being supported by the intellect and the assimilation, or the expression and the neutral. [MEntity] What this means is, in the process of the cycle of being inspired and doing – amplifying your inspiration, amplifying your doing – you must have some sort of plan, and that would be where the intellect comes in. You must have a plan. If you are going to practice the art of Discipline, it helps to have steps. It helps to have a path mapped out. This path can change. This path can be updated. It can be flexible, but you must have at least a few steps in mind as to where to go. If you do not have this, then you will not be able to reach, or continue, or sustain that cycle between the inspiration and the action. [MEntity] The assimilation side of the triangle is your comprehension or your digestion of the experience. In other words, when you get to step two, you must recognize it, you must assimilate, omprehend what you have done, give yourself credit, allow yourself to enjoy that process. Or, if you’re still at the negative end of that Discipline, allow yourself that reward. The assimilation side can be said to be the flexible side. You have to have that along with the structure or the plan. [MEntity] Are all of you following this? [Answer] Yes. 30:15 [MEntity] When we asked you your questions earlier, we asked them because in the circle of support that we have as part of our teaching, there are twelve positions. That circle of twelve is basically groups of three, because one of the ways – or rather the only way – in which evolution occurs is through the triadal process, which is also why we described the pyramid or the triangular visual so that we can make this point: that it is a process of three. There are always three sides or three elements that perpetuate or evolve a process. [MEntity] So in the circle of twelve, your Discipline support position is flanked by a Humor position and an Anchor. If you wish to implement Discipline in your life, it can help you to recognize where the Humor is in your life – or the sources of Humor in your life – and the Anchor in your life. This helps you when you are having difficulty remaining disciplined. [MEntity] Those support positions, your Humor position and your Anchor position, will help you to laugh at yourself, or to laugh. When the difficulties of implementing Discipline may seem overwhelming or daunting, turn to your Humor as a way to not lose your footing. This would be the equivalent of the intellectual side or the expression side of the same triangular visual. You must have Humor as a part of that process for you to truly be disciplined, to truly be experiencing it as an art. [MEntity] And you must have an Anchor. The Anchor is that neutral space that you can turn to that you know will not judge you, or that if the person does judge you, is doing so as a form of support in some way. So whoever was identified as Anchor can be turned to, not necessarily to be actively involved in your endeavors, but simply turned to to talk to, to ask for advice, or even to be thought of as an example to help you keep your focus. [MEntity] The Discipline itself would be the base of the triangle. So those circumstances that push your buttons, let those help in being supportive of your capacity for not being ruled by your emotional reactions, not being ruled by reactions at all, freeing yourself from those moments where the process of choice has become extremely acute. [MEntity] As you are implementing the art of Discipline, because that is the base of your triangle, so to speak, that is going to be what you will see the most, that is what you are going to come across the most: the challenges to your capacity to choose. So it is in those moments that you, in making a conscious effort, can say, “Yes I will get up off the couch even though I do not feel like it, because I am not ruled by how I feel. I am ruled by my capacity to choose. I am free to choose despite how I feel. I am free to choose despite the limitations I experience in terms of time or in terms of environment.” You can work around it, you can work with it, but you are not ruled by it. [MEntity] As we said earlier, at the top of your triangle was the inspiration. In this case that would be you. Where Humor, Discipline at the bottom, and Anchor on the side, you are at the top. You are what is being supported. And ultimately you are the inspiration, because inspiration, which is different from Discipline, is something that is generated from within. However much you may think it is external because you see it outside of you and something else inspires you, it is because it is a reflection of something that is potential within you, that you’ve already recognized as a part of you. [Comment] I think that’s one of the greatest things that you’ve said. I remember that from before. [MEntity] Yes. Inspiration is never generated externally. It is reflected externally, but it is always a reflection of that which is already internal, or a part of your capacity or potential. Not always is it understood. For instance, there may be an inspiring artist that you love or find to be encouraging, but it does not necessarily mean you are supposed to replicate that person’s art or path, but to find what it is within that is artistic, for example. 37:48 [Question] I have a question. So, I understand that Discipline is the base of the triangle. So your Discipline position, like who is in that position for you, how does that apply too? [MEntity] If you have identified an actual person…we started off our questions for you in terms of the Discipline base of the triangle, asking you about circumstances, because those are most likely what you will comes across as you are trying to implement your efforts towards Discipline. It’ll be more circumstantial. However, if you know of a person who is in your life who helps to provide you with structure – who helps remind you of the importance of what you are doing, helps to remind you of the point of what you are doing, helps to remind you of the next steps – that individual can be turned to then for help in keeping your choices in order. [Question] Well, I already know Nick plays my Discipline position. He’s just a vacuuming gestapo mostly. So how does that really apply? He is a button-pusher, that’s for sure. [MEntity] We used that angle on that question because, as we said, that is what you will come across when there is no one around. Often it is because of those circumstances that you do not make the choices that you wish would contribute to your Discipline, but rather you fall out of Discipline because of circumstances. So it is important to understand that it is not just a person, but circumstances in this case that you will have to contend with in that process of Discipline. However, if you do know your Discipline position, that would be someone you can turn to to ask you to help make a plan, to help you to stay on track, to be your accountability partner, for instance. Do you understand? [Comment] I think. [MEntity] So it is not necessarily that they will push your buttons. That is the circumstantial side. However, the person who plays that role in your life can be the person who helps bring the structure to your plans, to help keep you on track and to help keep you responsible and accountable. [Comment] Okay. [MEntity] So that might be the person you confide in to say “This is what I plan to do, can you help me stay on track? Can I report in to you?” [MEntity] If you look at what we described, these are the elements that are what makes certain organizations successful in their endeavors because they implement these things…such as weight watchers or other fitness programs. [MEntity] We use those as examples because they are quite difficult for a lot of people to implement and they epitomize to a great extent the examples of the obstacles to the art of Discipline. But they are implementing these elements that we have described and that is why they can be successful if the person who is pursuing them stays on track. They may not describe their program in quite the same way, but all of those elements are still there. [MEntity] Understanding this or hearing what we have shared with you today, is just the beginning of putting into effect the art of Discipline. We understand that this is an intellectual sharing and a sharing of information, and you may take it and set it aside and forget about it. But if you take it and work with it, if you look at the components that we have shared with you and keep in mind the polarities and keep in mind that cycle of inspiration and action, you can accomplish or aim towards pretty much anything that you wish to accomplish or aim for, even as an old soul who is quite tired. [Personal Q and A section omitted due to privacy] 43:11 [MEntity] This prompts us to add one more element: that the greatest pitfall for all of you in the process of implementing the art of Discipline is comparison. You can defeat yourself faster than you can even begin if you start from a place of comparison. It is very difficult to sustain the cycle of inspiration and action if you are comparing yourself to those who are already successful or who exemplify your aim. It is one thing to see them as inspiration and quite another to compare yourself. So we want to point that out that comparison is not necessary as a part of your process [MEntity] For instance, in your pursuit of being a singer, if you compare yourself to other people, or compare yourself as to your age versus another, or your style versus or another, or your anything versus another, you are whittling away, chiseling away at your foundation. And you more often than not, will undermine your effort if you use that process of comparison. [MEntity] The other thing your comment prompted was a question to ask each of you that, in our description of Discipline, “How often do you feel you have used the negative end for your life versus the positive end?” [Answers omitted] [MEntity] You have just pointed out what we shared at the beginning of our session with you. Your culture tends to identify Discipline as a reward/punishment system, whereas the positive pole of Discipline is doing it for the sake of doing it, for the pleasure of it. It is not something that is necessarily tied to any reward or punishment. Therefore, it is important to understand that Discipline is always, and always will be, and always has been, a part of your life. It is that spectrum between reinforcement and encouragement. [MEntity] We will say that as you work through the spectrum of Discipline, it starts from the negative pole, from the end of reinforcement. So when you are being raised, it is important to understand cause and effect. It is important to understand the reward and the punishment. That is a healthy way to introduce children to the concept of Discipline. [MEntity] As you grow older and you begin to develop your own sense of your capacity to choose, then you must be able to choose or make choices based on your own system, your own compass, your own desires, your own parameters. If you fall back on a reward/punishment system that was defined by somebody else, you have locked yourself into somebody else’s paradigm for your life. It is not necessarily that you have to get rid of that, but you must grow beyond it. You can include it, but it does not have to be the same exact structure. [MEntity] For instance, the things that were important for you to understand as being right and wrong as a child become second nature as an adult. It makes sense to you that you don’t put your hand in the fire. It is not a matter of reward or punishment, it is simply just true. [Comment] The reward is not being burned. [MEntity] However if you live in fear of fire, because you were taught to be afraid of it as a way to protect you, then you are locked into a pattern that is not necessarily helpful or healthy. So as you grow older, you must eventually – and we say older not only in terms of physical growth, but your essence’s growth as well – you must eventually move toward the positive pole so that you are making choices based on encouragement rather than fear. [MEntity] Discipline is a part of your life every single day, whether you are aware of it or not. In the same way that Humor is a part of your day every single day, whether you are aware of it or not. It is always there. All of the positions that we describe as your support circle are there every single day: Love, Knowledge, Compassion, all of the twelve support positions. And for the sake of this session, Humor, Discipline, and Anchors are there every single day, whether you recognize them or not. 49:18 [Comment] I just want to bring up one other thing. I think I’m understanding it correctly, but I don’t think it can be emphasized enough the importance of that at some point in one’s development, even when you first start learning right from wrong, positive and negative reinforcers, whatever…but at some point along the journey if you’re not told you can choose, or if you are not encouraged to choose, or if you don’t learn to choose, I think maybe you’ll never develop a natural affinity towards something. [Comment] For me, case in point, I’m a person who doesn’t necessarily like to read, and hearing what they were just saying about you start off with our parents giving you these sets of values. I wasn’t necessarily read to as a child, but I was very intellectual and I read. But really all through high school, and even up through college, I would say ninety-five percent of the time I read because it was required reading for school and for education. So I didn’t read. I mean, I read comic books. [Comment] But I read because someone else was telling me there was something to be gained from reading, and I never developed this innate love for reading, which as an adult…you know, all my friends, all my coworkers: “What’d you do this weekend?” “Oh I went and got to read my new book.” And I’m like, “That is the last thing I would want to do is pick up a book.” That’s like the last form of like therapy or pleasure for me. And it’s because, at some point along the way, when I should have realized, “you can now turn it over and you can choose to read,” I never made it a choice to read. It was always about positive and negative reinforcement. [Comment] And so I think that’s very important, in terms of Discipline: to realize or to have someone share that with you at some point, that you can now start making the conscious choice to love things or not love things. [MEntity] Your point is valid, and that is part of the growing up process, especially for those who go through the 4th internal monad of developing their own identity. That is a part of a rite of passage in every life. If an individual chooses to take that rite of passage on, they will be able to go beyond their programming. As a part of the perpetuation of your species, your first many years, up through the 3rd internal monad, you are receptive to imprinting, because knowledge has to be shared with you as a way of evolving the species. Everything that is known is then programmed into you, and then what you do with that is up to you. [MEntity] Many people do not go beyond their programming. They live within the confines of what has been taught to them. When you go through the 4th internal monad, you go through a process of keeping what works for you and expanding beyond that through your own capacity to choose, through your own capacity the shape yourself and to move forward in your life. [MEntity] And so your point is valid and is relevant to the topic. That is Good Work. [Comment] Heh. Score for you. Now it’s ten after five. [Personal Q and A omitted due to privacy] [Comment] It’s twenty-five after. [MEntity] With that we then will conclude and say goodbye to each of you. [All] Goodbye. Thanks. [MEntity] Goodbye.

This was originally posted on 6/17/08. Thanks to the hard work of CHERYL for making this possible so quickly! Based on the combined videos of my recorder and Cheryl's phone, we were able to transcribe the session as best we could for your reference and archiving. A document version is attached to this post for your convenience, as well. I have taken the liberty to add or change a very few parts of the session that just did not flow well or make much sense. The spoken word is so different from the written word, so I apologize for the meandering way I channel vocally. I tried to clean it up a bit here. I also forgot to bring up after the session that I KNEW something was mis-channeled; that something had come through that was misinformation, or a mistake, but not until I saw the video did I realize what it was. I've corrected it in this transcript, but it was when Michael was giving examples relating the Goals to the Alive Factors and they related Server/Change to Submission... it should have been Re-evaluation. Nothing huge, but it was still some bad channeling I wanted to correct. I am posting the fairly raw transcript here before posting publicly because I just wanted you to have it asap. I will post it publicly later this week. Enjoy! MICHAEL SPEAKS Mid-Atlantic Region Gathering June 14th, 2008 VIDEO/AUDIO TRANSCRIPT Courtesy of OceanCheryl MICHAEL: We are here, and hello to each of you. Please bear with us as we come through because it takes a little bit of time for us to get a smooth flow going through Troy, but it should be cleared up as we progress. So again, hello to all of you. We understand from Troy that the question posed to us, or the topic posed to us, is that of differentiating between "living your life," and "being Alive." And as with a great many words in our system, in our philosophy, there are nuances that are worth exploring, and this would be one of them: the difference between "living your life" and "being alive." And as with several parts of our teaching, we can put it into a system that can be used by you as a reference so that what we share with you today is within reach of your daily living. And as with a great amount of our teaching, it may or may not seem unfamiliar to you. For most of you it will feel rather familiar, as we put it into a system of seven frames of reference. So first we will define what we would have as the definitions for "living your life" and "being alive." We could say that "living your life" is simply maneuvering through your days in reaction to stimulation. When you are simply living your life, and we are saying this not in a way that is to describe it as "less than" or unappealing, or bad; it is simply a different way of living, and it is a very common way of living, but when you are simply living your life, you are living in states of reaction, for the most part, through being stimulated by events, people, or things. Your choices become less empowering, and more towards the side that we described as reaction, more passive. You react to things that happen in your life and you build upon this. What can happen as you live your life is that you build a foundation based on these things, and then it is very difficult to get out of those patterns. So what we will describe to you as ways "to be Alive" are very simple redirections in your day--to--day living, so that maybe you can make a change that you would prefer. Because while it is quite fine to live your life based in reactions and stimulation, it can get tiring. It can be difficult. And if you don't prefer those, there are other options for you to choose. To "be Alive," then, may be obvious to you in that your day-to-day living would just be a matter of conscious choosing. What you do with your day is your choice. How you respond to the events, and people and things in your life is a matter of response, not reaction. You are present in those experiences, and so you are "Alive." You are experiencing; you are not avoiding. If you are afraid, you embrace that fear as a form of information, and you do not let it dictate your choices for you. So a very simple way of defining "being Alive" is simply being able to consciously make your choices in a direction that you would prefer. Now what we'll do is describe some areas that we feel need to be in place to understand the difference between living and being alive. And the first place we'll start is with the concept of Change. In order for you to feel Alive, to be Alive, change is an important part of existence. It is an important part of being on the physical plane, or on any plane for that matter. Things change. To be alive is to be open to this change, to allow the change, to make an effort to do things differently than what you have been doing, if things are not working. So in order to be alive, to feel alive, allowing for making the effort for change can go a long way, a lot farther than you might have anticipated. When change happens TO you in a way that seems like it is an imposition, you still have the ability in those moments to make conscious choices in those matters, to respond to the change rather than to react to it. But what most of the students that we know do in order to feel alive, which in reality is simply living, is do the counterpart of Change, which is Crisis. In order to feel alive, many of you create, find, attract crisis situations into your life on a regular basis, and this keeps you feeling alive. Whether you like that idea or not, it is an exciting prospect for Essence to have the sense of being alive, whether it is in that form or in the other form, whether it's in crisis, or in active change, or conscious change. But many of you default to allowing life to change only during moments of crisis. As we said at the beginning, there is nothing wrong or bad in that, but it does help you to look at the spectrum of your days in your life to see whether you're living from a matter of default, where crisis is what propels you forward in your life, or whether you are at least countering that with active efforts to make change and conscious choices as a form of direction. As we go through these, if you feel you would like to make a comment or ask a question, feel free to do so. The next area that we feel brings an aliveness to you, to your life, is Beauty. And by this, we mean the ability to look at your life and see the bigger picture, to be able to look at your patterns of existence and find the beauty in them, to be able to understand where you are in relation to your past, and your anticipations of the future. Seeing your life as a tapestry that was created by you, and not just imposed on you. Keeping in mind that the more active your choices are, the more likely your life will look a little prettier, or beautiful, than those who are a little more passive in choices, and living from states of reaction. Often, when living from that state, life doesn't look as beautiful. But at any moment you can shift your perception to find the Beauty by looking at the patterns, looking at what has led up to where you are, and making your active choices from there. This does not just include the bigger picture of your life, but the bigger picture of other people's lives, looking at the beauty in the world as it is, regardless of war, regardless of poverty, regardless of health issues. This does not mean you do not care, but that you find a way to see the beauty, and this can be tough for many of our students, to find a way to see the beauty in the hardships that some or many fragments endure for a lifetime. And by beauty we do not mean that you are literally seeing something pretty, but finding an appreciation for the awe in how it's all ultimately working. When you are not able to make your conscious choices, and live your day--to--day state from a place of being alive, then this particular area that we refer to as "finding the Beauty in life" defaults to Chaos. And this is where you start to break down the patterns that are in your life into what could be termed ugliness, or confusion, feeling as if life is happening TO you, instead of FROM you in your day-to-day living. When you have defaulted to reaction and stimulation, it looks like life is a mess. It looks like the world is a mess, or that others are a mess. Acknowledging that you may not grasp the bigger picture is the first step towards being able to see the bigger picture. Allowing room though, in your consciousness, to trust that you are part of a pattern that you have created, or a part of a pattern that you are interpreting from your experiences, can help you then to move more towards seeing the beauty, and feeling alive again. But most of you know what we are speaking of: where you look at the world and think that it has more symptoms of chaos than beauty. But the truth is that there is beauty in any pattern, when you look at it from a wide enough perspective. The next area that we feel might contribute to your understanding of what it means to be alive is to choose and create Freedom; in your day-to-day living. Each of you requires a certain amount of Freedom for you to feel alive. If that freedom becomes restricted, it can feel unpleasant. This freedom applies to many levels of you, of course, your spiritual freedom, your intellectual freedom, your emotional freedom, and your physical freedom. Understanding what it means for you to be free, or to have a free amount of choice in your day-to-day living, is important. But what many of you do is fall to the default of freedom, and experience Boredom. Because with freedom... most of our students have come to learn that with freedom comes a need for structure. They go hand in hand; they are not mutually exclusive. With freedom comes a sense of responsibility, a sense of discipline. When most fragments start to create a certain amount of freedom within the life, it becomes terrifying, because then issues of responsibility come into play. Issues of discipline, self--discipline (which simply means a heightened awareness of your choice making process) comes into play, and then what you do is you fall into the default structures, which we could describe as routines, repetitive patterns, or Boredom. You check out, and you let life fall into its own shape or a momentum that you've already started, and this can make you feel less alive. In order to break that you simply need to define what it means for you to feel free in your day-to-day living, and then allow yourself the permission to create the structure required for that freedom to be in place. We will go through each of these quickly, but revisit them if you have questions at the end. The next area that we would describe as needing to be in place for you to feel alive is Love. This may seem obvious, but we are not talking about sentimental attachments, we are talking about true embrace, true intimacy, being able to relate, to resonate to something beyond yourself, and allowing that resonance to come to you from other sources. When we are speaking of Love in this context we are talking about your relationships, your connections, to others... your embrace of differences, your embrace of self. What most of you do as a way to feel alive in your day-to-day living is to sort this experience and reduce it down to what we would describe as Contrast, or comparisons. So in order to feel loved, you compare yourself. You stimulate yourself with the idea of who is better and who is worse, how you are better and how you are worse. And then you feel as if you have an idea of what's lovable and what's not lovable. This, of course, inherently divides you from parts of your life, parts of yourself, other people, and it can become quite debilitating when you are constantly comparing. The next area that we would describe as being needed in place for you to feel alive is Truth. And by this we mean that you have a true form of communication happening in your life; that you are able to listen. That you actually take a moment to comprehend your exchanges, your interactions, what's happening in your life. To look at your perspectives more closely, rather than dismissing them. Because we have seen many students decide what is true without examining that decision. And quite often, when you do not like what you see as the truth, you start to break down your circles of communication, so that you can keep the truth that you have decided is true, without getting feedback to contradict it. So the default version of truth, the default that many of you resort to as a form of feeling stimulated, is to simply return to Entertainment. And we call this Entertainment because it is quite often a form of escape. It is a form of checking out from the reality of Truth into places that either distract you from the truth, or help you to put into place a truth that you find more appealing. It could also be described as lying. But in your day-to-day living, so that you could see where your default behavior falls, entertainment could be the easiest way to describe this. This does not mean that if you enjoy entertainment that you are escaping, but that in terms of being stimulated versus being alive, or feeling alive, many of you substitute Entertainment as a form of reality, as a form of truth, as a form of communication. In fact many of you will use entertainment as a medium for communication with others, so that you can talk about TV shows and the latest movie, without having to talk about what is happening in your life. Even the news could be deemed a form of entertainment that distracts you from the truth of your life, and the truth of reality, because what you see on the news does not reflect the entirety of reality. The next area that we would describe as needing to be in place for you to feel alive is to have a Vision. It is very important for people to feel as if they have a Vision of where things could go, possibilities, potentials, dreams if you will, although we wouldn't particularly leave it as just dreams... but a Vision. And by this we mean that you are able to see all the parts of your life and put it together in a way that it works for you as a resource for making happen what you want to happen next. So having vision, having clear vision, can help you to feel alive. What many of you do instead is default to one of the most destructive words that we have seen in language, which is Hope. And as many were shocked by our take on the word Faith, we would also put together similar responses to the word Hope. Many of you default to a form of Hope that things will get better, you Hope that someone will love you, you Hope that you can do what you want to do. Hope is a disengaged form of creating your life. It is a presumption that something else is going to make things better. It's a presumption that life happens TO you, and not FROM you. And the truth is, that it happens in both directions, but when you resort simply to Hope, you've left out your part. What we would suggest for some of you who use the word Hope is to move into a more empowering way of looking at your future, and possibly use the word Trust. We've always encouraged the word "Trust" because this is based on experience; it's based on its being time-tested, and it's personal. And we use the word Trust to describe the fact that you have had similar experiences or patterns in the past and you have survived them. You have made it through. So it is okay to trust that you will make it through again. This is more of an interactive approach to living your life; a more Alive approach, rather than simply sitting back and "hoping for the best." The last area that we would describe as needing to be in place for your sense of being alive is Spirit. Although there are many who would claim to be atheists, or rejecting of concepts of non-physical worlds, that does not need to be in place for a person to have Spirit in the life. By Spirit we mean that you recognize yourself as a part of something bigger, that you recognize yourself in others, as part of being a dynamic that, at this point, is not quite fully understood. It is a sort of surrender to the magnitude of the force that IS life. It is an embrace of the concept that, however much you would like to understand life, people, God, Essence, us, that it is truly, at this point, not completely able to be concluded in concept. So it could be said that to have Spirit in place is to have a sense of open consciousness beyond your personal philosophies. What many of you do (and we are going to make this more specific to our students) is that you'll default to a need for simple stimulation as you live your day-to-day [life], and you resort to what we would describe as the Supernatural. It must be exciting. There must be something supernatural, paranormal, and this is where you get your sense of Spirit, from this place; this playful, if you will, place of approaching Spirit. And as we said at the beginning, this is not bad. It is not a negative thing. But if you reduce the concept of Spirit, if you reduce the concept of your being a part of a bigger source, to the Supernatural, then you are constantly looking for proof, for something that we, at this point, have not seen capable of being proven. This does not mean that you cannot have your personal experience that allows you to validate your experiences; this is not what we are saying at all, but looking for proof of Spirit is quite often a failure, because they are very different dimensions of experience. So allowing room in your day-to-day life for Spirit, for the existing philosophies and perspectives and ideas and ideals, can allow you to feel more alive rather than simply living by looking for proof of Spirit around you. And we realize that we trudged our way through these concepts through our channel, but we will pause here before going into other layers of it to ask you if you have any questions regarding it. And if not, then we may have questions for you. NICK: I have a question. The concept of freedom for people who seem to really have a strong need for freedom in their lives, that's like a recurring theme beneath the freedom, do they tend to also have, or to fall back on, addictions? MICHAEL: Addictions can fall into place for most of these areas. It's not really exclusive to one or another. We are looking to see if there is anything that stands out, but we would have to say that it is not exclusive to the area of freedom, but that the type of addiction that might occur is usually specific to an area, of one of these areas. So if a person has a strong need for freedom and then falls into addiction, that may be a way for them to be finding structure. The addiction forces them into positions where others may intervene to create the structure, and redirect them into a way that brings them back to a place of responsibility and personal choice. So we can't say that it is exclusive to any area. Other addictions may be related to other areas that we could give examples for if there is a necessity for that. If not, does this answer your question? NICK: Yes. MICHAEL: Next question, if there are any. We will give you a moment to think it through. We don't want to put everybody on the spot. GLENN: I am curious to know, what would be the best method to determine how true our Truth is, or whether we are establishing a false Truth and defending that, or actually using a right method of finding Truth. MICHAEL: We would say that if you are bringing a sense of Truth to your days, then that sense of Truth needs no defense. That sense of Truth needs no escape. It need not be imposed. When a person has created a Truth, or has discovered a Truth, or has found an alignment with the Truth, or is sharing a Truth, there is simply no need for it to be defended. That is the clearest and easiest way that we can respond to that question. It does not mean that you have concluded the Truth, but that there is no need for you to protect it. There is no need for another person to accept it. There is no need for another person to understand it. That it is simply your Truth. That does not mean that it is going to be an ultimate Truth, because it's very difficult, as you know from working with our material, that there are various levels of Truth, and most of the time you are going to be dealing with personal Truths, which are not always going to be the same as everyone's around you. Personal Truths are simply that, your personal truths, but you can determine whether these are personal truths that are bringing you a sense of aliveness versus simply living, if you can ask the question, "Do I defend these or do I hide them?" And if you hide them or defend them, or avoid, or escape, then you are probably creating a deceitful approach to your life. You are simply moving into lies and entertainment. Do you understand? GLENN: Yes. MICHAEL: Any other questions? Well, what we can do now is point out another layer of the information that you might find helpful in terms of your overleaves, so that if you look at your role, or your Essence, and your casting, and find which of these particular areas [of aliveness] they match up with, which we'll get into in a moment, it can give you an idea of areas where you tend to default, and where you may have challenges in terms of simply living or being alive. The Servers or Server--cast fragments may have the most difficulty with Change, and defaulting to Crisis. It is very fruitful for many Servers or Server--cast fragments to feel as if they are saving the day, as if there is something being rescued, or challenging the resources of a Server to make things better, and so it can default to Crisis. Actively making choices for Change are inherent qualities for the Server because they CAN make things better, by their own definitions, but quite often this is prompted by Crisis situations. (note: Here Sandy has a fit of coughing, and Server Sheryl goes to get her a bottle of water, saying "here I am, jumping up again" as if to illustrate the point on cue. Michael smiles.) The Artisans or Artisan-cast among you may find Beauty as a form of strength, but also having difficulty with issues of chaos and overwhelm, and trying to control the patterns of life rather than observing and finding the Beauty in them. As we go through these, if you are of the roles, or the casting, you are welcome to chime in if these are resonating with you, or making sense to you, and you are welcome to ask for further details. The Warriors, or those who are Warrior cast, can have the strengths of providing Freedom through structure, but also defaulting to boredom, routine, and confinement. The Scholars or the Scholar-cast fragments resonate to the issues of Love, and for those of you who are Scholars or who know of Scholars, also know that there is a great deal of struggle with the issue of comparison, or contrast, gauging, and anticipating. Sages and the Sage cast, of course, will resonate to the issues of Truth, and possibly default to Entertainment, as we discussed already. Lies, self-deceit... and we don't describe those words in a way that is particularly as harsh as they sound, but they can be quite subtle, and very simple; that you tell yourself one thing about yourself, and try to prove this to others, or that you tell yourself something about others, and constantly look for evidence of this, and so forth. SANDY: How about telling yourself something about yourself, and then trying to prove it to yourself? MICHAEL: What is your question? SANDY: I was just wondering if that would be similar to what you were saying: if that would be a latent tendency for the Sage, to try to make it true? MICHAEL: If you are trying to make it true? this is a question that's not quite as specific as we... SANDY: Let me try to rephrase. You were saying that the Sage might have a tendency to tell themselves something about themselves and try to make other people believe it, and what I was wondering about was if there is the same tendency to try to make yourself believe it. MICHAEL: Yes, but, we want to make it very clear that there is a difference between trying to better oneself in one's own eyes, or to grow into a concept that one might have about one's self, but usually, if it's in the case that we think you are describing, then the self-deceit is much more difficult to sustain. And so yes, it's true that you can decide what's true about yourself, and then try to convince yourself of this, but we are looking at that, and it's very rare that it doesn't include trying to get others to believe it, so that you can [believe it, too]. Do you understand? It's usually not an isolated event. It's very difficult to lie to yourself without trying to find somebody to mirror that lie back to you. So it could be said that yes, that's a possibility, but it's a little more difficult and usually does include other people. If not, then it goes toward seclusion, isolation, avoidance, and distractions. The Priests and Priest cast, of course, resonate with the Visionary strengths in the world, and in life. Being able to see the potential, bypass logic in order to see how everything can come together as a resource for an idea to be implemented... but they are also the ones who'll be the first to tell you to have faith and Hope, and to blindly move forward in your life and "hope for the best". And the Kings and King cast, of course, resonate with Spirit and often default to a distraction with the Supernatural. And we can go into more details for any of these if any of you would like. Keeping in mind that we are speaking in terms of your role and your casting. If you would like to see where in that system you might have some strengths and some defaults, you can also translate your profile by looking at which axis or role your overleaves resonate with, and interpret it from there... which would be too complicated to interpret for everybody, but if you have a great amount, let's say, under the Server [category/column/axis], that resonates with the Server qualities, then you would also want to look at the issues of Change, Crisis, etc. So did all of this make sense to you, and do you see the differentiation in your own lives? Do you see your defaults? Do you see your strengths? And do you see the options that you might have in your day-to-day living to bring about a greater sense of Aliveness versus Simply Living? You are welcome to speak up. We know we have some Sages here. GLENN: Wouldn't the Goal be a factor in determining this search for truth, for being Alive? MICHAEL: Yes, it can be a factor, as well. We simply point out the Role and the Casting because they will always have a great deal of influence during a life. The Goal, and all of the other overleaves, will have equal influence, but what you can do is take each within a context and say that, for instance, if you have a goal of Re-evaluation or Growth, that you might have issues of Change and Crisis, or Vision and Hope. (We can go through all of the overleaves, but we think you can reference this later.) But within the context of a Goal, we remind you that a Goal does not necessarily describe you, or what you are; it describes the quality of life that you are extracting from the life, that you are looking for within the life to experience, and so if you have a Goal of Re-evaluation, you may be more inclined towards issues of Change and Crises, because it brings about experiences that will lend more to your Goal. SANDY: Michael, I am a Sage with Scholar casting, and from the beginning as you were describing the two sides, in each one, in each pair, I identified with one or the other, and I thought "Oh! Oh yeah, that's what I do! But I'm not a Server, I wonder why?" Then you went to Artisan, and on one side I identified with one more than the other, and I went "ok, why am I doing this?" It's like, I have all of these. Could you help me understand that? I mean, I know what you said about following the numbers and all that, but... MICHAEL: We suggest to you the cross-referencing [by Role/Casting/Overleaves] simply as a way to explore further, but all of these [factors for Aliveness] are relevant to all of you. It is not one area or another, although you may find yourself relating to one more than the other, we tried to put together a picture here that is a picture of an individual experiencing the whole of life. And these seven areas seem... [to offer a picture of what needs to be in place for bring about an Aliveness to the whole of life for everyone.] (battery died on the video and ended mid-channeling) END PART ONE BEGIN PART TWO (taken from video recorded as quickly as possible from Cheryl's phone) MICHAEL: .....to you as a form of helping to bring about a sense of wholeness and aliveness, and ask you a few questions as a form of bringing about doing things a little differently than usual, contributing to your first area of change. So, what we would ask is if any of you would like to share an idea that has come to you while listening to this, that you feel you would like to implement, for instance, starting tomorrow. What first came to mind to you to implement differently? SANDY: Ok, I'll go first. I would have to say that the first thing that really occurred to me that I really wanted to make a part of my life is to stop reacting as though life is something that just happens to me. I would really like to have a more positive attitude towards being in charge and making things happen but at the same time the only things that gets me scared of that is that I also feel its important when things don't go the way I planned, to be able to make the best of what is, and it's hard for me to understand how to reconcile those two things. MICHAEL: How to reconcile trying to create what you want, but allow room for ... Well, this goes back to what we described as simply control. There is a great difference between creation and control. If you look at your days, if you look at your life as something that needs to be controlled, then it will become painful when you lose control, when it's not something that you can manage. But when you look at your life as something that you are creating, what you do instead is that you are contributing to your days, you are participating in your days. You are not dividing yourself from the process as a way to control it, but you are shaping it, you are, for lack of a better word, creating it. When things do not go the way that you would like them to go, it is much like... and we usually do not speak in such poetic ways, but it is much like planting a seed, and having that [plant grow and the] flower bloom, you don't know exactly which direction it's going to grow, or how it's going to grow, or its strength, but your ability to respond to the needs of the moment is a form of creation. But to control a plant's growth, which is possible, we are not going to say that it's not, and it may not be the best analogy, but to control it is a form of monitoring that can become exhausting, and is a matter of stimulation and reaction. If it's going this way or that way, there's a reaction to it, but creation is the ability to respond to the moment's needs, if necessary. And we will also remind you to throw in looking at the spectrum that we have described in these seven areas and see what might help you in your situation, and in this case it might be to remind yourself of the concept of Spirit, that there are parts of this that you are not going to understand, and we are speaking from the lowest levels to the highest levels of it, when we say Spirit. Sometimes you just won't understand. This doesn't mean you can't continue trying to, it doesn't mean that you don't try, that you have to resign from trying to understand, but sometimes you won't, and sometimes you won't like what you've begun to understand fully, and the concept of Spirit can help you to recognize that it is a part of being Alive, is allowing room for those unknown factors. So do you see the difference between creation and control? SANDY: Yes. MICHAEL: And does this help you to look at a situation that may have gone awry, and see how responding to it is different from reacting to it? SANDY: Yes, very much. MICHAEL: Next question. CHERYL: I'm a scholar-cast warrior, and on the point of structure going to confinement, I've found the past few years, I've almost gone into a self imposed confinement, justifying it with things like a broken leg, and not being able to leave the house, or feeling like if I can't do anything about a situation I sort of retire into my "cave", and I'd like to sort of break out of that and be able to put a more productive structure into place rather than finding even physical reasons that I must remain confined. I don't enjoy it particularly, but I find safety in it in a weird way, and I'd like to change that. MICHAEL: And your question is how to break that? CHERYL: How to break the habit of a self imposed confinement when I find myself in situations of change or crisis where it almost becomes an excuse that I can't do anything about it because of this self imposed or physically imposed confinement, and I do have physical issues. MICHAEL: Yes, and that is a reality, that's simply a part of the Truth of your life. And to own that is its own form of Freedom. To work within that structure is its own form of Freedom. To use it as an excuse to retreat is a completely different angle, and you do recognize the difference between acknowledging the truth of the situation, and retreating by using it as an excuse; there is a difference. The way to break out of this is often very simple, and that is simply to do something different; to go to the larger picture of Change and implement something different. We don't think that we are telling you anything you don't already know, but it is very easy not to do the different thing. It is very easy to default, and that is fine. Giving yourself permission to have been doing it that way over time is its own form of Freedom. But implementing something different and following through with it looks like one of the only ways that you could break that pattern. So, to be more succinct, we would say that owning the confinements that are in place, the Truth of the reality of some of your limitations, allowing that to be the Truth, is its own form of Freedom. But if you want to do something within that structure, rather than thinking of it as restrictions or limitations, look at it as a structure, then it becomes a playground of Freedom in itself. Then you can choose within that what you can do differently. There are many things that we can suggest that you could do differently but those are personal matters and we can discuss this with you at another time, but that is the clearest we can get at this point, that you would just need to do something different. There are no magic answers beyond your own efforts. If you are not making the effort, then the change won't happen; then the Freedom won't be there, then the Truth won't be there, and then you'll lose your Vision. Your efforts, your participation, is the key. So if you have resigned to the default, which is fine, and a matter of choice, then there is nothing that is going to rescue you from that, except you. Do you understand? CHERYL: Yes, very much so. I understand that it requires action, but sometimes you don't know which direction to go. MICHAEL: If you are confused about which direction to go, then you would want to look at these options as clearly as possible and simply move in a direction that you feel is most appropriate and then, once you have explored that option, don't condemn yourself to having made a mistake, to give you further proof as to why you should have stayed confined. Retroactive confinement is just as powerful as current confinement, so looking at your past as a pattern of mistakes or as a pattern of bad judgment is its own prison, whereas looking at the opportunities and experiences, and the adventures that have come from these so called mistakes, (and we won't argue with you that it would be easy to call them mistakes, or easy to call them difficult directions,) but there was definitely a beauty in these that you may have overlooked. CHERYL. I agree, there is. MICHAEL: So, when you are looking ahead at all of your options, to avoid choosing those options is still a choice, but it won't move you forward. Moving forward, and knowing you can trust yourself to deal with it, to handle it, to adapt, and giving yourself credit for that, is the only way truly to break out of what you described as your confinement. Sometimes, the options ahead, based on where you are now, which is a result of past choices, can also look like whatever direction you go in, you're going to have to run through fire. CHERYL: (laughing) Yes, it feels like that sometimes. MICHAEL: And we would not disagree with you; we would not say that there was one safer route than another, or to even direct you in one safer route than another, as that would take away your choice, but it is valid that quite often you corner yourself in your life in a way that when you look up everything looks on fire, or everything looks underwater, however you would like to describe it. And you can still get somewhere through that. Getting through that opens up more options, and branching your way forward through your choices is the only way to get out of that space that looks surrounded by fire. We just wanted to throw that in because we don't mean to diminish the experience of being physical and looking up and feeling like your choices are extremely limited, or difficult in making as you move forward, and thinking it must be obvious what to do next, because it should be a beautiful, lovely route that stands out. Quite often, it's not. It's a rickety old bridge that's your only way forward. Next question, if there are any. GLENN: I'm a sage, artisan -cast, and I found great resonance in the concept of retreating into entertainment, distractions, not remaining creative. That's an area I would like to change. I've seen that behavior in myself. I know we are not dealing with polarities, but in the positive sense, you would want to remain creative, and not, as you say default and not let your choices... ...and the other part I resonate with is that, well I have difficulty with actually, is that... how do I see the beauty in many of the choices I have made? Some of them are... you mentioned the word awe, but I would say "awful." I am hoping to find a way to reframe that in a way that, going forward, will give positive results. MICHAEL: We will point out that as you grow within a lifetime, or across lifetimes, you are going to look back and see where things could have gone differently, where choices could have been made in a way that would be more to your liking from your current perspective. It is easy to just look back and see those moments, from "Oh God, look at that hairdo" to the awful, as you say; choices that have been made that impacted others [or yourself] in painful ways. The way to see the awe, and the Beauty is to translate that into the Innocence by looking back at your choices and honoring the Innocence in who you were, or who that person was, in the past. That person did not know, or have the same perception, that you do, now. So, condemning yourself to past choices that were made does not necessarily bring about the opportunity for creativity or the Truth. Instead, it locks you in the past, in a place that is not you anymore. Looking back and finding the Beauty and the innocence can allow the forgiveness that might be needed or required for you to move forward, which of course falls under the aliveness factor of Love. Forgiveness would be included in that. Looking back at yourself and finding the ability to embrace that, to honor the Innocence that was you, however "awful" it may have been, can help you to... telescope, or embrace those fragments [of yourself] that you left in time, to bring about an energy that allows for creativity and the Truth. Does this make sense to you? Does this work a little better? GLENN: Oh yes! Very much so. SANDY: I have a follow up on the same line there. In the process of looking for the Beauty in some of those, as Glenn put it, "awful" decisions, I'm wondering if some of this stuff might not connect with Karmic situations, agreements, monadal relationships. Wouldn't honoring those things some of the time, couldn't they have sometimes caused us to make decisions that from now, to the personality, might look awful, but to the Essence might look validating and fulfilling? MICHAEL: Yes, and that is one of the double--edged swords of being alive, or even living, is that Essence pretty much gets a kick out of everything. And this can be very disturbing to Personality, or to the physical self who has one life, and Essence is enjoying all of the struggles and difficulties and pain that you are going through, in its own way. Not in some sort of sadistic way, but in a way... in the same way that many of you go to the theater, or go to the movies, and lose yourselves in those experiences, knowing you are safe, knowing that you ARE safe and are not actually a part of that movie. Yes, it can resonate with you, it [the movie] can bring out emotions and experiences and fears, but it's not the whole truth, it's not the whole picture. Essence has a little bit of an edge on your life in that regard, that it knows that ultimately, you are safe. This can help you at times in your life, from the angle of looking at the factor that we have described as Spirit. It could also included in that sphere [of Spirit] that you are ultimately safe. You could call it safety, that ultimately, you are safe. That's a quality that falls under the heading of spirit. Recognizing that there is a part of you that may have gained something from what you've experienced, something that you probably at this point, or most likely at this point, do not understand. Give yourself time to understand it, give yourself room to grow into, or grow out of the experience that you've just had, or have had. But we will also point out here, that personality ultimately has the control over the choices within the lifetime. Essence will never override the choices of personality. Essence can have the greatest, most beautiful ideas for a lifetime, and personality is born, and finds itself in many more messes than Essence could have anticipated. So it could be considered a factor that some of the experiences that you go through are a part of a plan, if this is what you mean? SANDY: At least could be, in at least some situations. MICHAEL: You have to be a willing participant in those plans, for them to be implemented. The only time that it's not is in situations of karma, where someone has interfered with your choice. When someone interferes with your choice, in earlier lifetimes [younger soul ages], the karma was created. Karma is easily created, and it is a very dramatic and exciting experience for Essence, because when your choice is interrupted, a lot of reaction comes from this, and karma is basically the balancing of that [energy generated from] reaction. It's not black and white, it's not tit for tat, it's simply a balancing. But, as you grow older in soul age, you tend to RESPOND to interruptions of your choices rather than REACT to them. And so karma is less and less a factor in your life. So keeping that in mind, that there is an intelligence in your personality that goes beyond just this lifetime, or [an intelligence] that you have the capacity to access that goes beyond this lifetime, that can help you look at your daily life and experiences, that can look at the experiences that may have been karma, or created karma, and that your RESPONSES can help create the next moment rather than your REACTIONS causing more karma. So we wanted to throw that in there as an observation for where you are now as older souls, whereas in earlier lifetimes it may be true that you are knocked around a little bit like a pinball [in a pinball] machine, and you learn to, you learn within that structure how to maneuver. But even then, personality is a willing participant. Even in karmic payback, for lack of a better phrase, those [instances] are not imposed on you. SANDY: I think I understood that they weren't imposed, but what I was looking at in this, part is hypothetical, but in an earlier life, something happened between me and person B, and they owed me a karmic debt, let's say they killed me, and they've taken all this time, and that karma was never resolved, the debt was never repaid. Now here I am at an old level, and it may have happened at a baby level, and I happen to run across them again could that not lead me to make a decision in my relationship with that person that a few years later looking back at it I say "How could I have done such an awful thing?" Whereas really I was doing what, if I look at it from the point you're saying now, of awe, if I could understand it I would realize that it's a beautiful thing, that I was balancing this thing, and I shouldn't be kicking myself for what I did, because there was a good reason for it. MICHAEL: Yes, you could look at it from that perspective. SANDY: I am going to be more specific. Michael, is this okay? CYPRUS: They like it when we solve our own problems. SANDY: I have had a karmic relationship with a fragment whose life... I caused their death. I wasn't told that I killed them, but I caused their death, and so I had a debt to pay. An agreement was made to make that repayment by giving that person life this time, where they could be raised by someone who was their Essence twin, to be their parent, and I was going to repay the life by giving the life to that essence by the birth, [but giving the baby up for adoption]. So the debt was repaid by the birth. My personality obviously went along with that, and did all that, but for a good many years after that happened, I was sitting around going "How could I have done that? How could I have given away that child?" I could be in horror of the decision I had made but later with perceptive in the way we are talking about today, you could look at the awe of the whole thing, of how beautifully it all played out, that it didn't have to be an eye for an eye or a death for a death. The repayment was made, I judged myself harshly and wrongly for a really long time, but now I can see the beauty of the whole thing, that I couldn't see before. Not to diminish personality over essence but it is all kind of tied together, Karma and personality and essence, and that's what makes it awesome. CYPRUS: I agree with you that it is beautiful, but let's say you didn't have contact with Michael, and let's say you didn't have that opportunity, I think the concept is to be able to see the innocence in yourself at that time, and forgive that person without that external information, or without the pretty picture that you paint. I'm not saying that's doesn't make it easier, and that it's not the way to do it, but to be able to look at yourself without that knowledge and say "I did this, I did it out of innocence", and see the innocence in that decision ... not just forgiving yourself but forgiving others. So maybe even though it is a beautiful big picture, the concept is that you don't always know what that big picture is, you don't always have that all laid out for you all beautifully. And you have to be able to, in situations where you don't have that, still see the innocence in you. MICHAEL: Yes, as Cyprus points out, you may not have had the luxury of, and we use that word loosely, of having the insights that we would offer to you, (and even then you may have rejected them,) as a way of getting out of the pain that might have been caused by the choice of the past. So with or without the information that was shared with you about the past, it's still a matter of choice as to how you interpret the past, how you look at the past, and how you find the beauty of that. Another fragment may have looked at that and found the beauty or the innocence in his or her own way without our information, or another fragment may have received this picture of an awesome pattern of which he or she has taken a part and still left themselves completely condemned by that past choice. So the point that we are trying to make is that it does not matter what information you have, or lack of information you have, or how choices were made, or what influences may have been involved, your perception of the past is still a matter of choice, it's still a matter of interpretation. It is still a matter of finding the Beauty, the Truth, the Love... all of these factors that we have described as being a part of the whole life or a life that is felt as being Alive. All of these factors need to be owned by you when looking at your past, so that it can be interpreted more productively, more creatively, and with, for some of you, forgiveness. If we get lost in all of the causes, in all of the reasons, then you get lost in the default. You get lost in the stimulation. You can look back at the situation that you described, and see it as a beautiful pattern that essences were involved in, or you can look back at it and say from a very simple perspective "I made that choice, and it was the best choice that I could have made at the time." Whether you would choose differently or not is not a matter of reality, it is not a matter of concern. So we hope that we are conveying to you that all of the ingredients you are describing as being factors in the past are not as important as your perception of the past now. SANDY: I guess what I was trying to say in a very convoluted way is that if one defaults to beauty, if one can achieve a habit of defaulting to looking for the beauty, that whether or not you know those specifics, one can then accept the idea that everything happens in beauty, and if you happen to learn the details of it, that's swell, but even if you can't, if you can get to a place of defaulting to beauty you can make it your task of seeing beauty out of the situation. MICHAEL: Yes, except that you will never default to those areas because they require conscious participation. They require choice. So it will always be an active effort to interpret and see the Beauty in your past. We want to point that out because it is not something that you can work to finally achieve; that it will be [permanently] in place, and from now on everything will be beautiful. SANDY: Well no, I don't mean that's something that will happen, but won't it happen more often if you practice that? MICHAEL: It won't "happen," as much as you will make it happen. SANDY: You have to default to something. CYPRUS: Yeah, but Default is not the conscious choice, default is the automatic... it's the reaction, not the response. You have to learn to respond with seeing Beauty. The default is when you just... SANDY: Well that's what I want to do, to just change the default. CYPRUS: Well you'll have to make that choice time and time and time again. MICHAEL: That [default to being Alive] is not going to happen: it's a manual process, because you are not going to stop life from having chaos, you're not going to keep life from having crisis. You are not going to be able to avoid that part of life. Instead, the part that we described as being Alive, is being conscious, whereas defaulting to an area means you have excluded the possibility of the Aliveness factor; Beauty in this case. When you are in a moment of chaos and you make the choice to find the Beauty in it, then you have created a more spherical experience. We are not saying that once you have reached a place where you are able to see the Beauty in things, that everything will suddenly be beautiful, though it will become easier, or more second- nature if you will, to be able to find those patterns of innocence, Beauty, awe, and you will not feel so trapped in chaos, or any of the other defaults that we have described. CYPRUS: And sometimes you're not always ready to make that choice at the time, and maybe not even ten years later or twenty years later... you look back and you see that you made the choices, and now you feel more comfortable, more accepting, whatever, and you are able to see it, when you weren't able to see it when it was closer. It's not always immediate. MICHAEL: Which would go into the factor we have described as Spirit. Sometimes you simply won't understand at the time. And to give yourself room for that understanding and comprehension is a way of bringing Spirit to it. So it looks to us like we might want to wrap this up and if there is another question we will take it, otherwise we will conclude. KERRIN: I have a quick question. You brought up Spirit, and I'd like to know a little bit about why the supernatural comes as a default. There is much about the supernatural that is real. CHERYL: Just non-physical. MICHAEL: It is not surprising that the King would bring this up. We use the word "supernatural" specifically for the older souls simply because it can become very enticing to look for proof of "other," proof of the beyond, proof of something; another source. But as we said, even in this particular event that you are describing as channeling and we are speaking to you, there is no proof here that we are Michael, there is no proof here that Troy is not accessing some part of his own brain in a creative way that is simply misunderstood. Allowing that unknown factor to be a part of the process is bringing Spirit into the arena of your life. Being distracted with the proof of the experience may have made you miss out on all of the information that we shared here. Looking for the supernatural in this... if you would like us to make the pictures dance on the wall so that the rest of the information is valid, then you have lost Spirit, you have lost your openness to other avenues of information and source. So that is why we have pointed out the supernatural as a default for a lot of the older souls in particular. Because as you grow older and you start to ponder, and truly begin to embrace the idea of having a soul, in a more tangible way than in many of your other lifetimes, then it becomes a conundrum to say " I have accepted that I have a soul, now where is it?" And having contact with us in this way can help bring about the symptoms and the insight and the information that can help you towards that reality, but Spirit will never be able to truly prove itself to you. We will be able to prove to you our existence, for example, when we see you after this life and all of us "wave" at you. GROUP: (laughing) We'll wave right back. UNKNOWN: I have a question about seeing each other after this life. Do we actually get to a level where Michael will be moving on from the causal or another plane, and we have so many other journeys to make, so do we eventually meet up? MICHAEL: Oh, yes. UNKNOWN: Eons from now? MICHAEL: It won't be eons once you are outside of the physical plane because the concept of time takes on a completely different experience and dimension. It's very difficult to convey, but in your linear time it might be quite a while, but outside of this plane it's not quite the same. And as far as your "in between" lives, for instance, we have met with several of you in order to have this group, in general. Not all of you, but a lot of you in this room are here because of agreements that we talked to you about before this life. And it [our having contact with Michael between lives] could be likened to various continents on the same planet, so that there is always communication, and there is the ability to interact, albeit in some ways limited to a certain degree, but none of us are separate, none of us are divided. And eventually, yes, your entity, your cadre, your energy ring, will exponentially grow and learn and do whatever it wants to do in these other planes, and we don't want to use this phrase, but it's appropriate in terms of Time, will "catch up" with us, and merge in a way that, at this point, is a little incomprehensible while divided. UNKNOWN: I have another question. When this happens, do we go on to incarnate in other planets, or other realms? Or once we reach that causal plane and passed that in our own cadre/entity group, do we stop incarnating? MICHAEL: There will be at least two more incarnations for your entity, or your cadre, because you only have, while individuals, the five soul ages, while incarnating on your own... Infant through Old. Infant, Baby, Young, Mature, and Old. But there is still Transcendental and Infinite, and each of you, as an entity, will incarnate one more time somewhere, in some parallel, in some version of your world, to be a part of that experience. That way one fragment will incarnate to represent the experience of the entity as we have described for such people as Gandhi and Socrates being Transcendental. Christ and Buddha, for instance, being popular Infinite soul representations. So there will still be, at least, those two additional incarnations, and most often it will be within the planetary system where most of the rest of the population is still incarnate. UNKNOWN: The planetary system being earth? MICHAEL: Yes. But by the time you are reunited to a point of incarnating as Transcendental or Infinite souls, who knows where your people will be. GLENN: What are Michael's plans for the future? MICHAEL: We have our own relationship to what you could describe as an Entity Twin rather than Essence Twin. Part of our "future" is the merging with our Entity Twin. This twinning is a matter of mathematics and resonance. Within a cadre, for instance, and this is not by any means a constant, if two entities have a predominance of essence twins shared between those two entities, they are Entity Twins. And so, every entity has its own twin, in the same way that almost every essence has its own essence twin. And so, if we were to describe our "future," it's the process of integrating with our Entity Twin and we are working on that. UNKNOWN: Is it exciting? MICHAEL: That would be a matter of interpretation. It is a unique experience. [QUESTION INAUDIBLE, but possibly, "Will you incarnate as a Transcendental Soul and will we be around to experience that?"] MICHAEL: You will be long gone. And that is not a prediction, it is just a matter of looking at the patterns that appear to be in place, or the momentum. But we may incarnate, and we have done so already in a few parallels, incarnated as Transcendental. So it is not a new possibility. We don't really have to do it again in this particular parallel, because we have our channels where we teach in a different way. And in several of our parallels we are working in this same way. But, yes, in some parallels we have already incarnated as Transcendental souls. UNKNOWN: Nobody we'd know, huh? MICHAEL: It's a completely different parallel. [meaning, we wouldn't know the person, because they don't exist "here."] GLENN: I heard there are a couple of issues on what may happen with the next Infinite Soul, including a different Michael channel saying "look at all the trouble Jesus caused when he showed up." And that a soul might incarnate in multiple fragments in various places. So I'd like to hear your insights on all this. MICHAEL: IF the infinite soul manifests, and we've seen it come close a few times, and it usually will incarnate only as a matter of bringing Logos to bear, (which just translates into "helping get everybody back on the same page, to help get everybody moving in a similar shared direction,") but ironically, with the anticipation of the manifestation of the Infinite Soul coming, and having so many fragments being born to be a part of that, many of them very wise and very capable to contribute to humanity even while having a great handful of people causing what you would deem "trouble," has actually helped to bring humanity, people, sentients, back down into a similar perspective, a moving forward together. If you look at the arc of time from approximately the '60s to now, progressively, the world is getting smaller and that awareness in itself is similar to the impact that the Infinite Soul would have brought with the concepts of global village, "green" living; a more responsible dominion with life rather than a dominance over it.... so now all of the fragments who are incarnated are doing just that, so it doesn't require an Infinite Soul intervention, which is basically what an Infinite Soul experience is: a form of intervention for a sentient species. At this point it is looking like humanity is going to right itself in a way that will provide sanctuary for the life that is here currently, and also to help keep humanity, or the human bodies, available for incarnation. We will, however, validate that what we have seen of the next manifestation of the Infinite Soul is looking to show up in five different places because of the population. The amount of people on the planet is different from in the past, and having a representative in different places in the world, all represented by a similar theme of being a minority and represented as a child, a woman, a homosexual... we're not sure what the other two may have been, but the Infinite Soul representatives were what would be deemed a minority, a representative of the minority, and would help bring about the drastic changes that might have been needed. But we don't see that as being so necessary at this point. So, currently, it is a floating possibility. Does this answer your question? GLENN: yes MICHAEL: As humanity, or as a dominant sentient species, grows in maturity, then the forces at work that help sustain environment, that help sustain the life on the planet, (which we regard as devas, or devic energy), those devic energies begin to withdraw to a point where the dominant sentience is then responsible for caring for those life forms on the planet that have cared for by them up to that point. It is a process of any sentient species to gain that responsibility for the planet, for animals, for others, and this is why you are seeing so much upheaval in the environment, because the devic energies are not there to help correct it. There are not these "magical forces" to pick up the slack or repair the damages that the sentient species causes, and so this experience for sentience is very similar to a person over the growth of one lifetime, where a teenage child or rather a young adult, has to, at some point, learn to live on his own, and create his environment with some sense of responsibility. And so that is the case with a collective sentient species as well, on any planet. UNKNOWN: There are a lot of people on the planet who .... have really been trying to reconnect with these elementals and undo the damage that has happened. It was getting exciting and really tapping into that. Do you think we will really start reconnecting with the energies that are pulling out? MICHAEL: It's not a bad thing that they are "pulling out." What you are describing is parts of humanity finding themselves going where certain parts of the population recognizes the intimacy with these forces that will continue to remain in place, because there always will be some of amount of these forces, devas; it's just not of such an abundance that it takes up slack, or heals the impact from humans. So when these fragments are making an effort to reconnect, to communicate, to manage this network of devic energies, that is exactly where we would think your species would go. It's just that it becomes a more intimate and validated form of helping the environment and humanity itself. Do you understand? So it's not that devic energies are leaving because they are in a huff over humanity, but that it is just simply the way that it works when a planet houses a sentient species; there is simply no more room for new souls to be incarnated, and to have the Infant soul lifetimes that are so important to the beginning process of your grand cycle. And for those "new souls" that are here and shifting into bringing sentience to species such as Gorillas, you will find that the awareness of devic energy that is required for your own personal growth on the planet expands to include the possibility that dolphins and whales and gorillas have a similar concept of "soul." The only way that the Gorilla population will be able to continue in its exploration of housing souls is if humanity expands its awareness to consider these subtle energies in nature. To have a lot of species suddenly take sentience might not be easy to do. For instance, Elephants were up for consideration, but it's simply not a possibility that we can see because of many factors. The reason that we bring up the drop in devic energy is because as devic energies are participating in the various kingdoms, the mineral, the plant, the animal, they are exploring the possibilities of sentience within a planet, and as those possibilities diminish, so does their interest in the planet, and they move on to others. LU: Michael I have a question about machines, do machines or electronics have a specific energy? MICHAEL: Yes, eventually they can start to become of high interest to certain energies that you could describe as devic, yes. LU: Does that mean we can begin to communicate with them in some way? Can we as humans communicate with machines and electronics? MICHAEL: In what way are you speaking? LU: I find that when I have printer problems at work, I often ask the equipment what it needs or what it wants, open all the ports and doors and look around and try to communicate to see what has happened. MICHAEL: That is not quite the same thing as devic energies, no. That is just an intuitive process for solving problems. And it is an effective one, because when you are doing it from that angle you are not limiting your insights, you're not limiting your perspective, but you are inviting other perspectives, and this means opening up to Spirit, opening up to other sources that may be of help to you. Whether those are your guides or other spirits who happen to be in the room and helping point you in the right direction of a solution, we don't know, but as far as that printer housing devic energies, we wouldn't say that is necessarily true. We can say that the higher the intelligence of some processors, the more interesting it becomes to some versions of devic energy to explore those. LU: Do some high level CPUs and processors have sort of a hive soul? MICHAEL: Not on this planet, no. CHERYL: I have often wondered about the internet being... Well, I used to joke that God had an internet account because of so many coincidences, or our meeting certain people. Do non-physical energies have any influence over it [the internet], or is it just random when people come together, such as us through a medium such as the internet? Is it somehow directed? MICHAEL: We have talked about this before that there is a theory that is not quite accurate that says that you use ten percent of your brain, and that there is all of this other processing that is unused. And we have responded to say that that is not true, but that in this case, we could say that ninety percent of your brain is generating the reality that you are experiencing, is being used to generate the reality that you keep in place to organize and communicate and work with all of the things that you don't have to deal with in your daily perception. As a species grows, some of these concepts [floating in the reality-generating part of the brain] that are metaphysical or nonphysical come into being and they become tangible objects [through invention, or creation]. They become real life, useful tools such as the telephone [representing clairaudience], such as television [representing clairvision]. The concept of the Astral Plane is not unfamiliar to any of you because all of you have died and reincarnated, died and reincarnated, so you "know" the Astral Plane is there, at least that "ninety percent" of your brain does, and so somebody got the idea to create a network that mimicked or represented the Astral Plane. And so the internet is the physical idea of the Astral Plane made form, or at least into the limited idea of the Astral Plane at this point. The Internet relates to the dream state, to the astral plane, and to emotional and intellectual realms that are not necessarily within reach of your daily life, but the Internet allows that to come into your space in the same way that, when you are on the astral plane, it's always at your fingertips, as well. Except you don't have fingertips there. (laughter) So in answer to your question, no it [meeting people through the Internet] is not always random as there is very little true randomness in the Universe, but it does give you a tangible method of using the intangible parts of your brain to connect to other people around the world. And with that, we will wrap it up. Goodbye.

Ask Michael Open Floor Chat August 3, 2014 Channel: Troy Tolley [Ty] I've been interested in the not-so-commonly held Historicist interpretation of the Book of Revelation lately: Could Michael comment on their perspective of what exactly is the deal with that piece of writing? (like what it means, etc) [MEntity] To examine this writing, particularly in terms of its reinterpretations of reinterpretations, would be quite a task, as there are such personal and nuanced symbolism within it that builds upon itself within particular contexts set. For example, if one were to explore the meaning of a dream where one sees a red wand that is suspended by light while swimming in a lake, one would have several elements here to explore before fully comprehending the symbolic language in its parts and as a whole as a message. So for simplistic purposes, we will say that, overall, the writing is a personal account of this individual's sense of his world ending, or transforming. It is not prophetic, and was never meant to be prophetic. It was never meant to refer to the world beyond his known world. [Ty] So things that appear to match up quite well historically would be coincidence? [MEntity] To apply this individual's dreams to relevance in time beyond himself is about as useful as reading any one of our student's dream journals in your community as a means to gain insight into your own life. Historically, there may be significance, but not beyond his own time. Depending on the version one is reading, the altering of words to retrofit more recent history (relatively speaking) can be fairly high. It is natural for imagination to find patterns, and then this must be navigated with intelligence to sort through which are valid. For example, there are many who feel that there is significance to a particular time seen on a digital clock when that is rarely the case. It simply happens that it is a pattern that you can extract from your experiences. Some patterns are ignored because there is intelligence involved. For example, going in and out of your front door of your home is not a startling event of significance, even though it is far more likely a pattern of significance and consistency than a digital clock read out. nd though a digital clock read out will never amount to more than an amusing synchronicity, many will impose mysterious significance upon it. [Ty] Sounds like you're talking about Angel Numbers [GeraldineB] 11:11 [MEntity] We use these more accessible examples as a means to point to the same process being used when interpreting writing, dreams, and records from the past as seen as prophecy. [Ty] Some of the writing claim in themselves to be prophecies, such as he book of Daniel from the OT [MEntity] We once described a "future" to our students as including homes that were partly triangular shape, connected by strands of light that were used for instant travel. This was met with oohs and ahhhs until we pointed out that we were describing the roofs of homes currently on the block, connected by cables of electricity and television and internet, which allowed for instant "travel." Our point being that our description of the present in more poetic terms could be interpreted outside of time and in any number of ways. This is how some historic writing is in nature, as well. [GeraldineB] I'd like to ask for followup information about how wide-spread Transcendental Souls are spread out through out society. You've alluded to it previously as many are unknown people outside of their local area. Recently, you said that several comedians were TSs -- is this in the full sense of being O6s or in a particular way they are functioning? [MEntity] We do not think we referred to these fragments as Transcendental Souls, but as teachers/channels for Entities. These are distinctly different contexts. [GeraldineB] ooh ok -- I thought the term TS was used -- [GeraldineB] then, please explain what you did mean [MEntity] For example, Troy is not a Transcendental Soul, he is a channel for us. Troy is not of our Entity, and therefore will never be a Transcendental Soul representing us. For us to be a Transcendental Soul, a fragment from our own Entity must incarnate. A Transcendental Soul is born, not channeled, though the fragment born does act as a channel for his or her Entity. [GeraldineB] oooooh [GeraldineB] But, you are cycled off [MEntity] Many comedians, healers, dancers, artists, etc are teachers/or channels for Entities with a teaching, just like us. Different Entities teach in different ways through different Centers. Our Teaching is Intellectually based, while including the Emotional and Moving. More Movement-based teachings require channels who move, use the body more, and/or have more direct access to students, such as dancers and healers. And so on. All True Teachings include all Centers, but are based in different ways. We do not provide healing energy, nor do we inspire through a pirouette, but we still heal and inspire. [Maureen] Which center did Seth teach through? [MEntity] Intellectual, of course. If the teaching is vocal, it is Intellectual. All Entities as they pass through the Causal will teach the Physical Plane in some way, so there must be a multitude of channels and methods of teaching. The variation of Parallels allows for all Entities to have sets of parallels that are focused on their collection of students. Within that set, there will be at least one parallel where the incarnation as Transcendental Soul is fulfilled. As for the state of Transcendental Souls on the planet, there are very few in this parallel. [Kurtis] Hi Michael, in the OMW section of this site I found some nifty information on how Aggression and Power Modes evolve intimacy. "...Aggression is an exalted action Overleaf. Aggression evolves intimacy by way of constant change, movement, activity, progress. One must be able to "keep up." Intimacy is nearly impossible with someone who might wish to slow you down, tame you, or fault you for constant change of focus and directions." "...Power Mode is about Being Present. It is an Expressive Overleaf, not an action, so it will be about making your presence known in some way. It is about owning your presence, being comfortable in your skin, "being yourself." In other words, how you might evolve intimacy is in how much of "you" can be present, be permitted, allowed, without shame, silencing, etc." I was wondering if you could provide the same info for how the other modes evolve intimacy like those examples. Particularly Observation, Passion and Reserve, as most students here are or slide to those modes. I don't want to take too much time off of others questions so if all other 5 can't be fit in, just cut some off of course and I can ask for them another time. [MEntity] For Observation Mode, it is a matter of truly seeing and being seen. The key, however, is that it is not a static state. It is an evolving, shifting, and adaptive state of seeing and being seen. Intimacy for Observation Mode is killed if someone locks him or her in one version of himself or herself. If the one in Observation does not allow for the variations and facets of others, but locks them into one preference or expectation, this begins to repel the other. For Passion Mode, intimacy is evolved through each being extensions of the other. This can show up in a range between co-dependency and co-creation. Co-dependency expects the other to represent himself or herself. Behaving in ways that are outside of the range of Passion's own behavior can be startling and divisive. This can still lead to intimacy, depending upon the relationship, because some are drawn to Passion precisely for that context of personal transformation. If this is not an understood dynamic, it can be messy. This is usually the case when Passion is used or sought for teaching. Co-creation is a dynamic of inspiration that feeds from one another as Passion learns about the self through other. This is more appealing, as both are learning then. Both are teachers. Reserve evolves in intimacy through layers of reveal. It must be experienced and processed as layers, not as a dive into a deep pool, but as a cool or warm sip at a time. As you can see, the reason Observation cannot be static is because it can slide to any of these, and each of these are valid paths of intimacy. We can elaborate upon all of these as a topic of focus, if that is requested. [ViP1] Why is it necessary for an Entity to reunite before cycling off the Astral plane to the Causal plane, as compared to fragments being able to reside on, or move to, the Causal plane without that happening first? (Or even before that, if I remember correctly, possibly by the 6th level of the Astral?) Is the sheer amount of input on the Causal plane too much for a single fragment to process without the bonding and resonance with the rest of the Entity in place? [MEntity] There could be two valid responses to that question. One is that your latter suggestion is true. To move through the Causal as a fragment would "destroy" the fragment. The density of the Plane is such that the physics would disintegrate the fragment. There may be more accurate words to describe this, but it is fair enough in terms of understanding it here. We can only speculate on this, of course, as no individual fragment has resided in the Causal. In much the same way that your Physical Body could not be sustained in the Astral, neither can the Astral Body be sustained in the Causal. At least, not in the way it was used in the Astral. [ViP1] ok (I thought individual fragments also had Causal bodies, but perhaps these are built such that they must "hook in" to the Causal body of the Entity as a whole?) [MEntity] Your response here leads to our second answer. The reason one is referred to as a fragment is because one is already a part of a whole. That whole already exists, and as one moves beyond the denser planes, that fragmentation is naturally left behind, even if the "individual" is not. Your "Causal" Bodies ARE your Entity. It is a field shared across all fragments of that Entity. As a Physical Incarnation, this may be more nuanced in its relevance to the fragment, but it is still connected across all fragments. Imagine an ice cube tray that could produce 1000 cubes. Your Entity is a perpetually replenished pitcher of water poured into that tray, divided into cubes. When frozen, that is like an incarnation. When thawed, that is like the Astral. When poured back into the pitcher, it is the Causal. So it is not so much that the fragment would be "destroyed" as an individual in the Causal, but that the very nature of progression to the Causal, naturally, requires a different state. As an ice cube, "you" are destroyed. But everything that made up that ice cube is never lost. [ViP1] and all ice cube shapes are stored in the Akashic [MEntity] We realize these are crude analogies, but they work. To include how the Akashic fits into this, we would have to move to a different analogy or metaphor, as it is not a Plane in which anyone resides, but is only accessed. It is more like the center of a vortex that exists because of what is spinning around it. A donut hole, if you will. [ROYCEonROIDS] Art as I know it at its best is a reflection of the mysterious, the wonder, the beyond words. As the world begins to approach an old soul paradigm in a few hundred year or so...how would art change. would it still be necessary in the ways we know it? as more PEOPLE become the reflection of that WONDER that art encapsulated, what place will ART have in that world? [MEntity] Though this varies among Old Soul worlds, Art escalates in range and importance among all of them. It is often no longer confined to a specific range of media or obvious creativity, but comes to include the entire life of an individual, how he or she creates his or her day, etc. This is already being glanced at in your current paradigm, though colored heavily by Young Soul filters. "Reality TV" is, at its heart, a glimpse of Old Soul Art. Becoming a celebrity only because one has become a celebrity is also a distorted form of Old Soul Art. These things may be repulsive to older souls as they are being presented now, but these hint at an undercurrent of acknowledgement of the LIFE as ART. In many Old Soul worlds, Art is entirely experiential and temporal. Exhibitions are sunsets that can never been seen again, or gatherings where spontaneous suggestions are matched up with random individuals who must then perform, create, or do the suggestion, even if it is well outside of their talents. This leads to great rounds of humor and levity that is often at the core of Old Soul arts. Interactivity is highly important to the Old Soul world of art, as well. For example, one installation we know of is something like a steep hill of xylophone-like panels that are carefully arranged in ways that an individual could dance down this hill in any number of ways to create his or her song of spontaneity. Collaborative art is highly important to the Old Soul world of art, as well. In many probabilities, holographic-like galleries are "online" for contributors to create projects that can be altered by anyone from anywhere. No walk through that gallery is met with the same version of the art. Interactivity, Collaboration, Temporal/Amorphous, and spontaneous are key traits for Old Soul arts, though we caution against presuming these traits are definitive. There is more we can say to this subject. [Maureen] I just realized that my question may tie in (indirectly) with Royce's question. "The "rise of the selfie" is pretty well accepted now as a big part of our culture, but I can see the “darker side” of it representing a self absorption and self-indulgence that seems "boundless" some days, especially on facebook where some choose very little actual dialogue and over-posting is like an epidemic. It's a one way blast of "me-ness"." Do you see that so much “self-interest” is related to 1) incomplete 4th Internal Monads, 2) the average Soul Age being Mature (including manifested Soul Age as well), 3) narcissism, 4) pure, unfettered self expression, or 5) all of the above, 6) something else? Any comment on this would be appreciated as I would really like to understand this phenomenon. [MEntity] At no other time in your history has there been such a shared space of celebration of the self. This is a transitional state between Young and Mature. It is beautiful to us. There was a time when it was sinful, shameful, and even evil to look in a mirror, as well as dangerous to be photographed. There was a time when disowning the self in disgust was Holy. Now you are in a time when the mundane is being celebrated. The self is being allowed to be seen, not just in terms of how others see that self, but in terms of how that self wishes to be seen. Yes, there is a clamoring of noise in this celebration, but that is the nature of celebration. You are in a time of liberation, which often comes before freedom. True Freedom. Liberation is the relief that comes with surges of noise while still anchored in some restrictions or extremes, often with great displays for the external world, while True Freedom is owned, experienced, and known, often in quiet, internal ways. It is beautiful to us because it is a step in the direction of acknowledging that you are important, that the mundane is important, that a moment is important, that context exists beyond preordained contexts. Our Species has long been subject to the notion that only the next world is important, or that *things* are important, or that only that which is deemed important is important, and those things are important, but not at the expense of the singular joy in sharing, of expressing, of being, of capturing a moment of mundanity. The species knows that privacy is a concept of the Young Paradigm, and that a Mature and Old Paradigm must embrace a lack of privacy in a healthy way for evolution to continue. Willingly offering up yourself in the most mundane of ways may seem to be a bumbling or chaotic, self-absorbed step, but it is a step in the direction of evolution. If the emphasis were to remain only on privacy and protection, then true invasion is much more likely. But in the same way that hackers teach systems better how to manage its delicate systems, so does constant exposure help the species to learn better how to manage its delicate identities. [Maureen] If Liberation is the "negative" pole and Freedom is the "positive" pole -- what are they the poles of? [MEntity] Among your options for describing the motivations of those contributing to the visual cacophony of "selfies" and other related sharing, we can say that "all of the above" would naturally be included because those motivations are reflective of the various fragments and Personalities among you. In response to the last question, it could be said to be the poles at either end of whatever was being oppressed: innocence, power, sexuality, etc. [Maureen] Thanks Michael. That was an interesting answer. [MEntity] When any of these oppressed states are liberated, there is "noise" that then moves into a more peaceful state. We will conclude here for today. Good day to each of you. Goodbye, for now.