BY SHEPHERD HOODWIN

As with many well-known people, there have been a number of different channels who have gotten overleaves for Barack Obama. I've seen around ten different versions of his, but I've rarely seen so much agreement among the different channels. 

Essence Twin (No ET)

Casting (King)

Other Essence Qualities

I got him as being on the truth side of his entity. That makes a soul more oriented in truth. The positive pole of priest is compassion, caring for others, so priests have an obvious natural affinity for the love force, but being on the truth side, there's a personal prioritizing of what is true. He is certainly insightful and thoughtful. His autobiography, "Dreams from My Father," reveals a search for truth and not just for an exalted feeling of inspiration (love). 

The goal of growth has more often come up among channels, but dominance has come up a couple of times. You could make a good case both ways, so I will explore that here: 

Growth is the priest goal, so every priest has something of the quality of growth in him; therefore, it's easy to see it in a priest. People who have the actual goal of growth are characterized by being exceptionally busy; they tend to fill their time and their lives, with many irons in the fire, and enjoy that unless they overdo it, which puts them in the negative pole, "confusion." In growth, one seeks new challenges; in responding to new stimuli, one grows and learns things. 

People with a goal of growth tend to be more self (inner)-involved, whereas dominance tends to make one more involved with the outer world. It would be too pat to see dominance as the goal for every leader, but as introspective as Obama can be (which especially showed up in his first autobiography), he seems to spend far more time involved with others. In its positive pole, "leadership," dominance is about facilitating win-win solutions among others. 

Attitude has come up as either idealist or pragmatist. As with his goal, I can see both, but my vote is for idealist. The argument that's being made for him being a pragmatist is that he's a practical person--he's flexible about policy, taking into account what he's able to pass through Congress. He says, "Okay, let's just figure out something that works here." However, one suspects that many politicians have been shocked early on by how hard it is to get things done and have learned the hard way to be at least somewhat pragmatic. Also, Obama has a conciliatory personality, which may, in part, relate to him being a priest. Some priests are firebrands, but part of his priest "higher ideal" is trying to find common ground with those who identify as conservatives. This could also relate to the positive pole of dominance, forging win-win solutions. (Being averse to conflict can be a characteristic of the goal of acceptance, negative pole "ingratiation," but that has not been suggested by any channels I know of as being his goal.) 

The pragmatists I have known and validated, in the sense of the overleaf, also had a bland quality about them. It's the neutral attitude, and it has a no-nonsense, grounded approach, not just practicality, but it has no set preference for how to look at the world. The idealist attitude says, "The world can be changed and I'm going to do my darndest to change it." Of course, change was the entire theme of his campaign. One could argue that it was just a political slogan, since a lot of politicians talk about change in a general way, but I think it was more than that for him. The idealist compares the world he sees now to his vision of how it should be, and with great optimism, positivity, and the ability to bounce back, he gets in there and tries to do that. His speeches and writings reflect idealism to me. Idealists smile more, too, as a rule, than pragmatists, and Obama smiles a lot. 

The belief that idealists are not practical doesn't pan out in my experience. I am an idealist, which is on the same axis as my role, sage, so it's a very strong overleaf for me--the two traits reinforce each other. Sages are already naturally optimistic and verbal about how things could be made better; it's our nature. However, I also have, in some ways, a practical nature. I'm efficient and good at organizing things. I'm interested in matters of policy and how they can be made to work better. When I was younger, I was more in the negative pole of "abstraction"--I was naïve about a lot of things. That's something that idealists in the negative pole share with the negative pole of spiritualist: a tendency to be out of touch with how things really are. However, the positive pole of idealist, "coalescence," pulls things together and makes them work, so there is an inherent practicality in the positive pole. Idealist is more inherently practical than spiritualist; spiritualists can have rose-colored glasses and their heads up in the clouds. 

The majority of channels, including me, have gotten observation mode for Obama. Fifty percent of humanity is in observation, although some of us slide fairly often to other modes. Some people find Obama aloof, and the neutral mode can yield that impression, especially along with self-protective arrogance and dry intellectual centering. In observation mode, one neutrally observes, as opposed to passion mode, for example, which jumps into life with both feet. 

One channel got caution mode for him; you could make the case for that from how he speaks--there's a lot of "um's" and pauses. He's trying to think and be careful about his word choices. Any of the neutral overleaves (those in the far right hand column) can slide to any of the other overleaves in that row, so his observation could easily slide to caution, and probably does from time to time. However, I think his basic default is more neutral. His caution about what he says may just come from the knowledge that he's going to be judged for every word (igniting self-conscious arrogance, which is the next item), and it's better to avoid misunderstandings before they start. Another factor may be his king-casting perfectionism, seeking excellence in his word choices. 

Center (Intellectual/Moving)

Chief Obstacle (Arrogance)

During the campaign, he was at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. A tradition is that you write down a prayer on a little piece of paper, roll it up, and stick it in a crack in the wall. This is a sacred act, and it's considered to be a serious breach to look at what someone wrote. However, of course, after he put his prayer in the wall, someone took it out and publicized it. Part of his prayer said, "…help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. Make me an instrument of your will." The latter part sounds like a priest prayer. "Help me guard against pride" sounds like a struggle against arrogance. "Pride" is the positive pole of arrogance; the negative pole is "vanity." (Even pride, in this case, is false pride, so it's not a good thing.) Michelle is force of nature, a strong and blunt person; according to Obama, she helps him stay grounded because she tells it like it is and won't let him get away with anything. That's helped him keep the "dragon" of arrogance in its cave. 

Every channel got him as being a mature soul except one. The one who said young soul was one of the Yarbro channels, who said that he was sixth-level young. I got sixth-level mature. I think that the Yarbro people are often accurate in their overleaves of celebrities, and I'm always interested in what they have to say. However, I think they have a bias about soul age that tends to make them skew younger than they are, especially with celebrities; they seem to have an assumption that if you're famous, you're probably young. Some other channels have acknowledged that they've had a bias skewing older, a similar but opposite problem: they tended to assume that if somebody seemed to be spiritual, they were probably old souls. To be an accurate channel, you have to put aside all bias, either deflating or inflating or any other distortion; you have to have no assumptions about the subject, or at least know that you have them and put them aside. 

I have known young priests who are inspirational and wise people. I would not have a problem thinking of him as being young, and would think no less of him for that. However, the focus of the young soul age is success for its own sake; the focus of the mature soul age is relationships. Even though he got a degree from Harvard Law School, he never made a lot of money. Michelle, whom I got as being sixth-level young, made a higher salary when she worked. 

The levels that he's been channelled as mature are fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh, with a lot of consensus around sixth. I probably wouldn't go with fourth, because it has a pure relationship orientation; I don't see that with him. I wouldn't go with fifth, either, because it's eccentric, doing things in an odd, expansive, sage-like way. I would go with either sixth or seventh. Seven is the mastery level; it's about teaching and he's clearly doing that. Sixth-level mature stereotypically is difficult and karmic. However, I know a lot of sixth level mature souls, and not all of them are having rough, "through the wringer" kind of lives. A lot of them are, but not all of them, which illustrates the limitations of generalizations with this material. Sixth levels of any soul age tend to take a lot of lifetimes to complete, because they're about tying up things with other people from the whole soul age that had been left undone. It matters whether you're at the early stage, the middle, or the end, because if you're just getting started or you're finishing it up, it may not be as karmic. It also matters how much leftover karma that the soul has at this point; every soul is going to have a different story to tell in that regard. If one has already cleaned up a lot of it, there isn't as much karma to deal with.