Manifested Soul Age

Manifested Soul Age

BY SHEPHERD HOODWIN

On my Michael Reading charts, I channel both a person’s true soul age and the soul age he is manifesting at the time I channel the chart. Our manifested soul age is the average level of our personality’s perspective at a given time; it can change relatively rapidly if it is lower than our true soul age. I’ve had clients who rose from manifesting second-level mature, for example, to fourth-level mature in a matter of months. Our true soul age is our level of potential function, the perspective of our inner self. It is more significant and impactive than our manifested age, which is more on the surface.

In every lifetime, we manifest first-level infant at birth, since our body is not capable of sustaining a higher perspective; our true soul age may be evident, but it is not engaged, because on the level of personality, we have to focus on infant soul lessons such as survival. As we get older, our manifested soul age can increase up to our highest level of previous attainment in past lifetimes. However, we might become stuck at a certain level, at least in some area of our life. For example, a mature soul may manifest young because he doesn’t want to face some difficult relationship issues; he’s more comfortable focusing on success. Or an old soul may manifest mature, because he is not willing to give up some attachments. It is similar to an adult being emotionally younger than his true age in some way because of a trauma that occurred in the past—he is staying at that place until he is willing or able to deal with it.

We also might deliberately manifest at a particular level longer than would otherwise be necessary to review some lessons. For example, an old soul may need a “brushup” on young-soul lessons regarding success and money, and may spend the first half of his life focused on business endeavors. I am not implying that everyone working in the business world is manifesting young—it is more subtle than that. Our manifested soul age is the dominant focus of our lives, no matter what we are doing externally. Someone manifesting as a mature soul in business, for instance, is likely to be most interested in the relationship aspects of business, even if he is required to spend a lot of time dealing with other aspects of it.

Soul age manifestation is sometimes a mixed bag. A fifth-level old soul may be manifesting young in the area of money, for example, mature in the area of relationships, and old in most other areas. The energies that these perspectives generate might combine to form a composite manifested age of seventh-level mature. Since it can be an average, manifested soul age may not always seem to completely fit. Again, true soul age is more important anyway, since it describes the real person rather than what is happening at the moment on the surface.

Surprisingly, soul age can sometimes advance even if it is not fully manifested.

If someone is manifesting a younger soul age, he may still be gleaning valuable experience. He may, for example, be on his last lifetime as a first-level mature soul, and his review of some baby and young lessons may be all he needs in order to move on to second-level mature.

A third-level old soul may not have developed fully in certain types of relationships when he was a mature soul. For instance, he may have developed a strong mature-soul perspective in sexual, male-female relationships, but not have had much experience with mature soul male bonding. Maybe he did not have much opportunity.

In any case, when a problem arises in this area, he may not have many resources to fall back on. He may simply not know how to share emotional intimacy with another man, how to trust without being competitive. He is where he would have been as a mature soul when he would have normally first handled this issue. Doing so now might help him advance to fourth-level old. Once he integrates the mature soul lessons in this area, he is likely to move on to old soul lessons in it, since that is his true perspective. Old soul bonding, by the way, is deeper, yet less personal.

He does not have to manifest third-level old in all aspects of his life to advance to fourth level, as long as he fills in the gaps he needs to fill.

A person may also need to review some lessons that he already learned because they have not been reinforced for several lifetimes. As the saying goes, “Use it or lose it.”

Once, Michael commented on a chart:

Steve is manifesting slightly higher than his own soul level due to imprinting.

He was sixth-level mature manifesting at seventh. I would have thought that impossible, but the client confirmed that it was true. I suppose that means that he is living from a perspective that he has not yet “earned.” Perhaps it is like the disciples of spiritual masters who are given experiences they couldn’t have had on their own, and who then must grow into them. Since Michael has only made this comment through me once, I assume that this sort of thing is rare.^¹

In the following passage, Michael discusses how a person can benefit from being imprinted by an older soul without actually manifesting older than his true soul age.

A mature soul, for instance, virtually never manifests old. However, if he is imprinted by someone who is old, he can learn helpful skills.

Suppose that a busy forty-five-year-old has a seventy-two-year-old semi-retired friend. The semi-retired friend sees the workaday world from a perspective that is farther away. He has come through its drama and knows what is on the other side. Therefore, he does not take it as seriously as the forty-five-year-old does. The forty-five-year-old can adopt some of his friend’s philosophy of life, learning to be more detached, but he is still in the midst of the workaday world—he has not yet come through the other side of it, so he does not yet know for himself what his friend knows.

Likewise, the mature soul is still in the midst of the drama of life. He cannot stop being in it while he is still in it. It would not be beneficial to skip over that whole portion of development. He would always be hobbled by the lack of that experiential movement. But he can learn from old souls, who naturally find it easier to have a detached viewpoint (although they do not always have it either).

Mature soul lessons are just as significant and valid as old soul or any other lessons.

Many older souls who have manifested younger than their true soul age for a number of lifetimes are beginning to manifest more accurately because of the media. The media provides a way for any group to know about and communicate with other members. For older souls, who see the world in a larger way than the average or mainstream person, there are now many books and other media that help reinforce that way of seeing.

Manifesting our true soul age is not the same as manifesting our essence, which occurs after we dispose of whatever childhood imprinting we carry that taught us to appear different than we really are—we begin to look like our actual role and overleaves across the board. We can manifest our essence without yet manifesting our true soul age, and without necessarily being in the positive poles of our role and overleaves (which is the experience of true personality). After manifesting our essence, we will occasionally be in our negative poles, like all human beings, but at least they will be our negative poles, not a simulation of our parents’ or someone else’s negative poles.

Sometimes people are distressed to learn that they are not manifesting their true soul age—they see it as a sign that they are behind in their spiritual growth. That is not necessarily the case. This idea stems in part from the belief that “older is better” when it comes to soul age. We may feel more integrated when we manifest our true soul age, since our inner and outer perspectives are more aligned, but perhaps a more accurate indication of where we are spiritually is how much we are in our positive poles.

1. Psychic John Friedlander suggested that a person could also manifest older than his true soul age when combining energies with other essences who are older.

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