Old Souls

During the last couple of years when I was researching, I went through a phase where I became really curious about soul age and the soul's evolution. I was taking classes from Marie Manuchehri and listening to her podcasts. She's a spiritual teacher, medium and energy healer. She would talk a lot about older souls. She considered herself to be an old soul and she said that older souls tend to be very compassionate since they already worked on compassion in prior lives, so the focus of the older soul is self-love. She also said that humans that are old souls tend to struggle in their relationships with younger souls because they are in such a different place in evolution. I found all this to be very interesting so I researched it. Let me share some information below and then my own opinion on this subject.

There are two well known sources that I found that talk about soul age and are often referenced:

• There's a spiritual teacher named Ainslie Macleod that became well known for his teachings on soul age. He wrote books called The Old Souls Guidebook and The Instruction. He was also on the Ellen DeGeneres Show and the Oprah podcast so he became well known in the mainstream.

• The Michael Teachings is channeled wisdom by evolved souls that completed their incarnations on Earth. The original book is by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro called Messages from Michael. There's a website now with quite a bit of information on soul age: (https://www.michaelteachings.com/soul_age_index.html)

Both the above resources share similar information so I'll summarize the "soul ages" from both resources. These soul ages are an explanation for the different beliefs and perceptions in people across our planet. Ainslie explains that the more incarnations or lives we live, the more evolved we become due to our experience. It's important to note that the spirit realm sees every soul as equal, there is no hierarchy on the spirit side. Even Jesus, a very evolved soul will say to near death experiencers that he wants to be seen as their brother. However, each soul is also considered unique, beautiful, and authentic in its own way. So even though there are souls more evolved or "older" than other souls, each soul is deemed just as precious. Evolved souls do provide guidance and are considered teachers though.

Infant Souls:

These souls avoid having to deal with the modern world. They usually choose to live in small communities where they can avoid complexity. They create rules and rituals that give them security. Their focus is on their own survival. These basic instincts swiftly calibrate in favor of aggressive, and often cruel and violent responses to perceived threats.

Baby Souls:

These souls protect themselves with guns, draconian laws, and vengeful gods. They see the world in terms of black and white, them and us, and good and evil. Their fundamentalism and obedience to authority helps them avoid facing what might be uncomfortable questions. Their experience of life is rule-based, rigid, dogmatic, family-oriented, and highly structured around adhering to the laws and morals of an institution or culture.

Young Souls

These souls tend to act emotionally rather than rationally. These souls want to belong, they create strong families which they glue together with firm religious beliefs and strict moral codes. Their real need is to fit into their community. These souls tend to be attracted to megachurches where they can blend in and feel part of the majority. Conformity, and the safety it offers, is so vitally important to these souls.

These souls tend to lose much of the awkwardness and discomfort it once felt as a younger soul. These souls are conscious of their own lack of sophistication. They tend to focus on their offspring. Their own desire to achieve makes them a committed parent. They want their children to do well in part because their successes will reflect well on themselves. They build strong communities and focus on education and developing particular careers.

These souls are exciting, dynamic, and always striving to push things forward. Their tendency is to take what they want, regardless of the long-term consequences. These souls also love the excitement of politics, with all its opportunities for self-advancement and intrigue. And when it comes to war they find it a great way to express their power.

Mature Souls:

Instead of accepting conventional wisdom, these souls question everything. The guilelessness of earlier soul ages is replaced with skepticism. They begin to see that the world isn't quite the place those in authority tell them it is. These souls begin to find materialism shallow, yet they're not sure where happiness does lie. Having reincarnated many times in a variety of races and cultures helps them to develop acceptance. Discomfort with armed conflict begins here.

Great inventions are created, masterpieces are painted, and new discoveries are made. These souls brought us aviation (the wright brothers), the sistine chapel (Michelangelo), and penicillin (Alexander Fleming). This urge, combined with the desire to help each other, results in the creation of societies and organizations dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge.

These souls get involved in politics and socially conscious charities, and seek out groups of people who, like them, want the world to be a better place. You can find them in progressive political parties, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and Greenpeace. They begin to seek out peaceful solutions to conflicts, both personal and national. With many dramatic incarnations behind them, these souls want to be left alone to live their lives in their own way.

Old Souls:

These old souls are all working on issues from past lives. With so much grief and heartache behind them, many will spend a lifetime in therapy or finding ways to understand their emotional side. Spirituality gains immense importance and these souls develop a greater-than-ever consciousness that we're all connected to each other.

Old Souls Ready for Retirement:

These old souls are ready for retirement. Conventional ideas of success become meaningless. Materialism becomes less important than ever. Most live quiet lives, doing work they love, in the hope it will contribute to society. These easy going souls have many lifetimes of achievement behind them, and often develop a sense of having been there and done it all before.

I want to share my opinion on this because I think this topic is really interesting and it tends to come up in spiritual discussions. I think of an old soul as someone that is tired of war, politics, materialism, and bickering. So I can see why old souls and spiritual teachers want to try to categorize humans and put them into different boxes. This helps them understand why some humans act in a way that is incomprehensible.

However, I think that the model above is too simplistic. Let me share my thoughts below:

• For one, I think sometimes we go through different phases in our life and we may hit multiple categories in Ainslie's list above. I know that I have.

• I also think that the time period and country we incarnate in has a big impact to our actions. It's really hard to focus on love and spirituality when a person is focused on the survival of their family and themselves.

• In the above categories, Ainslie is painting those that are religious as younger souls. I don't think this is a hard and fast rule. There are good things with religion, for example I know my husband likes the community, kindness, and charity work that religion can provide. I think we can all agree that Mother Teresa was probably an older evolved soul. However, I agree with Ainslie that there are parts of religion that are based on human ego and control through fear mongering. Any of the stuff in religion having to do with fear, hell, judgement and excluding people based on dogma was all historically created by those that wanted power and control over others. Thus, I think an older evolved soul may intuitively feel that this is not true and right for them. So an older soul may still get involved with religion, but ignore this part of the religious beliefs and focus on the original teachings around unconditional love and service to others.

• Also, I believe that sometimes our soul wants an experience so our soul will "set the stage" for certain learnings to happen. For example a soul may say to another soul..."I really want to work on my self-worth in this life so I need you to play a role where you are unkind to me so it forces me to go inward and work on myself". I have seen many accounts of that through my research.

• In addition, the belief systems we are exposed to are selected at a high level by the soul but I do believe these are a factor in why we act a certain way until we clear those belief systems. Belief systems are beliefs we are taught and exposed to by parents, grandparents, teachers, and society. For example religious dogma, atheist beliefs, beliefs that we aren't good enough....etc

• Then of course, free will is king in the Universe so that will have a factor as well.

So to summarize, I understand why old souls are trying to figure out why some people hurt each other and the planet, create different religions that sometimes separate each other, and focus on materialism. It is very confusing. The old soul often wants to return to a simpler life of treating others the way you would treat yourself, an emphasis on spiritual connection through meditation and prayer, and the remembrance that we are all connected and divine souls. I think this was actually what the original spiritual teachers like Jesus, Muhammad, and Buddha were trying to tell us. However, I don't think we can put people in a box or category. The soul's journey is unique and wondrous for everyone.