MICHAEL READING CHART EXPLANATION

For Jane Doe

By Shepherd Hoodwin

INTRODUCTION

According to Michael, each of us at the core is what they like to call a “spark of the Tao” or, you could say, a “unit of consciousness in the all that is.”

As this spark, we each decided a long time ago to begin a great journey or adventure that might be called “planetary sentience.” To be sentient, as Michael defines it, is to have consciousness that is complex enough to be capable of purely intellectual function, such as self-awareness and long-range planning. To be a planetary sentient is to play a particular game the universe offers that involves coming to the physical plane of a planet such as earth, inhabiting a life form such as the human form, and experiencing what that planet and life form have to offer. When we’re done, we ascend through the higher planes until we’re fully reabsorbed back into the Tao. That whole loop, from the Tao, through the physical plane and each of the six higher planes, and back to the Tao is called a “grand cycle.”

In order to do a grand cycle, we need a vehicle, something that will anchor us into the seven-plane dimensional universe and carry us along this journey. That vehicle is called the “essence,” or “soul.”

If you were going to take a road trip, you might first go to a car dealership to get a vehicle. The first thing the salesperson would probably ask you is, “What kind do you want? A sedan, a hatchback, a minivan, or an SUV?” Once you narrow that down, you choose your options, accessories, and colors. It’s rather like that with the soul.

When you decide to undertake this journey, you go to the “soul dealership” and decide what basic model you want. The seven models, or types of souls, are called the “role.” The seven roles consist of three pairs: server and priest, artisan and sage, and warrior and king, plus the single role of scholar. Certain role combinations are “classic” and are often found in mates. In addition to the pairs mentioned, scholars often mate with priests and warriors, and servers often mate with kings. However, every soul will eventually experience most, if not all, combinations.

Once you decide your essence role, you pick the equivalent of options. For example, you choose your ratio of male to female energy, and your frequency, which is how fast the soul vibrates, giving it its texture. You also choose your unique location within larger groupings of souls, which gives you particular resonances. And so forth, until you’ve ready to “drive it off the lot” and begin your journey.

Now you have another set of choices. On a road trip, you’d decide where to spend the first night and what you’d do there. With the journey of your soul, you decide where you want to have your first lifetime, who your parents will be, and what you wish to experience. Then, you choose what Michael calls “overleaves,” personality traits that overlay your soul and help you accomplish your goals.

Note that the chart is divided into two sections, “Essence” and “Overleaves,” or soul and personality. At the top of each section are four headings, the four axes: “Inspiration,” “Expression,” “Action,” and “Assimilation.” Many chart traits are on one of these axes. A trait on the inspiration axis has an inspirational quality; it’s about the inner world, and it’s associated with the fire element. The expression axis is the bridge — it’s about bringing what’s in the inner world into the outer through communication or creativity; it’s associated with air. The action axis concerns accomplishment or results in the outer world — the bottom line; its element is earth. The assimilation axis is about collecting and distilling information — it provides a neutral observation point and resource for the other three axes; it’s associated with water.

The first three axes are divided into “ordinal” and “cardinal.” The ordinal side is concrete; it has to do with the details of life, the nitty-gritty. The cardinal side is opposite: it’s abstract; it has to do with the overview of life, the big picture. The ordinal is contracted, the cardinal, expanded. The ordinal is like a zoom lens, the cardinal, like a wide-angle lens. Ordinal is private; cardinal is public. Cardinal has a positive pole of “lucidity,” and a negative pole of “activity.” Ordinal has a positive pole of “responsiveness” and a negative pole of “passivity.” The more cardinal, the more influential the trait is on the larger world; the more ordinal, the more internally focused it is. The assimilation axis is neutral, neither ordinal nor cardinal.

So the roles and overleaves fit onto the axes. For example, the first pair of roles, server and priest, are ordinal and cardinal, respectively, on the inspiration axis. The unpaired scholar role is on the assimilation axis.

The roles and overleaves each have a particular position on the axes. For example, the first pair of roles, server and priest, are ordinal and cardinal, respectively, on the inspiration axis. The unpaired scholar role is on the assimilation axis.

Parallel roles and overleaves — those that are on the same side of the same axis — have similarities and, when they occur together on a chart, reinforce each other, making them stronger. For example, the role of sage and the goal of acceptance are both on the cardinal side of the expression axis, and both involve a need to be liked (sages need their audience to pay attention to them, and the goal of acceptance motivates one to behave in an acceptable manner). All sages have acceptance as a “natural” goal, so they have some of that flavor even when it is not their actual goal. When it is, acceptance manifests particularly strongly. Likewise, if a person has both a goal of acceptance and an attitude of idealist, those traits amplify each other. On the other hand, opposite traits, such as discrimination and idealist, counterbalance one another.

Many of the traits on the chart have a positive and negative “pole.” In the positive pole, the trait manifests cleanly, with a loving intent; in the negative, it distorts due to immaturity and fear in some form. One of the benefits of having your chart is having words for your pitfalls — these are tools for avoiding them and having a more conscious and peaceful life. The poles are listed on your chart.

Overleaves can “slide,” or temporarily move, from one to another, either across the same axis, or, from the neutral assimilation-axis, to any other. If you are in a negative pole of an overleaf, deliberately sliding to another’s positive pole can help you get out of it. This is called “hands across” on the same axis, and “hands through” from the assimilation axis.

Childhood imprinting is how we were taught to be, or conclusions we drew about what we needed to do to get along in our family and community. It can override our true personality and prevent us from manifesting who we really are, especially earlier in life. If it does not fade away as we grow up, we will likely confront it during our fourth internal monad, which is typically during our mid-thirties, when essence seeks to overthrow anything standing in the way of our accomplishing our life task. We examine our imprinting to see whether it still serves us, and attempt to let our true nature emerge. Many people do not successfully accomplish this, and therefore do not completely look the way their Michael reading chart indicates. For example, a suppressed sage may not be able to express herself freely, which is an especially big deal for a sage. A warrior or king who was beaten down as a child may be afraid to let his power flow, also a key issue for someone in that situation. Childhood imprinting may continue themes from past lives. That warrior or king who was beaten down may have abused his power in past lives.

Personality is not the same as soul, and we don’t look and act the same way in every lifetime. Other factors can inhibit or highlight our traits, such as physical and mental health challenges. I find that in the Michael teachings, the stereotypes are apropos about sixty percent of the time. I have known a few quiet sages, for example, and several gregarious scholars. None the Michael teachings traits are about behaviors per se, but about underlying energies. Perhaps you can validate your chart by considering more your motivations and the forces acting in your nature, if not your outer behaviors.

Sometimes our charts become more obvious as we get older; we tend to play around with different ways of being when we are younger, trying them on for size. It’s always possible that channeling (or any information) is incorrect. However, someone who is consciously on a path of inner awakening who receives an accurate Michael chart should be able to validate it over time.

Let’s take a look at your role and see what axis it sits on, and whether it’s ordinal, cardinal, or neutral.

ROLE

First of all, what is a role? Your role is the kind of soul you are, one out of seven. Their proportions are multiples of one out of twenty-eight. The seven roles, from most populous (and ordinal) to least, are:

Servers 25% (7/28)
Artisans 22% (6/28)
Warriors 17% (5/28)
Scholars 14% (4/28)
Sages 10% (3/28)
Priests 8% (2/28)
Kings 4% (1/28)

Your role dictates your primary way of being and therefore, how you contribute to life. You might say that it’s your inner style. Every role can do any profession, but there are proclivities, and your role indicates how you are likely to approach anything you do. For example, although many actors and musicians are sages and artisans, there are people of each role who are successful actors and musicians. It’s no so much *what* you do but *how* you do it that reflects your essence traits. A priest actor or musician, for instance, might underline how she might inspire others through her craft, rather than focusing so much on the craft itself.

The cardinal roles tend to interact with larger groups and more of people in general than the ordinal roles. Still, we all need our space. A surprising number of outwardly gregarious sages have expressed a need for alone “down time” in order to regroup — with three inputs, they’re more sensitive than they may appear. Priests need time alone to commune with the universe. Even kings need chances to review and reflect.

Your role, Jane, is “scholar.”

Scholar is on the assimilation axis, so we know that your primary way of being is assimilative. In order for you to be yourself, you need something to assimilate and the opportunity to do so; without that, you languish.

Scholars, being neutral, are the most versatile role, and especially take on the “colorings” of their secondary characteristics, as well as their imprinting, astrology, etc. However, they usually love to learn and are interested in a wide range of subjects; academia and research are their natural domains. They can excel at any field, but tend to approach everything by learning as much as possible about it first, rather than jumping into things more intuitively. They can be as passionate and intense as any other role, but they more often have a quality of dispassionate objectivity as the detached observer.

Scholars not only have “knowledge” (the positive pole) *about* things, they also tend to know how to do a lot of things. In the positive pole, they have living, real knowledge, that fits in the real world. In the negative pole, they have false or untested knowledge, “theory,” that sounds good “on paper” but doesn’t pan out when tested. They can be excessively dry and vicarious, rather than participating and living life.

Scholars tend to have an encyclopedic memory for facts. There are many different types of intelligence (the creative intelligence or artisans, for one); a scholar’s intelligence tends to be more stereotypical. They can show off in class with the right answers. They tend to like all institutions of learning (including museums) and like to get advanced degrees. Most scholars love to travel, a way of learning through the body. This is especially true of those who are moving centered.

Since scholars provide a resource for the other roles, a library, if you will, as well as a source of unbiased viewpoints (hopefully), most tend to be packrats. They have a sense of needing to save things that might be of benefit to someone in the future. This most often manifests relative to media, especially books. Scholars have always prized books, and now that they’re so relatively cheap, it’s hard for them to resist hoarding them. Other media, such as CDs, DVDs, and digital media also qualify, but anything useful tends to be saved, and maybe organized, catalogued, etc.

Scholars can tend to be excessively literal and lack social skills, like the nerds who can’t get up the courage to ask someone out on a date. Attendees at Star Trek conventions tend to be disproportionately scholars (artisans are second). Yet there are many scholars you wouldn’t immediately spot as being scholars, although you might be hard-pressed to figure out what else they could be (which is typical of the neutral-axis traits).

Scholar is neither ordinal nor cardinal; generally, they have a narrower social circle than the cardinal roles, but a wider one than the ordinal roles. However, scholars run the gamut in all things.

Scholars are known for having eclectic interests and hobbies. Because they have one input, they tend to put their focus on one area at a time, and, thus, can move from one obsession to another. The term “absent-minded professor” especially fits the role of scholar when his mind is off on something he finds more interesting. Scholars follow what interests them; on the other hand, they’re able to find something interesting about almost anything.

With humor, as with most things, scholars can go either way, since they are neutral: they can be humorless, or quite funny, often in an eccentric way. Funny scholars especially enjoy puns. With scholars, their other chart traits have a lot to do with which directions they lean in. (We’ll be discussing your casting, overleaves, etc., below.)

I do intense energy work in my sessions. Of the few who have said that they didn’t feel anything, most have been scholars, probably because they tend to process intellectually. On the other hand, some scholars are quite adept at perceiving energy; if they are, they probably started by studying how to do it, as they usually do, rather than by jumping into it intuitively. Any skill can be learned with enough practice, but each role has its affinities.

Scholars tend to be most attracted to the two most intense roles, warriors and priests.

ESSENCE TWIN (ET)

Your “essence twin” is another soul you team up with in the beginning to help you with your lessons by being vibrationally similar to you, and thereby reflecting you back to yourself. When your ET is discarnate (not in a physical body), it’s almost as if it is living in your vest pocket, and some of its traits blend into yours if its role is different. (I write “it” because the discarnate soul has no gender.) There is less bleedthrough if the soul is incarnate and knows you, and even less if you don’t know each other.

In addition to the natural attractions each role has, we also tend to be attracted to people who have the same role as our ET.

About five percent of us have no essence twin. A lesson of a cycle without an essence twin may be self-sufficiency, finding balance and completeness within, experiencing our reflection within ourselves rather than externally. We might choose a fairly balanced male/female energy ratio to facilitate this. People with no essence twin sometimes tell me, when they learn of it, that they aren’t surprised; they always had a sense of doing this planet “solo.” They may need to be especially deliberate about drawing in support from others. Sometimes they team up with someone who functions like an essence twin for a lifetime or a series of lifetimes. I refer to them as surrogate essence twins. When someone has no ET, his casting becomes his only source for secondary role influences and therefore is especially important.

Even when we have an essence twin, we only know him or her in the flesh during ten to thirty percent of our lifetimes; it can be a very involving relationship, anywhere from very pleasant to very unpleasant, and the soul wants a wide range of experiences on the physical plane. Many Michael students make the mistake of romanticizing this relationship. There are many other reasons a soul may be close to you, and your ET is not necessarily a soul mate. However, no matter who or where your essence twin is, your soul connection is always there.

Essence twin and task companion are the two key relationships defined in the Michael teachings. However, they are not necessarily close to us on a personality level in any given lifetime, and it is not unusual for both to be discarnate. There are many other reasons we can feel close to other people, such as being in the same entity, or having shared powerful past live experiences.

Your essence twin is a discarnate warrior, so there’s a good deal of bleedthrough, making it a significant secondary influence.

Warriors, like kings, are cool and no-nonsense, and quite powerful, because they have one input — they focus all their attention in one place at a time. They are tough, grounded, sturdy workhorses, and the most sexual of the roles.

Warrior has a positive pole of “persuasion” and a negative pole of “coercion.” Warriors (like sages) are good at selling, because of their ability to persuade (sages are good schmoozers). Warriors are characterized by a “macho” instinctive drive in both women and men. They are the most blunt and non-diplomatic of the roles. They are all about the “bottom line” and productivity. Their domains are business, the military, law enforcement, and anything practical that brings efficiency to society. So this combination makes you more grounded, less prone to scholars’ “absent-minded professor” syndrome.

Scholars are the number four-position role, and warriors, the number three. They add up to seven, and therefore have a nature complementarity. They are attracted to one another and often twin. You tend to get on well with warriors. This is true of all scholars, but especially when you have a warrior ET.

CASTING

“Casting” is the order in which you were cast from the Tao. The two rows of numbers on your chart detail your casting; they are like your address. Your role and primary casting are the most important items on your chart.

Each number, one through seven, resonates with a particular role (and its corresponding overleaves). For example, the priest role is in the sixth position and it corresponds with the sixth chakra (third eye). It is the sixth most ordinal (or second most cardinal), and also the sixth most populous (or second least populous). It corresponds with all the cardinal inspiration-axis overleaves. Artisan is the number two role, corresponding with the second chakra, which is known for creativity and sexuality. It corresponds with all the ordinal expression-axis overleaves. However, cardinality/ordinality is reversed for numbers and roles, so seven casting, for instance, is the most ordinal position, despite resonating with the most cardinal role, king, because it is the last of the seven numbers.

Priest is also a cardinal role, so priest casting is ordinal, because the number six is in the second half of the numbers one through seven — the second half of anything is ordinal. Likewise, artisan casting is cardinal, because two is in the first half. The fact that the casting numbers are opposite the roles in this regard allows souls to experience every energy in both ordinal and cardinal ways. All the complexities of casting allow for much more variety than the seven roles alone would permit.

Essence twin bleedthrough allows some of the actual energy of your ET’s role to be mixed with your own, if it’s different, whereas casting is more a direction, how and where your role energies tend to be invested. For example, a warrior-cast scholar may not feel like a warrior, but tends to act like one.

PRIMARY CASTING

A “cadence” is a group of seven souls, usually all of the same role. Your position in that is your primary casting. You are fifth in your cadence, so you are a “sage-cast scholar.” Sages are the fifth most ordinal and populous role (the third most cardinal and third least populous), so five is the sage number.

It has a positive pole of “expansion,” and a negative pole of “adventure.” In this case, adventure is a more limited experience of the energy. There’s nothing wrong with it, but if you have an expansion, you probably also had adventure, whereas an adventure isn’t itself necessarily expansive — it could just be getting kicks. The number five gives one an urge to experience in new and different ways, to perhaps be eccentric or to pioneer “where no person has gone before.” Sages, the number five role, often like to try new things and are open-minded, more so than the other roles.

Since five is in the second half of the numbers one through seven, its position is ordinal. Being a sage is cardinal, but having sage casting is ordinal, so it allows you to also do sage things in a more down-to-earth way, such as counseling one-on-one, whereas speaking to large groups is a cardinal activity.

Scholars and sages share in common a love of knowledge and learning in a wide range of subjects. Sages are more attracted to disseminating distilled “news you can use,” whereas scholars have patience for wading through drier data to pick out the nuggets and to organize and catalog them. As a sage-cast scholar, you can do both. As a scholar, you are likely to collect books and other sources of information; sages like to do that, too, but because of the urge to disseminate, they are not as likely to hold onto them, but instead seek to find “good homes” for them with others.

Like scholars, sages are also natural teachers, so, with this combination, which is the most verbal of any, teaching in the higher grade levels would be a good fit, as well as informal teaching. Sages tend to jump into learning more intuitively than scholars do, and tend to appear less detached, with better social skills, so your sage casting can help mitigate against the scholar negative-pole tendency to be excessively dry and vicarious. Sage casting tends to impart a scholar with the sage’s famous sense of humor.

SECONDARY CASTING

The middle number is your cadence’s position in its “greater cadence,” which is seven cadences, or forty-nine souls. It is what stands out about you to friends and family. We are each like multifaceted gems, with different facets standing out at different angles and distances. Your cadence is seventh in its greater cadence; seven is the king number. Seven has a positive pole of “inculcation” (to teach, lead, and bring the lessons entirely home) and a negative pole of “eclecticism” (Jill-of-all-trades but master of none). King, like warrior, is on the action axis. With your warrior ET, you are almost an “honorary” member of the action axis. Below, you’ll see that you are also in a king-position entity, futher underlining this influence. This makes you more grounded, efficient, and better at business and leadership than you would normally be as a scholar; scholars can sometimes become lost in their heads (“theory”). These influences keep pushing you towards practical application and testing in the real world.

King casting, like your warrior bleedthrough, is ordinal, so your leadership and organization skills tend to manifest more one-on-one.

TERTIARY CASTING

Your greater cadence is second in its string of greater cadences. The positive pole of two is “stability,” which is three-dimensional; the negative is “balance,” which is just two-dimensional. With numbers, the negative pole isn’t destructive, just more limited. This is a relatively minor flavor in the “stew,” but it gives you some artisan influence, because two is the artisan number. It perhaps gives you an added esthetic sense and ability for craft.

CADRE/ENTITY

Several greater cadences of your role combined with greater cadences of some or all the other roles makes up an “entity,” your spiritual family of one to two thousand souls. Seven entities make a “cadre.” Twelve cadres make up a “cadre group,” or “energy ring.” Most essence twins are in the same cadre, but some help join together the whole cadre group by being in different cadres.

The cadre number (which is first) is unique for each one, so it has no casting influence. However, the second number, which is the entity, is out of seven, so it does have a numerical meaning. Since it characterizes everyone in a large group, it tends to more stand out about you from a distance, in what strangers and acquaintances will notice about you from afar. In addition, every entity has its own personality based on its unique makeup.

Members of your entity often feel like your immediate family. Members of other entities of your cadre are like your first cousins. (Those of other cadres in your cadre group are like second cousins.) People most often mate with members of entities that neighbor their own, although there are no rules about this. In addition, there is a special resonance between every other entity and cadre. So, for example, a member of a second entity may feel a particular complementarity with members of her cadre’s fourth entity. In addition, if you are a member of, say, the third entity of your cadre, you have a similar number three feeling as members of number three entities of other cadres: on one level, you’re the same, even though on another, the particulars are different, so you may feel a connection with another soul simply for this reason.

A soul’s most intimate bonds are with other members of his primary cadence, along with his essence twin and task companion. However, there are many possible reasons you might feel connected to someone; for example, bonding past-life experiences can make two souls very close even without sharing one of these “structural” connections.

Twelve cadres make up a “cadre group” or “energy ring.” The cadre group that includes Cadres 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 13, as Michael through me numbers them, has an agreement to study with the Michael entity, although, of course, not every member decides to study the Michael teachings in each lifetime.

You are in Cadre Four/Entity Seven, or 4/7 (called 2/7 through some channels), in the system Michael uses through me. Being in a number seven entity adds a generalized bit of king casting that stands out most at a distance. Strangers will notice a pervasive kingliness about you: leadership, organizational skills, etc. This characterizes everyone in a number seven entity, in addition to whatever specific personality an entity might have. Your particular entity has been characterized as “cleaning up messes that other people make,” which is a kingly flavor.

I have channeled these celebrities as being in your entity: Antonio Banderas, Yogi Amrit Desai, David Icke, Viggo Mortensen, Christina Ricci, and Valerie Plame Wilson. There are, no doubt, many more who haven’t yet been asked about through me.

ORIENTATION

You orient in “beauty,” which resonates both with your physical centering (discussed below) and your action-axis secondary essence traits.

There are three universal forces behind everything: “love,” “truth,” and “beauty” (corresponding with emotions, intellect, and body; or inspiration, expression, and action axes). Souls orient in one of them, or work with balancing two of these qualities. Someone with a truth orientation is more likely to be blunt about the truth she perceives, whereas someone oriented in love is more likely to forgive and let go of the trespasses of others, for example. Someone with a beauty orientation is more likely to cultivate his body and enjoy nature; it aligns with the action-axis affinity for physicality and energy. The beauty force is also called “energy.”

Although love aligns with the inspiration axis, and truth, with the expression axis, a priest can orient in the truth or beauty force rather than love, just as a sage can orient in love or beauty rather than truth. If a priest has a love orientation or a sage has a truth orientation, that reinforces her basic nature. Although scholars are neutral, interested in all experiences, a truth orientation underlines the scholarly love of knowledge. A beauty orientation supports endeavors such as energy work.

Someone with a combination love/truth orientation is constantly working to integrate these two forces: for instance, trying to speak both truthfully and kindly. Someone with a love/beauty orientation is about the intersection of love and beauty: the love of beauty and the beauty of love. With the combination of truth and beauty, one seeks the truth in beauty and vice versa.

This information is provided after the cadre/entity numbers because each soul must tie into a universal force in order to maintain the existence of the entity. Entities do not necessarily have equal numbers of each orientation, but cadres are likely to.

This system is different from the casting information based on raw numbers with three entity “sides” that JP Van Hulle works with. Also, it is not possible to translate from the casting numbers I channel into JP’s system, since they are not the same kinds of casting.

TASK COMPANION (TC)

Your task companion is your second closest soul bond structurally, after your essence twin. Your relationship with your ET pulls you into each other, and since your ET reflects you, into yourself; conversely, your TC draws you both outward into the world. When you are both on the physical plane, your life tasks tend to complement one another and you ignite each other to do them, whether or not you know one another. You help each other with your life tasks either on the physical plane in real time, or in the dreamtime, on higher levels.

When your TC is discarnate, it shows up as a spirit guide particularly devoted to helping you with your life task, the biggest lessons and accomplishments you seek (rather than, say, a guide focused on your day-to-day course corrections). It doesn’t give you the kind of bleedthrough that you have with your ET, which can show up strikingly in your demeanor — it comes in more subtly under certain circumstances, when you’re doing your big-picture tasks.

Yours is a discarnate king, meaning that you are able to pull in more king leadership and organizational skills, further underlining your king casting.

MALE/FEMALE ENERGY RATIO

There are many chart items that imply masculinity or femininity as they are usually thought of, but what we call “male/female energy” on the chart has a more narrow definition: the ratio refers to how goal-oriented the soul is. Those higher in male energy more tend to be workaholics or just like to do a lot, especially when in a male body. Souls higher in female energy may work hard, too, but tend to do a lot of things, as opposed to focusing on goals in a major way. The ratio could be said to determine how much of a specialist or generalist one is. High male energy channels a person’s energy into a narrow tube, so to speak, and he has a large impact wherever he directs it. However, the nature of high focus is that more things are left out.

The majority of souls are in the middle range, between 40 and 60. Whatever one’s ratio, the soul’s male energy is “forward” in a male body, and its female energy, in a female body. Mostly due to social expectations, the solid roles of king, warrior, and scholar generally prefer the male body, and those roles have more to do with our archetypes of masculinity than male/female energy. Servers and artisans tend to be more comfortable as females, and they are more archetypically feminine in our culture. Sages and priests are agnostic. Priests are both fluid and powerful; they enjoy both the fluidity of the female body and the power of the male, so they tend to do fine in either.

Overleaves such as power, aggression, impatience and dominance have also tended to be more associated with masculinity in our culture. There have been more feminine associations with acceptance, submission, and spiritualist, for example. In this era, many souls who have been more comfortable as males are incarnating as females, and vice versa, in order to achieve greater internal balance and also to take advantage of opportunities to create a more equal society, so the archetypes are changing.

However, with any role or overleaf, higher male energy tilts one more often toward the male body, and higher female, to the female body, although souls can acquire a personal preference along the way regardless of these factors — it is an individual matter. Almost every soul will choose both male and female lifetimes in order to have a complete “education” on the physical plane. It’s “good work” when the soul can be comfortable as both. I’ve never seen anyone at exactly 50/50, but a lot of charts come out as having 49/51, 51/49, or thereabouts; souls in that range are clearly going for a more balanced experience of Earth.

It’s common for partners to have opposites. When both have higher male energy, it suggests that they’re good at working together toward goals if they can harmonize them; otherwise, they may clash. When both have higher female energy, their relationship tends to be more laid back, all else being equal. There are many things on the Michael chart that can predict attraction; if two people don’t have opposite male/female ratios, they probably have other complements. There are many possible factors in attraction.

Your ratio is 83/17. This is the most extreme and unusual trait on your chart. Scholars tend to be more comfortable as males, since throughout history, females often were not permitted to read and travel. Especially since you have much higher male energy, it’s likely that you have been male more often, although that’s a matter of individual preference. Since we are attracted to our opposite, someone at 18/82 would most attract you, but anyone in that range would work well for you in this regard, although there aren’t many souls with such high female energy.

FREQUENCY

Our frequency is the rate of vibration of our essence on a scale of one to a hundred. Slow frequencies feel steady, stable, or substantial. Fast frequencies feel effervescent, ethereal, or airy. Frequency ranges could be compared to solids, liquids, and gases such as ice, water, and steam. People with high frequencies can be dreamy or bubbly, have more intense and rapid experiences, and perhaps burn out more quickly. Low frequency souls vibrate more slowly and gradually. Frequency does not change throughout our lifetimes, and no frequency is good or bad.

We are most comfortable living with people whose frequency is within about twenty points of our own. Less than half of all souls incarnating have frequencies higher than 50, because higher frequencies are harder to manage on the physical plane, but many are between 40 and 50. If you were living with someone whose frequency was substantially higher or lower than your own, it would subtly pull on you, trying to speed you up or slow you down, it might seem.

Roles and overleaves also have a frequency. Priests and artisans are high-frequency roles; warriors, kings, and scholars are low frequency; and servers and sages are middle frequency. Your role’s frequency has a stronger impact on how you are perceived than your individual one (for example, all warriors seem earthy). Some channels get this number as an amalgam of your individual and role frequency.

Your individual frequency is 28, which is near the top of the low range. At 28, many people will vibrate above your greatest comfort zone. As a soul, you chart a slow and steady course through the physical plane. This balances your very high male energy, which is quite out there in the world and might stick out if combined with high frequency.

PREVIOUS CYCLES

You have had twelve previous grand cycles. Each one was probably on a different planet in a different life form, from infant soul through old, and through all the higher planes back to the Tao. You’ve probably done each of the roles, in combination with various ET roles and casting. Every time you as a spark do a planetary cycle, you gain experience and therefore complexity. You might compare it to this year’s computers vs. last year’s: last year’s work fine, but this year’s are a bit more complex. The average Earthling has had four previous cycles. Nineteen is the highest number any of us have had (for example, the man Jesus). The most common number on my charts is eleven, and then twelve; the numbers thin out a lot after that. Like all things, complexity can be either positive or negative, and is relative.

*****

So far, everything we’ve discussed has concerned your essence, making it true for all your lifetimes on Earth. Now, we’re going to discuss your personality traits, which can be different in each lifetime.

NEEDS

There are nine “needs.” This material largely originated with Jose Stevens. You can find articles about them at:

http://www.michaelteachings.com/nine_needs_index.html, and

http://www.michaelteaching.com/jun97.htm.

Incidentally, there is a lot of other material relative to the charts online, as well as in my book, Journey of Your Soul. Michael books by other authors are listed here. MichaelTeachings.com links to a variety of other Michael teaching sites and lists.

Your needs are based on your life task. We all have all nine, but their priority can change from lifetime to lifetime. They are good to keep in mind relative to possible careers. The nine, with their poles, are:

Security: + trust, – fear
Adventure: + presence, – drama
Freedom: + independence, – fear of commitment
Expansion: + prosperity, – indiscriminate growth
Power: + authority, – authoritarian
Expression: + creation, – narcissism, lies
Acceptance: + open, friendly, – manipulative
Communion: + sharing, – indiscriminate contact
Exchange: + give and receive, – slander, gossip

You can remember these through the acronym SAFEPEACE.

Your top three are “adventure,” “freedom,” and “acceptance.”

Adventure is the need to take risks and have excitement, however you define that. For a mature or old soul, exploring the inner/spiritual world can be the greatest adventure, but this also refers to your outer life. It seems that you’ve lived an adventurous life, with a lot of travel and involvement in a variety of groups and studies.

The freedom need is the need to have the space to call your own shots. That makes self-employment, or a job in which you have a lot of latitude, ideal.

Acceptance is the need to live and work in congenial environments, where you feel safe and accepted.

LIFE QUADRANT

“Life quadrant” is a simple concept that states when in a group, either for work or play, we tend to take one of the following positions:

Love: Initiate, as in, “Let’s go to a movie.”

Knowledge: Provide information for the group, as in “I read a review that said that such-and-such is a good movie.”

Power: Move the group, as in “Let’s get in the car; I’ll drive.” And

Support: Serve and unify group, as in “I’ll get popcorn.”

Our position is flexible, depending on the group’s needs, and we will do all positions in our lifetimes.

You tend to do the “support” position.

***

Now we have the seven overleaves, ordered from most internal to most external.

GOAL

The “goal” is the most internal overleaf. It may be the most significant, but it’s not usually the most obvious. It’s the motivator, what pulls you through your lifetime, what you ultimately seek from each circumstance.

Yours is called “discrimination,” aka “rejection.” It’s one of the most challenging overleaves. Ultimately, it’s about learning to discern — the positive pole is “sophistication.” It involves saying no, as opposed to its opposite, “acceptance,” which involves saying yes. The negative pole is “prejudice”; in its strongest manifestation, it can make the person reject others and situations without cause, driving others away without truly examining and thinking about it. When in the negative pole, you can benefit from the “hands across” technique, deliberately sliding to the positive pole of its opposite, “acceptance,” and find unconditional love for all things, which can lead you back to your own positive pole, being discerning without being prejudicial.

Although your goal is always operating in your life, you invest your discrimination in things that you care about. If you don’t care about clothes, for example, you won’t be picky about them. After all, no one can pay attention to everything. However, perhaps the pastry dough has to be exactly right — you have learned to discern much about what it takes to get the things you care about to be just the way you want them to be.

In the positive pole, the intellectual parsing of discrimination helps one make better choices, which is a key concept of the Michael teachings. As we take responsibility for our choices, we accept the consequences, but know that “it’s all good,” because we can learn and grow from everything. We make the best choices we can but without fear of making the “wrong” ones — whatever happens, we will have new choices to make, and keep doing our best to make something worthwhile, lemons out of lemonade, if need be.

ATTITUDE

Your “attitude” is how you look at the world, the sorts of things that tend to jump out at you. Yours is “skeptic,” one of the more challenging overleaves. Skeptics look at the world with an element of doubt. In the positive pole, “investigation,” the skeptic asks the necessary questions to get to the bottom of things; skeptics make excellent journalists and scientists, for example. Once the skeptic gets enough good information, s/he can totally get behind something that has panned out. In the negative pole, “suspicion,” no amount of information is enough.

Everything on the chart needs to be seen as a whole. Skeptic and discrimination are both on the ordinal (contracted) side of the expression axis, as is the intellectual center; both have an intellectual quality. Skeptic is the attitude equivalent of the goal of discrimination — both cause the intellect to contract (focus) around information to sort it out. The difference is that the goal is a motivator, more deeply internal, and the attitude is a perspective, a way of seeing things. Parallel overleaves (and those parallel with your role influences) reinforce each other, making them stronger.

MODE

The “mode” is how you run your energy, how you operate in the world, and, in particular, how you achieve your goal.

You are in “power” mode. Power exudes (expression axis) from you in everything you do in a large (cardinal side) way. In the positive pole, you have “authority” — you sound like you know what you’re talking about, because you come on strong. In the negative pole, “oppression,” you cannot hide a bad mood; you blare loudly and seem more opinionated that you might feel yourself to be because your expressions are amplified and negative feelings fill the space around you. To get out of the negative pole, slide to the opposite, caution mode, and be careful and deliberate about your choices.

CENTER

We all have all seven “centers”: emotional (everyday feelings) and higher emotional (exalted feelings), intellectual (day-to-day matters) and higher intellectual (philosophical/big picture thoughts), physical (bodily excitations) and moving (whole-body actions or higher energetic states), and instinctive (automatic survival operations). One of four is chosen by the soul as our primary center, the front door of the personality that opens when someone knocks: either intellectual (most common in the U.S.), emotional, physical or moving.

Your primary centering refers specifically to how you react to stimuli. Your thinking when it is not a reaction to externals uses your intellectual center but is not a manifestation of your primary centering, although intellectually centered people tend to think more often. Similarly, you can have an emotional nature in general without being emotionally centered. The emotional center is on the inspiration axis, and the inspiration-axis roles, priest and server, tend to have a particularly emotional nature regardless of centering. However, if they don’t have an emotional center, they don’t tend to *react* first or second from their emotions, even if they feel a great deal. The feelings may be just *there*, not necessarily displayed, so they may not come into conscious awareness as easily. Sages and artisans, being expressive, also tend to be at least fairly emotional, since they are constructed to bring out what is within (communication and creativity). Scholars tend to be the least emotional of the roles, followed by kings and warriors; for them, being emotionally centered may be the only way they’ll develop their emotions, and having that centering can be a big deal and a challenge for them. On the other hand, they tend to be more comfortable with their physicality than the other roles, even without an action-axis center. Of course, everything else on the chart has an impact, too, as well as imprinting, astrology, and so forth.

One of the aims of the Michael teachings is to help us balance our centers, so that we have free access to whichever one is most appropriate. When both partners have the same centering, it makes for better understanding of the other, but then neither is filling in the weak spot.

You are physically centered, in the intellectual part (your secondary center), meaning that your first reaction is to have bodily sensations or “gut feelings,” and then your thoughts more-or-less automatically take shape based on what you feel physically. You most easily change your thoughts for the better by changing how your body feels: maybe getting some exercise, sleep, good food, a massage, or sex.

The positive pole of the physical center is “amoral,” the negative, “erotic.” “Amoral” here means that you fully feel all your sensations without judging them; “erotic” suggests that you interpret your sensations in overly narrow or personal terms, not necessarily sexually, although it could be that. In Yarbro, this center is called the “sexual” center, with the caveat that it refers to all physical excitation. I use the term “physical” to avoid misunderstanding. However, people with this center are perceived as being sexier, all things being equal.

The weak link when your primary center is physical and your secondary is intellectual is the emotional center. Scholars and warriors can be dry anyway, and you don’t react from your emotions first or usually second. Therefore, you and others may not necessarily know what you’re really feeling emotionally. For instance, your reaction may be testiness (because your body is uncomfortable), but your real emotion might be hurt. If you fall into the “trap” of uncomfortable sensations (frustration, repression, irritation, etc.) feeding negative thoughts, leading to even more uncomfortable sensations, forming a vicious circle (until perhaps you explode or break down), the way out is to feel and appropriately express your true emotions. You can accomplish this by distracting your intellectual part: instead of thinking about the thing you’re reacting to, do a crossword puzzle or read. When you feel sufficiently disengaged, then allow your true feelings to arise.

Scholars who are in the moving or physical center tend to have an exceptional love of traveling, so it doesn’t surprise me that you have traveled and lived abroad.

CHIEF OBSTACLE

The “chief obstacle” was originally called the “chief feature” in the Michael books by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro; that term was drawn from the Gurdjieff teachings. I like calling it the chief obstacle because I think that’s more descriptive. It refers to your primary stumbling block, the focus of your fears and illusions, something you deeply believe on a gut level to be true, but isn’t. The positive pole of a chief obstacle is the lesser of the two evils, since it is still based on fear.

Chief obstacles may be blatant or subtle, strong or weak. They may be visible only under certain circumstances of high stress and fear. However, they are always working in the background to thwart our growth, so “photographing” them in action and working to reduce their influence is a priority if we wish to grow. For each of us, overcoming our chief obstacle is a lynchpin of personal growth.

Here is a channeling I did on the subject:

http://www.michaelteachings.com/michael-on-chief-obstacles.html

Some channels get a “secondary chief feature.” I rarely do, unless it’s also a big part of the person’s daily life. However, it would be reasonable to rank all seven in priority order, since there’s at least a little bit of each of these obstacles in all of us.

You are in “arrogance” (+ pride, – vanity) a fear of vulnerability, of being judged and found wanting. It usually springs from a childhood of being mercilessly teased or criticized until you reached a point where you said to yourself, “If I’m judged one more time, I’ll die.”

There are three different strategies the subconscious uses to then cope with potential criticisms:

1. Shyness. “If no one sees me, if I fade into the woodwork, no one will judge me.” There is a wall of self-protection erected that might be perceived as coldness, and a terror of, say, being called on in class for fear of exposing a vulnerability. This is different from artisan shyness, which is more a reflection of their natural ordinality.
2. Self-judgment. Older souls often strategize that if they catch all their mistakes before anyone else can see them, they will be saved from being judged. Instead, they judge themselves mercilessly, leading to awkwardness and self-consciousness.
3. Stereotypical arrogance or haughtiness. The strategy is, “I’ll criticize others before they criticize me, putting myself up on a pedestal where they can’t reach me.” This usually backfires.

One may combine two or three of these at different times.

Affirmations can be helpful, such as, in this case, “I am safe in my vulnerability.” Realizing that it’s okay if people criticize, that it can provide useful insights and does not have to be painful, can also help. Our spiritual evolution is moving us away from a “better than/worse than” model to one in which we’re each seen for being parts of the same whole, equal in worth. Finding the freedom to be vulnerable and risk the judgments of others bring many good things.

BODY TYPE

“Body types” are the influences of the celestial bodies on our physical bodies. The concepts come from ancient esoteric teachings re-revealed by a student of Gurdjieff and incorporated by the first Michael channels and students, who were also students of Gurdjieff.

There are seven main body types. Here they are, with their poles:

LUNAR: + Luminous, – Pallid
SATURNIAN: + Rugged, – Gaunt
JOVIAL: + Grand, – Extravagant
MERCURIAL : + Agile, – Frenetic
VENUSIAN: + Voluptuous, – Obese
MARTIAL: + Wiry, – Muscle-bound
SOLAR : + Radiant, – Ethereal

Virtually no person has just one influence. Most people have two, and some have three or even four. The types blend together, so we have some traits deriving from each of them. On the charts, I don’t channel the percentages of each body type; I just rank them in order. Obviously, the larger the percentage of a body type, the more striking it will be, especially if it is not offset by its opposite.

For example, let’s say that your body type combines venusian (51%) and saturnian (49%). Venusians tend to be round, whereas saturnians can be gaunt. You could be round, gaunt, or somewhere in the middle. One’s basic build and/or coloring may be more influenced by a secondary type when there’s a substantial amount of it. (In fact, any body type can be thin or heavy; in addition to body type, there are issues of diet, metabolism, heredity, culture, etc.) However, if the split is 80/20%, you are more likely to be round, since venusian is so dominant. Still, there are thin venusians, so you can’t generalize too much.

If you have a venusian/martial type, it can be challenging to spot them, because venusian and martial are opposites, and whatever amount of martial you have tends to cancel out that much venusian.

Two people having opposites, on the same axis, make for body-type attraction, which is good to have in a sexual relationship: your bodies form a sort of electrical circuit; same body types make for comfort (as opposed to the excitement of opposites). One way to validate your body type is to observe what types attract you. When we have opposite types in our own body, they tend to almost cancel each other out, and body type attraction with others is less compelling an influence. Incidentally, body-type attraction is not necessarily the same thing as your “type,” which can come from many factors. See my Kindle book “Why We’re Attracted.”

Your primary type is “martial,” with a secondary of “jovial”; they blend with each other. Martials are squat, ruddy, muscular, and feisty; they can be explosive. The jovial type, named for our largest planet, Jupiter, is round and is the type most prone to weight gain. Its personality is also jovial in the sense of being fun-loving and being able to enjoy life. These two very-different types balance each other.

Body types have three attributes:

1. Positive- or negative-charged. Positive bodies emphasize the good things and ignore the negative, sometimes leading to the person failing to read the handwriting on the wall and ramming into it! Negative bodies, being receptive, can notice every flaw and be overly sensitive. Martial is negative and jovial is positive, so you are in the middle somewhere.
2. Masculine or feminine. Energy moves out from a masculine body type, and into a feminine. Both are masculine: martial explodes, and jovial unwinds into its environment with its presence.
3. Active or passive. Passive bodies are still, and active bodies want to move. Martial is active and jovial is passive, so, again, you are in the middle.

You have body-type attraction to those with a venusian/mercurial body, or those possessing either influence. Venusians also tends to put on weight easily. Venusians tends to have lush features; venusian men tend to be “teddy bears.” Mercurial is compact and lithe, with an oval face. Mercurial energy can be nervous and high-strung, just like the word “mercurial” suggests.

SOUL AGE

Soul age tells what your lessons are about. It is not about spiritual advancement per se, because at any age, one can become conscious and aware. Furthermore, when New Agers say that someone is an old soul, they are not referring to the specific soul age categories of the Michael teachings. They are just sensing that someone has a lot of experience and depth.

When we’re new to a planet, in our first lifetime, we’re first-level infant. Infant souls are like newborns focusing on surviving: mainly, finding food and not being killed. They tend to live in tribal settings or urban “jungles.” Baby souls are like toddlers learning the rules; they focus on ritual and structure, and are prone to fundamentalism. Young souls are parallel to youngsters playing hard, acting out the roles. This is when the soul, now equipped to prosper on the physical plane, looks to have maximum impact on it and be successful in an outer sense. The average person on earth is fifth-level young, so there is a worldwide emphasis now on success, climbing the ladder of prosperity, and so forth. Five is the sage number, so there is particular emphasis now on expanding communication and technology (such as the internet). After the young cycle comes mature, parallel to adolescence, which is about delving into self and relationships. Last on the physical plane is old, parallel to going away to college, which is about living from a more detached, larger perspective. Mature and old soul cycles are both about the inner world: mature souls go deep, and old souls go high.

Each soul age has seven levels, each of which focus on a different stage of growth and the realization of that soul age’s perspective. Although some are intrinsically more challenging than others, how you experience them depends on where you are in it (beginning, ending, or in the middle of it) and your own history. For example, if you’re at sixth-level, which is typically a time of repaying outstanding karma, how much karma you have to begin with will help determine how karmic that level is for you. Also, if you are just beginning the level, or are just finishing up some of its loose ends, it will be less intense than if you’re in the thick of it.

I like the analogy that JP Van Hulle channeled, comparing the seven levels to going to the beach: At first level, we stick our toe in the water. At second level, we are in the water up to our waist (half in and half out). At third level, we dive in and are completely submerged. At fourth level, we reemerge, fully wet with that soul age’s perspective. At fifth level, we splash around and play. At sixth level, others splash us. And at seventh level, we return to the shore.

The seven levels of the mature soul as channeled by Sarah Chambers, focus on:

1. Right relationship with self.
2. Right relationship with intimate others, especially your immediate family.
3. Right relationship with other people you come in contact with, such as friends and co-workers.
4. Right relationships with your culture/subculture.
5. Right relationship with the opposite sex.
6. Right relationship with the other cultures on the planet.
7. Right relationship with the other beings (plants, animals, etc.) with which we share the planet.

(I don’t have the seven levels of the other soul ages. This illustrates, though, how each level becomes more expansive.)

The biggest shift for the soul is from the increasingly outward thrust of infant/baby/young to the inward focus of mature/old. The solid roles of warrior and king, especially, are more comfortable with outer achievement (the young cycle is the third, or warrior, soul age), and may have particular difficulties in switching gears to a more inward orientation. The fluid roles (server, priest, artisan, and sage) are more accustomed to it, and tend to have fewer challenges with it, since the inspiration axis is innately about the inner world, and the expression axis is about expressing the inner into the outer. The mature cycle is the fourth, which is the scholar number, so, in one sense, it’s a natural for scholars. However, plowing the inner world can bring up difficult emotions that scholars in our society often avoid dealing with. In theory, the assimilation role is equally adept at assimilating thoughts, feelings, and physical experiences, but they frequently gravitate more toward intellectual knowledge and choose intellectual centering when intellectual stimulation is valued in a society, as it is in ours. The mature cycle can have a lot of drama and subjectivity; it is especially easy to take on others’ emotions when one is first exploring deep connections with others and self, although that can occur in any cycle. Old souls become increasingly detached.

The soul age stereotypes promoted in some of the writings suggest that old souls, especially later in the cycle, care nothing for this world, but that’s more in the negative poles, in which people aren’t coping well. Old souls have a harder time cracking the whip on themselves to do things that aren’t harmonious with their essence and life tasks, whereas younger souls might push themselves just to have the experience and success. However, wanting to do well in your job and be materially comfortable is healthy at any soul age, an attribute of good self-esteem.

Your manifested soul age is what your life currently is focusing upon. If your chart says “same,” that means that your outer life matches your inner. If it shows a lower soul age, you are reviewing lessons you covered in previous lives. This is very common. We all review younger soul ages in each lifetime until we “catch up” to where we are. Sometimes a soul lingers at an earlier level because a review is needed (for example, manifesting young in order to brush up on career issues), although sometimes it occurs because the person is stuck, perhaps unwilling to face an issue that would otherwise be on the horizon. Moving up a level in our actual soul age can take several lifetimes, but we can move through a level of our manifested soul age quite quickly if it doesn’t hold any “snags” for us, until we manifest our full soul age. Ideally, one manifests one’s true soul age after completing the fourth-internal “mid-life” monad, which is generally in one’s mid-thirties, but can be several years earlier or later. Manifested soul age isn’t relevant until one is an adult, because one’s perspective is more fluid and influenced by the body’s age during childhood.

Since no soul age is good or bad, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with reviewing a younger soul age; both youth and age have their advantages. With everything on the Michael chart, “it’s all good.” Even our chief obstacles and negative poles provide necessary lessons, although we are happier when we overcome them and choose to “grow through joy.” However, if there’s a big gap between your true and manifested soul age well into adulthood, you might feel a little out of synch with yourself.

Soul age is an emotionally charged issue. People frequently misunderstand it and give it too much importance. Some channels have a reputation for routinely either inflating or deflating it. It’s not as obvious and easy to validate as one might assume. For one thing, personality and essence are two different things; even a late-old soul can have an immature or damaged personality. The way to validate it is to explore what lessons you focus on, not just as intellectual interests, but as what propels everything you do.

You are at fourth-level mature, manifesting the same. Since the mature cycle is about relationships, at fourth-mature, life can look like a soap opera, but it’s basically fun. Fourth is the scholar level. It is in the middle of the seven levels, so there is a sense of having landed and of being balanced. It’s like being on a fulcrum. It’s the resting place at the top of the mountain you’ve worked so hard to climb, having completed the grueling work of the third level. There is time to take a breath and take in the view. You study and teach, now having more confidence than you had earlier. You are the quintessential mature soul, modeling solid relationship skills and an ability to know yourself.

SUMMARY

There are many traits on your chart that combine to paint a picture of someone who is laser-sharp. There’s the very high goal orientation of your mostly male energy. There’s the strength of your warrior bleedthrough and the focused edge of your king casting influences (and task companion). There’s the exacting nature of your goal of discrimination, and the way your skeptic attitude tests things for validity. Your power mode comes on strong, like your warrior bleedthrough. Your physical centering leads with your body, adding to your earthiness. Your arrogance can put a critical edge on you when it’s triggered. And your martial body type can be explosive.

It’s true that being physically centered is a bit cast against type for a scholar, but you are in the intellectual part of that center. Being fourth-mature, you have the confidence to pull all these traits together. Your sage primary casting makes you exceptionally verbal and articulate, and can lighten the mood with humor and insight. With twelve previous cycles, you are a quite experienced soul and can bring a lot of depth, complexity, and subtlety to your incisive nature.

Several of your classes and groups reflect your scholarly nature, such as your book group, dream group, Alexander technique classes, and Qi Gong (the latter two allowing you to study through your body, since you’re physically centered).

This concludes your Michael Reading. Feel free to write if you have questions. There’s a wonderful online Michael teachings email discussion list at

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MichaelTeachings

If you join, write “agape” in the “Comment to Owner” box to speed up approval.

My book Journey of Your Soul goes into more detail about all this.

All the best,
Shepherd