Hope is a hard thing to maintain as a sensitive person on earth. As Emily Dickinson said:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
This article is my attempt to bring hope and make life a little more bearable for old souls and all who feel the limits of life on earth.
When I say old soul, it’s coming from the Jane Roberts Seth Material. She explained there are baby souls, young souls, mature souls, and old souls. Baby souls want to know the rules, so they can follow them. Young souls want to know the rules, so they can exploit them for their own gain. Mature souls want to focus on relationships and learn how to love. Old souls want what mature souls want, plus they want to focus on their spiritual evolution.
The term old soul, as I use it, means one who can do empathy at a very deep level, sometimes so much so that it prevents them from having an ordinary life. Old souls feel the pain of the earth, hear the cries of humanity, feel the forests being torn down, and feel the hatred that plagues the economy which exploits workers and the poor, and feel the dying of our culture and our world.
Most of the “self help” movement has been focused on taking old souls and making them functional by denying some aspect of their feelings. If you’re an old soul, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for all the immense cruelty you are feeling everyday. I’m sorry this existence is so dense, difficult, and painful. May this article spread a little bit of sunlight into this darkened scene on earth. We old souls need to band together here in this difficult land to survive.
How to Know You’re An Old Soul
You know you’re an old soul if you feel other people’s pain acutely. Old souls are sensitive to subtlety and usually you have trouble getting by or being successful in this society which is built for younger souls, who only want to know the rules of living to exploit. As an old soul, you feel so deeply and do not often get recognized for the gifts that you truly possess. You may have great vision or ability to feel. You are decidedly unlike most people, those who don’t know how to follow what is on their heart and mind. You may have simply wanted to get out of the cruelty and horrors of this fucked up world. As an old soul, you probably feel alienated and may have contemplated or attempted suicide.
Sensitivity of the Old Soul
One of the obvious markers of older souls is that we are sensitive and feel and perceive things that others don’t notice. This sensitivity can come in many forms.
Sensitivity to the Senses – Oftentimes, old souls will perceive their own and other people’s senses more acutely. It could be that our hearing is extremely acute, and we hear sounds others generally don’t. Or, we may feel deeper into all five senses and experience the same sensation as others do, but more deeply.
Sensitivity to Subtle Feelings – Old souls can often tell the feeling texture of their own and other people’s feelings, with a profound and uncanny accuracy. This may be extremely annoying to some of the younger souls who want to lie or hide.
Sensitivity to the Environment – Older souls often possess a profound sensitivity to the environment and can detect the most subtle changes in the feeling mood or other features of the environment.This might be the ability to walk into an empty room, and feel the presence of those who just left the room.
Developing Endurance
There’s a middle ground for older souls when they have all the sensitivities, but don’t yet have the courage to endure the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” as Shakespeare’s Hamlet said. The key to developing endurance is self-love. You have the ability to endure when you commit to loving yourself, no matter what happens to you, and you dedicate your life to a higher purpose or calling.
Without hope and little self-love this world is very bleak. I believe I’ve committed suicide in prior lives at least ten times, according to the glimpses I’ve gleaned from ancient memories. The escape hatch can seem like the best option when we don’t remember the full consequences of suicide. Suicide is a setback for the soul’s development. It’s not irreparable, but it does typically require more lifetimes to make up for lost ground. When you realize that suicide has much bigger consequnces then simply ending your immediate pain, it helps to put things into perspective.
How to Not Commit Suicide
This world is so dense and pointless compared to the freedom from which we come. The impulse to commit suicide has a lot to do with this. When we realize how fucked up our society is, and how useless attempts to change it have been, it can be really easy to want to go back from where we came. Many old souls may end up killing ourselves, especially those who are acutely sensitive and haven’t yet gotten the full lessons relating to suicide and how it sets us back in the other world. I’d encourage anyone who can hang with it, to stay in the game until it is truly your time to go. When it is time, there’s a rightness to it, like when a fruit ripens. We don’t need to yank ourselves off the tree of life. When it is time to die it’s time. Until then, let’s live and make the most of the time we have here.
There are experiences that are only possible here on earth and one day we will miss this life much in the way we might miss a former lover. When we are surrounded by light and love more fully, we may one day miss feelings like the alienation of losing a love, the fear of not knowing if you can fulfill a dream or live out your destiny, the sensations of love making, the taste of food, or the feeling of resting or taking a bath after a long day. There’s so many simple pleasures to enjoy here that we can so easily take them for granted.
How to Stay Out of the Insane Asylum
Old souls will often go crazy in this society. Our modern society is fucking crazy; it’s replete with toxic bullshit in so many forms. It is not designed for people to thrive and grow. It’s designed for people to become numb to their feelings and endure the daily atrocities of living in a society that still has rape, murder, and abundant cruelty. As old souls we take on the pain of society. Sometimes this leads to committing suicide, and other times it leads to going crazy. Craziness should not be judged against, as things aren’t what they appear on planet earth. In fact, those in leadership are often the least equipped to lead and those in the insane asylum may be the ones with the clearest grasp on reality. Your ability to function in this society is only a measure of how able you are to tolerate bullshit and human cruelty and play by the rules of this decadent society, enough to stay out of the mental institution or jail.
How to Play Games and “Shed a Little Light on this Darkening Scene”
It’s important to bring a little light of our love to this dark world, as the great singer Dave Matthews said in his tune, “Christmas Song,” as he describes Jesus’s life. The key to not killing yourself on this seemingly overly dense and often lightless, soul darkened earth is to play games. Games are the star’s light dancing before your eyes. When you play games – such as asking, “How can I suck the most joy out of life, savor my experience, or notice my awareness and learn” – you will naturally enjoy your life. The Great Game is why you are here. It’s the game that life is. The game of learning and evolving love together. The game of unfolding limitless potential.When we play expanding awareness games, it helps us to remember the Great Game and return to our soul’s true calling.
How to Survive Relationships with Younger Souls
One of the hardest elements of being an old soul on earth is how to survive relationships with younger souls. Younger souls will often compete, control, and play power games. These foolish games are no fun to an older soul, who feels deeply hurt by all this futile competition. We love win-win games, not win-lose games. Power games always have someone losing, unless both parties want to play.
As far as I’m concerned, unconscious power and fear games have no place on this earth. We’ve let people play their war games long enough to know there’s no true good that can come out of these types of games. To quote the movie Arrival: “In war there are no winners, only widows.” When people die in batttle, who can rejoice at the murder of young men and women.
Beware of Younger Soul’s Projections
Younger souls will invariably project onto you everything that is their own issue. Younger souls can be so endearing to us older souls. We want to help them and we see so much potential in them. And, it’s okay to love younger souls in whatever way you desire. But don’t get lost playing their small game. It’s easy to be humble as an older soul. You’re naturally more flexible and adaptable. Beware of bending too much. It’s wise to know when to bend and when to hold firm. If you are the older soul, you are the leader of the relationship. You can’t let a younger soul lead you unless they happen to be including what you really feel in the moment in their leadership. Often, younger souls will not fully include you in the field, and thus you need to be sure to stay with your truth. For the relationship to fully blossom, the younger soul needs to follow you and trust your superior wisdom on most matters of the heart. If they compete with you, and attempt to inappropriately lead, this will make the relationship fail.
Know Who is Wiser
It’s good to always know who is wiser than whom in any given interaction. This may move around some depending on the topic and the situation. Yet, typically one person has more wisdom or is more embodied than another person. When both people can acknowledge this, and not try to compete, it settles the dynamic more clearly.
Soul Age “Molest”
When an older soul enters into a romantic relationship with a younger soul, there’s a mutual abuse pattern that may be prone to happen. The younger soul feels violated by the freedom of the older soul and tries to control and limit the older soul. The older soul feels misunderstood and judged for things they are not doing, by the younger soul’s interpretation of their actions through a narrower lens. Neither one can feel seen, recognized, and understood for who they are. Being with younger souls can feel like a sort of molestation or violation to them. They have difficulty handling the extreme freedom and can feel burned by it without exactly knowing why.
Sensing Bullshit
Oftentimes old souls are good at sensing bullshit, but we assume other people are like us and have the purity of intentions we have. We question our bullshit detector and often think we are being unfair to others. Your anger is your bullshit detector. Trust it. Notice what makes you mad and pay attention to it, while still staying open and empathetic toward the other. When you sense something off, trust your feelings, while staying open to the other person.
Finding Friends in a World Where No One Gets You
When you are an old soul, there are very few people who will truly understand you. One solution is to join forces with other old souls so you have friends. I welcome any of you to contact me and join the Heart-Centered Revolutions, so we can come together and forge a world that works for everyone. It’s such utter bullshit, or as my father used to say, “rubbish,” how we treat each other in this society.
How to Find Meaning in a World that Doesn’t Give a Shit
The hardest part of life on earth as an old soul is the tremendous amount of cruelty embedded in this world. You can turn to the areas of economy or the business world to see the way social darwinism is still governing the way people think about business. For example, in a capitalistic economy corrupted by greed, the rich get rich on the backs of the poor. Too many people think it’s okay to reach the top by stepping on and crushing the dreams of everyone else. When I had some people break away from my company and engage in corporate espionage, people would say, “That’s just business.” That’s not fucking business, it’s cruelty. In loving business we honor all our relations. Just because you don’t understand love, doesn’t mean you have the right to tell me that unacceptable behavior is acceptable. We would never tolerate this kind of behavior from a friend. To have the world we really want, we must treat everyone as if they were our friend.
Dealing with Cruelty
Cruelty is the most difficult thing for older souls. When you are a really old soul, it’s hard to find cruelty in your own heart and soul. You may feel like you want to murder some people because of their lack of love. This is not cruelty; this is the true open heart’s response to cruelty. It can be difficult to empathize fully with the younger souls. Remember that all cruelty comes from unconsciously acting on fear. Unconsciously acting on fear puts us all squarely in the egoic sense of self. When we are trapped in the egoic sense of self, we can not escape the fear which is running us. All cruel adults are simply babies who are not getting their needs met. There’s a baby inside of every tyrant, who is waiting to be loved and connected with.
Realize That Many Younger Souls Will Deflect and Blame Others
Younger souls have difficulty listening to feedback and not taking it personally. They will deflect and make you wrong for their own faults and problems. They will blame you for having your feelings and judge you. Help support them in opening, as best you can. If they refuse your support, find the appropriate distance from them. If a younger soul doesn’t open to the truth, and stays locked in blame, they will become toxic to you.
Hope is Available: Calling Upon the Angels
The angels, the stars, and the heavens are here for us. It’s too much for us to carry alone the burden of life. We are not meant to. When we call upon the angels, it takes the load off of us. The angelic forces want to help us bear the burden of this life. They often miss realms of manifested existence and they love when we let them in deeply to our very human and mundane problems. It is my belief that the angels were once humans and they miss some of the experience that exists on earth. They can only access it if we let them. When you make your body a vessel for the angels to come through, they will help you even more and they get to experience some of what they are missing by being closer to the light and less dense in a material form.
Calling Upon the Angels for Big Favors and Little Things
I find the angels particularly like to help us with the biggest problems we are facing. They have a way of bringing light into the situation. However, they can’t fully support us without an invitation. They love to interact and play in the human realm. When they are realized and honored and get to be of full use and service, they light up. In the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, angels get their wings by being of full service. In a very real sense, their evolution depends on us being open to their inspiration. When we open the door of our heart to the angels, they sing up into the heavens, dance, and play as they get to use their powers. It’s hard to stand back and watch a game unfold and not be able to influence it fully. When you know how to help the situation, it’s hard to not be allowed to participate. They love to participate whenever possible.
The angels are happy to assist with smaller things, as well. Call upon them in the moment to help with these little things. They are not like us. There’s no, “I’m too busy to help you” ethic for the angels. They are happy to be there with us in every little thing we do that we want their presence in. My janitor in college once said, “The big things you’ll deal with in life, but it’s the little things that can really get you.” He was emphasizing the importance of little things. I wholeheartedly embrace his philosophy and work with the angels on my little things as frequently as possible.
Staying True to Yourself
One of the greatest challenges is staying true to yourself. As an old soul, we are very flexible and we can go with anyone else’s perspective on things. The importance of staying true to yourself and your core becomes even more important the more mature you are. Learning how to love yourself, and more importantly why to love yourself, allows the light of your soul to shine through the darkness. By traveling with other old souls, and by following those who came before, you become a beacon of hope guiding the way for others’ souls. When you stay true to yourself, you remain on mission no matter what life throws at you. You can be sure that life will throw some interesting shit at you. Life will shamelessly throw at you anything you need to evolve. By centering in your heart and staying true to yourself, you will blossom on your path through whatever comes your way.
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