Transcendental Souls (Astral Plane)
AC 432: December 26, 2010 (Part 1)
[This is the first part of a long adventure (50 typed single-spaced pages) published serially in several newsletters, starting in June 2011. The adventure provides a detailed tour of the astral plane.]
This adventure began from a dream in which I was walking along a road with a young woman and her children toward the town center of Concord, Massachusetts. I recognized the woman as a friend I’ll call Roberta. I knew she was struggling with rising above the astral body and plane. Issues having to do with being a divorced mother of three young children apparently had something to do with this–the emotions stirred up by family life were keeping her in the astral plane Dream Zone, where they had to be processed before she could move on to the mental body and plane.
Roberta must wonder whether she can maintain her family and pursue her spiritual growth. The response of the space we were walking through was that it was certainly possible. All that was required was living in harmony (concord).
Concord, Mass. was the home of the New England Transcendentalists, such as Emerson and Thoreau. The location was a pun for Roberta’s being a transcendental soul. Such souls are experiencing their final lifetimes on the physical plane while transferring the main focus of learning and growth to nonphysical reality, where they function as what I call Facilitators.
In Otherwhere, transcendental souls take on roles such as helping people through their dreams and acting as personal spiritual guardians and guides for the living and the dead. When they incarnate on Earth, they often forget who they are and must engage in a process of self-remembering. This process involves recovering skills such as the conscious use of their energy bodies for nonphysical travel on the astral and mental planes. They must also learn to integrate what they remember from their work in nonphysical reality while between lifetimes with the challenges of incarnating on the physical plane. One aspect of Roberta’s self-remembering process required that she learn to balance care of her family with spiritual growth.
We crossed to the other side of the street and I helped Roberta and the children climb a short steep slope about five or six feet high to get to the sidewalk. We continued walking along a line of mansions.
As we approached the center of town, we passed a library. It was attractive, though small and provincial. After that came the Astral Plane Ashram, which I saw as a Welcome Center like those that appear at rest areas near state borders. It also had aspects of a Cultural Center.
In the Welcome Center was a gift shop. On a lower level was a movie theater.
Roberta and I checked in with each other. “I want you to come with me,” I said, intending to take her to the mental plane Dream Zone.
Roberta heard what I said in a different way than I intended it. She thought I wanted to take her to see a movie for adults.
“But I have the children with me,” she said. We can’t go to that kind of movie. They might get restless and act out.”
I could see what she thought were her children were really dream characters representing emotional reactions to her children that she brought with her onto the astral plane. I didn’t push her on the idea of having a mental plane adventure.
“Don’t you think a cartoon would be more appropriate?” Roberta asked. I knew she meant an astral plane dream concerning her children. Dreams on the astral plane often have cartoon-like elements.
I said, “Sure, why not. Cartoons are supposed to be good.”
I knew that even though Roberta’s level of spiritual development should have allowed her to gain access to the mental plane, she could still benefit from experiencing astral plane dreams. Such dreams were more suited to younger souls, but they could have value for anyone who knew how to read them. I also knew that mental plane adventures shouldn’t be prioritized over astral plane dreams when the latter are needed to facilitate the emotional processing of challenging events in physical reality.
An attractive gray haired woman came out of the gift shop and approached us. “Welcome to the seventh subplane of the astral plane,” the woman said. “The purpose of the Cultural Center you see before is to welcome transcendental souls and give them a chance to rest between missions. It sits on the border of the astral and the mental plane–the state line, as it were, if you think in terms of states of consciousness.
“This Cultural Center also serves as a training area. It’s a place for learning about how to work, behave, and take care of yourself as a transcendental soul. People come here to learn about the culture of transcendental souls.”
The woman paused to see how we responded to her announcement. I understood she was speaking about an area I was recently exploring, which I’d designated as the Astral Ashram.
Roberta turned away without reacting and headed downstairs with the children. The older woman caught my eye and held it. She seemed to be waiting for me to recognize her. It was the Administrator from last year’s World Bank of the Causal Plane adventure. In that adventure, I learned about the energetic overlays created by the Overseers to surround our physical planet and gently urge it in the direction of positive growth.
Administrators are advanced transcendental souls, occupying the level between Facilitators and Overseers. They still incarnate occasionally, but usually on special missions. All their karma on the physical plane has been exhausted, unlike the Facilitator level of transcendental souls, who are still completing various lessons and relationships begun in earlier lifetimes.
I was crossing paths with this Administrator a year and a day after our previous encounter. [AC 379: December 25, 2009, unpublished.] Before I could say anything to greet her, she passed by me carrying a flat basket full of currency. A wad of bills fell from the tray onto the ground.
A group of college girls was waiting around the lobby of the Cultural Center, embarrassed and uncomfortable, not sure where to go. They appeared to be something more than children yet something less than adults. One picked up the wad of bills and returned it to the tray. I knew instantly that she was being tested in some way.
The Administrator turned toward me and smiled. “What are you doing down here?” I asked.
The Administrator said, “Just because you first met me on the highest level of the mental plane doesn’t mean I’m confined to that level. I can move freely on all lower levels of the mental plane. Generally speaking, however, I won’t go lower than the Summerland [highest] level of the astral plane.
“Souls at this level have enough lucidity that I can work with them. Below this level it’s a grab bag–people show up with every conceivable degree of lucidity. Even the more lucid ones are often confined to the lower levels by belief system biases or by unexpressed negative emotions and unfulfilled desires. They’re too self-absorbed, you could say, to be of service to the causes I represent.
“You may recall that those causes involve energetic overlays designed to urge the planet forward in its growth. Often, the people most responsive to these energetic overlays are idealistic college kids who want to make the world a better place for themselves and others. Sad to say, they tend to talk themselves out of responding to this call to service, not feeling good enough or deserving enough to make a difference in the world.
“That’s what you saw a moment ago: three college age girls, all extremely bright, psychologically balanced, ethically well-bred. They’re standing on the edge of their adult life, uncomfortable and embarrassed about having to show the world who they are, uncertain of the actions they should take to discover and fulfill a useful purpose in life. They’re all waiting for a vocation–a calling–to announce itself.
“One of the ways in which we reach out to such idealistic young people is through dreams. They’re exposed to a sampling of the energetic overlays which they could embody as a grounding agent and which could become a life purpose or career. You see me carrying these samples.”
[Energetic overlays require people on the physical plane who are willing to take steps to implement them as grounding agents. Usually, a grounding agent is a transcendental soul who is fully aware of the nature of an energetic overlay through exposure to it in nonphysical reality, often in the Administrative Ashram on the mental plane (the astral ashram is for Facilitators, the mental ashram for Administrators).
Point people may also be involved. The latter are lesser evolved souls who are exposed to the energetic overlay and its grounding agents through dreams they may or may not recall. When they encounter an organization or a person or grounding agent on the physical plane which in some way embodies the values encoded in the energetic overlay, a positive response results in the form of some action, such as donating to or joining the organization or spreading the word about it. World peace is an example of an energetic overlay.]
“Yes,” I said, “It looks like you’ve got an offering basket full of money, such as you would see at church.”
“In that image, you see the energetic function I’m fulfilling,” the Administrator replied. “It may seem as if I’m offering the basket for young people to take something from–but what they take actually involves an offering of themselves in service. So it is with all true callings.
“The problem of course is that young people are trained to assess the value of such callings on the basis of how much money it will net them as a salary. That’s why you see the vocations I’m offering as wads of money. It’s true that everyone should be compensated for fulfilling their life purpose, but social and family pressures will often discourage young people from pursuing careers motivated by idealism if the pay scale would prevent them from maintaining a certain arbitrarily determined standard of living.
“Our policy is always to reward people who pursue their ideals with a standard of living that allows them to sustain themselves at the level of true need. Only two things stand in the way of such rewards: materialistic ideas about what you need to be happy, and an inability to value yourself, to feel deserving of having your needs met.
“What you saw in the young woman with whom I just interacted is what happens when a vocation seems to fall into someone’s lap. They may take it up, consider it, then put it back from a combined feeling of unworthiness and doubt about financial sufficiency. Such situations are initiatory tests to see whether someone not only responds to the call of some energetic overlay to change the world for the better, but also becomes a grounding agent for it through taking some concrete action that expresses it on the physical plane.
“Your friend Roberta is in a similar position, which is why the two of you ended up here. Her vocation has fallen into her lap, but she doesn’t believe herself worthy enough to develop it or that it could possibly become a career that would help her support herself and her children. As you saw, she’s torn between developing herself spiritually and dealing with the practical considerations of raising her children.”
“What exactly do you mean by her vocation?” I asked.
“You saw it when you met her–offering some form of intuitive guidance for others. Doing readings, you called it, without realizing that that was probably the scariest choice of words you could have made to describe it to her.
“But don’t blame yourself for that. You were simply the mouthpiece for an initiatory challenge to her to deepen her awareness of herself as a transcendental soul, to open herself to the process of self-remembering, and to use what she recovered of her abilities in service for the greater good of all by offering intuitive guidance to others.
“In a sense, she sees her role in life as loving people to death (in the good sense). Offering intuitive guidance is just another way to do that.
“Any transcendental soul who radiates love, compassion, and acceptance as Roberta does is sufficiently charismatic and will have no trouble drawing in potential clients. Showing others that she sees and understands them is the best service she can offer them, because it strengthens them from inside.
“That experience of being seen and understood seems to most people like the rarest and most valuable form of love. It reconnects them with Source, which is an experience beyond price. But they’ll want to show their gratitude by offering her money–sometimes more even than she ask for.
“One purpose of transcendental souls is to reorient people toward the Source. This is why they’re natural spiritual teachers. All they have to do is find a form that people respect and feel safe with. Looking into the eyes of strangers and telling them all about themselves is not likely to do that. Some form of divination such as tarot cards may be one of the best ways to begin. Eventually, such props may no longer be needed. By that time she may have enough trust in her abilities and a large enough clientele that she can dispense with the cards.
“The joke of it all is that it almost doesn’t matter what she says or whether she’s considered accurate. The love, compassion, and acceptance she radiates will be sufficient for her clients to feel they’ve gotten what they need.”
I looked around. The college girls had disappeared. Had they gone downstairs to the movie theater? Or maybe they just lost their level of lucidity and blipped out of existence at this level.
The Administrator read my mind. “No,” she said, “they’re still here. They stopped registering in your awareness once we began communicating because you were focusing on a frequency to which they didn’t have access. They haven’t heard anything I’ve told you.
“The young woman who reached out for her life purpose and then put it back was allowing herself to be influenced by her peers. What would her two closest friends think if she were to take this calling seriously?
“All three are still young, in their early years of college. There’s plenty of time for this first touch of an energetic overlay from the Overseers on the consciousness of an idealistic young person to be recognized and built upon.
“No test of this nature is ever final. The call will come again and again, as long as the ideals to which it’s a response are present in the consciousness of the person being touched.”