PERMANENT ZEN BLOG: THE STAGES OF REINCARNATION & SOUL EVOLUTION
Our ultimate aim is to become fully conscious and capable as unique individual expressions of All That Is. It is a long journey, but that’s okay because the soul is eternal.
Soul Evolution
The soul’s journey is really a process of evolving. This means growing in consciousness, steadily progressing through different levels or stages of consciousness. How do we grow in consciousness? Through taking on challenging experiences in physical form. These cause us to make important, “soul-searching” choices and call upon us to discover our inner resources. But why in physical form? Why would a perfectly happy spiritual being decide to inhabit the physical realm with all of its limitations and difficulties? It is precisely so that we can experience the state of what feels like total separation from others and from the rest of reality. Only by going into this physically separated human form can we know ourselves as beings in our own right, and not just as … well … undifferentiated blobs of energy. Being physical throws our experiences and choices into extremely sharp relief in a way that is not possible otherwise. This is how we learn who we are and how to become all that we are.
Soul Ages
There are a sequence of five “cycles” or stages of soul evolution. They are named after the stages of human development:
Stage 1: The Infant Soul
Stage 2: The Baby Soul
Stage 3: The Young Soul
Stage 4: The Mature Soul
Stage 5: The Old Soul
Stage 1 — Infant Souls
Infant souls focus on immediate survival needs. They flourish in simple environments close to nature, such as remote tribes or rural, pastoral settings. In the context of modern society, however, they can come across as uncivilized simpletons or yokels, and may even be deemed to be psychopathic or have some sort of developmental disorder.
Psychologically, infant souls are naive, impulsive and “pre-conventional”, acting on impulse or habit with little or no thought for consequences. Because they lack both social understanding and self-inhibition, they are capable of committing antisocial or immoral acts without any sense of wrongdoing. As such, they do not fit well within modern society and may end up in prison or in psychiatric units. While they may lack the moral principles, social graces and cultural understanding of older souls, Infant souls are in a sense completely innocent, being without pretense or agenda.
Stage 2 — Baby Souls
In contrast to Infant souls, Baby souls think a great deal about the rights and wrongs of their actions. Their lives are about safety, security, structure and order — rigidly so. They like to live in communities that are highly principled and “civilized” (think of the Amish). Baby souls come across to older souls as rather “square” – strictly conventional and conformist. Both their beliefs and their actions are largely rule-bound, so they are often ultra-conservative, traditionalist, orthodox, upright, moralistic, religiously devout, and mindful of law and order.
That said, they will occasionally give in to temptation, or temper tantrum, and break the rules themselves — but then might find themselves tortured with guilt and shame. They are acutely aware of the rights and wrongs of people’s actions, including their own, though they have little insight into the motives behind them. Bad behavior is sinful, and that’s that.
Young Souls
Young souls tend to be worldly, frenetically energetic, brash, competitive, political, ambitious and individualistic. Life at this stage is about thinking for oneself and asserting oneself as an individual.
Young souls are more ego-driven than others, keen to make their mark in the world. They are generally attracted to some form of worldly success — fame, fortune, power, glory. Young souls cling to their own opinions, with a certainty that their own perspective is the right perspective, and their way ahead is by far the best way. They are very aware of their own agenda but do not really question it.
Mature souls
Mature souls tend to be more reflective than younger souls, with a growing understanding of self, growing empathy for others, and a desire for authenticity in both. Life is less about proving oneself, and more about exploring “right relationships”.
Mature soul consciousness is no longer egocentric, in the sense of being limited to one’s own perspective and agenda, but is capable of accommodating multiple perspectives and different agendas. In fact, there is now a tension between “what I want” and “appreciating what you want”.
This makes life much more complicated — sometimes overwhelmingly so. On the one hand, mature souls reject narrow-minded values. Yet on the other hand, they are able to empathize with whoever holds those same values. This disappearance of solid ground can be hugely stressful, but it kicks off a search for deeper meaning and self-understanding, whether through art, psychology, philosophy or spirituality.
Mature souls tend to question everything, including their own motives, and are prone to do a lot of soul-searching.
Old Souls
Old souls tend to exude some degree of depth, gravitas or wisdom that is quite obvious. For having moved beyond the stresses and conflicts of the Mature soul, Old souls have a growing sense of inner peace and freedom — the freedom to enjoy being very much in the world, but not of it.
Compared to younger souls they are relatively calm, measured, untroubled and stable, unattached to social structures and cultural expectations, being sure of their own existence and inner strengths and their compassion for others. On the other hand, finding themselves in a world that is so conflicted, chaotic, frantic, and superficial can be utterly depressing.
For Old souls, the aim of life is to find true self-expression and fulfillment. As such, they tend to go their own unique way in life, letting go and letting be, in a detached way that may seem very weird and eccentric to younger souls. Late-stage old souls find themselves consciously participating in the evolution of all-that-is, and often focus on teaching spiritual wisdom with great compassion.
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