“He who dies with the most toys wins!”

Popular aphorism of the 1980’s

Symbols and Color

• Background Image: Fireworks! Explosions, bursts of light, bright color, attention getting, spectacle, and imagery. For the Young Soul, this represents engagement in the glamour, achievement, intrigue, and who can put on the bigger show. All that energy is in play. The Adolescent is at the stage of life when all potential is “bursting in air.”
• Border Color: Tan – like the Good Red Road of Life in Native American Mythology
• Horse/Knight: The Warrior Level Soul Age is of Action
• Spiral Nautilus Shell: Cycle and Soul Age Set
• Mandrill Baboon: 3rd Stage of Simian Evolutionary Complexity
• Teenager: Young Adult – The Adolescent Stage of Maturation

Implications in the Upright Position or Positive Pole

Professional achievement and titles are the goal for developing competence, and even prowess. The doctors above may have a desire to help others, yet they may be just as motivated by the prestige of their position and sense of having climbed higher upon the ladder of success. Entering the Young Soul stage, a
soul desires a new form. The previous playground, based upon conquest, now becomes one based up competition and victory and capture, not eradication or subjugation, as in the Baby Soul stage. It is the mindset that “it’s you and me and I’m going to win.” Thus, the Young Soul is not so interested in playing by the rules so much as he/she wants to bend or even better, do away with them. “Get the advantage for myself!” Running headlong with greater energy and vigor than any other Soul Age, the Young Soul paradigm places “self interest” above all else seeing it as the motivation and solution for everything.

Card messages in the Illuminated  position.

+ Development

(energized, individualistic, limitlessness, competitive, morphing, bold, competent, striving, emergent)

1. Teenagers test their limits in the development toward an adult Self. Coarse and unrefined, awkward trial and error prevails. But with each working experience, a new prototype emerges. Everyone and everything invented goes through these stages. Things are taking shape but still a bit premature. The outcome is still in process. Don’t claim victory just yet.
   
2. Exploration requires risk taking. Testing one’s mettle is the only way to insure development of the Self and the shaping of a secure Ego, in which the Self is housed. Whatever project you are involved with put yourself through some trials and test where the strengths and weaknesses lie.
3. Competition challenges you to be “the best you can be.” Use your competitive spirit to advance your view, positions, or advantages.  You are about to hit your stride.
4. Testing begins! Various configurations of the design emerge and are tested for strength and viability.
5. Let the contest begin. Challenges are what make us strong and adaptable. You are in one now.
6. Not sure who to relate to or confide in? Start with telling yourself the truth…the real and total truth! it might seem ugly but once that lifts, you will feel much more grounded and clear.
7. The Young Soul strives for bigger, better, faster, more. Their adventuresome nature is bold. Go after those things that makes you feel alive.
8. Teenagers test their limits becoming an adult Self. An awkward trial and error is up and on course. Things are taking shape but still a premature.
9. You have mastered your skills. You have the competence to make the claim that you can and should achieve.
10. New designs are in testing. Choose on the basis of effectiveness and viability for victory.
11. Things are in the middle of development. With each working experience, a new prototype emerges. Everyone and everything invented goes through these stages. The outcome is still in process. Don’t claim victory just yet.
12. Singer Kurt Cobain viewed, “The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.” It takes the tremendous energy at the height of our faculties to face difficulties with maximum potential. While you can’t regress in age you can remember your youthful ideals.

Quotation Illustrating this concept…

• “Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.” Oliver Wendell Holmes
• “The Lord gave us two ends—one to sit on and the other to think with. Success depends on which one we use the most.”—Ann Landers
• “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” John F. Kennedy
• “The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.” Kurt Cobain
• “If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men? ” Vincent Van Gogh
• ““If man makes it, don’t eat it.” Jack LaLanne, Fitness Expert

Implications of the Reversed Position or Negative Pole

Look closely at the image; you will see a big tussle of folks scrambling to get to the top of the heap. Sometimes called a “cluster fuck”, we witness a struggle for Dominance. In a world where the predominant paradigm is the Adolescent – Young Soul, acquisition of money, resources, status, fashion, and achievement of individuality is the currency of merit. Both this negative pole and the background images show a busyness quality which coincidentally take the form of business. Thus, this image is not only a portrayal of “capture the flag” and in the real world, the corporate ladder.

Card messages in the Shadow position.

– Acquisition

(Egotistical, reckless, conniving, intrusive, duplicitous, cutthroat, ruthless, contentious, antagonistic, invasive, subterfuge, complication)

1. Juvenile wants may stifle success.  Too much freedom or at the other extreme too little, stifles ones development and renders them immature. If the situation is stuck or out-of-whack, identify which extreme is occurring. Then call in an outside mentor to provide the experienced hand needed for constructive guidance.
2. “If I can’t get what I want, you shouldn’t have yours either.” Jealousy gives way to resentment and sabotage of others. Who is gumming up the works?
3. Don’t be a know-it-all. Call in an outside mentor to provide the experienced hand needed for constructive guidance.
4. Beware of a scam. Just because a product is for real doesn’t mean those selling it to you are on the level. The devil is in the details.
5. If the ethics of the Young Soul mentality were parodied then few would be more representative of humorous explorations of psychology than Star Trek’s Ferenghi 247 Rules of Acquisition. So, if you want to see where modern corporations got their marching orders, it’s back from the future.
6. Even “those who die with the most toys win”, still die! If there are no limits in place, what then?
7. Don’t be a know-it-all. Call in an outside mentor to provide the experienced hand needed for constructive guidance.
8. If I can’t get what I want, you shouldn’t have yours either. Resentment and sabotage is present. Who’s gumming up the works?
9. Breaking a few rules, like breaking a few eggs, can leave your secure shell cracked, and the yoke is on you.
10. The Young Souls are the explorers, the builders, and the status seekers. All might come under the heading of hedonism. So, if you are going to entertain yourself this way, best to take something along that you care about.
11. Friedrich Nietzsche said, “The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.” To aspire to conformity means that there is no evolution.
12. Juvenile wants may stifle success. Too much freedom or at the other extreme too little, stifles one’s development and renders them immature. If the situation is stuck or out-of-whack, identify which extreme is occurring.
13. Matters get complicated when you have one rule but apply it in two different ways, and then deny the fact you are doing it! Confusion, then rebellion ensues. Duplicity.

Quotation Illustrating this concept…

• “The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”  Friedrich Nietzsche
• “A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.” William Shakespeare
• “The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition” – Star Trek 
• “Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope. ” Aristotle
• “Fame is the thirst for youth.” Lord Byron

Overleaf of the Michael Teaching

Entering the Young Soul stage, a soul desires a new form. The previous playground, based upon conquest, now becomes one based up competition and victory and capture, not eradication or subjugation, as in the Baby Soul stage. It is the mind set that “it’s you and me and I’m going to win.” Thus, the Young Soul is not so interested in playing by the rules so much as he/she wants to bend or even better, do away with them. Get the advantage for myself. Running headlong with greater energy and vigor than any other Soul Age, the Young Soul paradigm places “self interest” above all else seeing it as the motivation and solution for everything.

Very capable of being present within the game, their sights are almost always set on achieving whatever they deem relevant. Sometimes, winning itself is all they want. It validates their existence.

We might hear the successful Young Soul say ‘well of course it was worth it!” because the only thought is toward power, material gain, and supremacy. But accountability for their actions is something held in disrepute. Escaping culpability is indeed part of the game itself. Seeing what you can “get away with” or “not bear the brunt of” is equal to their drive to gain the prize they desire. Is it any wonder that Gangsta Rap is so popular? In that context, “dogging a bullet” takes on added meaning.

During the stages of the Young Soul expansion they move from a sort of cautious assertion to outright declarations of superiority. It is here where social hierarchies are fit for climbing for the benefits of Ego. Essence will play a part if and when the personality involved is committed to a cause.  Fame and fortune are the mantra that is enthusiastically played deep within the psyche of every Soul in this time frame.

Currently, the world of humans is undergoing a paradigm shift from Young to Mature Soul values and precepts. But no paradigm shifts smoothly or without resistance. And Wall Street, dictators, the wealth and fashion loving proponents of the current paradigm are not giving in without a fight. Paradigm shifts tend to take a few hundred years in the change-over and actions, institutions, political-economic climates and social values tend to overlap and be concurrent.

Famous Examples

Dick Cheney, Ronald Reagan, Madonna,  L. Ron Hubbard, Richard the Lionhearted, Michelle Bachman, Pink, Sean Coombs, Carly Fiorini, Augustus Caesar, JP Morgan, Donald Trump, Cher, Carmen Electra, Professional Sports, Wall Street, Cowboys, Snowboarding, Popularity contests, beauty contests, awards shows, fashion, gambling

Cultural Meaning

Niccolò Machiavelli

Adolescence is the time when testing and experimentation occurs. It is also a time of great acting out, due to insecurity. Poser, is a term that can apply caught in the throws of this phase. Acts like: rejection, rebellion, and saying “forget you!” flow from the young who are trying to form an identity, but sense more of what the don’t want, instead of what they do want. Realize that this style of testing for what you want, proceeds through the all-or-nothing mind set of consuming everything and then spitting out what  you don’t want because it doesn’t taste good or is not satisfying. When this proposition is applied to a culture, it helps us to understand how the current United States , though founded on Old Soul principles, (an accepting and permissive parent), shows how mass consumption as a means of identity and perceived satisfaction is employed and dominates the social landscape.

With hormones running high and aspirations tending to run neck and neck with them, the future is almost always a limitless field of possibilities which can never be spent and which has no end. It is a fantasy that everyone is eventually, disabused; but in this period most everything seems ripe for the taking. And what is values and seen as “cool” is how clever one can acquire what they want. While anyone who does look “bitchen” is a loser!

Sometimes valiant, sometimes reckless, but always self centered and indiscriminate, the Young Soul, like his teenage counterpart, looks at life as risks to be challenged and everything in it as something to be exploited. Hence, Capitalism is by far the preferred mechanism for this age. The most prominent sigil of this paradigm was marked in the Industrial Revolution in the United States. Unbridled growth became the hallmark of the American Ethos and it brought with it many innovations, increased world  prominence and expansion of population, but not a fair distribution of income. Adolescents say, “hands off, this is mine!” The many benefits wrought by the expansion of technology and invention were paid for with deforestation, air and water pollution, crowed cities, and American Imperialism abroad.

The Young Soul era of humanity has taken us to the moon, given us cell phones, and made fossil fuels the life blood of the world economy. Wealth, fashion, specialization, and every form of enterprise has flourished. But now the price tag has come due. The Earth is issuing a summons in the form of melting ice caps, hotter summers, colder winters, and super storms, reminding us that no matter what the teenager does to dis’ his parent; it is Mother Nature who has the final authority.

You might be at this Soul Age if….

1. Fashion is so important to me.
2. My reputation should be the most important thing I am concerned with.
3. As long as I can get what I want, I don’t really care how I act.
4. He who dies with the most toys wins.
5. Never give a sucker an even break.
6. Other people’s well being is there problem.
7. My children have to look a certain way lest they reflect poorly on me.
8. It is not what I know but who I know that counts.
9. Winning is not everything, it is the only thing.
10. My energy for life is really high because I can’t imagine coming to an end.

by Stephen Cocconi © 2011, Updated 2024

For a Motivation Cards or Channeled Consultation call: 209.768-4956 or email Stephen at channeling@themichaelteaching.com