The Roman Senator

Journeyman Paul spent a lifetime using the bodymind of a citizen of high standing in Rome during the relatively stable and growth period that is known as the Roman Republic, somewhere around 200 B.C.E. This lifetime is intriguing for its contrasts. Convinced of his honest, upstanding, and fair treatment of others, Paul is totally taken off guard when his life comes to an end with his own pre-meditated murder.

Choosing a bodymind of aristocratic birth and standing was a bold experiment of Paul's. Despite the social standing his birth afforded him, Paul chose from a very young age to live quite simply--probably carrying forward the patterns of austerity that had become ingrained in him from his previous lives in Asia. He felt little love or need of material possessions. He saw beauty in duty and order and found joy in predictability, honesty and truth. In the midst of his youth he found himself quite a devoted student of philosophy. All of this prepared and served him well for his high-minded participation in Roman government.
     As the only child of elderly parents, he found himself on his own at a relatively young age. A far more social creature than one might imagine, Paul's social circles were full of other intellectuals and, later, of other members of government and members of other patrician families--especially ones who liked to fully immerse themselves in deeply philosophical or political discussions. Paul was so in love with his intellectual pursuits, with his ideals of practicing good government, that he never found an interest much less the time for romance or marriage. The altruistic musings of his own mind proved so constant and so consuming that though he lived life as a citizen of the greatest city of its age he walked the streets of Rome barely even noticing the plebeian population surrounding him. Yet he truly and fully believed that his ideals and opinions were quite even-handed and democratic. And he believed that his efforts and advocacies within government fully reflected this.
     As an adult Paul chose to adorn the Palatine home that he inherited from his parents very sparsely. The incomes he gained from the extensive farm lands he had also inherited he chose to direct toward the glorification of his city, to army subsidies, as well as back to the farm workers and others in or affected by his employ. His villa atop one of Rome's most outlying hills (southeast of the city center) was very sparsely adorned though kept impeccably clean and immaculately landscaped. His service staff was minimal--tiny when compared with the lavish displays of other patrician families (whom he regarded with quite a little disdain--which he showed through dissociation rather than public or verbal display). He believed that he treated his staff and all in his employ with the same respect and regard as if they were his own family.
      As a Roman Senator, Paul served his voting citizenry as honestly and morally as he could. He was simply ignorant of the biases his patrician upbringing and ruling class had provided. Remember: at this time Roman citizens were landowners. Cives Romani optima iure meant privileges and rights that 95% of the rest of Rome lacked. Paul was a member of "the one percent" yet he lived in total ignorance of the pent up feelings of anger and inequality welling up within the rest of the population. His insulated life never allowed him to be confronted with the realities and injustices of social and economic inequality.
      In its end, Roman aristocrat Paul was killed by one of his own servants. A trusted and beloved kitchen and garden aide. A man who had long served Paul--and his parents before him--he came into the room in which Paul had been standing no different than thousands of times before. Paul, as usual, was caught up in the musings of his own active mind. The fire of hatred raging in the eyes of his servant was what first caught Paul's attention. Then the knife. "This is a trusted servant!" he found himself thinking, in total disbelief. As the diminutive man thrust the kitchen knife up into Paul's abdomen, just beneath his rib cage, Paul found himself offering no resistance. Totally unprepared for this--or anything like this--he remembers making the conscious decision to not fight these events, to remain passive. He remembers thinking that somehow at some level he must be deserving of this. "I have been nothing but kind to him! What anger could he have with me?" are the kind of thoughts running through his confused mind as he crumples to the ground and into unconsciousness and death.
Roman Paul had thought in perfect seriousness that he was without enemies. He believed that his attitudes of incorruptible honesty and fairness were universally respected. Also, he thought that his treatment of his serving staff had been faultless and totally nurturing. (Note this theme of arrogant naïveté as it continues to appear in many of Paul's Earth lives)

The lessons gleaned from this lifetime include the arrogance and ignorance of class privilege. There are unconscious prejudices that we form and accrue due to our birth and childhood circumstances. In this Roman lifetime Paul thought that he was doing good, acting fairly, treating others with the same or better treatment than others would have done--better than their social standings may have deserved. The errors in these thought patterns, I hope, are obvious. We are all humans, equally human, equal in our tasks and challenges; yet the conditioning coming from birth family and social culture forge mental patterns that contain inherent biases and prejudices--of which we may never become aware. BUT, it is in the struggle to rise above our conditioning to recognize universal equalities and practice detachment from the mental and emotional constructs that the Ego/Personality has built that is the true quest, the true goal of our ventures into four-dimensional Earth-based human experience. Though it is quite likely that you will discover these same patterns of arrogance and ignorance for any human life experienced in the Homo sapiens sapiens model, it does not make it right or excusable. We Monadic Beings created these conditions and trappings for the express reason of learning how to overcome them, of learning how to discover the Truths of Spirit while in human form--despite the murky trappings of the human experience. Hence, the accumulation of guilt and regret that some Monads carry forward into successive human lifetimes, that cause a predisposition toward repeated thought and behavior patterns over the course of multiple lifetimes. Journeyman Paul has been just as susceptible to these attachments as any other Monad venturing into the four-dimensional Earth School experience.
      The result of the alarming mysteries of this Roman patrician life caused Paul to choose to return to a succession of human lives that lived ascetic or monastic conditions. He sought the combined possibility of penance and retribution, rediscovery. Some of these lives were chosen for their familiarity in Tibet and India, some were in the early Christianity of the Middle East and Mediterranean. Asceticism, monasticism, isolation, even martyrdom were some of the patterns Paul chose to return to and experimented with. Eventually, he became interested in trying on the European style of life and living under the Roman Catholic Church. These lifetimes are as yet unclear to me. They must have little or no useful or relevant information to offer this Drew Fisher consciousness. It is not until the 12th Century A.D. that I have the next memories of Journeyman Paul Earth incarnations.