Journeyman Paul chose Asian bodyminds for two of his next incarnations. He found himself desiring a change of scenery, a little variety, as he was feeling frustrated with the experiences provided by the European versions of Homo sapiens sapiens. The first of these Asian lifetimes was in China. This male, whom we shall call "Chu-tsing," was born about two hundred years ago into a fairly average family that lived on the outskirts of a village or town that was growing due to increasing trade traffic on the road that went through it which connected more key governmental urban centers. Chu-tsing is the same boy who grew up as devoted childhood friend and playmate of Toril and who was sent away to a distant monastery after having been caught in open defiance to Toril's parents.
You may remember this lifetime from last year's podcasts. It is the one in which young Toril was subjected to the painful custom of foot-binding. It was her family's hope that by using Toril's beauty they might attract the attention, interest and, hopefully, placement within the household or court of one of the local lords or magistrates. The procurement of a place for a young girl within one of these noble homes--as wife, concubine, or even household servant--was usually for life and often guaranteed financial reward and upward mobility for the girl's family.
Foot binding in its various forms was a fairly common and accepted practice in parts of Asia. Who knows where and why small feet became desirable and valued. It was, however, usually associated with improving the 'beauty' of the child/woman and often served as a potential means to bettering a family's socioeconomic standing. Perhaps girls/women in a frail and fairly immobilized state became symbols of the subservient role and demeanor that was expected form and by men--and especially men of wealth and power. It sounds like just another experiment in dominance and subjugation by the insecure yet physically more powerful male of our species.
Anyway, as a consequence to both his incendiary rejection of this torturous practice and his unbound love for his friend (his Cosmic Twin), Chu-tsing was sent away. He spent the rest of his life in abject poverty, enslaved to a mountain monastery as a physical laborer. Though he lived as an outcast and was never able to enjoy the normalcy of marriage and fatherhood, much less ownership of property or master of a valued trade skill, his hours of solitude did, in fact, result in spiritual advancement. He was able to find a place in which his acceptance, detachment, and the workings of his internal mind (his imagination) allowed him to develop a fairly high degree of access and use of some of his spiritual faculties. Telepathy was one ability he possessed though he never understood it as such. He simply believed he was talking to either spirits or ancestors or another voice within himself. Thus he never was able to take full advantage of this skill--nor did he develop it to the degree he could have had he understood it properly. Though he never saw Toril again in this lifetime, she was never far from his thoughts and, in fact, he communicated with her through thought and prayer in a way that benefitted Toril throughout her tough life of subservience and forced obedience. Chu-tsing, however, was never aware of this.
Chu-tsing learned to accept his station and learned to find fulfillment in the way he chose to fully commit to whatever job was assigned to him. He loved to work his body, to be alone, to sleep soundly at night, and was content to eat the scraps of food he was given--learning that the human body could perform amazing tasks if the mind and spirit were willing. As a child discipline would not have been an easy acquisition for him as he was prone to flighty lapses into his imagination and drawn to endless explorations of and meanderings among Nature around him. Thus, the monastic servitude was an ideal means to Journeyman Paul's acquisition of discipline--which then paved the road for higher capacity for spiritual energy flow. This exposure to the flow of Ray 1, the ray of Will, Power, and Sacrifice, was just what Journeyman Paul had been looking for.
Some other lessons Journeyman Paul was able to realize from the Chu-tsing incarnation include: patience, detachment from the emotions and expectations of others, enjoyment of moment-to-moment thought and activity, peace and joy in menial tasks, appreciation and gratitude for small gifts like the warmth of sunshine or the cooling of a breeze or the happy feeling in his body with certain stretching movements or with a brief nap or the soothing effect the scraps of food he was given had on his perpetual hunger. Despite its hardships, this was a good life for Journeyman Paul--one that provided fuel and nourishment for skills and awarenesses that would serve him in his growth and evolution.
Journeyman Paul next incarnated into a Japanese host bodymind. This male, whom we shall call "Moriku," lived a fairly ordinary life in which duty and order were of supreme importance to him. Alas, duty and order were of supreme importance to all Japanese at this time. One could say that duty and order made up the very backbone of Japanese feudal society.
Moriku was a dutiful son, a dutiful worker, a dutiful villager, as well as a dutiful husband and father. The crucial test of his lifetime came when he was faced with financial ruin. As was expected of him by the customs of the time, Moriku took full responsibility and blame for the mistakes and misjudgments that he made which led to this ruin. If truth be told, however, the source of his ruin also came from occupying a place of too much pride--which was quite a common pattern among Japanese men at this time. Pride led Moriku to establish behavior patterns in which he was stubbornly unwilling to ask for help under any circumstances.
As a dutiful citizen and honorable servant of his overlord, his village, his province, Moriku felt that the only way for his family to not have to take on the shame of his failures was if he should take his own life. Suicide, or seppuku, was an accepted and much practiced choice within Japanese culture. In Japanese culture, honor was valued, respected and expected more highly than living in a life of shame and dishonor. The willful act of ceremoniously taking one's own life, he and his culture of the time chose to believe, would spare his family and village any more of the shame that his ruin would bring upon them by showing the will and courage and respect of his family and village by removing himself from the problem. At this time, this was the act an honorable family man would and should do under the circumstances he had brought upon himself.
However, in a bizarre and incongruous decision for the times, Moriku decided to try to hide the imminent news of his financial ruin from his family. He was too ashamed and afraid to share it, to face their faces, to experience his shame through others. Moriku's decision to take his own life also takes on a interesting twist in that in this, too, he made the decision to take it on alone: without warning or telling his family.
So, one day, while alone in his house, Moriku prepared the staging for a modified version of what was normally a formal ritual. The Japanese act of seppuku, which came from the millennia-old bushido code of morality, was originally reserved for the samurai class in imperial Japan. It was not typically a commoner's choice. Since no one in Moriku's family blood lines had achieved samurai status, his decision to commit seppuku demonstrates a bit of delusional thinking--which might have been the result of his guilt- and anxiety-ridden mind. Still he went through with the actions according to his understanding of them.
He knelt on a cloth which, he hoped, would catch all of the mess of the blood and entrails. He used a long sheathed knife that had been a family heirloom (but which had long ago lost its sharpness). He thrust the knife point into his belly and proceeded to direct the sawing motion of the knife edge upwards, toward his liver and heart. But then Moriku began to lose consciousness! Before making the final and "essential" cut left, across the center of the top of his abdomen (beneath the rib cage) he began to pass out!
His final thoughts as he slipped from consciousness were, "The shame! The shame I have brought upon my family!" Not because of his financial blunders and male pride but because he had failed to complete the appropriate cuts according to the rules of seppuku!
Shame and inadequacy are oft recurring and powerfully disrupting themes in Journeyman Paul's psychological patterning. Feelings of low esteem, a pervasive desire to be alone and/or invisible, and stubborn, arrogant independence all serve to denote a lack of will, courage and awareness of one's inherent power. They are all also direct results of succumbing to a thorough immersion within the Great Illusions--and, of course, especially the Illusion of Separation. Were we all to re-member and understand our eternal tie to our Divine Source--as well as our underlying Unity in and with all things--we would be much stronger in our choice making and much less susceptible to the illusions of dis-ease and disharmony. Journeyman Paul's lifetime as the dutiful Japanese man taught him the dangers of societal conformity and extreme separation and isolation. Moving forward, these are great awarenesses to have! The "Moriku" lifetime was a source of jarring awareness and perspective. For these, Journeyman Paul is grateful and happy.
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