I suspect, but so far only suspect, that my present incarnation was designed to teach me humility. And given the obvious intensity of the lesson, if indeed it is a lesson, perhaps there was a nearly insurmountable amount of vanity and pride in some other life that I am compelled to account for.
I once had a very vivid dream that I was a samurai provincial lord waiting on the side of a hill for first light over a small village. In the dream I understood that it was necessary to kill everyone in the village, men, women, and children, as a way to control the prosperity of my province. I did not feel bad about what I had to do, it was just “necessary”, that was all. In fact, even though I knew my samurai warriors would attack the village very soon – it was predawn and they were to move in and start killing the people as they slept at dawn – I was preoccupied with thoughts of a teenage boy lover.
The dream was so real and detailed, and contained numerous elements that intrigued me enough that I decided to read what I could find about samurai.
I discovered several things in the dream that were historically plausible that I was not consciously aware of when I had the dream.
For example it was not unusual or even unsavory for a samurai to have a boy lover. If anyone had enough nerve to say anything derogatory about a samurai's sexual exploits they would likely be killed, or end up having to kill the samurai that they derided as a matter of honor if they themselves were also a samurai (if they were a subordinate samurai then they would be required to kill themselves).
Also, the killing of an entire village as a form of “management” was very common. I would never have imagined this to be true before my dream. But even before I confirmed it in a history book I knew the dream was right. It just made sense somehow.
At one point in this same dream I encountered a completely incongruous character; a man lounging in a reclining lawn chair wearing a Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts sipping on a margarita, who seemed to be watching me as if he were enjoying a show.
In character with the samurai I believed myself to be, I drew my sword and raised it over my head in a challenging manner and charged down the hill toward what to my mind was an invader. But to my consternation the strange man, though clearly unarmored and at my mercy, showed no fear at all!
Precisely because he showed no fear, and ONLY because he showed no fear, I stopped my attack. I believe there was some baffling exchange of words, but I no longer remember the nature of the exchange. But the interesting point here is that I behaved exactly as I only learned later that a samurai might behave in such a situation. The strangers lack of fear and obvious poise caused me to assume he had more power than me. This is very much a samurai kind of rational, or so I read later, after the dream.
I also read that samurai tended to be very conscientious in regard to their role and purpose in this world. It would not be unusual at all for a samurai to earnestly question the purpose of his own existence. While of course the samurai were never supposed to question their role or their loyalties as samurai, they often did dedicate their lives toward higher purpose.
So, it would not be unfathomable to suspect that if I were once a samurai lord in some other life that perhaps even then I knew that I needed an entire lifetime (at least one, maybe more) of abject humility in order to counteract the extreme imbalance and disconnectedness that one lifetime of a severely proud and vane samurai lord would likely have wrought.
Or maybe I'm just subconsciously trying to make myself feel better about all the terrible things I have to be ashamed of in this life. Who knows? Anything is possible!
