"Okay D, so you've died and been reborn to a life that is shiny and new. That's great, but what now? What will you do with all that freedom and time in the sunshine? Any plans to open up shop, get further educated and tie the knot? How about that 401k, isn't life better in old age with a check coming every day? Even with a new lease on life, you'll still have to strive, still have to fight, isn't that right?"
What can one say to a question like that? It presupposes that whatever one died to in the first place is exactly the same as what one will be reborn into after. But then, isn't it? Isn't that exactly what the Buddhists say will happen? Deliverance into the waiting hands of our past deeds? Even if and even so, isn't it almost the most damaging question one could ask a new life? Burdening them with a restricted mindset, bound by ones own limited imagination wrapped in fears and regrets. But somehow its the first one we ask of our own children once they are old enough to understand it, and even before that, when we project our own worries and feelings of failure upon them in the womb, just as our parents had done for us.
And what a projection indeed, especially towards someone who hasn't even learned what it is to live, to laugh and to cry. To be hurt and hurt others in kind and one day realize the cycle for what it is. Eventually being able to cherish their experience as more than something that happens to them, but because of them, and thus for them. The tears of absolution washing away all regret, in the vast endless sea of causality.
"But D, you already know all those things, even after being reborn like the phoenix. Can't you tell us something about your new views on life? Something different? Something more..."
"Yes and Go : No and Know, I say. For one day, one day soon it will be nay nay nay! And even that is much too much to say, for one day after it shall be pray pray pray!" - Messenger of the bamboozler
But what to reject in a world made anew? What to pray for when one has within them all they'll ever need? In this journey of mine across Japan I've come to witness something over and over again that exists as a constant pressure upon the people here from even before the time they are born. Something that is inescapable no matter where in this beautiful country I go, and that is the expectations that every Japanese person has as their constant companion. A familiar friend whose always with them, but never for them, in the same sense as the words imply.
It isn't simply the push to succeed, this is felt across the entire world by the youth, except perhaps in America these days, where the ideal has become to be so free in the ranks of the unremarkable that you can somehow gestate into the perfectly anesthetized corporateer that the school system is in fact designed to manufacture. Free from any pain or possible failure, because you fell into the human/robot production line, assured of your daily bread, its circus and endless yet shallow musings for the head. This was never the America dream, the opposite was, it just so happened to become so through generation after generation of people who had become fat and lazy off the wealth and status of the country, as "Gods greatest gift," one which we were burdened to bring to the rest of the world the day our military became nothing but a collections agency for the central banking cartel.
In Japan however there is a crazy mixture of pressures which are only partially linked to those found in America. There is the societal pressure which is an ever present miasma of formalities which is so palpable in the air itself that even if no one moved an inch, said a word, or thought a thing, they'd know if they were safe or in the line of fire as far as its expectations are concerned. Then there is the family pressure, which is a fine line between what they're lineage has historically accomplished and what they believe is best for each other. I don't know which is worse for they both work in tandem to create the almost perfectly ordered and respectful society we know and love, but I do know that either one of them has and does keep the Japanese wrapped within multiple ever tightening bubbles of expectation. The outlets for which are virtually the same as for many other countries, booze, tobacco and women wrapped in an endless tsunami of advertising and entertainment.
Again what does this have to do with me and my newfound life? Well its rather simple. Until coming on this trip my heart was trapped in a web of anger and resentment that I simply could not escape from while living in America. The air of expectations there is so much different than they are here. In America today you are no longer allowed to be left alone, even if you are doing whatever is expected of you by the society. Good luck pinning that down in 2025. These days there are roaming bands of ideologically inspired thugs and bullies whose only goal and purpose is to stop "evil and injustice", as they have been instructed to do. Whose doing the instructing? Whose whipping these masses of hooligans into action? The answer is not what you'd expect. I could easy point to George Soros, Bill Gates, The Secret Societies, Royal Families or Red vs Blue for you tel e vision programming stations etc, but that’s not where the real source of the problem comes from.
No, the real call to action or to pacification, depending on your skill sets, comes from the none other than you. The one and only Will by which the world whirls around towards the light of Love or towards the shadow of fear. I know this is not what you want to hear. It is in fact even more uncomfortable than the other things, for it lays the responsibility of all evil squarely at ones own feet. But how else could it be? And how more perfect? For the solution is always in ones hands, versus in obscure ivory towers in Switzerland or in corporate/military bunkers 3 miles below the ocean floor. Don't you see? When one dies to the world, they are reborn in a place that the world cannot touch. And the powerlessness one gives up in one, they fully gain in the other.
I stand now at the top of the Tokyo Skytree tower, some 450 meters in the air, looking down at the 800+ miles of concrete jungle that is the largest city in the world. Wondering as so many wonder seeing the sprawling masses of humanity, "What will become of us? What lays in store for all this which we have created?" I know what answer I have come to, but it is mine. You must find your own vision, your own life for it's own sake, but none of that will matter until you've died yourself. Able to abandon the comfort of the illusion, and been reborn, eyes clear, mind and heart open with true vision, the power of fate and faith held, with every decision...