To learn is to progress

I had pierced through the noise! Finaly, I had found the familiar energetic organ, after 3 months of life, and felt the flicker of power within. The lower dan tian situated at the center of the body a palm beneath the navel. And the jing within. However it was too little for me to do anything. It was continuously consumed and spread through the body to sustain its growth, I knew that. To bad that all this effort can not benefit me now. But it would definitely be useful in the future. Right now using the jing or trying to gather it would only result in an impediment of growth while trying to purposefully use it would raise the risk of death. So for now all I could do was to feel it and wait. My attention was now turned to the meridians. Going from the lower dan tian where meridians and vessels. Following the vessels up my body I would definitely find the middle dan tian. As for the upper one… I was painfully aware of it due to my reincarnation. To my happiness that meant that I had an easy time gathering and sharpening my focus in order to find the others. And now I was faced with the result.

During these months I had also learned a lot more words such as how water, fire, the stove and several vessels for home use where named. Learning is progress! ‘Now I learn words by two years of age I’ll learn to read and nothing will still my progress anymore!’ I thought with happiness unaware of just how taunting reading would be. I was still blissfully unaware. Overlooking the fact that in this house there were no books and nothing that seemed to be written on. Still at that moment my excitement for the future was growing fueled by new small freedoms I was gaining. Like the ability to climb.

At about 3 and a half months I became quite skilled at climbing out of my little baby bed, made of thin straws, and was exploring around the house. At this point one of my fears was also gone! The weather outside was growing warmer sign that spring arrived. I still couldn’t get to the windows to see outside nor could I go out. Also due to my various tries to get out of the house each time one of my parents left the other would make sure that I was in my bed and would come to make sure I wouldn’t make a break for it. I’m pretty sure they said that I was possessed as a joke. If only they knew how true their joke was they wouldn’t have been so amused… Too bad I still couldn’t ask to be lifted to the window.

Despite my growing vocabulary I was still unable to speak. It wasn’t that I didn’t manage to catch enough words for a broken speech, but that I was slurring the words too badly. My vocal cords weren’t developed enough and any try to form a word resulted in just a slightly more complex baby word. To my relief I didn’t attempt speaking in front of my parents. With my adult mind I’d have felt too embarrassed to try and fail as badly as I were. I did practice when alone but it was hard to find such moments, which obviously slowed down my progress. Not like I could do much since my vocal cords weren’t developed but I felt like I could do more. I aimed to be able to pronounce well, or at the very least to be able to pronounce words as intended. After all the ability to speak or pronounce was important if I wanted to produce certain vibrations to help develop my focus and trigger responses from my inner energies.

It took about half a month more to be able to identify and focus on both lower and middle dan tians simultaneously. It was hard and I often lost focus one or the other. The silver lining was that if anything I had time. In theory I could even disregard this journey and exploration entirely for now after all everything was still growing forming and developing. But the opportunity to keep observing and learn from the changes that appeared was priceless and with the utter lack of appropriate entertainment it gained even more weight in my mind. For now I lacked the ability to fully observe my body but I was getting there driven by both boredom and longing for the unknown space.

Out of curiosity I started pushing and pulling with my will onto the foreign energy forming a breath like flow. I wasn’t something I prioritized as I didn’t understand what this power did and I was afraid to not mess my body. For all I knew even this breath flow could be dangerous, but considering that this world was permeated by this energy there was a very big chance that it was very well known and used by most of the humans in this world. If I wanted to have a good chance of accomplishing my goal of seeing that space again then I’d do well to learn to use it anyway. I had no way of knowing just how far the study of this energy or the body had went in this world nor did I know what was the path established through the experience of others. For better or worse I was going in blind. Still I was probably doing better than most at this age… I hoped at least. My own consciousness being already formed and interfering with this energy and the development of this body in relation to it could mean that I was in fact far behind other kids my age. I couldn’t tell.

Speaking of things I couldn’t tell, I had no idea of some basic concepts such as the units of this world. I didn’t know how days were called or if they had something like weeks or months. I had no idea if there even was a moon that would determine the creation of months as a concept. Hell, I didn’t even now if we lived in a city or a village. We were probably somewhat far from highly populated areas as there wasn’t much noise from outside. I didn’t hear animals either, the songs of birds sometimes resounded from outside especially now that the weather warmed. The humidity grew with the heat, I guessed that the snow was melting outside and the water was infiltrating the wooden walls. It mattered not, as long as the water wasn’t pooling up in the house all was well, right? Wrong!! The damn roof had a leak right above my bed! What sleep could I have now? I try to sleep? Plop, plop, plop. And I would be wide awake and with cold water droplets in my puff of a hair. Unacceptable! But I couldn’t talk to my parents and beating water was even less of a thing… Further more despite my best tries even my learning to go to the toilet my parents still thought that I wet the sheets… I never faced such a lamentable situation before.

With all this happening I had one option only… I turned to the one thing I was sure could do something and tried to mold that foreign energy. It took a few tries but I managed something in the end. Wrapping it around an object I could make it float. Barely but it was something. Of course this led to nothing. It only proved how foolish I was. Here I was a grown ass man and I was thwarted by a leaky roof. All I had to do was to cling to my father and keep him next to my small bed for him to see the falling drops of water. A very mundane and simple solution. So much so that I was wondering why I risked using that energy in the first place. It was interesting to see how his interest and happiness to have me cling to him turned into mild annoyance while I did nothing but keep him there then see his wide eyes staring at the ceiling after another drop fell straight on my head. It all ended up with my father yelling happily after my mother to tell her how much of a, I think genius he said, I was. By evening a brand new wood board was in the roof and no water leaked in. Haa… Sweet undisturbed sleep followed! Or so I thought until my bladder waked me up asking it’s due. Damn undeveloped body!

Regardless the problem was solved. By the age of 4 months I was still slurring words badly and I thought that my sweet ambition of managing by 5 was nothing more than a dream. Of course by now my parents were a bit worried by how quiet I became, but there was no more need to cry if I could go to the barrel used for inside toilet and do my business alone. Another concern I’m sure I gave them was my refusal to walk on 2 feet. I had done it in my past life, walking too soon. I developed splay foot… It caused pains while walking over long distances, I had only a mild case so I escaped easily. All this considered I did not wish to deal with this again. So I patiently crawled. I could feel my internal state and knew when walking would become safe as a result. Another point to make was that I only had some rags for clothes. It was already obvious my family wasn’t well off so this wasn’t a surprise. It reminded me of anime… In those even poor families where somehow dressing their kids with appropriately sized clothes… What could I say reality was less kind obviously.

I kept persisting in my practice and learning words. By the time I was 5 months old I still had trouble speaking but way less so. Furthermore I had almost integrated in my vocabulary all the words my parents were usually using. I was still slow in forming sentences in my mind but it wasn’t a problem since I was even slower pronouncing the words. I observed my mom cooking and was honestly surprised to see metal tools. I thought those would be expensive. But then again we had a proper stone stove… It became obvious that I had a skewed understanding of the value of things around here… Well one way to solve things. Pester my mother to take me with her when she heads out. Seeing how other houses looked would surely allow me to find out what kind of status we had. If possible finding out about money would be even better… That seemed hard however since I hadn’t seen any coins since coming to this world… Not one in this entire house. One could argue that I wasn’t capable to see what was placed in elevated spots but still… It was a bit strange… Perhaps they were just very careful with handling them… Or perhaps they did not have any at all. If we lived in a village then trade by exchanging what everyone made was a viable way of doing things. If so then the main produce of the village was exported or given out as tax and the only person with money was the village chief… Trouble trouble…

Oh yes I found the way my parents looked at me when I was thinking and prodding over stuff very funny. To be honest I was probably the funny one in the room… But regardless the opportunity arrived a month later. My mom finally decided it was time to parade me through the outside world, more to learn and more to progress… Finally more people and some action!