How the hell was I going to get strong enough? Did I have to lie waiting, stuck in an infant's body, knowing that cultivation existed? I shivered at that thought and curled into Mother's warm arms.
She spoke to me in soft, melodic tones, "… Oscar… Oscar."
I noticed that she repeated a set of syllables before my name. I had no idea what it meant, but this repetition anchored to my name gave me hope. If I could glean snippets of information like this, my time wouldn't be wasted.
Mother lay me back on her chest, and I remembered meditating in my past life. I never found it easy, but I was always told to start with the breath. My breaths were shallow and quick, but they had a rhythmic quality. I focused on building a bond with this rhythm, connecting it to the concept of my body, and somewhere deep in this cycle I fell asleep.
When I woke, it was hard to tell how long I had been asleep for, but I knew I was starving. This was going to be weird. My infant body cried out, so Mother slipped off a shoulder of her dress and brought me close to feed. Yes, this was very weird. But I had to get used to this cycle. Wake, eat, learn, meditate, sleep.
Each day, I became more accustomed to it. I was awake for one hour, then asleep for two. I gleaned anything I could from the snippets of speech around me. Whenever Mother talked or Father visited me, I listened close. But I only became familiar with the syllables.
While I had learned little language, I progressed leaps and bounds in meditation. By treating each body part separately, I could focus on it completely. I was slowly assembling a mental jigsaw puzzle.
I counted two weeks and well over a hundred meditation sessions before this body felt like my own. I was ready to find my soul seed. I focused on my breath to begin with, then shifted to my extremities. Entering a full trance took much longer by myself than it had with Sirius.
Falling ever deeper into myself, the white noise of rushing blood filled my ears. I could almost see the inside of my body, it felt so clear. I moved my attention to my solar plexus and stayed there, but there was no light and no warmth. A thread of doubt entered my mind, disturbing my focus.
I calmly teased apart the doubt and discarded it. Once again, letting my breath take me away, I moved down to my solar plexus. Staying there, focused, calm, I felt strange, like I was detached, looking at a space that was not quite me. This was the centre of it all. Bodily awareness no longer mattered. My body would exist on its own, without me attending to it. It didn't need me.
I was fading into detachment, but a wave of warmth brought me back. It came from the soul seed. I could sense it: this flickering glow. I knew what I had to do. Instead of diving into it, I gently drew it towards me. It quivered in resistance and retracted into my body, but I kept pulling, more forcefully this time. With a jump, it surged forwards and sent a blistering sensation through my body, jolting me out of my trance.
My body felt like it was being shredded, like needles flowed instead of blood, and I let out an unnatural shriek. As the surge reached my fingertips, there was an eruption of ecstasy from my core. It was all consuming, more pleasure than I had ever experienced, and I melted into my cot, savouring this feeling.
Mother slammed the door open and swept in, then picked me up with vigour. Frantic muttering reached my ears, but no further. I was a puddle of euphoria, and I rolled back, limp in her hands. She held me tight to her chest and rushed out of the nursery room.
As she ran, the pleasure subsided. White and brown flashed past, and we burst into a room. Father took me, a frown splitting his brow. He muttered some words of panicked confusion, then placed two thick fingers on my chest. A pervasive heat flowed into me, then subsided after a few seconds.
He passed me to Mother with a few, calmer words, before reaching somewhere out of sight. With a click and a knock, he brought something over. As he drew closer, I could see it more clearly. In his white, gloved hands lay a glowing golden crystal: a brilliant sheen reflecting off its irregular facets.
He placed it on my chest, and a chill spread through me. I wanted to look but didn't have the strength to raise my neck. Light surged from the crystal, and Father recoiled. He chattered to Mother, sounding nervous but excited. I wanted to keep listening, but I was too drained and fell asleep.
I awoke to an unfamiliar sight. A strange man leaned over me, tendrils of his black moustache and goatee dangling in front of my face. I couldn't resist and playfully batted them. The man stood up and backed away with a chuckle, and I noticed that he wore the same green robes as Father. He showed my parents a card that flashed in the light, before putting it back in a box and chatting with them. Their conversation was hard to follow, and I hardly recognised any syllables.
After the man had guided my parents outside, I shut my eyes and focused on my solar plexus. Incredibly, I could detect the seed without meditating. Instead of pulsating, it hummed with a potent energy. I had completed the first stage of the Soul Becoming World Technique. Looking in my mind and revisiting the memory of the book, it drew me back into a vision. The book flipped open on the second page:
Chapter 2: Soul Formation, Early Disciple stage requirement.