Hi Chris,

I realize this is a longish post, but they are the issues I've been facing for a long time in my life, I'd be really grateful if you could provide me some clarity on this!

I've always felt my life has been pulled apart by two very different types of energies. I've always been an deeply inquisitive and contemplative person, this was very apparent even when I was a very little child. Then there's another aspect of me that often feels a strong urge to go out to create, break things apart and rebuild anew. I've had many big visions to transform society and build new social structures since I was very young. The contemplative mode in me has always been the dominate one in my life, but in my gut I know had I truly followed my heart I'd live a very different life today, I'd probably be in the business field and be an entrepreneur instead of doing what I'm doing now and spending much time contemplating. But I do know that spirituality would always be an important part of my life, I'd want to integrate it into whatever line of work I do.

When I look at my life I can somehow sense why I would want to incarnate in China in my particular family at a time when China was just starting to open up and would continue to enjoy a long period of political stability and economic growth. They seemed to be the perfect conditions to set up my life stage for my learning and growth and to help me to fulfill my life's mission. I had a father who would be a perfect man to help me to realize my masculine potential, he was also open-minded, was into spirituality and practiced Qigong and read a large amount of western literature at a time when China was very closed. He would a soul I resonate a lot with. I also had a very caring mother, and my family was far better off than average at a time when almost all the people in China were very poor. But everything seemed to go wrong after I was born. My dad's dictatorial manner was just too overbearing for me, I was always very fearful of him and resented him so much until he died when I was only 6. I suppose many fathers were like that in a Chinese culture at the time, it was very natural for them to expect their sons to obey them all the time. But I was an extremely individualistic and stubborn child, his style was simply too oppressive for me. At such a young age, there was no one I could talk to to help resolve the issues. I've always felt somehow that he had to go in order to make ways for my growth, otherwise my relationship with him and my family would simply grow very dysfunctional and it would have serious repercussions for my future personality development. After his death and as I grew older I came to learn many impressive tales about him and how well he was respected among his friends and colleagues, I started to really admire many of his virtues. Had he not died and our relationship been functional, he'd definitely be the best teacher to put me on the right path during my young adulthood. I consider the lack of a proper father figure and a strong male influence a huge drawback for me while growing up.

As I mentioned I've often felt an urge in wanting to break and rebuild things, it was like a warrior type of energy, it was particularly strong in my younger years, but over past few years many of my edges seem to have been rounded, I think I've become more understanding and flexible and less drastic in many ways. On the contemplative side of me, I often felt lonely and odd growing up in a Chinese society, people just seemed to behave in predictable patterns, I'd sometimes wonder if it was all real. Even since I was very little I could sometimes feel an almost sagely like presence in the background watching all things happening, and I always knew somehow one day I'd be awakened, but the desire to accomplish and to just get on with my life was always so much stronger. I was lucky to come to the UK to live and study for many years when I was 18. It gave me lots of space to reflect and introspect. When I was at college I read a bit of Carl Jung's writing, it opened me up to spirituality and Taoist philosophy which I had little understanding of when I was in China. Then about 5 years ago, that was about a year after college (right now I'm 27), I got into a deeply contemplative mode, an event triggered me to start to really question the nature of reality. I became deeply introvert and my thinking got extremely abstract and in fact I was very very close to having a mental breakdown at the time. After that experience I was afraid to touch anything spiritual for the next four years. I wasn't so afraid to re-experience the psychological pain, my main fear was that I'd lose all my interests in all the normal human pursuits if I crossed a fine line and reached a point of no return. I knew what I was capable of through that experience, I felt I could dissolve all my illusions pretty quickly if I really wanted to, but I still wanted to experience success, family and have kids one day, I was so afraid I'd lose myself identify and my interests in them all.

I've re-embraced spirituality since about a year ago, lately the awakening process seems to be gathering pace. About a week ago, I had a dream where I was in the outer space looking down at earth, I saw people of all nations, races and from all the continents were slowly making their ways into the ether, as if a grand awakening on the planet was happening on a giant scale. I was so struck by it because it just seemed to so unbelievably real and vivid to me. Then just few nights ago, I had another dream where I was scratching a pink crystal I'd bought, and realized it was fake and made of plastic, I then split it apart and started to look for a real diamond in a shop. Right now I can only imagine my desire to awaken gets more overwhelming with time, but there are still much fear and conflicting desires in me. I'm still feeling an urge to embark on an entrepreneurial adventure, it's like an unlived dream, sometimes I just feel I must go on this heroic quest in order to fully realize my masculine potential! If it was true that we all had a life blueprint before we incarnate, this would probably be what my soul originally intended for me to do for the early part of my life. I've always felt a choice has to be made - to awaken but not go on the entrepreneurial adventure at all or to embark on the quest but awaken later. Then sometime last year I started to see things differently. I started to ponder the possibility of building enlightened and self-sufficient enterprises, and reallocating financial resources and channeling them to better use, I wondered if I could use the entrepreneurial path as a vehicle for my spiritual growth, or maybe with a more awakened consciousness I can better realize my visions in a detached manner. Also yesterday reading your post to my questions and the seven rays of divine impulse article you wrote gave me a another new perspective and made me wonder there might be indeed a possibility to integrate the two. I seem to have gotten more saner as I grow older, I'm now far less interested in grandiose fantasies than I used to be, but i still see visions about future, I often wonder if I could contribute to building a more fair economic system and eventually help to realize a moneyless society. Yet I still have so many doubts. The business world is so dark, especially in China there are so much corruption, I wonder if I can really stay conscious or just get swallowed up in the darkness, despite my inspiration I sometimes just don't feel I have enough courage to step into that dirty mud!

Life should really be utterly simple, why do I have these confusions?!

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this! Thank you so much!

Lei