Erle Frayne D. ArgonzaA gracious day to everyone else!
At this moment I wish to share my reflections about the great boon that an Old Soul would bring to a household. And baneful it is for a certain household to have a lack of or throw away an Old Soul most specially an authority figure who’s the Light of the home.
As already clarified in previous article, an Old Soul is one had evolved way ahead of the rest of the population. We mystics call them ‘evolved souls’ while ancient Chinese call them ‘old souls’. Being evolved, they are those who can coach and mentor other younger souls—the ‘laggards’ (or ‘young souls’) and the ‘middling souls’ (no more laggard but short of being an old soul)—so that the latter can hopefully evolve faster in their respective Paths.
For a planet like Earth that is considered ‘fallen’, or trapped in dense energy veils (e-veils or evils), it is such an enormous boost for all souls to have old souls among them. Needless to say, in the micro-setting, a family would perform optimally in the evolutionary path if an authority figure of the old soul type is present.
Most often, an old soul is assigned to a family as an infant to be taken care of if another old soul is present as an authority figure who can sublimely mentor this infant. The Divine Hierarchs will never risk incarnating an old soul among street people or families of laggards where the stimuli for soul growth are of the deprivation levels.
That is not to say that among the poor folks there are no old souls. No matter how deprived a community is, chances are the Hierarchs will find ways to embody some old souls there, provided that somehow the minimum of growth-optimizing stimuli are present to ensure that these old souls will advance in their evolution while in that same community.
In my own experience being an old soul myself, I was very lucky to have incarnated in a family with an old soul authority: my paternal grandfather Estanislao Argonza. He in turn came from a family (Argonza) where intellect ran high. That was by the way around the years 1890-1915 when the same old Argonzas embodied, in a country the Philippines that was 4th world (backwood colony), in a backcountry called ‘Cagayan’ province.
I could only surmise that old souls were rare then in my country. I’d say lucky enough if there were 1 old soul per 1,000 heads total. Even intellectuals were rare, probably in the proportion of 1 per 500 heads. But the old Argonzas (my grandfather and his male cousins particularly) I encountered as a tot were so intellectually endowed that the Argonza name came to be known as synonymous to ‘illustrious’ during the American era.
My grandfather came from a humble family of struggling artisans and clerks. Note that to be an artisan and clerk during those times was already worth one’s esteem. His father Thomas, half-Basque mestizo, was a clerk who rose to supervisory rank at the Tabacalera Company (located in Tuguegarao town) and was reputedly very intelligent. He died during the 2nd World War, though he didn’t die in vain as among his children was an old soul who was Christened as Estanislao.
This young boy Estanislao only reached high school as the most advanced schooling he had. His parents didn’t have the funds to send him to college. But he was schooled in the classic Anglo-Saxon pedagogy of the Americans, and beyond that he read so widely that his mind was encyclopedic as he neared 20. At 20s he was allowed to teach mathematics and music at the Cagayan High School, Cagayan Valley’s top school then, with a mere high school diploma as his formal credential.
From there he rose to fame as a young mathematician and musical genius. He was assigned the post of Band Master to the Cagayan Public School Band, which he oversaw for nearly four (4) decades and which produced many young talented musicians and musical geniuses. When the USA granted independence to the Philippines on the 4th of July 1946, the genius Estanislao was among the select band masters who were invited to play the inaugural themes of the new republic at the Quirino Grandstand in Manila.
Handsome, charismatic and brilliant, the young Estanislao got his most important reward in life ever: a young woman named Faustina Narag. The daughter of a gentry, Don Juan Narag, who was among the wealthiest landlords and scions of ancient nobles in the valley, Faustina was schooled at the Philippine Normal School and was mentored by American professors. She then taught at the newly founded public schools in Tuguegarao, then a young entrepot town, where her father’s vast estates were located.
The only biggest bitter part of Faustina’s life was marrying a ‘common man’, Estanislao, and the marriage being disapproved by the family, Faustina lost her inheritance privileges. But Estanislao was no ‘common folk’ as he later demonstrated, though till late in his life, which I myself saw with my eyes, he was brushed aside by Faustina’s wealthy sibs as a mere commoner. He was a man with big dreams, a visionary, and as a multi-level marketing man declared, “a man with a dream cannot be denied.”
Being both from the intelligentsia, you could just imagine the level of education and culture that flowed in the household of the Estanislao & Faustina couple. Having born eight (8) children in all (some died later of ailments), both them moved to sideline in some mercantile activities to be able to send their children to school. All of the children, including my father Steve, were able to go through college and grew up as professionals.
My grandparents were already retired when my family settled in Tuguegarao in 1964. It was a large nipa house, built as a substitute to the big house destroyed during the war, that my family encountered. However, in 1966, a new modern house was built to replace the old native structure. The house became the ancestral home of the Estanislao lineage, and my family had the privilege to live in it and maintain it till 1986. When the entire house was fully built in 1971, it was the most beautiful architectural and structural house in the whole of Tuguegarao.
To go along with the house was books and musical pieces (vinyl records). They were our cultural standards then. Every evening as we dined together, we held nice conversations led by my grandfather. Reading, listening to fine music, nice conversations, intelligent discussions and fine culinary (my grandmother, mother and father were expert at culinary arts) were the legacies built and left to us younger Argonzas in that home.
I would say without doubt that it was the sublime energy and nurturing efforts of my grandfather, the old soul Estanislao, that was the cutting edge behind our family rearing. One can go ahead and research this: my family was among the most cultured, well-bred and intellectually-endowed in the entire Cagayan Valley till the 1980s. And that all started with the presence of old souls in the lineage, a chain of old soul embodiments from the older generations to the next ones.
My grandparents left Tuguegarao for the USA in 1969 to retire in New York, where my two aunties have migrated (one a nurse, another a doctor). But in 1971 they came back to Tuguegarao, did the finishing touches of the roughly done home, and stayed for two (2) years to enjoy retirement. A family car was added as a utility, plus a television (too few had TV then in town) and all the modern accessories then including air-conditioning. We were clearly a typical middle class family by 1970s, at a time when our main streets in Tuguegarao had just been asphalted (it was dirt gravel till 1971).
The home thus became a center for extended family events –parties, Sunday gatherings, tea & coffee chats, etc. My cousins from the barrios and other places would normally drop by ‘ambush style’ (unannounced, as we didn’t have a telephone at home) and we would entertain them there. The chats and exchanges with my grandfather always differed from the rest, as there were always deep reflective notes. He was clearly the philosopher of the entire extended family (Argonzas and Narags). Many kins begged for his words of counsel on a diversity of matters.
There at home I learned my first ABCs, my mathematics, my story-telling abilities, my dance, my music. Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Brahms and classical masters were our standards, aside from the emerging pop tunes (jazz, folk & counry, pop-ballad, vaudeville, Latin). Broadways like “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Showboat” and “New York New York” were among our favorite collections. The King James Holy Bible was my first scriptural staple, the 30-volume Britannica my regular reading past-time in 1973-75, and enormous pieces of substance books plus fiction on various topics were my cognitive viands.
But among many nurturing things at home, I can never ever forget the chats, discussions, coaching and mentoring by my grandfather. It was only but a few couples of years of living with him, but it was like travelling to many distant galaxies in terms of impact. At hindsight, I can now understand why the Hierarchs embodied me in the Argonza line, for only in a family with an old soul as authority can a budding old soul like me grow up to become one whose gifted mind and heart will be of greater service for the sublime causes.
My own parents and the children of my grandfather (my father and his sibs) never reached the level of genius that my grandfather had. I guess this was their privilege: both young and middling souls, they had the good karma of being nurtured by an old soul. While my parents are merely of above average intelligence, the situation was compensated for by the presence of my grandfather till my 3rd year high school. My formation process was already solid when I left for the university in 1975 to begin my college life, thanks to this old soul Estanislao.
Today the embodiments of old souls are happening on a greater scale. There are middle class parents of mere average intelligence whose newly born kids are all old souls. Aware of this fact, I do go to the extent of getting involved in coaching and mentoring my nieces and nephews most specially the potentially gifted ones. The luck of these kids is that, in the absence of an old soul among home authorities, they encounter the old soul mentors in school as their teachers or pupils of older ages.
My own estimate is that at this time, most specially in the big cities, old souls comprise 1 per 100 heads. Laggards broadly comprise 63% of the population while 36% are middling souls. The balance will tilt towards more middling and old souls in the coming decades, and before 2050 there may not be a single laggard in town, as all of them will be shipped out to backward planets where they are most fit.
We can hit a proportion of 5 old souls per 100 heads by 2050 per my estimate. That means every household will have one old soul at least, whether an authority figure or a kid. And the possibility of family lineages of pure old souls, 100% composition, is now within our sight.
What exciting times we surely have. Hopefully we can all contribute to the challenges of nurturing these old soul reinforcements, for they shall continue to increase in numbers across the Age of Aquarius. This is surely a cause for great celebration.
[Writ 10 March 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
