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'Let there be no doubts that I am the assemblage of our ancestors, the arena in which they exercise my moments. They are my cells and I am their body. This is the fravashi of which I speak, the soul, the collective unconscious, the source of archetypes, the repository of all trauma and joy. I am the choice of their awakening.  I am the choice of this awakening.'

--Leto II, Atreides

 

Life becomes a process of finding the right soldier at the wrong time; you become them all with no power to control them, ingesting them as you go, and then one day this growing platoon is strong enough to wage war.

This is the moment you finally get to choose.  This is the 'awakening', as you put it, when you finally assume the mantle of "General".

The little boy playing in sandboxes had no control over swallowing the junkey, the crackhead, the pill popping nihilist, who swallowed the rebel, who ingested the wanderer, the outcast, who gobbled the prodigal soul who decided one day to work part-time at Target, who woke up one day in the flush of this energy and finally got to choose who you are now.

You've been waging war since, and all the soldiers you peopled your army with remain in their trenches, just as the Atreides carry the souls of their ancestors inside them.

Its the difference between being an abomination and not.