Announcement
We invite you to attend a Commune Lecture entitled "Love at Second Sight". For reservation and details, click here
The Call of the Soul
Two days ago I met Michael, a 20-year old college student. Together with his friend and classmate Earnest, who lives in my own neighborhood, Michael came to see me and ask my help for their writing project. I was eager to talk and help them, but our conversation led me to discover the other side of their souls. They are currently majoring criminology. I asked them why they chose criminology. They said they have developed a taste for guns and dreamed that someday they may hold and use one. But when I asked them what their hearts truly want, Earnest said he wants to learn more about information technology while Michael wants to take fine arts.
photo from PhotoXpress.com
I was struck by Michael’s story. He told me he was left with no choice except criminology, forsaking his passion for art. Still, he has been creating artworks in secret, with no people to appreciate him. Yet he continues to pour his heart on his art. He told me that the moment he holds a pencil, his hands seem to flow on paper, creating images that he did not even imagine to draw. Often, he is unbelievably amazed, dumbstruck by his own ability to create. He wants to share it with his friends, but even them find his works incredible. When challenged by his friends to repeat the same artwork, he could not do it anymore. They seem to accept his talent, yet they do not support him by heart. He keeps on seeing beauty in anything unusual, such as mud. But others find him crazy on his misunderstood habit of observing.
I told him that his story is completely natural. Perhaps he is among hundreds and thousands of young people whose hearts dream to express their talents, yet often obscured by the society’s priorities on getting good grades, getting good jobs, flying abroad and earning more. We have heard the prevalence of career mismatch not just in the country but worldwide. For instance, the enrollment rate for nursing in most Philippine colleges and universities skyrocketed beginning in 2002. It became a beacon of hope for economic abundance of most Filipinos who wanted to work in North America. Parents pushed their teens to major in nursing even though most of them yearn to become a chef, a writer, or a journalist, all for the sake of earning more money. Schools made a business out of this trend. This mentality of having more literally extinguished the fire of dreams in the hearts of young people.
Listening to Michael stirred my soul. His soul is calling him to express, to become who he truly is. He told me that every time he begins to draw he always sees beyond. He sees with what he calls “the emotions of eyes”. He draws something from his deepest emotions. Positive or negative, his emotions energizes his hand to draw. Afterwards he feels calm and at peace. I could not agree more. He reminds me of an M. C. Escher lithograph, The Drawing Hands. He is drawing his divinity. He experiences God right then and there.
…may they find their life endeavor a bearer of peace and Love.
I was in Michael’s shoes some years ago. I felt alone in a world where no one recognizes who you are and what you can do, because they do not see your divine vision and do not hear your divine calling. Now I completely understand and am deeply thankful for their presence. They helped me to strive to make a difference. Since our worlds were different, I was able to create and enter my own world and developed a way of seeing – a vision that I now share with the world. I have responded to the call of my soul by writing and teaching Love. Michael opened me to an opportunity to look back, and see him as I see myself. I saw in his eyes his infinite future. I saw the hope now seeded in his heart. Our meeting was a soulful confirmation.
photo from PhotoXpress.com
If he would have an opportunity, he would choose to follow what his heart tells him. With that, I challenged him and his friend to see beyond the lure of weaponry. In a flash of insight, I recalled a contemporary artist Alvin Zafra, who was once featured in I-Witness’ Buhay na Obra. I shared to them what struck me to one of Zafra’s odd medium: a live rifle bullet. He rubbed the bullet against the surface of huge sheets of sand paper, sketching the images of slain journalists. He declared that by using one bullet for his artwork, he was able to stop its potential for violence. This story glued more my intention to inspire Michael, as well as his friend, for them to creatively see the possible entwinement of their current education with their personal calling. More than that, I intended to amplify the call of their souls – that whatever path they take, may they find their life endeavor a bearer of peace and Love.
I used to dream of becoming a doctor. I had four criteria before entering college. I should know more, earn more, respected more and ultimately help more people. Instead, my feet led me to a path of writing and teaching. Interestingly in old Latin, a doctor actually means a teacher. Even amid the noise of my society persuading me to define myself in its ways of success, I know that not only I fulfilled my four criteria, I also heeded the call of my soul. I have followed my bliss, heeding Joseph Campbell’s echo. I have continued to kindle the passion that keeps on lighting and warming my soul. “The fire of your heart is the light of your path,” writes Christian pastor Max Lucado. And I intend to help Michael and his generation to do the same – that they may have the courage to listen to and follow the call of their souls.
You can invite me to do a small talk, lecture or workshop for your organization, to discuss the importance of Love as a divine calling. E-mail me at rmtanauan@hotmail.com
Loving Oneself
Whitney Houston’s recent passing evoked deep sadness among her fellow artists and multitude of fans worldwide. Although I do not consider myself a fan, somehow her songs made me sing in my childhood years. Nevertheless, hearing about what happened to her evoked in me a very different experience. She became a sudden reminder, an awakened inspiration to me. She again reminded me singing her hit version of a George Benson original: “Because the greatest Love of all is happening to me. I found the greatest Love of all inside of me. The greatest Love of all is easy to achieve. Learning to Love yourself is the greatest Love of all.” Houston’s life suddenly became a soulful legacy to celebrate Love, the intention of Loving oneself – a purpose that I am now fulfilling.
photo from Microsoft Office Image
To Love oneself is the ultimate purpose of fulfilling Love. But how can we Love ourselves? I have heard this interesting question more often. This question has been obscured in my exploration of Love, since I have always focused my attention in finding its meaning. Now, I have realized that the question “How to Love oneself?” is perhaps the most powerful way to rephrase my usual question “What is Love?”. I believe it becomes more significant in our lives if this important question compels us more to act than to describe.
To answer it, however, is not as simple as a how-to, step-by-step instruction. What I can suggest is for you to take each fundamental principle of Loving oneself as an approach interdependent with other principles. You can try them in different order, and experiment with them at your own pace, applying your unique understanding. These principles have universal properties that allow them to become applicable in any situations or cultures. All you have to do is to live these principles as simple as they are.
Loving Oneself through Breathing
One of the most basic things to do to Love oneself is to breathe consciously. Actually, we breathe involuntarily so often we are not aware that we are breathing. But breathing involuntarily is weaker as opposed to breathing consciously. A conscious breath has a different quality: it has a powerful way to embody Love. Some of us may find this puzzling because we thought that Love and breath are technically not similar. The thing is we associate Love with romance and emotions, and these associations prevent us from accessing Love in its raw form. Being conscious of our breathing brings our chaotic minds in stillness, putting us in a mode of sharp attention of our physical and nonphysical capacities. Our inherent capacity to Love lies in the peace, contentment, patience and awareness that our conscious breathing brings us.
To Love oneself is the ultimate purpose of fulfilling Love.
Loving Oneself through Seeing
The apparent byproduct of breathing is seeing. As we breathe, we recognize the force of Love which we often call Life. Yes, we can see with our naked eyes but this is limited seeing. As we become conscious of Life through breath, Life becomes more visible to us. Seeing in this sense goes beyond what is physical. We begin to penetrate our perceptions down to the most unseen, and breath opens the beginning of our insight. We begin to see both our inner and outer humanity, and see it as the same nature in every human, not just in our loved ones and friends. We peer through the nature of Life as it allows us to live and other creatures on the planet. We begin to see our connection with with each other, since breath is the invisible cord that connects us with the web of Life. All of us – humans, animals and plants – breathe the same air. Nothing is ever disconnected. This connection is what makes us alive. That connection is what we often call Love.
photo from Dreamstime
Loving oneself through Feeling
Breathing and seeing leads us to a profound feeling. We feel more than our bodies and realities. We feel such expansive connection with humanity and the universe, and we share the feeling with our fellow humans. We feel our aliveness together with them. We rise up from the usual impulses of liking and disliking. We become aware and feel what others feel. We feel compassion and empathy when others suffer. We feel gratitude and mutual joy when others are blessed. We feel that we are one body, however we appear separate from each other. We have breathed, seen and felt all together this inherent oneness of our existence.
A Generous Act
Loving oneself is not selfish or greedy. Indeed, it is the most generous act we can do, not only for ourselves but for the rest of humanity. As we totally give our full consciousness to the life we have, we also give our consciousness to everyone and everything. We must let go of this limited mentality that Loving oneself is about selfishness. Doing this opens us up to vast possibility of experiencing Love. Like what Houston sings, we can easily achieve the greatest Love of all.
Defining Love
photo from Microsoft Office Image
Defining the indefinable
A definition is used to make sense of something unintelligible. It clarifies any jargon found in many systems of thinking. Unclear and difficult words must be defined so they can be clearer and easier to understand. A definition gives a simplified picture of particular word, perhaps fixing its meaning and rendering it unchangeable. So defining a word is to end its ambiguity. Definition in Latin is definire - to put an end. The word fin means end, as in the word finish and final. A definition puts limit to a particular idea, to contain it in a box, to demystify it, and to keep it there. If this is how definition works, how can we define an indefinable?
How about Love? How do we define it? If we follow the rules of definition, it would fail us to define Love. The common saying “Love is a many splendored thing” is not just a cliché but resonates an undeniable characteristic of Love. Love has many meanings depending on who makes it. It has no limitations in producing meanings which makes it more complex and vast. We all define Love differently through our individual perspectives. These definitions have different angles and manners that demonstrate a great deal of variance. We define Love more as we change our perspectives and the ways of perceiving those definitions.
I have learned since then that I can only define Love when I stop defining it.
What is Love like?
It is hard to have a good definition of Love. Love is among the most ambiguous human concepts. To make something straightforward out of it is bound to fail, because Love has a potential to ruin any fixations in our minds. Love takes the mood of its thinker – becomes morality in the words of the religious, notions in the thoughts of ordinary folks, romance in the hearts of lovers, theories in the experiments of psychologists, phenomena in the mind of philosophers – ad infinitum. But what does a definition do? As I conceptually and experientially delve into Love, I become more and more convince that no exact definition may suffice. Our chase for the right words on Love remains elusive.
To find a single definition for Love is just a futile task, because any attempt to define Love is a new expression, a definition like no other. Similarly, we can see this characteristic in any natural pattern, be it derived from human, animal or plant. They have one thing in common: all patterns are unique. There are no two patterns that can be exactly the same. Even the patterns of veins of a leaf are different from that of another leaf that comes from the same tree. How is this possible? This is the miracle and mystery, both of which are embodied quality of Love. Love is as infinite as the universe itself, and thus it demonstrates its nature through infinite ways. Yet however leaves are different from each other, we call them a leaf. This is the common ground. Anything different has only one face. This is the same for Love.
Love is Love. Defining Love could be a redundant rhetoric, because everything collapses into one word: Love. Love is both too simple and too complex for just a single definition. I keep on telling people how fluid Love is, and this is why I have always felt that it is not the issue of defining Love. To go beneath the roots of definitions, we will find basic principles to examine why and how Love is infinitely defined. There is a core that lies underneath our myriad of definitions. The catch here is that this core is never a word, but a consciousness that includes all words, concepts and experiences.
photo from Dreamstime
Core definition
When you feel this core – this feeling of connectedness with all people and with the whole world and the Universe – you will feel that you are awaken to your capacity to witness, create and grow. As you become compelled to do the same for others, you are beginning to grasp the indefinability of Love. You cannot explain, but you know. It is hard to put Love into words, but it is so easy to experience it. It envelopes all aspects of your soul: your thoughts, dreams, imaginations, emotions, feelings, body sensations. As they course your consciousness, you begin to recognize the same process with the people around you. You and the other are simply at one, because you are sharing Love. At this moment, Love arises from your heart bringing a new definiton you have never read or heard before.
Once, a young student asked me if know everything about Love. I told her that the moment I knew Love, I realized that there is so much to know. I have tried exploring Love and its infinity has kept me both honored and humbled. I have learned since then that I can only define Love when I stop defining it. The only thing I can do is to LIVE this Love’s indefinable definition. And we can all do that, because the core of our definition is very simple: we are Love.
Happy Valentine’s Day to all!
Pag-ibig and Pagmamahal: Filipino Truths On Love.
photo from Microsoft Office Image
Just 2 weekends ago, I talked to group of college students about Love. It is always natural for young people like them to be drawn to the topic, as I always observed in many of my conversations with people of their age. They were interested in learning more. As usual, I engaged them with my natural flow of connecting Love with many concepts and experiences. In the course of our conversation, one of them asked a very interesting question: What is the difference between Pag-ibig and Pagmamahal? Prior to the question, I have not yet given much thought on these words in the years of my personal learning of Love, although I have plans to outline my insights. Surprisingly, they had engaged me more, as new insights sparked that moment.
Pag-ibig and Pagmamahal are both Filipino translations of Love. I am referring particularly to the Tagalog Language, which is widely spoken in the Philippines. (Other regional languages in the Philippines have their own equivalents, and perhaps bear much more profound nuances. I hope to learn more about them in the coming years. In this case, I can only talk about my insights based on Tagalog.) These words are both used in local parlance, although depending on certain contexts. Sometimes, they are compared as if one has a greater meaning than the other. Now, I want to share a colorful perspective, one that makes these two words as equal archetypal of Filipino psyche of Love.
Many Filipinos speak of the word Pagmamahal as part of everyday talk. It is the word referring to a quality of Love between non-romantic relationships such as parents and children, friends and siblings. Pagmamahal, at least in common meaning, means endearment. It refers to the way people value their country, their jobs or anything important to them. But often, in both fictional and real life romantic dialogues, when a lover says “Mahal kita” (I Love you) to the beloved, Pagmamahal becomes a confession of Romantic Love. The word has dual connotations. Pagmamahal is a word of both romantic and non-romantic expressions.
It is because the words Pag-ibig and Pagmamahal although different in origin and nuances, bear the same truths of Love in the collective soul of Filipinos.
Pag-ibig is more poetic. Poets like Francisco Balagtas used the word as a surge of romantic force. Patriots like Andres Bonifacio and Jose Rizal used the word as the summation of their longing and devotion to the Motherland. In most cases, Pag-ibig religiously describes the kind of Love God gives. It is scattered in many songs and sweet nothings. The phrase “Iniibig kita” (I Love you) recalls a history of Filipino courtship, serenades and romantic culture. Pag-ibig sounds more sincere yet a little outmoded. Pag-ibig has its both romantic and filial qualities, which are essentially quaint and timeless.
photo from Microsoft Office Image
Pag-ibig and Pagmamahal are similar because these words represent the deepest knowing of Love among Filipinos. Interchanging them in conversations is common; by heart, there are no separate meanings except Love. Whoever gives and receives Love, the words of Love for Filipinos always intend connection between people, things and realities.
Pag-ibig and Pagmamahal are different not because one is too poetic and the other is vernacular. These words actually encode two facets of Love. I heard a professor who once said in her speech that aside from the last sound “-ig”, the words Pag-ibig, tubig (Tagalog: water), and pasig (Tagalog: river) share the same qualities of rhythm and flow. Whereas Pagmamahal’s root word “mahal” shares a meaning with a Sanskrit root word maha, which means “great”. Like stone, Pagmamahal seems to bear that greatness, power and strength.
Love’s ultimate nature unfolds into two great truths: Pag-ibig is the symbol of Love’s becoming – like water, always flowing, changing, transforming, evolving. Pagmamahal is the symbol of Love’s being – always solid, unchanging, firm, eternal. These facets do not oppose; they always compliment. Through these words, Love always reminds us its indivisible yet distinct and paradoxical opposites . It is because the words Pag-ibig and Pagmamahal, although different in origin and nuances, bear the same truths of Love in our collective Filipino soul .
Love at Second Sight (A Commune Lecture), Feb 11, Saturday. For details, click here.
Love at Second Sight
photo by PhotoXpress.com
Love at first sight. People often ask me if I believe on this aphorism. I used to give a neutral answer and refer to Love through my personal insights. Looking back, I have difficulty recalling how I answered, but now that I have an interesting manner of dealing with this saying, it’s good to return and reexamine it with full attention. It started when a friend and I were brainstorming on common aphorisms of Love. An amusing wordplay occurred to me: Love at second sight. Although this has been used in songs and stories, I have felt a new way of seeing it. In fact, the sequence through which we become aware of Love is an important process worthy of deeper understanding.
First Sight
We fall in Love. That’s a fact. Even our parents and grandparents did. We have heard stories of lovers of their generation who fell in Love on their first meeting. They longed for each other and fulfilled their romantic vows. In modern times, these stories only changed characters and plots and continue to bear the same theme. It has been perpetuated in songs, soaps and films to feed the romantic thrill that we have discovered in our transition from childhood to young adulthood. For the first time, we can see Love as a tangible force in our hearts: our desire to connect with another human being. It is romantic and sexual in nature, and it anchors us to continue the growth and propagation of our species.
Beside the evolutionary impulse, we have defined Love as Romance, a common concept of our society. Symbols such as Cupid and red heart shapes, secular celebrations like Valentine’s day, and concepts such as soul mates have immortalized Love as a romantic phenomenon. Cultural norms like dating, courtship, sex and marriage are all associated with our definitions of Love. Whenever I ask people about Love, apart from Romance, they also refer to it as a religious virtue, a philosophical puzzle or psychological constructs. And more so, Love is primarily boxed in as two possibilities: either it is too mushy or too painful. They all comprise of how we see Love the first time.
Our second sight is the force of our awakening from the illusions that separate Love from the rest of existence
Second Sight
After seeing Love through the eyes of others, we must now see Love through our own eyes. A renewal of our opportunity, this is seeing Love the second time around. Falling in Love, which seems an end goal, is not the terminus of Love. In fact, it is an opening to a new pathway of understanding Love. Love as a Romance and other notions are true but limited perspectives. In hindsight, we are dissatisfied by just fulfilling romantic potentials between men and women. There is more to what we used to expect. In foresight, we envision Love that is beyond the thresholds of our common ideas. Love becomes more than just our usual symbols and definitions.
The direction is to see Love in every person and thing that exists around us. That we see Love both as an essential principle and a powerful technology that eases between the paradoxes of our realities. That it becomes both material and immaterial, an idea and a tool that puts meaning to anything we do in our lives. That Love must be seen as unlimited and found in our fundamental truths and thoughts. That we can begin to see Love not just in the best but also in the worsts of all things. That we begin to create and discover Love as the core that connects everyone and everything, the source that sustains all and the point to which all converges back.
photo by PhotoXpress.com
The Difference
Love at first sight is a limited seeing, a desire to find out Love’s concrete and visible truth through the fragments of others’ viewpoints and our conditioned responses. Our first sight dictates that Love has different categories such as the difference of Love between parents and kids and Love between couples. We have assumed that these categories are disconnected and have separate issues. In this view, we learn Love as a separate entity from everything in our lives. It restricts Love within its boundaries of our abstractions.
But Love at second sight is a bird’s eye view seeing, an awareness that sees Love not just its physicality but also what is unseen and untouched. This is a perspective that gathers all separated perspectives to see the whole picture of what Love really conveys. It encourages us to see what is whole about Love and how it puts together the seeming fragments that we use to define it. Our second sight is the force of our awakening from the illusions that separate Love from the rest of existence. We now unlearn Love and build a new view that Love is at one with all.
Love at Second Sight (A Commune Lecture), Feb 11, Saturday. For details, click here.
Breathing Peace
We usually neglect the importance of breath except when we are nervous, distressed, or down with asthma and colds. We often take the breath for granted as something involuntary and does not need much attention as long as it works. We neglect its presence without understanding that it is our breath that makes us alive. Most of us know that we breathe, but few of us are aware of how powerful it is, especially on something more profound: breath as a way to promote peace.
photo from Microsoft Office Image
Why breath? Is it not something vague and simple? How can breathing effectively promote peace? Is it not too abstract and invisible? In experiencing each breath, these questions are irrelevant. As we inhale, peace imbues our minds and bodies. As we exhale, we return peace to the world. No need for words at this breathing moment. No need for any reasoning and explanation or any external and aggressive actions. The experience of peace is always accessible right under our noses. This is no metaphor: breath is Peace itself.
There is an ongoing peace project here in the Philippines, launched and spearheaded by my peacemaker friend Orlan. It is a project of its kind: no rallies, no activisms, no criticisms against anyone or anything. It is a project that seeks to go back to the basics of our desire for peace. A peace movement that relies neither on method nor ideologies. An advocacy not of debates and arguments over policies but something ancient – a radical experience that has been largely ignored. A peace project that is closer to our breath, for it involves our breath nonetheless. Known as the Breathe Peace 12-12-12 Project, the aim is to build a critical mass of 121, 212 people paying attention to their breaths every 12 noon starting November 11, 2011 until December 12, 2012 (Hence, the target number of people). Moreover, it is spreading the culture of breathing as a way to peace in all levels, areas and aspects of the word.
So many issues on social order are abound in many countries (including the Philippines), places that are wounded by war and apathy. Governments and their political and military machinery have always resorted to external interventions to control these conflicts, measures that are beyond our reach and means. We sometimes numb ourselves from these issues and have difficulty relating, unless we are threatened by any apparent instability. We detach ourselves and go on with our lives, with no regard for those affected in the crossfires. We have heard the news announcing many people who die helplessly in their struggle for peace. And we have remained disconnected, for we have always thought that our own peace is unfazed and unperturbed.
Breath is Peace itself.
But this kind of peace is incomplete. We must imbibe a newer framework, one that recognizes an encompassing, multi-dimensional understanding of peace. This is the aim of this breathing project: for an individual to recognize that his or her peace is connected with the peace around his or her environment, as well as with the peace of the world; and for government, policy-makers and military officers to recognize first the importance of peace within themselves. In Orlan’s words, this is the stable tripod of Breathing Peace - May Peace within me prevail, May Peace around me prevail, and May Peace in the world prevail. It completes the whole picture of the possibility of Peace.
Any disagreements, factions, conflicts, wars in our world is mainly a result of forgetting this peace that is found in the breath. The breath anchors our awareness of life, how precious it is, and how we must revere it. Our breath is our invisible connection to everyone and everything, and any ways we remember it is a sacred process of seeing our oneness despite differences. All sacred traditions have a name for it: chi, pneuma, neshama, ruach, spiritus, prana, panna, ha, ginhawa. Its universality is a proof that the breath has no boundaries of enmity, ownership and competition, but rather a shared truth of life that is found in every human being.
photo from Microsoft Office Image
Breath is both the symbol and energy of Peace. This project does not just campaign for a radical ideology, but more of remembering what Life is about for all humanity. We must not forget where true peace comes from. It is always comprised of a virtue enveloping our own lives and those of others. We breathe each other’s existence and we cultivate this power of peace in our hearts and allow them to expand throughout our communities and the whole world. In each breath on each day, may we be always reminded of its essence.
For those who like to join this peace project, visit Breathe Peace 12-12-12 Project or contact Mr. Orlan de Guzman for details.
New Endings
photo from Microsoft Office Image
It has been a week since the new year has started. After the fireworks and the food during the holidays, we return again to our routine realities. We may have boring things to do again in our jobs and households, new year still marks an exciting point of transition in our lives. We choose interesting changes in many of our usual ways, breaking the monotony we have always followed. Some of us stick to fulfilling a popular tradition – listing down our new year’s resolution, formalizing the ritual of living out our new decisions. And we embody Janus, the double-headed Roman god of beginnings as symbol not just for this month but of facing our doors with faces of certainty and uncertainty as we step onto the next side of our renewed timeline.
New year is always a significant celebration of new beginnings. There is so much to start with. From new ideas to new ventures, we are given so much opportunity to recreate our lives in fresher ways. We give birth to our new selves, searching and finding our sacred paths, rearing our hearts into growth, and taking a bold step to begin a new journey. New year holds a time-oriented beginning, yet as months pass we continue to prepare ourselves as we anticipate the rituals of beginning among us, our families and friends. Traveling, new career, wedding and pregnancy are some of our joyous and perhaps equally painful moments which all become part of the rituals of our life transformations.
Few of us associate new year with endings. Endings are abhorred for they picture bleak moments such as death, farewell and loss. We anxiously ignore the endings in favor of beginnings, which is more favorable and understandably positive. We consider them as unsolvable problems, built within the very destiny of humanity. We are fated and doomed by how we and the people we love may die one day. We are saddened by goodbyes from our old friends and old worlds. We are devastated by losing the possessions and power we have acquired through sweat and blood. Nobody wants to meet the end. It is always a dreaded taboo in celebrating a moment of beginnings.
We need to end the life of meaninglessness so as to begin finding a life of meaning.
The irony bites us, since this year 2012 is the beginning of waiting for the end of the world. Images of apocalyptic and dystopian world are looming ahead and doomsday sayers announce them with their own vehement claim of accuracy. Films, stories, religious teachings and even scientific research have tried to depict and explain the possibilities of how the world ends, and we are warned to better get ready in ways we can. We have lost in this illusory portrait of our future. We are driven with more fear than excitement of radical change. The end is too terrifying thing to wait.
But I feel that as we face our new beginnings, we must begin facing our new endings. Not the endings that scares us, but the subtle endings of our life. We begin gratitude as we end sulking about the inequities of life. We begin peace as we end being at war with ourselves. We begin friendship as we end enmity with others. We begin growth as we end holding on to our weaknesses and past misgivings. We begin life as we end death of apathy towards our existence. What could be wrong with endings, if we only see them in such optimistic paradox? Endings ring us moment to moment, telling us to recognize our true beginnings.
photo from Microsoft Office Image
Our dear teacher Regina Dee frequently hears people fearfully asking her the same question: “Will the world really end sooner?” And she would always reply, with a glee in her eyes. “Yes, thank God! Definitely, the world really ends…the old world of greed and anger ends. A new world of peace and Love begins.” I believe this is more than just a positive answer to quell anyone’s anxiety. It is a wise answer from a soul who understands the wisdom of new endings. This is the wisdom that enables us to see a butterfly being born from a dying caterpillar. Endings signal beginnings.
This new year 2012 might be the most remarkable year of the millennium. This is the year that challenges us not to start working out our new year’s resolutions, but to return to the loose ends of our deepest intentions. We do not really intend to change our old habits and neither do we intend to develop new ones. These are just surfaces of what our hearts are up to, small actions to make up with the busy lifestyles we have chosen. At the end of each year, we have always wanted greater transformation, something that encapsulates our true meaning and purpose. To survive is not enough reason to live. We need to end the life of meaninglessness so as to begin a life of meaning.
Happy 2012 to all!
Defining Christmas
photo from Microsoft Office Image
Christmas for many
In this frenetic air of holidays, people are busy shopping, gift-wrapping, partying, eating and drinking here and there. The means to define Christmas is to celebrate it. Most of us refer to Christmas as a break we deserve, a time to spend money for gifts and foods. We decorate our houses with trees and lights, shop and wear our new clothes, hang out together with family and friends, play games or watch movies. This is what everyone does. After all, its Christmas – it is always fun and merry to celebrate. And yearly, we have heard some of our elders and church leaders to find some meaning in Christmas in the middle of this “normal” frenzy.
It has been more than a millennium, and the origins of this tradition have not change despite the varieties of symbols across cultures and generations. Not all of us are aware that when Christianity was declared as an official religion of the Roman Empire, Christmas, a celebration of Jesus’ birth, replaced a Roman pagan festival called Saturnalia. It was then a celebration in honor of the Roman god of agriculture Saturn, a time where giving gifts and banquets were abound. There were overturned rules, where masters served their slaves. It was then a perfect day yearly on December 23, a preparation for the birth of the sun, on December 25. This is how this worldwide celebration started. It is why we always associated it with giving gifts and fun-filled communal celebrations.
Historically, Christmas can be said of these things, and our traditions to express the virtue of giving is how we often define Christmas. And we are encouraged by our spiritual teachers and religious leaders not to forget this perennial duty and act on it as much as we can. With all the worsening lack of the unfortunate people, plus the unexpected catastrophic tragedies such as the ones affected by a recent storm in Mindanao, we have plentiful opportunities to give not just material resources, but our time, effort, skill and presence. We are grateful for this call and response of generosity, and the despite these devastating suffering, the spirit of Christmas vibrantly reigns.
Christmas is a long forgotten call to renew our consciousness, to recognize a birth of a Loving soul in us.
Christmas for me
But there is more to giving and generosity or fun and celebration if Christmas is to be defined. This what makes the question of my teacher, Regina, more pertinent than ever. Shifu (Chinese for “teacher”), as I fondly call her, asks as every year: “What is Christmas, really?” Honestly, this is something beyond definition, for we have different ways to define it. There are more or less 1 billion Christians around the world, and even non-Christians add up to the countless possibilities of what makes Christmas a worthwhile celebration. Just as God and Love are universal words of multiple meanings, Christmas bears the same energy. Definitions are either right or wrong. That always depend on who defines Christmas.
I am reminded of my personal definition that impacts my personal meaning. Christmas, for me, has had good and bad memories, those streams of experiences that hardly make Christmas the same for me every year. But one thing suprises me during the recent years – that when Christmas comes, I haven’t fully noticed as it arrives. Yes, I am fully aware of all the symbols, the expectations, and the rush that make Christmas a wonderfully awaited event. But when the day comes, it was simply an ordinary day. Just the same, me and my family would fill ourselves with whatever is in the table. I would sleep after a couple of hours. I would again wake up tomorrow morning, as I am used to. Nothing special outside. Yet there is something I have found inside that I cannot deny. It was a celebration beyond the linearity of date and time.
photo from Microsoft Office Image
I feel that Christmas is regardless of its appointed date or usual traditions. It is a reminder. A discovery that at times I forget and most of us unaware. Christmas is neither the birth of a historical Christ nor a celebration we are obliged to observe. Christmas is a long forgotten call to renew our consciousness, to recognize a birth of a Loving soul in us. Christ has symbolized it for us, and every year it is manifested in our excitement and generosity. Christmas rings us the purpose of our humanity and what we can become. We are being reborn. A yearly reminder worthy of personal review.
It ends with not defining Christmas at all, but with becoming aware of its role in our lives. It is not so much of the quality and quantity of what we give to others or how much fun we had. Interestingly, new year always goes 5 days after Christmas, for the resolutions we make are not so much for a new year ahead of us, but for a new birth of our awareness. In this time and age, as we seemingly wait for the world to end, we are ushering the birth of new humanity, a species that awakens to its true purpose: to Love and be Loved. Is it not why Jesus was born? This is our beginning, and every year we somehow remember, and hope to celebrate, not the event, but this Loving consciousness all year round. When the clock strikes 12 tonight, may we remember that again.
Merry Christmas, everyone! May the light of Love be with you always.
Youth in Love
photo from Microsoft Office Image
When most young people I meet hear the word Love, they would often respond in a very interesting way. Teenagers smile gleefully, looking like a blooming flower. The space where we share this kind of conversation is now being charged by a subtle energy from the glow of their eyes. Their stiffness lightens with their chuckles, tensions are released from their muscles, and all of a sudden what was once a shy personality recoiled by strange encounter becomes an open field of connectedness. We suddenly become one with the other, converging in the center of shared experience – a bonfire lit up in the middle of dark and strange disconnection, and we begin to share the warmth and light of one encouraging truth: our profound desire to Love and be Loved.
This generation of youth – teenagers and young adults – from where I also belong is a generation seeking to understand more of their inner selves in relation to others and to the world. Love, Romance and Romantic Love are topics that tickle their funny bones, curious minds and excited hearts. In their juvenile adventures where their inner and outer worlds intersect, the rituals, norms, and implements of being in Love is a natural evolution. Inside their bodies, happily overwhelming hormones are raging like whitewater and cascading like waterfalls as they fall in Love. This is a perfect process happening in the wholeness of being human. This is the youthful beginning of their impulse to connect with others, to feel that they belong, that they are not separated but instead are truly connected despite material boundaries and biological separations. They express and fulfill connections – albeit romantically, through dating, marriage and sex. This mystery is as ancient as the Universe itself, but unfolds primarily as a simple reality in our relationships. We are bound to Love and be Loved.
We are bound to Love and be Loved.
Helen Fisher, an American anthropologist, in her book Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love
I am not anymore surprised to see how young people, budding in their capacity to understand Life, are immediately drawn to Love as a conversation topic. They are all synergized – nodding and smiling, along with asking and speaking about their personal experiences. Some of them are in Love, others are pained by their previous relationships, but they use them as an anchor to reexamine what Love is – why does it cause both pleasure and pain, why does it excites and bores us, and why does it have, as a virtue next to God, the most profound importance in our lives.
photo from Microsoft Office Image
Writing about Love, Romance and Romantic Love is quite a cliché task because it could merely just add up to the pile of many writings that have talked about these topics. This attempt may echo the same themes and, to put it bluntly, may sound as if regurgitating what have been discussed by many authors and experts. But what is perennial and universal exhibits kaleidoscopic patterns – patterns that are intricate and colorful, and therefore novel and unique. Following this precise characteristic of natural patterns, I have come to proceed and write about Love – a topic so misconstrued that we are all being blessed and devastated by it. We see things differently, and as part of that myriad of perspective, I present Love in a renewed way.
Young people undergo a number of transformations in how they think, live and interact with others. They meet people, mingle with groups, learn many things, feel a wide range of emotions, find and establish and their identity. These changes show how Love plays a huge role in motivating them to discover their true selves and their reasons of why they grow and live. As a young person myself, I can relate and voice out my own perspective about this experience of Love, rummaging beneath its heavily tainted layers by our society’s definitions to allow its purely emanating essence from our human and divine nature.
I am not writing about Romance and Romantic Love alone, but working and exploring it as a platform upon which Love is expressed and known. As I have always told young people, to understand Love as opposed to Romance/Romantic Love is like differentiating an ocean from a raindrop. They are not different, for a raindrop and an ocean is both water in nature. They only differ by extent of their force and the magnitude of their volume. Love is oceanic, Romance/Romantic Love is just a raindrop. It does not mean that Love is supreme over Romance/Romantic Love, just as the ocean is not supreme over a raindrop. They are both the same, as far as their nature is concern; their difference lies in their capacity to nourish and “quench” our thirst for authentic expression of Life. If we only refer to Romance/Romantic Love as the sole resource of Love, we might miss a greater paradigm that Love demonstrates not just through romantic relationships but to all possibilities and opportunities that Life presents us. We are now bringing back that awareness.
God Includes All
photo from Microsoft Office Image
I heard from some of my Christian friends that people of other faiths won’t be saved and will be damned in hell forever. It really troubled me so much. As a kid, I had an affinity with other faiths, even if at the time I had not met a Buddhist or a Hindu and not even visited their temples or read their books. I had a chance talking to first Muslim I met in college, and we did not even talked about Islam. I grew up in a predominantly Catholic community and earned my diplomas from Catholic schools. I was virtually clueless of what other religions and their followers actually do and look like. But my respect for their humanity compelled me to discover them.
I could not just brush off the consequence that those people in the world, millions of them, would be eternally damned. I couldn’t help but ask God why he allows such reality. I knew deep inside that there is something wrong. Humanity is not just predestined to suffer because of such religious diversity. God is surely not to reject others. There is more to what he really means than most adamants of Christian doctrine have always claimed. God saves everyone in his Loving embrace. I was just sure of it. But I was not sure how I knew it.
I then explored Buddhism and Taoism. It hurt and confounded some of my valued Christian friends. They thought I was deviating from Christ’s teaching. For a brief period I had become self-righteous, thinking that my newfound faiths were much truer than Christianity. The Dharma, the Zen and the Tao teach concepts of essence and emptiness, and I had found no difficulty in accepting them as an escape from the words and meanings of my religious upbringing.
This Divinity in us, the perennial message of all ancient masters, is nothing else but Love.
Then I was startled that my detour was actually coming full circle: That Christ and Buddha and Lao Tzu were sages of different times and different nations, but arrived on the same wisdom and preached the same message. Religion is not anymore a question, but the rediscovery of the Divine in each of us, of which all humanity possesses. That is the message I wanted to tell every person who believes in God, and allow them to witness the profundity of this wisdom. I saw something very significant, something earth-shattering. This Divinity in us, the perennial message of all ancient masters, is nothing else but Love.
In the light of our characterization of God, Love has been touted as just one of his characters among a spectrum of variety. One Christian friend I met told me that God is not just of Love, but also of wrath and jealousy. God seeks retribution against his enemies, of which a multitude of them are human beings – beings in the image and likeness God, created by God and who are deemed and redeemed by God’s Love. Why is this idea of God so pervasive? I sought not to refute my friend’s thought nor defend my understanding. I simply saw that both of us are in the embrace of a Loving God, seeking to reconcile differences in ideas by seeing our human sameness. I feel deep inside this is the message of a God who includes all.
photo from Microsoft Office Image
I first confirmed my insight through the late Brother Wayne Teasdale, a Catholic monk who saw the wisdom of Christ as a teaching of Love (see The Path to Agape). Regardless of diverse faiths, God, beyond our limited, capricious personification, is an inclusive deity who does not seek divisiveness and rejection. I found this very wisdom in the sacred, secular and scientific propositions of Deepak Chopra in his book How to Know God, whose premises include all faiths and see the human, not the doctrine in them. I was completely swept away by Neale Donald Walsch’s conversation series with a radical God that cuts through the illusions of a fear-inducing belief in God. I was amazed on how Pastor Brian McLaren revealed The Secret Message of Christ, and told the world a new face of God in line with Jesus’ mission and manifesto.
And recently, I was surprised to learn and read about one of the most influential preachers in America, Bishop Carlton Pearson, author of the book The Gospel of Inclusion. I am almost half way to the last page, yet I have been so much thrilled and deeply inspired by the confirmations I read about his stand on a God who includes everyone. Bishop Pearson asserts a God who sees sinners beyond misgivings, grave mistakes and unforgivable acts. He affirms a God who does not qualify anyone by gender choices or religious affiliations. He champions a God who is not judging but Loving everyone simply because they are all human beings. No hell, no retribution, no punishment, no second judgment – only Love. Because Love, in our shared understandings (even though Pearson does not even know me reading his book), is God’s true impulse in the breadth of our existence. Only an image of God who includes all can truly Love. In that image, we fulfill our purpose of ultimately Loving one another.
