Inner Knowing

"But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." --Book of Matthew

Our lives are full of uncertainties. These uncertainties are the result of suffering. We grapple our ways towards many fixations, of making life more secure and comfortable. We have sought ways in which we can stabilize the flow of life through the best ways we know, be it money or job or some sort of meaningful task or endeavor. We always make sure that whatever that is uncertain, which we always fear, must vanish through our efforts of creating a life that is more predictable and measurable. We often design ourselves like cogs in a machine, following the gears of a mechanistic, fated universe. So whenever we encounter the opportunity to change, we often shun them away, or worse we dread them, for these are uncertain choices that do not fit our expectations and assumptions. My former classmate raised a question during our usual group conversations a few years ago: "What happens to our lives after college? We'll finish school, get a job, get married, have a family, have kids, send kids to school, travel places, collect things, shop and buy, yet what will happen next? It is as if our lives is just a cycle of repeating experiences. I guess there is more to life than just these things." Yes, there is more to life. This is for sure. Still, what we are always missing is the certainty, the decision, the courage to take the risk and dare to venture the uncharted wilderness of that more in our lives.

Uncertainty is not just a fact, it is the truth. Through this, we can be always certain that there is more to life. But too seek this more outside ourselves is a futile venture. Because whatever we find outside, paradoxically, is all inside of us. Within us is the power to find the immensity of life. Our very tool is our Soul's Inner Knowing. It is both our tool and our being. The Inner Knowing brings us to this core of awareness, of being deeply certain in the middle of countless uncertainties.

Our Inner Knowing is the sense of our Soul. It knows what it both knows and does not know. It is our connection to the mysteries of Life, to the things we are yet to experience, to the possibilities we desire to achieve. Our Inner Knowing cuts through our vague understanding and brings us to reexamine our decisions and choices, and leaves us a question: "Am I coming from Love?" We become aware through our Inner Knowing when we can sense that deep essence of Love, and we answer our life's puzzle through the test of doing and acting from that very Love. Within this Knowing, we discern the passion of our hearts, on how it wants to express and experience Life in the grandest way possible. Often, the world around us, and the people we know will find that our choices that come from Love will always be absurd. It is because Love never follows the standard of this world. It has its own Inner Knowing. This Inner Knowing is always sure of what it chooses. It is always an empowered choice. And it transforms our Life into its truest fulfillment.

This Inner Knowing is the Kingdom of God and Christ encourages us to tap into it. We could find it nowhere nor sooner. Because it is, in Christ words, within and among us. We never wait for it, for this Inner Knowing only knows that the only moment is this very moment where we can always give the world what our Soul can offer, and that is Love. So we must stop seeking it elsewhere or waiting for tomorrow to let the Inner Knowing come. The here and now is the best time and place we can Love.

And it what ways this Inner Knowing knows and does Love? Our Inner Knowing knows Love if we stop judging and comparing ourselves with others. It does Love if we stop worrying of whatever happened in the past and will happen in the future. There is no Soul better than us, except the illusion that we are being compared and measured. These illusions stop us to acknowledge our Inner Knowing, but remind us that it is there. Soul has no time to wait, for there is really no time at all. In timelessness of the Inner Knowing, we have already achieve our desires, what we just need to do is to recognize them that we do. It is so obvious, but we think our Inner Knowing is still unknown because whatever unknown must be feared of. Fear of the unknown prevents us to seek this mystery, of diving to this overwhelming dimension of our Inner Knowing, of this Love within. Thus the paradox: the more we look for some known goal we are badly obsessed to grab, the more we lose our chance of being aware of the blessings that is right in front of us.

This Inner Knowing is the door leading to our awareness. Once we become aware, we are less afraid of what we don't know. Delving to this unknown, to this mystery of Life is the first step to our own transcendence. Life, however predictable it may seem to be, is no longer reduced into redundant routines. Each experience, even if it is so mundane and ordinary, becomes a sacred moment, where Love radiates into being. We can do things with Love, even as simple as washing the dishes or riding a bus. This awareness of Love moment to moment is the Inner Knowing that knows itself being known, and allows itself to be known in its most unknown and unlikely manner. It directs us into the state what our Soul really is. Inner Knowing is always sure and never fails to be sure, because the only thing that is exact to it is the certitude of Love.

In the unfathomable depths of our being, we have always known our Inner Knowing. It only waits for us to choose to know. There is no other way. Once we do, whatever limited things we know about Love expands. We will finally know that Love and Inner Knowing are both the same. This is the ultimate knowing that finally puts our hearts at peace with Life, and our Soul in the womb of Love.

My Journey to Shambhala

This time I had no doubt.

This is the last sentence in the book The Secret of Shambhala: In Search of the Eleventh Insight by James Redfield, which I had read right before I started the first chapter. It was an eerie coincidence. Right after I bought the book, I was in doubt if it was worth my money. That last sentence was a signal to a new adventure ahead of me. But after reading it all, it was way beyond. And it really transformed my life.

A new fountain of knowledge had drowned me to infinity but unable to quench my existential thirst, which led me to begin my journey to Shambhala, the renowned eden of the Tibetan Buddhist lore. It is said to be the place where people are in harmonious co-existence, and building up the possibility of the future of humanity. Learning this, Redfield's novel became my transcendent portal to Shambhala. It tells the synchronicity-propelled adventures of a nameless character. Nameless he is, for the author wants every reader to personify oneself as the character. I became the nameless, for my spiritual understanding was still unclear at the time I read this book. My life's milestones had yet to clarify their purposes.

But the journey was not easy. Life has always challenged me. I struggled with my turbulent emotions. I once wanted to become a robot, free from all sufferings and pains. I lived in anger and fear, sharing the setbacks of the nameless protagonist. My past, present, and future concerns were badly entangled. Yet my spiritual fervor had remained. I must arrive in Shambhala, whatever obstacles may lie ahead.

Despite the perilous journey, I have learned a great deal of wisdom. Going to Shambhala taught me the power of thoughts, which when harnessed with faith, transforms into a prayer. It came to my sense the very principle that operates behind the strange prayers of different religions and traditions, the principle that designs all man-made objects, or why prophets are able to act through divine will. It shows interaction of energy systems of all livings and non-livings, harmonizing with the laws of nature and affecting existence of this reality.

Like the protagonist, I have found the utopia of Shambhala, but in the cold, highest peaks of my bewildering life questions. There lies a pristine, warm paradise of intuitive wisdom, the mysterious Divinity which I experience through the most mundane word we have ever known: Love. In the book, it is conveniently called the fields of intentions. Yes, it can be a deceptive term, yet the truth of Love exudes from any kind of experience, such as intentions. A prayer, which is always a positive thought, empowers who ever receives and gives it. This is intention, and its power is unmistakable. The Loving, intentional thought can literally transform curses into blessings. And I have seen this working in my life, and how it has permeated and unfolded in every religious tradition. It is because in a hindsight, Love not merely permeates all, for all things in its true, pure nature, are tangible Love.

Now, I have grounded my practice of calming the mind and sending intentions of Loving-kindness as the essence of prayer power. In reading books on teachings of Love, my growing awareness has elucidated the questions that confounded me for years. With newfound friends who are on the same journey, I have seen my goal the same as theirs and those in Shambhala: to integrate the spiritual truths of all religions. That is, whatever differences in doctrines or rituals, they all hold the same purpose, which is to unite with the Divine source. I have seen that this is more than just interfaith. The goal of all religion is to live out the universal virtue all humans ultimately want to achieve: Love.

These interconnections of synchronicities, prayer fields, and new spirituality are part of a never-ending journey of unfolding the secret. Life for me is no more routine and confining. Arriving in Shambhala is being in the process: to learn and to integrate Love as the deepest spiritual truth that humanity has been learning ever seen.

This time I have no more doubts.

Hugging

If there is one gesture that shows how pure Love can be physical and welcoming, perhaps that is the most universal: hugging. Yes, kissing is one, yet in many cases it can be very exclusive. But hugging encompasses all levels, situations, differences, and personalities. Hugging is so universal that any person, whatever language they speak, when he or she throws open arms to give someone a big hug, can always give the warmth of Love in that very moment. A hug welcomes and comforts everyone, breaks down the barrier between strangers, creates a circle of inclusive intimacy. Hugging is but Love, physicalized.

Leo Buscaglia, one of my favorite authors on Love, shares in his book Love that no person hugs the same way. In such a way that all of us is unique, we can express ourselves with great uniqueness, for there is no one person alive in this world as exactly as we are. In Buscaglia's insights, hugging has a signature. Giving a hug may look like the same, but Love has no limited expression. Since Love manifest in infinite ways, so as hugs.

Thich Nhat Hahn has invented a different kind of meditation. He calls it hugging meditation. He says it is a combination of East and West. In the East, people are good in meditation, but seldom in physical expression, unlike in the West. So hugging meditation brings the best of both worlds. He tells us that through this technique, we become aware of hugging another, of being there, of accepting with our whole presence the presence of the person we hug. I was quite surprised the first time I learned this because I've been doing this meditation with my significant other, as well as with my loved ones. And prior to learning that there is this technique, I'm glad to be able to hug them with such presence and Loving awareness. It is the easiest way of appreciating them and showing my Love.


I remember a study I have read somewhere that hugging is a way to increase immune system of our bodies. That explains why the more I hug, the less I get sad, even to catch a cold. Bernie Siegel said that no one of his patients would know how to increase their immune globulins, yet if he tells them to Love, the effect is the same. If there is one way to increase them, that is hugging.

It's heartwarming to find some Filipino youth, some years back, who went to the streets to offer free hugs to any passing pedestrians. Some people found it a little strange, if not taken aback. Yet, maybe because hugging is not a common experience, especially with a stranger. Nonetheless, it has opened doors for a stranger to get outside one's wall of isolation, and take refuge in the arms of another who offer hugs with such fun and caring. While for nature-lovers, hugging a tree or a pet animal is such a ritual. Young teens love to hug big teddy bear toys, which are cute cuddling substitutes, if not pillows. After all, hugging does all the job to let Love be known and shown in the most unlikely situations.

I find hugging as a way to unite again with friends I haven't seen for a long time. Time and distance seem to vanish, and we begin to commune again as if we are always together. Such gesture has the depth of Love, for it brings our pairs of separated arms wrapped into Oneness. We may all seem to be separated with each other, but hugging is where we can see how our unseen connections entangle again in the subtle level, where Love, as an energy, has always existed.

In our world where people often feel disconnected, I believe hugging makes us feel again this connection. We can undo the culture of feeling strange to feeling warm, where our physical bodies can be always in touch with another, to fill each other with Love. We don't have to wait for some miracle to happen. A pair of open arms receiving another is miracle enough. Hugging can create a wave of Loving energy that will reconnect us to the deep essence of our Souls. In the level where God can be found, everyone of us is always in this eternal hug of Love.

The Goddess Within

For most of us, to see God as a woman is quite unimaginable, for we have long accepted that God is only a man, a father, who oversees us with power and control. Our history has galvanized the image of God as a man, whose power is beyond measure, and whose authority knows no boundaries. This is the God we have believed who fathered every one of us, and provided the life that we possess. But, today, the face of God is changing. In this new era of awakening, humanity is restoring the balance of how we see God. We are now embracing that God is not just a father, but a mother who gave birth to us all.

We are now invited to see God in a different way. There is no need to replace God as man with God as a woman. To see the powerful qualities of God in union with the nurturing qualities of the Goddess, we can now understand how significant this insight is in our lives. While we can find the kingdom of God within, together with all its greatness and strength, we can also take refuge with the sanctuary of the Goddess.

The Goddess within is not a substitute to the image of God. To recognize the Goddess is to reconcile with God's great Loving capacity. To find the Goddess within is to see that God can cherish us like a mother, or more so, a mother himself. The Goddess is the face of God in the time of conception and growth of Life. This Goddess is our inner humanity, our wonder and miracle, our potential to create. Regardless of gender, this is more to rediscover the psyche, what Carl Jung calls the anima. To honor the anima, our feminine psyche, which is just another way of calling the Goddess, is to do the same with God, our masculine psyche, our animus. To say that there is a Goddess within cannot dishonor God, for God is but the completion of being a man and a woman, not just in terms of sexuality, but in the light of Truth of the Soul. God is the union of all opposites that are always in harmony with each other. God and the Goddess are but two distinct being of Oneness. They are both within us. They cannot be separated. Christ said, "The two become one." In this union of the God and the Goddess, the being of Love is born.

We are romancing not just the idea of this union, but its potential to enrich our lives. God is no more a mere concept of a separate, superior being. God is always one with us, and He is within us. He transforms in many ways, and becomes the ultimate transformation of the Soul, manifesting in our Loving actions and thoughts. He is the God that becomes the Goddess through colorful possibilities. He can conceive our Soul, give birth to our goodness, and can nurse our hungry hearts. And He cannot anymore be labeled as He, for the pronouns that separates God and the Goddess no longer labels whoever is man or woman. Love becomes their main gender, and they are in One within our Soul. Our God calculates, organizes and focuses on the physical aspects of how Love is express. Our Goddess endows, sustains, emancipates the soulful, subtle energies of how Love purely exists. Whenever we share Love to others, God provides us tangible ways to do it, such as a physical gesture, or a material blessing. And Goddess imparts Her sheer, pristine divine power of caring and compassion. This very dynamic is happening within us, and we become both the God and the Goddess in our own right. For their awakening reveals the balance of Love within us, and the wholeness of Love invokes our Soul to be whole again.

The Nature of Circle

In the Circle, all of the gifts of human being are yours. --Laura Day, The Circle

Our eyes bear the most sacred shape in nature: the Circle. It is not a polygon, unlike any other shapes, which have a number of corners. The Circle appears so organic and flowing, a perfect meeting of curved lines, closing at the same point of its origin. It is a metaphor of infinite space, where it embraces everything in its radius, and can expand into limitless boundaries. It is the most ubiquitous shape, possessed and manifested by many creatures and natural structures. The Circle is found from a tiniest disk of single cell to the gigantic celestial spheres in the universe. And whatever begins and ends at same point is a process of the Circle, where all evolve in the rhythmical cycle of Life. As the saying goes, "Life comes full circle."

If God has a shape, then it is Circle, since God is the alpha and omega, the every beginning and end of existence. In its tangent, all points of time are never-ending, and its fringes encompasses the past, present and future, all fused in timelessness. While within the radius of a Circle is the Oneness of all, wherein nothing is separated. Every being, creature, event and things is within the Circle's inclusive field. They are all within its grand universe, and nothing is unimportant or even deserted. And, in the center of the Circle, is the source of being, from where all possibility radiates and expands and flows into all levels of reality.

Circle is known in many forms, often consecrated as a symbol of the soul. Zen monks call it the Enso, and in their meditative brushstroke they conscientiously paint this Circle of enlightenment. Enso reminds them to see that the essence of Zen is within this shape of essence. While Tibetan monks painstakingly create a detailed sacred sand artwork known as the Mandala. This word literally bears the meaning of circle, and that of essence and completion. Carl Jung once called it the representation of the unconscious. The Labyrinth, on the other hand, is a symbolic circular design seen in medieval times as the path to God. Walking in the labyrinth is like a journey towards the center of the Self, a destination that is actually endless. In China, the moon gate is a common architectural element. It has rich spiritual meanings, yet depicts a symbol of passage. In ancient India, a Chakra (Sanskrit: wheel) is an ethereal passage into the Soul, or the turning wheel that carries our Soul in union with God. And, however mundane the wheels and gears are, they are the great Circles that propelled not just our entire material civilization, but our inner evolution.

Circle is the shape of the never-ending movement and possibility. It is an orbit of time and a cycle of existence. In Sanskrit, this is Samsara, the continuation of birth and death, where every life renews itself. Samsara is the Circle of suffering - and the understanding of suffering, when we realize that we have all enough of our repetitive cycles of our faults and blunders, where at a single point of awareness we stop, and transcend this rotation. When we do, we can see again our cycle in a different light, as Circle moves in the flow of time, where Life constantly creates and perishes, as we arrive in the conscious realization that nothing can escape change, the very nature of our existence.

In the bosoms of heaven we see Circle through the spheres of sun and moon and planets, all in harmony with each other, playing the Divine rhythm. The Light-bearers, sun and moon, shine like flat disks in the face of the sky. They ultimately display the interplay of opposites, the celestial Yin and Yang. They are Circles in the midst of our universe, and they bring the Light of Life in our realm.

This Hindu-Arabic numeral called zero, which literally means empty, carries the depth of emptiness. Within this kind of Circle is the Truth that everything is empty. Empty, not of essence, but of all definitions that constrains us to see Truth as it is. As you add those seemingly empty zeros after another number, that number increases manyfold. In the space of this Circle, we can see that zero is not a number of nothingness, but of infinity.

There, in the eye of the storm, lies the Circle of peace and calmness. Inside its trunk, a tree counts the Circle of ages. Each raindrop on the face of a calm water, Circles of ripples wave instantly, their movement reverberates across every other ripple. Wherever we look at, Circle draws our attention. We are reminded that each of us is a Circle that continues to bear the cycle of Life, the perfection of Oneness, the fullness of our Soul. Circle is the shape of our beings that shapes the consciousness of our collective inner peace, of our all-embracing wholeness, of our ancient yearning for Love.

Paradox of Love

Truth is ultimately paradoxical. None of us can fashion any box of thought that can contain it. No one has any absolute power to make Truth absolute. The true nature of Truth both complements and contradicts itself. There is more to truth than what the eyes meet. There is more to how our senses interpret what we have always thought is real. Reality, after all, in Einstein's physics, is relative. Our own limited realities of Truth can disenchant us in a very drastic way, unless we open ourselves in realizing beyond how we have recognized and accepted them. If reality is dependent on what we choose, therefore, Truth follows suit. But it does not mean that its universality is compromised. Simply put, the Truth of how all Life organically grows is discovered through its DNA, and still the same structure of any DNA remains the same, but combines in infinite ways that makes many creatures different while expressing the same basic features and functions. Likewise, it is the Truth that every human being, despite cultural differences and beliefs, has always the same deep, inner perennial need: to Love and be Loved. If we humans find and express Love through many ways, labels and tools, the nature of Love remains the same.

How paradoxical is Truth? Since Love and Truth are just different words of the same essence that sets us free, why does the contradictory happens? Why are we still enslaved by the trappings of Truth and unable to discern the indescribable essence? To search for Truth is a great adventure, much as to experience Love. Going deeper beyond the surface of our own limitations can we be able to find how Truth and Love become clearly understandable. To understand them is to see the other side, what is unseen. Truth is always deceiving, until we let our inner Truth reveal itself.

This shows us how mind-boggling paradoxes are. The Western foundation of Logic has kept us thinking in terms of polarity: that anything has its opposite, and this opposite opposes the other; that anything has a category, a certain truth where anything can only belong, a compartment of reality that can never be lost. For instance, we have always believed that everything is solid, and categorized them accordingly. Yet our new physics tells us that everything is energy, nothing is solid. It puzzles us to comprehend this nature of reality, because however we can establish the Truth, it becomes more erratic and unstable within the dimension of our limited consciousness. Following Socrates' famous paradox, we can only know the Truth if we acknowledge that we really don't know it. It is only in darkness that one can see inner Light.

Christ foretold it: The Truth will set us free. But how? We must now begin with Love.

Love is the only Truth. We might contend it through time-tested philosophies, doctrines and premises. We might say that Love is just an aspect of Truth. Yes, another paradox: it is and it is not. Love is the trunk of a big tree called Truth. And Love is the big tree itself. We can only see beyond the baffling paradox if we see the big picture: that the Truth remains whole even if we often cut it into pieces. It goes beyond our common assumptions that anything can be divided and separated. Whatever you see incomplete, separated or fragmented is always complete, connected and whole. In this light, there is much to be said about Love.

The Paradox of Love is very true in each of us. We can only find Love if we stop finding it. No one can give us Love but ourselves. Much of our Love deserves the person that we are. We can Love anyone and be Love if we Love ourselves and be Love.

When we Love, we become powerful. But we can only wield power if we throw it away. We don't throw away Love, but the baggage that stops us from Loving, the overpowering manipulation and control we want to impose on others, and the standards of perfection we impose on ourselves. We wield this power but not to be powerful upon others, but to be and have the power of Love inside ourselves. Rather than seeking for the illusion of being perfect by rejecting our imperfections, we must accept them. When we do, we become perfect.

We are butterflies inside caterpillars. Within us, we find our true courage in our fears, our strengths in our weaknesses, our potentials in our frailties. We are humbled if we exalt ourselves, and we are exalted when we humbled down. When we begin to face our own demons, they transform into angels, who are messengers of our true Loving selves.

Beyond these paradoxes is an inherent reality that nothing is really paradoxical at all. That seems to be another paradox, and perhaps the ultimate paradox of all paradoxes: the paradox that there is no such thing as paradox. Because in the ultimate Truth of Love, nothing can be labeled, categorized, compartmentalized, dichotomized, contradicted or simply separated. In the presence of these ways of understanding, the Truth becomes automatically paradoxical. Nonetheless, putting an end to all of them, Truth is simply Truth. And that's how we begin to understand Love.