Writing from the Soul

photo by mpclemens

At the age of seven I was thinking of what talent I do really have. Is it dancing, I thought. Perhaps singing, since I used to get up on stage and perform. Or cooking. As a pre-schooler, we were asked to bring eggs and hotdogs and pancake to fry and serve them for lunch. I enjoyed doing them. Well, those little things, as a kid, were things of enjoyment, of being in that moment without really worrying what will happen in the future. So it didn't occur to me that there is something more that I could really do.

At age eleven, I started reading a poem in Filipino. That poem ignited my deep interest on poetry, which was then the spark that has made me explore writing up to now. This newfound power compelled me to write my own story, create imaginative characters which I used to do while playing on my own, making humanoid toys converse with each other. Through writing I could create my own world of magic and possibility. I write stories on a yellow pad, a bond paper, or even on a flattened cigarette carton boxes. Inspired by children's fantasies on TV, I would write my own alamat (legends), fables, and fairy tales. I even create my own version of well known children's stories. During my grade school days, I would go to the library and devour on Filipino high school textbooks. After my stay, I would bring at least two textbooks with me, so I could read them the whole weekend. When my mom bought me a typewriter as a gift, I typed stories voraciously, spending my holy weeks madly banging the typewriter with endless ideas, stories and poems that spring from my imagination. These are my writing adventures, all of which are foundational for all the writings on Love you have read on this blog.

"Writing is my Soul. It is my being.
It is my becoming."

This time, I am rediscovering writing. It is my great tool. No, it is more than a tool. Writing is my Soul. It is my being. It is my becoming. It is the best thing I want to do, to enliven and to achieve. It is not just a routine of scribbling sentences and paragraphs. Writing is my form of expression, a personal experience, a timeless adventure. In writing, I can write my own world, bring back my wonderful memories, chronicle my own history, describe my experiences, learn from my inner creativity, relieve my stressful days, talk to myself and to God, share others my heart, and explore my true self. My writing is as unique as me, as specific as my DNA, for it allows me to create my personal dimension manifested in words. Sooner I may die and be forgotten for years, yet the gift of my writing to the world will outlast centuries, just as many writers who have lived their lives and left their legacies. Writing becomes the fossil of their once living beings, a blueprint of their entity and a witness to the fulfillment of their souls. In truth, I am bringing these same effects in my life.

Writing from the Soul has led me to find that everything around me can be captured through unspoken words untainted by worldly meaning. There is suchness in each truth I see, and each can offer that power to become written experience. The sea can become an inkwell or the earth can become paper. Or the sky a blank screen and the stones a keyboard. Every movement in nature has a dynamic awakening of words, in which every heart can read Love.

I am now writing a book on Love. Of all my writing adventures, this one is the ultimate. As words spring forth from this book, each rings the wonder and magic of Love. My Soul writes its own enlightenment, as Love brings light as its message to the world.

photo by Linds :)

My greatest fulfillment, and perhaps equally as my greatest success, is to write from the depth of my Soul. Yes, I could write in many ways, about many things, yet to write from the Soul is much more transformative. I have enabled myself to see things in the eyes of Love, and to account for those sights, hindsights, and insights. Bringing life to Love through words is a magnificent achievement. I feel that this goes the same for Souls who have chosen to express Love through music or arts or helping each other, and the expression of Love becomes their own radical unfolding. The same is true for my writing experience. Writing is the very key to the immense potentiality of my Soul. I have realized that if I'm going to seek first the kingdom of God, I have to find it through writing. Because this kingdom of God, which I call and experience as Love, remains formless until the time I weave words that would express it. Then Love becomes tangible and real. And from there, all forms of Love would flow incessantly, the blessings that come from my realization of Love.

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.

On Soul

What is essential is invisible to the eye -- Antoine St. Exupery, The Little Prince.

Anything that carries mystery is often unseen. Such is the Soul. It is the invisible fragment of the invisible whole. The Soul is a fragment, yet it is not fragmented. The fragment is whole in itself. It remains invisible for those who remain blind to the truth it embodies. It cannot be seen through the eyes of doubt, through which most of us use. The naked eye that sees physical things in this physical world is incapable of seeing non-physical things in the non-physical world. Nevertheless, the truth never hides itself. The lovely, wise seagull of Richard Bach advises a little hummingbird: But remember that not being known doesn't stop the truth from being true. Truth stays, waiting for our inner eyes to see.

Truth of the Soul continues to be the truth as it is. But that truth is far from being defined by words or described by sight. A friend once said that The Soul is so abstract that it is so difficult to comprehend; it seems so far from concrete reality. She argued that there must be some way to make the Soul concrete, like some operational theory or explanation. Yes, there is one way, I thought. For us to understand the Soul, we must stop thinking of labeling it as abstract and reality as concrete. Because every thing that is concrete comes from the abstract, just how many sages of the past told us. The Soul is never an opposite of the flesh and bones or sticks and stones that we can see and touch. Rather, the Soul is all-embracing, as it embraces and permeates every physical thing that we see. The Soul is reality itself. It is both abstract and concrete. It never opposes anything, for all things are manifestations of the Soul.

Our visible reality is deceiving. It deceives us to believe that anything invisible cannot be described, and therefore untrue. But absence does not mean non-existence. The Soul does not just exist. It lives among and within us. The Soul is us, yet to be acknowledged. The Soul is real, yet to be described.

The Soul often appears to be a metaphor and a symbol of that which is indescribable. Since the Soul is beyond description, we have used many things that we can see, touch and feel as tangible metaphors and symbols.

Wind is one. It is invisible, yet it is felt. A Filipino riddle tells us that wind is something that comes yet still unseen. Wind blows between branches and rustles among leaves. It can always be gentle, sometimes fierce. The whole earth inhales and exhales it. Nobody can say that even wind is unseen, it is not true. Everyone feels how cool and strong the wind is. This is the same for the Soul. The Soul does not need to be seen in order to be true. Great truths, like the Soul, need more than physical sight. We must feel the Soul. Feeling the Soul becomes truer than it seems to be. To feel the Soul is to find it more than its existence. We must experience the Soul. Wind becomes real when kites fly or when flag waves or pinwheels spin. Kites, flags and pinwheels are useless without the wind. Or they won't even exist if not for the wind. Wind gave birth to them, and they bring life to the wind. We are all kites and flags and pinwheels that came from the invisible Soul. The Soul gives life to us as we feel its presence. And the Soul becomes more real because of us.

We need not to prove how real Soul is. It is. We can see it everywhere. We can find it anywhere. We can hear it. We can touch and feel it. Soul is as real as you and me. We are taught that Soul is something that resides in us and makes us alive. I would add more to that: It is within us, and yet it is absolutely us. The Soul faces us when we face the mirror after we wake up in the morning. And deep beneath pale cheeks and drowsy eyes, there is the Soul that stays unseen. The Soul is the life in us that makes our hearts beat, arteries throb and blood flow. Soul is Life itself, beating, throbbing, flowing.

From our hearts, arteries, veins and capillaries branch out. Blood traverses this web of intricate vessels, woven within layers and layers of tissues and flesh. It is a network, coming from a center. Tony Buzan calls this the natural architecture. Natural architecture is present in all things in nature. In fact, it is the only universal structure ever present in all things natural. A spider web is a network of fine web threads. A Tree is also a network of branches and leaves. Even brain itself is a network neurons. They are all natural architecture. Something from the center shoots up, grows, branches, and expands. But each outgrowth is a center itself. Each node is a new center, a new source where something again grows. In a whole network, each new source is complete. They are all centers. Nietzsche once said the center is everywhere. Likewise, each of us is a Soul, a center of being, a divine node capable of growing. We interconnect, like a huge invisible network. Indra's net. Jewels - we as Souls - are interwoven to this network.

In this light, the Soul is in fact the Soul of many Souls. We are individual Souls, woven together by underlying truth of the collective Soul. Together, we become a universal Soul. In our unconscious consensus, we are all One Soul. Oversoul, like as Emerson put it. It is called in many names. As we work in both as individuals and a collective, Our One Soul is our greatest aspiration and existence. We are not separate from the rest, because our One Soul is the encompassing reality of Love. The Soul we discover is the Love we can create.