Last year, I received a message showing different quotes and what struck me was the one quoted by Leo Tolstoy: " Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." Tolstoy's words seem to speak about our current national dilemma: the call for national change. Many statespersons, lawmakers, political officials and critics, and concerned citizens have uttered their viewpoints, so as to give their takes and to propose solutions. However, amid many years of political commotions, I am no expert. I am not even joining any actions on the streets clamoring the oust or resignation of GMA. While the church and different groups are on the move to restore the integrity of the nation, trying to sweep corruption by doing noise barrages, rallies, masses, and communal actions, I'm here right in the comforts of my four-cornered universe. While hearing every person who has the power and freedom of speech, voicing out their thoughts to justify the action of removing a single powerful entity that rules this nation, I am only here in quiet observation.
But one couldn't really say I care less.
I am not pro nor anti-GMA, and I neither support nor rebuke these clamors against her and her bureaucracy. I do not sympathize with any oppositions nor abhor them. There's no reason to seek any sides of opposing poles. It seems that endless fighting does not produce any victors at all. GMA reaffirms her power and confidence to stay on it, while the opposition recharges its power to counterattack. Almost all levels of society are seeing things in only dualistic perspective, while considering neutral positions to be remarkably unconcerned. But what is the use of saying this politician or that politician evil? Should one cast stones to the other without seeing oneself worthy of them? We have witnessed every action that is external, using broadcast, print and other forms of media. People want to carbon copy the act and effect of the 1986 people power, which are always believed to be the best way to combat the existing regime of greed. But are Filipinos forgetting the most important thing in these dire times?
If one might say that I am against whatever action, I will reiterate my point. I neither agree nor disagree with whatever social actions, nor I have any biases on opinions. In a country that clamors for change, its people must transcend from walking down the streets. Any social participation is good, which was once demonstrated by people power. We always stress the importance of nonviolence in catalyzing a change, but nonviolence doesn't stop in refusing physical or coercive violence. We must begin to see the violence that exists deep within.
To examine our minds and hearts is a good place to start. Are our minds and hearts corrupted, not by greed of money or power, but by hatred with other people whom we thought are evil? Are we deeply attached to all thoughts and emotions of anger and revenge? Do we limit ourselves through social and political outcries and coercion to achieve change? If the answers to these questions ring some subtle truths, we ourselves are fermented by our own drive to get even, to compensate this injustice we think have been done to us. We have been harboring these frustrations in longing for this absolute freedom our forefathers and patriotic martyrs had once tried to achieve. In each turn of generations, we are still tormented. We often ask ourselves why is that, after putting all our efforts and wounding our spirits, every action becomes futile. We have always believed that we are good people doing all the things we could to stop evil for becoming triumphant. Yet what we have been fighting are still being fought for, and we find series of defeats thwarting our hopes.
We can do one thing, which is the very core of Christ's teaching two millennia ago: Love our enemy. But the true enemy is not outside or far from us, not someone whom we believe wield political powers and economic machinery. That enemy is not the one the society hates. Our true enemy is ourselves. We are our own enemy. This enemy that acts with all fear, that holds grudges and prejudice against others, and always believe that needs brute force to allow change to take place. This enemy in the form our desire to destroy someone for all intents and purposes, for the sake of nation's welfare. Every bitter emotions and thoughts will continue to madden us until the time we embrace this inner enemy by dropping all the burdens that chain us into bondage. We will be eternal slaves until we choose to free ourselves.
Yesterday, a remarkable day was celebrated. Yesterday was a reminder of our freedom. Though Independence day is always a day to remember, there's is more to do than any citizen's observance. This day is to remember not what happened in the past, nor the things our nation desires to achieve. This day is to remember the power of today; today when we find our hearts beating with freedom. True freedom not from colonizers, nor from the talons of our political predators, but the freedom from our anger towards them, our sadness towards our losing hopes, our cravings towards any national dreams we are yet to fulfill. True freedom is achieved when each of us, whatever national turmoil we have, would open hearts to intend Love, then let our peace flow; when we suspend our judgments against whom and what we see as enemies, we can forgive them and ourselves equally at the very same time. Freedom is to regain our own responsibility of nurturing a peaceful spirit towards what we like and dislike. Through our Loving hearts only true freedom can be achieved, the freedom that honors and upholds the genuine Filipino soul.
(conclusion)
I now discover that Love is not just falling; Love is rising. Love is in this continuous endless dance. I fall, I rise. There is an endless movement that has called itself the Rhythm. It is rhythmical, with peaks and valleys, like a radiation wave, like a river flowing. I become aware of this movement and see the wholeness of Love in it. I somehow begin to fall with this illusion of incompleteness in the belief that I am alone. The thought of being alone compels me to seek for that someone to be with, to complete me, to fill this void. I seek, and at times I find, but still inevitably I would find myself alone again. All these are elements of falling in Love. But the descent allows me to see the vastness from where I fall. With the spirit of the Phoenix, burning myself and falling into my ashes is the moment of rebirth, the moment of rising.
Unconditional Love, which bears a million names, arises in my awareness. Being aware of it leads me to realize my wholeness. Both are inseparable. I am not alone anymore, but I am all One with the Universe, with this Divine Intelligence. The void that I feel is not anymore true, for that illusion has shown me the truth. I am in a search, but not anymore with someone to complete me. I begin to see that I am complete, and therefore clarifies my sight to see another the same as me. I am now reconnecting myself to the essence of my soul, and seeing that I am making the most important relationship with myself. I am my own Soulmate and not anyone else. The person I am seeking is not out there; that person is within me; that person is me. The other person I seek is not separate with me, because both of us are all One. As I give love to another, I give myself the same Love. Time and space are such illusion that my mind has chosen to perceive. In the realm of Love, both do not exist. I intend Love for this person and I am certain of its great power. I may not be with the person I Love, both in presence and spirit, yet I trust the Love that is between us in this illusion of distance. I find Love real between the two of us, and so it brings me back to the experience that there is no such distance. We are no more separate beings. We are both Love. Now, I find my intentions of Love the noblest act of Loving. What I generate from my mindheart is this miraculous wonder of Love, from which all transformation into the physical dimension takes place.
Every possibility of unconditional Love is spawning from its mystery. The Rhythm is such. I fall in Love, with thoughts and feelings of being alone, for my spirit is in journey of finding Love. I rise in Love, with this absolute certainty of this glorious uncertainty that I am Love and its infinity is in me. It is how light becomes both a wave and a particle. Love is likewise, a moving mystery, always unfathomable, yet a possibility happening, metamorphosing into such forms. The phenomenon of Love is ineffable; no such words can truly define it. It is the same phenomenon when Love find its way to unfold in me, as I become aware again. I am one with humanity: this is a soulful relationship. I am committed to the Love within, just as I commit my Love to someone. I, too, become freedom when Love emancipates me. I am free as the clouds, drifting yet not lost; formless yet forming. I am committed and free at the same time, and I eventually find that person who has found this merging of experience.
I now delve into the mystery of mysteries, where all physical and non-physical melt into one existence. I allow Love to work its way through the levels of my consciousness; through my thoughts, emotions, understandings and insights. I put all my faith to those questions I have on my processes that I find unanswerable. In the Rhythm of Love, answers come forth. Like an unknown seed, which falls down on dirt, then rises again as a sprout, which bears countless fruits. I trust that the seed and the fruit are one, inasmuch as I trust the mystery of Love that bears countless possibilities. Falling in Love with someone is an indefinable thing, no reason to sustain. Rising in Love with someone is the way how to accept this indefinability. Beyond what I can comprehend is my certitude of how I Love a person. I let this unconditional energies of Love flow from me towards this person; I intend all blessings of Love this person can be, do and have. Love chooses this person to become a soulmate in the very essence of choosing myself as my own soulmate. My intentions become more distinct, as I see that Love moves in this person's dimension, and apparently the same Love that moves in mine. Both of us are now being Love, sharing Love and growing Love, the exact ascension of how Love evolves in our lives.
I am now Loving the soulmate of Love. The Love that I let myself become has opened my soul to find another Loving soul who inspires me in the dance of the Rhythm.
(second of the three-part series)
When your intention is to transfer loving energy there is no way you can fail...because in the subtle realms intention is action.
--Leonard Laskow, Healing with Love
We often believe that Love is an abstract concept born out of pleasant emotions. Emotions, being untouchable, are energies which we think validate the existence of Love. Because both Love and emotions are characteristically abstract, we often show it through symbols and myths.We have tried throughout centuries how to crystallize the truth of Love. Despite all efforts to grasp its true meaning, Love mysteriously fails us. Here comes our restless search. In my own inquiring, Love has become not an emotional evidence, but an awakening of truth in the innermost of my being.
Of all truths of Love, the crux is that Loving oneself is the only endeavor one can achieve. This is not about providing oneself of all material and emotional luxury, which are all coming from outside sources. Love is never outside; it is always inside. The discovery of Love within is the very source of true Love. To begin, we must acknowledge that as a being of Love we are our own inexhaustible source of Love. There is a sun that never sets and brightly shines within us. It would be very difficult to acknowledge it at first, because we always have tons of judgments against ourselves. We must cut through the clouds of our own judgments, fears and paranoia. They come to our awareness but they will never last. We must stop judging ourselves, from our gross assumptions of oneself and others, down to the littlest detail of our day to day existence. When judgment ends, Love begins.
This very process of Loving oneself is always parallel in how we Love others. As we stop judging ourselves, we simultaneously cease judging others. As we see ourselves as beings of Love, others begin to become the same. Even perhaps in the grossest situations when we find people unloving, we remain at peace as we understand that each being is in search of the true meaning of Love. Realizing this, we are no more searching for the source of Love from somebody else, especially from someone we think is special to us. What Moore describes as a soulful relationship commences, which is certainly the process of rising in Love.
Rising in Love happens when we no longer siphon the energy of another, but starts to send that energy we used to steal. We have this steadfast awareness of the immense energy of Love within, the Love that cannot run out. Its abundance allows us to have the joy of giving, and in turn allows Love to transform itself into something we can perceive, may it be emotional, 
material or physical. Love becomes the source of pleasant emotions, not the other way around. We become joyful and fulfilled, for the act of giving Love is the what we really receive. It is generosity, not reciprocity; We generously send this Loving energy without conditions, without expecting someone to return it, without fear of having our Love unrequited. We never demand anything from a loved one, and we, too, never submit to the demands of another. Whatever we become, do and have all with the power of Love gives the most satisfying reward we can get.
By giving Love means we accept ourselves the Love that we are, without any definitions of social roles and material possessions. We let go of power struggles since we affirm that Love is a commitment to the freedom of our partners and loved ones. As life moves up and down, we remain trusting, and we continue to Love and to become Love. We simply detach from any expectations, outcomes and assumptions that box in our true nature. Our hearts freely share this unending Love, where we now fully experience that we are one with all beings, and we are always one with that soulful partner we want to be with.
(to be continued)
(first of the three-part series)
How can I Love? This has always been a disturbing question; to some extent, it seems to bear the same gravity of asking life's existential questions such as who am I or what is my purpose or who is God. Since Love is often misunderstood, we begin the tendency to search, to find the most reliable answers, though at the end we are almost hell-bent and fed up. Everything in this search becomes more futile, confusing and painful, because nothing that we have been searching for outside can satiate the meaning and experience of Love. In this great human consciousness, an answer does not appear somewhere I can perceive, but through this internal discernment when the radiance of Love at the deepest core of my being never fails to shine.
Love is always a moving force. How Love manifests in the Rhythm is such a dynamic of inner movement. In this article, let me expound what has been articulated as the Rhythm. This is primarily a very profound personal experience; nonetheless, I am deeply certain of the universality of its truth. And the way it must be discovered and expressed can possibly radicalize how we see Love as a stirring energy in the context of male-female relationship at its subtlest level, so we could see more beyond the abstracts of its dynamics.
Falling in LovePerhaps the most famous "category" of Loving is the Romantic Love. If you do your own survey, you might arrive in a conclusion that most people understand that Love is always an intimate relationship between a man and a woman, a husband and a wife, a knight and a damsel. Books, films, songs and TV shows are abound with such thematic concepts of romance. When I asked a group of young teenage girls in the early Communes, most of them answered that Love is a boy-girl thing, embracing and kissing each other. Yet, however sweet and delightful the energy of romance can influence relationships, it still leaves a perennial fear of the possibility of pain. Why in the world that such an experience of seventh heaven eventually might become a fiery hell. Falling in Love is painful, or rather, people always expect that Love is pain. Despite the possibility, seeing Love as pain becomes more enticing.
Romance is an aspect of Love, a part, but can never be equal to the whole. Making both of them synonymous is the greatest myth on understanding Love per se. American psychotherapist Thomas Moore writes his definition of romance in his book Soul Mates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationships. According to him, romance or romantic love is "an illusion, a projection, and an obsession." There is an illusion that I am alone, that I need someone to fill that longing. This attitude motivates us to find that someone at all cost. Our hormones provoke us with fleeting emotions as we meet a particular person, whom we believe as the source of true Love. We sustain that physical connection, leading us to a more tangible intimacy. To maintain that relationship, we must always give and take. We live in the ideal concept of reciprocity, wherein to build a satisfying relationship I must give what my partner demands from me and take from my partner those that I demand. It encompasses many aspects of every day life, and most commonly seen in marital relationships. It is like a business of Love, where Love becomes a commodity of exchange. I can only Love someone if the person is this or that, must do or have this or that. For instance, men demands stereotypical women who are both beautiful goddesses and passionate homemakers. Women, on the other hand, demands stereotypical men who are both adamant gods and inexhaustible providers. These are common human aspiration in terms of settling down for a new family, all rooted in the mode of human survival.
The prevalence of this consciousness is the main reason why most romantic relationship ends in disillusionment. The illusion of romantic perfection unbearably concludes, when we used to believe that everything we feel for someone can last a lifetime. We thought that relationships that have lasted for years may prove its eternal existence. However, treading the rough roads of life seems to disenchant this possibility. On the physical level, a person demands things from his/her partner that will satisfy him/her in a relationship, leaving the other person exhausted. In some ways, a person seems to feel guilty and helpless for s/he cannot fulfill his/her partners demands. Separation becomes an imminent choice, and both lovers are downfallen, and the Love they used to experience has become the source of their deepest pains.
Apparently, it has been proven that everything in this world is a dynamic of energy systems. This explains why on the non-physical level, romantic love behaves in a way that one person gets the energy of Love from his partner, leaving his/her partner drained. We are in this unseen power struggles, pursuing manipulative control over the other. We build this psychological matrix of dependence and codependence. In the context of romantic relationships, a person seeks control over the partner in all aspects of their lives. When control is not achieved, one resorts to emotional backlash. Fear, anger, jealousy and guilt are just some of dense experiences resulting from this struggle. These states are crystal-clear proof where true experience of Love cannot ever co-exist.
The force of Love calls for the Rhythm, when, after falling in Love, there is always a great opportunity to rise in Love.
(to be continued)
My grandparents rent apartments to anyone looking for a place to stay. Whenever a renter leaves an apartment, I would begin playing inside the emptied space. I wondered how echoes vibrate in an empty room, in contrast with the time where all furniture and appliances were still in place. It was fun hearing my voice shouting against the wall. There was an airy feeling in my echo like a voice of some enchanted being. I would run around the room, stump my feet on the floor, then whisper, coo and shriek like a caged raptor unwary however my cry sound like. It was then a child's play. Many years have passed, people come and go to this apartment, and have left it behind as empty as I have found it. I have lost this childhood memory, yet it echoes back again with an insight.
In a one-to-one Commune, a new friend, who is one of our room renters, told me his story of struggles and that lingering lesson he has learned every time we talk and greet each other. He lives his life based on others expectations, on everyday survival from his deep agonies to make his family happy. He wants to discover a richer life. He keeps on lifting his self-esteem as he pits against all difficulties in his life. He has risked the meaning of life in this inner war.
An insight flashed while listening to him. I saw myself zoomed throughout the past years of my spiritual evolution. His life today was a realm I had tried to escape from. I found myself seeing the faces of the people I have met through him. It suddenly dawned on me that all those people bear the same response. All these people have been pondering that very essence of meaning that I have been searching and discovering. Now, I am sharing with them the meaning they have often brushed off as they live their lives everyday.
It never fails to surprise me how those wonderful people I have met can easily amplify that echo within. They have this longing to fathom this mystery. When conversations roll, they would zestfully share the string of events that had threaded unrelated possibilities for them to be right here in a perfect Commune moment. These events happened days before, or some years in the past, when they had tried to answer some Life's big questions through their own naivete.
Stories that echo these connections are abound in my each Commune. For example, a friend told a story of Love being discussed over a hearty dinner the night before a Commune; someone narrated a story of a boy with a hellish mood turned into a reconciliation full of Love; another had puzzling decisions made in the past, and the answer came in the Commune; some group of friends in a middle of quarrel were led to a synchronistic Commune; or some students and professionals who were undergoing a predicament when insights ignited while Communing. These and other precious sharing are worth our time. We would always be in timeless awe when the sound of Love echoes by itself.
I have begun to see myself not in contrast with the people I meet, but a spirit which another can echo oneself. Every person I meet is also an echo of my own shortcomings and triumphs, of this incessant search for the meaning of Life. I have heeded the call of Love coming from the eternal universal music that rhythmically echoes throughout our deeper consciousness. Every person I meet seeks Love, speaks about it them the best they can using the most fitting language they know. As they speak, there is an innermost voice that sings from each of their hearts. In return, voices reverberate within me, and my heart sings Love with them.
I imagine my spirit like a dolphin, swimming in this oceanic universe. My spirit sings a song and waits for the echo to bounce with another spirit. The spirit in the other sings, too. While the ocean seems to be endless, within it our spirits cross paths and connects. We begin to swim together and discover this vastness. We echo in unison, and the whole ocean is now being filled with that echo, the inner, resonant echo of Love.
Last year, I received a message showing different quotes and what struck me was the one quoted by Leo Tolstoy: " Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." Tolstoy's words seem to speak about our current national dilemma: the call for national change. Many statespersons, lawmakers, political officials and critics, and concerned citizens have uttered their viewpoints, so as to give their takes and to propose solutions. However, amid many years of political commotions, I am no expert. I am not even joining any actions on the streets clamoring the oust or resignation of GMA. While the church and different groups are on the move to restore the integrity of the nation, trying to sweep corruption by doing noise barrages, rallies, masses, and communal actions, I'm here right in the comforts of my four-cornered universe. While hearing every person who has the power and freedom of speech, voicing out their thoughts to justify the action of removing a single powerful entity that rules this nation, I am only here in quiet observation.
We can do one thing, which is the very core of Christ's teaching two millennia ago: Love our enemy. But the true enemy is not outside or far from us, not someone whom we believe wield political powers and economic machinery. That enemy is not the one the society hates. Our true enemy is ourselves. We are our own enemy. This enemy that acts with all fear, that holds grudges and prejudice against others, and always believe that needs brute force to allow change to take place. This enemy in the form our desire to destroy someone for all intents and purposes, for the sake of nation's welfare. Every bitter emotions and thoughts will continue to madden us until the time we embrace this inner enemy by dropping all the burdens that chain us into bondage. We will be eternal slaves until we choose to free ourselves.
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