A repost from an old blog

A blessed full moon everyone.

As we approach the end of January, I took it upon myself to clean my spaces: physical, mental and of course online spaces too. I would like to welcome the new moon in February with a cleaner and emptier space because the old must give way to new. I have been feeling ungrounded lately, maybe because I have been clearing up spaces around me, that the center of gravity in my life is a bit skewed. Of course this unstable feeling will only be temporary as I am trying to adjust everything down to the 'last small screw' then I am good to go. 

While going through the hard task of inspecting and discriminating every single thing that must stay in my life and in my sphere, I got to read this very moving post that I have written during a tumultuous time in my life. It was a time when I was doing my masteral studies in Asian Studies, while doing work in a Buddhist foundation and feeling my way into leaving QC for a while, to go somewhere far. Relationships in all levels were disintegrating or perhaps transforming, it was really a difficult time for me. 

It was a time when I started to realize that Asian Studies was not for me, in a way that in all honesty, I truly like to study the culture and the politics of Asian nations, especially East Asia, but not for a stable career that will provide bread and butter on my table. Also, I had just broken up with someone who at that time I was involved with in a long distance relationship, and the other long-term on again, off again relationship was really hitting an undeniable dead end. These were what I meant when I wrote personal disasters. 

I was really a wreck at that time, and it kept on getting worse and worse each day. The only way was to escape the hot kitchen and go somewhere really far, that was what I thought would save me from total breakdown at that time. 

The escape came from a call from a German international organization, it was an offer of 6-month stay in Cebu with very minimum allowance. The organization will only provide the flight ticket expenses but not the lodging or food, but I was desperate at that time, I said yes without even thinking about the consequences or even how to make both ends meet. 

Anyways, what happened in Cebu deserves a totally different post.

But here, I am sharing and reposting this post that I wrote when I was about to lose the little sanity I was keeping at that time in me. Miraculously, I wrote something so positive in such dark period of my life. Interesting, interesting.

Shift happens every single minute (or Saved by Yoko Ono)

posted on 20130702

Last night, I read this very moving piece by Yoko Ono:

“After Andy Warhol visited Japan he said ‘Japan is the country of the future. It’s amazing!”. At the time I thought to myself ‘Yes, but it has many old scars.’ I think this earthquake is our moment of destiny to create a country of the future. The time has come for us to work together to make Japan an even more wonderful country than it has been so far.”

She is talking about the fatal disaster that shook and flooded Japan two years ago. I saw video footages. I was in awe.

I remember, the first time we heard about it, I was in our office (a Buddhist Foundation). Moments later, all the officers, staff, members of the foundation were on their knees, singing a prayer for peace and sincerely wishing for the country’s recovery.

I witnessed how a disaster of a great country had affected the people, from our office, throughout the Asian Region and the whole world. We conducted a lot of talks about climate change, about recycling, about praying for the victims and about how we can extend our loving arms to survivors and heroes of Japan.

I saw how compassion can erase borders. How it turns tiredness into fulfillment when we see little smiles from people who accept(ed) our help. How it miraculously heal all of us when we reach out to each other. Saying the same prayer, encouraging each other to move forward. Hoping that one day we can look back and tell ourselves, ‘Look, we made it. We overcame the tragedy. We even made good progress from what was before.’

Those were dreams and wishes touched by Yoko’s words as I read her blog. As I read it, I feel I understand her more.

I am currently having major breakdowns and if you may, personal disasters  in my life. Hopelessly clinging to something familiar that I would not like to let go of. Perhaps, this character of mine defines me. Perhaps, this habit is cemented permanently in my life. Perhaps, this is integral part of me that if you take this little piece of me, I will helplessly crumble down to the very fiber of my being and I would not be able to get the pieces back together. These are thoughts that seep into me when I am face(d) with change, transition, which is by now I feel, happens every single minute of my life. Yes, these are monsters I created in the shadow of my consciousness. They are very potent, they scare me to death. They sometimes steal sleep from me. They sometimes pin me down to bed, depressed and down. They are in charge of visions of worst possible scenario ruthlessly pushing their agenda right down my throat. They are like the clowns living in my shadow who collected all my dark secrets, my insecurities, my fears in a single box, ready to open the lid anytime they get the chance, they exist to torment me with my inadequacies, my lies, my denials, my weaknesses and my foolishness. Sometimes when they get too strong, I cannot help but just escape ~ those are lucky days. But if they get me down, they really do some serious work in disorienting and haunting me ~ bad hair days. They are dark and threatening and isolating. Creepy.

It seems like these ‘shadows’ will torment me forever that I am resigned to just run away from them with all my strength or pray/meditate until they all go/vanish. And then I read Yoko’s words. I had an epiphany.

Yoko made perfect sense. That the disaster is a painful process we have to go through to make space for a new beginning. That the disaster is actually a healing process that can erase the wounds we carry with us. Yes, painful, yes it requires hard work, yes it will make us sad and tired and scared, but if we laboriously put up with it, and if we trust the process then it will point us to a space where we can create a stronger foundation and a cleaner, brighter beginning.

The wounds we carry with us need powerful scrubbing to erase it, right from its roots. This  ‘box’ containing our weaknesses, denials, dark secrets are our wounds ~ we need to scrub them to erase them. But some wounds inside our ‘box’ needed tending, tender care for them to heal. We have to put them under the light, so that we can understand them well and thus integrate them in our personality. A healed wound is like a jewel. A hard won victory after adversity.

The wounds we carry with us, we should make peace with them by believing that it is the best possible thing we could do/say or behaviour/reaction that we can come up with given our circumstances at that moment. Now that we have grown up and we know better and we are blessed to be in an even ground, we must let go, not dwell and just forgive ourselves.

As above, so below, they say. The shake, the tragedy is the painful process of erasing the wound. Then a clear space will emerge. We are aided by this wisdom we have not been aware of. Now is the time to wake up to it. This will point to us the good fertile ground, a clean slate where we will build sustainable future. A place where we will create a peaceful community, all of us together, hand in hand. A vision of love and compassion rooting from our humanity. It is time to reach out.

So, I pray that we all remain strong during this times of terrible shake. That we open our eyes to the space created for us to start planting good seeds for the future. Let us use our emotions to see and let us tap our soul for creativity.

~

It is still a wonder how I could write something like this, but after some reflection, maybe the inner turmoil releases something from deep within that we can use to light our path in the physical world. I never dreamed of having some sort of deep wisdom in me during that turbulent time, but in hindsight, maybe I needed to go through those storms for these words/ideas to finally come up. 

Life is indeed really interesting.