My Spiritual Journey

December 28 to January 3 Edition

George Santayana

My Spiritual Journey

Emotional Independence

Batangas City

George Santayana

My story on philosophy was published September 8, 2013 in Philippine Panorama. This is the cover letter:

Our existence is a miracle, "a free gift from moment to moment," says George Santayana.

But our spirit is beyond our control. The spirit, through an act of self-examination, learns a significant revelation: it's utter powerlessness.

"But the moral presence of power comes upon a man in the night," he says. "It re-appears in every acute predicament, in extremities, in the birth of a child or in the face of death."

Philosophy sets the mind free from the dangers of absolute convictions. At the same time, it teaches the mind to use its own powers of logic and intuition to see how valid an idea is, or whether it is worthy of further study, rather than swallowing the whole thing, lock, stock and barrel.

The greatest minds in history all believed in a reality that transcends mere existence. My new story, "What Philosophy Can Teach Us," is about timeless ideas with practical applications in our daily lives.

Santayana shared all these reflections in a speech in a speech at the Hague in 1933 to commemorate the tercentenary of the birth of Benedict Spinoza, who's also one of the philosophers featured in this story. Completing the cast of great minds are Rene Descartes, Arthur Schopenhauer, John Stuart Mill and Francis Bacon.

"Power comes down to me clothed in a thousand phenomena," says Santayana. "In submitting to power, I learn its way: from being passive, my spirit becomes active." So "therefore all the operations of universal power, when they afford themes for perception, affords also occasions for intellectual delight." 

My Spiritual Journey

I have changed so much since I began the most important adventure in my life in late 2012: the journey within.

I view karma differently now: it's not a mechanical engine for reward and punishment. Everything you do (or don't do) will have a reaction.

For your soul to grow, you need to experience the pain you've inflicted on others. If you've been cruel in a past life, then you'll spend the next lifetime learning humility for you to achieve karmic balance.

I see the workings of the universe when I'm swimming out in the sea. It's a perfect metaphor because the ocean has deep metaphysical significance. The water just respond to what I do, whether I swim or dive or just float on my back. There's no judgment whatsoever. Just action- and reaction.

Our purpose in life is to purify our souls so we can return to our original state of Oneness with God. We are all connected. From the perspective of infinity, you cannot hurt me without hurting yourself.

The Biblical adage "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" is one of its most misunderstood passages. Some people even invoke it to incite revenge. But it's not about vengeance. It's about karma.

"It means that a person who takes the eye of another will inevitably experience the same trauma," says the Higher Self of Shirley MacLaine in Dancing In The Light. 

It's one of the books I've been reading over and over for the past months together with Superbeings and TheSilva Mind Control Method For Getting Help From The Other Side. I just re-read large chunks of it as I write this piece near midnight on Friday, November 9, 2013, as "Super Typhoon" Yolanda (aka Haiyan) lashed outside my balcony window in my apartment in the city. I have decided to stay in Cebu because there's a small sea-side town down south where I can call home.

I know that my spiritual education and, hopefully, full awakening, should be my priority. I just do the best that I can to keep my focus.

Shirley MacLaine's Out On A Limb is what actually pushed me onto my own search for self discovery. My inner odyssey inspired me to write "The Journey With Shirley MacLaine," my spiritual autobiography.

"Fate moves in mysterious ways," I wrote on my story, which got published January 2013 in Philippine Panorama, the Sunday magazine of The Manila Bulletin. "Things happen, and someday, if you're lucky, you'll be able to connect the dots, and find something that wasn't there before – even if it's been there all along..."

"It is a karmic statement, not a statement of punishment," continues her Higher Self. "You reap what you sow. It is a manifestation of the cosmic law of cause and effect which is administered by the souls themselves, not by the authority of the penal code or a government or even by God. The God energy is no judge of persons. In fact, there is no judgment involved with life. There is only experience from incarnation to incarnation until the soul realizes its perfection and that it is total love..."

On Emotional Independence

December 14, 2013

7:21 a.m., Saturday

My track record in work is at an all-time high.

It's gratifying though I know they're like wisps of vapors waiting for the next breeze.

At the same time, a totally different event last night put me in an introspective mode. I got a gentle reminder about my vow to achieve detachment.

What I want is to be able to serenely glide above the turbulent seas of human passions and emotions. I have lived independently since I was fourteen. I know I can completely turn away from people who don't deserve my friendship.

The funny thing is: the fact that I'm alone in the world is what makes me seek companionship. Looking back, it is this primordial longing that gave me the greatest agonies in my life. But it would be foolish to retreat from the world because that doesn't help any. And besides, being away from my fellowmen tends to makes me want to connect to them even more.

I'm completely independent financially,and I know I'm more emotionally solid and grounded than most people with their personalities constantly shifting as reflections in a hall of mirrors. I would even say that my ego is more titanium-solid compared to almost all of the countless folks I've met in all my travels, with their moods that zoom like a rollercoaster across the Himalayas. I care about friends but there have been times that I cared too much, always forgetting that not all of them can give the kind of respect and loyalty that is to last a lifetime.

I just had an epiphany. The way to be emotionally independent is to lose the fear of losing them if I show how completely self-contained I can really be.

On Batangas City

It's November 9, 2013 as I write this.

I'm in one of the few quiet, shady areas of Cebu's I.T. Park.

 This is my story on my trip to Batangas City, more than a hundred kilometers south of Manila, on the third week of November 2012.

I've never seen anything so blue as the sea beyond the Batangas Pier. And I'm supposed to be color-blind.

I was there checking the schedule of the inter-island ferry that will take me to Mindoro where I'll stay with Greg, my best friend in high school in Las Piñas which is one of the high schools I've gone into.

Then, from Mindoro, on to Bacolod and Iloilo.

The deep blue ocean soothed my soul. Yet it ignited a fire in me to sail beyond the beckoning horizon. Water ignites fire.

I went to visit D, one of the figures in my early childhood, in Libjo Central in Batangas City. We haven't exactly kept in touch through the years; I just knew that she's been living there forever. I imagine I looked like a stranger to her now: I was still in grade school the last time we're together. I always bring food whenever I visit someone, though not during funerals. I brought some bibingka, rice cakes cooked over charcoals in customized clay stoves. I got them from the plaza which have been turned into a night bazaar complete with a giant Christmas tree. If it wasn't high noon, what I would've liked was a cup of the world famous Batangas barako coffee.

I sought refuge from the stark midday heat. I found myself in the old church across the plaza where I had my picture in this story taken. The statues gave me goosebumps. I took these photos.

The church has stood for centuries. It has been like a sentinel, watching puny mortals come and go, since the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century. The true story behind the Masonic symbols will perhaps never be known. A sense of history made me feel more alive, surrounded by the vestiges of a civilization that has died a long time ago.

Tribute To Og Mandino

December 21-27 Edition

Og Mandino

My Heart & Soul

Dichotomoous Thinking

Impressing Others

 Og Mandino

My article on Og Mandino was published October 20, 2013 in Philippine Panorama, the Sunday magazine of The Manila Bulletin. This is my cover letter to the editor:

"Mistakes are life's way of teaching us," says the great inspiration guru Og Mandino. "Your capacity for occassional blunders is incomparable from your capacity to reach your goals."

Og Mandino has changed the lives of millions. His books will be read by the untold generations to come. We can never count the ways how his stories has uplifted a flagging spirit and strengthened a resolve to begin anew.

My story, "Og Mandino's Messages of Hope," is an ode that will remain timeless, a story that will endure forever. The youth of today needs to meet the camel boy Hafid in The Greatest Salesman In The World; the selfless merchant Zaccheus in The Greatest Secret In The World; the risk-taking writer Mark Christopher in The Choice; and the mysterious "Ragpicker" Simon Potter in The Greatest Miracle In The World.

But the greatest story of all is the inspiring life of Og Mandino himself.

"Never again clutter your days or nights with so many menial and unimportant things that you have no time to accept real challenges when it comes along," he counsels. "You are not here to fritter away your precious hours when you have the ability to accomplish so much by making a slight change in your routine."

My Heart & Soul

November 25, 2013

8:34 a.m., Monday

I'm blessed in so many ways, not the least for having the ability for introspection – and for that, I'm eternally grateful.

I have contemplated my life on many levels and I found myself more intuitively attuned to the direction I need to go to achieve peace and enlightenment.

Here in Cebu, I have friends whom I can count on, in the same way that they've proven to themselves that I'm always here for them. I have my sea somewhere south of the city – where I feel a touch of the sacred in swimming alone out on the deep, in the same way that pilots Richard Bach and Charles Lindbergh found it flying alone above the clouds.

I'm not afraid to be alone because I have a deep abiding respect in myself as a human being. I don't get bored in solitude because my inner life is not empty. I'm not afraid of silence because my soul needs it. I know I live in a world where most people are the complete opposite. That's perfectly natural and I accept that without judgment.

I've been around enough to not expect others to understand that not everybody is the same, not everybody belongs to the herd. So I'm not surprised anymore if some people treat me as an pariah, for the simple reason that I refuse to be insincere and superficial. I don't pretend to be sophisticated. I find all these very shallow. I don't think I'm the only one like me.

"You will be different, sometimes you will feel like an outcast," Superman says to his son. "But you will have my strength, and you will see the world through my eyes." (See "Why The World Needs Superman")

I don't major in minor things. A lot of people focus too much on nonsense but completely ignore what is truly important. I don't try be what I'm not. I'm not comfortable with crowds, I'm not eager for attention, I'm not obssesed with impressing others – only the insecure are like that. I don't act superior to anybody, but I'm inferior to no one.

My mindset is that no matter how good I am, there will always be those who are better than me; and no matter how terrible I am in some things, like trigonometry, I'm better than others in other things. This attitude inspires to me to rise above myself yet keeping my feet on the ground. That's why I remained level-headed despite my own share of achievements.

But this is also why I feel sad because a really close friend of mine changed so much. He's at the height of his popularity now. I think it got into his head. We have been like brothers but his gradual transformation turned him into a stranger. He has become patronizing, sarcastic and insulting. I can overlook the fact that he's fully convinced of his superiority. But somehow the bond has been broken What we had was that electric chemistry, like Sam and Dean Winchester in Supernatural. I'm going to miss that. If trust and respect are gone – and one cannot exist without the other -- then any meaningful friendship is lost. But it was fun while it lasted – and I'm grateful for that too.

On Dichotomous Thinking

It's 1:11 a.m., Tuesday, October 29, 2013, as I write this. I've lived in so many different places and I realize, because of that, the way I perceive the world is now radically different from most people.

I get along fine with folks from all walks of life. But it's not always easy to build a meaningful connection with someone who can't even conceive how big the world is outside of his cultural shell.

So I was hurt in a conversation with two friends last week when they seem to display what my mentor Wayne Dyer calls "dichotomous thinking." from Your Erroneous Zones, his bestselling classic that transformed my life.

People who think in dichotomous terms see the world in black and white: something is either good or bad, somebody is either normal or weird; there is nothing in between and there is nothing beyond that. It has nothing to do with intelligence because human nature is not a purely intellectual concept.

I value relationships. I regard friendship as sacred. I want to build bridges that will last for a lifetime. I think the foundation of friendship is trust and respect: one cannot exist without the other. For me, a person who understands, accepts and respects that fact that people are different is worth dying for.

On Impressing People

On the early morning hours of November 3, 2013, I had a flash of insight about human nature: "Why do we tell people about our lives?"

That question intrigues me, especially now that I'm dealing with people with radically different backgrounds.

I'm talking about talking to people, not blogging which may seem logically connected but lacks the instanteous dynamics of face-to-face interaction.

So this about why we tell others about ourselves.

I don't know why.

I can guess, though. I think that somewhere in the depths of our souls is the longing to feel accepted. It's perfectly normal. So we want to give others a positive idea about us.

Then there's another factor. I've consistently seen this as a student of human behavior and as a former semi-telepath: People react to us based on their perception of us. If they like us or if they want to be like us, then everything we do is filtered in their minds and emerge as a good thing. But if they don't like us, then they'd dismiss, downplay or ignore what we say or do or whatever good they hear about us.

Example: Kal-El, Logan and Peter Parker are all labeled as "loners." There are some things about them that most people would simply never understand. I like them because I can identify more deeply than I can explain. Some people like or dislike them for their own reasons or even for no reason at all.

Man of Steel

Bar Scene

The Wolverine

Shingen Scene

The Amazing Spiderman

Subway Scene

If you like them or if you're broad-minded enough to be objective, you'll see them as essentially good guys who need privacy and understanding. But if you don't like them or the fact that they're different somehow threatens your self-identity because of your fragile self-esteem, then you'll see them as outcasts. You would want to believe to they are inferior to you because you've never met anybody like them before.

So, all in all, I think people would rather believe what they think about us than what we say to them. That's why I don't see the point of trying to impress others. I'd rather be judged by my actions. But then again, the opinions of judgmental people mean nothing to me. On the other hand, won't people accuse you of being secretive? Malicious people will accuse you of anything. Decent people and real friends will never do.

Huggybear's October Diaries (Part 2)

December 14-20 Edition

Jonathan Aquino's Journals

October 15, 2013, Tuesday

I was shaken awake this morning. My first impression is that somebody next door is reaching climax.

"This is the worst hangover I had in my life," I thought as I noticed that my entire apartment is shaking.

I heard the screams below my balcony. It was then that I realized it was an earthquake. I would learn later that it was magnitude 7 on the Richter, with the epicenter in the neighboring island of Bohol.

"There's a personal reason why I have the absolute conviction that no harm will ever come to me," I told Chad and Harvey when we got together for lunch. "And I have proven that to myself many times."

I went down just in case the second floor where I was would collapse. No point in courting disaster. I saw people outside panicking and weeping, holding on to each other as if the world was ending.

"The worse the situation gets, the calmer I become," I said later. "That just goes to show that I'm not normal."

I remember a time in Manila when an exposed wire in my electric fan got wet and it blew up. The entire boardinghouse plunged into darkness as sparks flew. Everybody thought it was a fire and scrambled away. I just stayed in my room, amused.

"Bro, I want you to meet Harvey," I told Jeric as our class ended last night. Jeric has already met Chad. "I want to see my three closest friends together." They're my best buddies and I love them like brothers. I'd die for my friends. Jeric had to rush home to take care of his eleven-month old son. The boy will turn one two weeks from now. I'm happy and proud to be the godfather.

"I'm with genuine people and true friends," I happily told Chad and Harvey as we celebrated our long-overdue reunion last night. We were at the terrace of a bar with a cool view of the entire Mango Avenue. We watched the people on the square below. It's like being in Italy. There's a kiosk serving Greek food on the other side of the plaza. All my friends know that I don't drink because I have a real low tolerance of alcohol. It's my kryptonite. But on that special occasion, I had a couple of beers and some bolognese.

Our friendship has been tried and tested. The foundation is concrete and solid steel. We treasure meaningful conversations. Only superficial acquaintances need "fun" and "bonding."

Then the world began to spin. I felt my entire body drenched in cold sweat. Everything was spinning around me like a carousel. They had to help me cross the dancefloor to the men's room where I vomited twice.

"Guys, I'm really sorry, but I need to go home," I told them, almost on the verge of crying from embarassment. I can feel their concern radiating through the mists of stupor. I had to force them not to take me home so I wouldn't ruin the evening because Chad's newest girl and Harvey's friends Jeanno and Enzo just arrived.

"Where to, sir?" asked the cab driver.

"Ah," I replied, not knowing what to say. It's as if my brain froze. I just gestured. Then I realized that I've forgotten where I was living.

He started to drive.

"Arbee's," I managed to say.

"Arbee's where?" he asked.

It clicked a trivia. Arbee's is a popular bakeshop in Cebu. There are dozens of branches all across the city. I tried to remember which one is in the corner of my street.

"Ah, Cebu?"

October 17, 2013, Thursday

I'm a stranger in a strange land. It's not easy to be different from everyone else.

"I was born in a world you might not understand."

That's a line from Ultraviolet, one of the many movies I saw on cable in the last couple of days.

There's a large flatscreen TV on the office pantry. I would stay behind when everybody goes home to avoid the elevator crowd.

Ultraviolet

"Sooner or later the world finds out," says one of the characters in one episode of Serangoon Road.

I don't really have secrets of my own. I live in a way that I won't be ashamed even if everything I do or say will be revealed to the whole world.

I want a life where I won't have anything to hide. But I would never proactively reveal my heart and soul to people who don't even matter in my life.

Serangoon Road

"Labels won't you happy," says a zombie in the support group meeting scene in Wreck-It Ralph.

That's one of the things I also do my best to avoid: labels. There are those who would reduce you to one of their rigid cliches.

I stay away from superficial people. They label me though I don't see myself through their prejudices.

Wreck-It Ralph

"I don't want to see you grow old and die," says the immortal Lin to Alex, the son of Ricochet.

I am also immortal because my true nature is my spirit and not my physical body. 

But I don't want to live forever in my present lifetime. I seemed to have irreparably lost my faith in humanity.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

"I'm in the courtyard of the American Embassy in Istanbul in a smashed car, don't ask!" says Liam Neeson to a friend on the phone in Taken 2. "Can you make sure no one shoots us?"

I now see the priceless value of being able to call somebody for help knowing he wouldn't let you down. A true friend is a treasure not even venture capitalists can buy. In a world of plastic, finding one is a great blessing.

Taken 2

October 19, 2013, Saturday

Everything that happens to me is a part of my life. I've been a witness to history but that's for later. I'm still writing about the movies I saw on cable in the cafeteria in the past few days before going home after class.

"I aint pretending to be somebody I saw on TV," says a character, not Ice Cube.

Authenticity is important to me, bordering on the sacred. I'm true to others because I'm true to myself.

I don't even feel the need to create a public persona: what you see is what you get. Of course there's more than meets the eye. I may be like an iceberg where the public only see a part of the whole, and the rest is only for myself and the people I trust, but there is no deception in my chunk of ice.

I can spot a fake a mile away.

Barbershop

"Nothing defines me except you and your mother," says John Goodman's character as he decides to sell his van that he loves so much just to pay his daughter's credit card debts.

I like to believe that if my parents were still alive, they will be there for me whatever happens. Not knowing my parents made me idealize them. Perhaps they would have turned out differently, but so would I.  I might be tempted to risk destroying the time-space continuum if I get the chance t travel back in time and change my own history.

But after all is said and done, I'd rather be me than be somebody else. And it gives me comfort to know that my parents are in a much better place.

Confessions of A Shopaholic

"A home of my own," says Andrew, the robot with a heart of gold, as he built his own house beside the sea.

I almost jumped out of my chair: the sight of that paradise with the waves crashing into the isolated shore galvanized my soul.

That's what I always wanted: my own corner under the sky in front of the infinite ocean. 

"Do the people I care about always...leave?" he asks in one of the most memorable scenes in the movie that touched me deeper more than any other. I like to think that I'll see again the people I love who have...left.

Bicentennial Man

I saw myself in Andrew's journey as he spent his life trying to find his own kind and a meaning for being different from the rest. It's just him and his knapsack in the long and winding and everchanging road. That is the story of my life. That is my life.

October Diaries (Part 1)

December 7-13 Edition

Jonathan Aquino's Journals

October 1, 2013

Cebu City

 "Thousands of people have gone down to me," began D, a female classmate. "I was ripped open by a large and hard object."

"Titanic!" I answered instantly.

"Correct!"

Everybody else answered something else to that riddle, the same thing, rhymes with Virginia. It's also the first thought that popped into my mind. But I got the prize: chocolate candies.

"Almost heaven, West Virginia," sings John Denver in Take Me Home, Country Roads, "Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River..."

Take Me Home, Country Roads

John Denver

(See also Huggybear's Favorite Songs By John Denver)

A colleague, M, told me that the apartment next to his will be vacant on the tenth. He said he'll talk to the landlord to work something out with my down payment for rent. I want to, but if I set on that course, then my expenses will go up just when there's so many things I need to prioritize and save up for. If I transfer, then I'm sure to step into a financial treadmill, about to get caught into an "infinite loop," to use a software engineering analogy. I haven't decided yet but I'm happy I was able to see the road ahead and the irony of it all.

J, one of my best friends, is planning to go somewhere. He asked me if I want to come. Of course I do. But I'm not ready yet. There are so many things I need to do first. What I haven't told anyone, not even him, is that I have lost everything. I'm starting all over again. I've been adrift and it's only now that I'm tentatively walking towards dry land. Do I want to go? Yes. Am I meant to? I don't know. If I am, then I will be there. But first I need to reach solid ground.

I came across a situation today that got me thinking. A guy is being urged by his wife to go abroad to work. I see the economic reasons. What I don't understand is what it means. Me, if I love a person, then I would set her free to reach for her dreams. If she would be happier to be with somebody else, then I will leave, no matter how it hurts. But what I can never do is to push her away. I just can't. If she chooses to be with me no matter happens, then it means I married the right person.

The song that kept playing on my mind today is one of my favorite songs of all time. It's from Stephen Bishop who, coincidentally, will do a concert here in Cebu in Waterfront Hotel with its rude security guards. I'm glad I'm singing the soundtrack of my life, rather than marching to other people's bandwagon tunes. I'm happy to touch base with my Authentic Self even if I sometimes feel drained by so much superficiality around me.

"I guess I wanted something new in my life, a new key, to fit a new door," Stephen sings, "to wake a see a different view in my life, that one I've been waiting for..."

Something New In My Life

Stephen Bishop

(See also Huggybear's Favorite Songs By Stephen Bishop)

"Whatever happens,

this is true in my life,

when all the springs

have come and gone..."

October 2, 2013

I've always been a keen student of human nature and a good judge of character. Today I was really overwhelmed. I have never been in a room with so many people almost losing their minds with giddy exhilaration from stupid nonsense. Never have I been thrown in the company of so many people desperately upstaging others. I have never seen so many people excessively obsessed with being the center of attention. I find that sincerity is quite rare in this town. I'm stranded in a place where I've been on the verge of leaving because of the parochial mentality of its native culture. Their idea of fun is making fun of others. Their idea of friendship has no place for respect and dignity.

My recovery from my encounter with "Doomsday," is taking longer than I ever imagined. But I'm now working and saving up for my next trip, for the next chapter of my life. I have no more interest in fame or fortune. All I want is simplicity and authenticity until the end of my present lifetime.

October 5, 2013

Today I made a decision that changed everything. Now I have set my future.

"I'll never be the same again," to borrow the lines of a song. I never thought that I would "change so much in so many ways..."

You Changed My Life

Janie Fricke

"How many people are like you?" a character in Salt, which I saw I earlier on cable, asked Angelina Jolie.

It made me think of how many are like me.

"None," was the reply.

Salt

I'm a voyager. I don't make judgments about the culture of the places along the way. But I just don't belong here. All I want is peace and quiet, away from narrow minded people and the madness of the world.

"This traveling boy," sings Paul Williams, " is only passing through..."

Trav'lin' Boy 

Paul Williams

(See also Huggybear's Favorite Songs By Paul Williams)

"I won't say that I'll be back again

but time will tell the tale..."