Finding Detachment

Saturday Evening Posts

November 29 to December 5 Edition

July 27, 2014

Sunday

I've said goodbyes in a wink of an eye. I've walked away without even looking back. I've let go of worlds I have come to love.

I can attain a sense of detachment to a greater degree than most people.

I think of detachment in a relationship not as not expecting to be loved in return, but as not being emotionally dependent on other people.

I think of detachment in finances not as not caring about money, but having the strength to start over again, without the paralyzing stings of bitterness and regret, when all is lost.

It's not about having no feelings because that's part of being human.

It's about being shielded from the effects of raging emotions, like driving through the rain comfortable and dry in your car, protected from the elements.  All of this starts within.

"I am my only source for change and we can change at any age and in any circumstance," writes Buddhist author Clarice Bryan in Expect Nothing: A Zen Guide. "When I'm mindful I don't make mistakes. When I am here, now, and not somewhere else, I am harmonious with all around me. When I am here now, I am fully alive." 

Attaining detachment is like tending a Japanese garden. One needs to be fully in the moment, in mind and spirit.

"When I am present, here and now in all things I'm doing, I am much slower, but more precise," she says. "I rarely make mistakes."

I try to practice the Buddhist art of meditation where I became aware of my every act, and the nuances and the layers of meaning behind my every move. It grounds me in the center of everything yet letting me transcend them.

"Mindfulness is non-judgmental and impartial," writes Bryan. "It's impossible to take sides and still be mindful."

What I like about Buddhism is the way it embraces everything unlike the other major religions which thrive on elite righteousness and exclusive salvation. At the same time, it doesn't coerce anyone. Yet I believe that the philosophy can only be understood by a heart that is ready to accept.

"I believe we can and must start our own evolution," she writes. "We have so much to start with, so many miracles, and we can choose to create more."

 "By recognizing failure we change, renew, adapt, listen and grow," says Thich Nhat Hanh, one of Bryan's gurus for whom she dedicates her book. "It is only only by participating with expectation of success that we can truly open to the world, to suffering and to joy."  

Thich Nhat Hanh 

with Oprah Winfrey

"To release," says Sogyal Rinpoche, her other guru, "means to release mind from its prison of grasping, since you recognize that all pain and fear and distress arise from the craving of the grasping mind."

Sogyal Rinpoche

The Mind and the Nature of Mind

There is a passage from Buddha's The Dhammapada:

We are what we think

All that we are arises with our thoughts.

With our thoughts we make the world

speak or act with a pure mind

and happiness will follow you

as your shadow, unshakable

Jonathan Aquino's Journal

October 7, 2014

Tuesday

I dreamed the other night I was in a strange house under a shroud of darkness.

I was alone, seeing glimpses of empty gray walls. I can't even see the floor: everything else was black.

I knew that someone had died there though there was no paranormal activity. I can feel his psychic imprint if not his presence.

I was looking for the woman who owns the house but she was nowhere to be found. I wanted to tell her that her husband's father died in his sleep, lying in bed with his legs crossed like he's sitting in an armchair.

In a flash, I was taking a shower in that gloomy house. Suddenly the ghostly curtain was pulled back. A man was standing there urging me to come. He said that the man I tried to heal was now okay. In the dream, I seem to know him though not in my waking life.

One may see the act of taking a bath as a symbol of purification (or the need for one). Some may interpret it twelve ways to Sunday. If I bump into Sigmund Freud's spirit, he'll probably tell me I'm a sex machine. Dreams, says the clairvoyant George Noory, have their own internal logic.

In My Dreams

REO Speedwagon

See My Favorite REO Speedwagon Songs

"We climb and climb and at the top we fly,

let the world go on below us, we are lost in time..."

Muli (Again)

Huggybear's Favorite Songs From Rodel Naval

November 26 Midweek Musical

Muli

Photo courtesy of musicagratismp3.org

Touching Wisdom Inside Your Mind (Part 3)

Saturday Evening Posts

November 22-28 Edition

Touching Wisdom Inside Your Mind

Part 3

"I believe in coincidences," as I write in “Johnnybee,” my short story chosen for publication in May 2007 in Philippine Graphic by the late great literary editor Adrian Cristobal. "I also believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and that the moon is made of cheese."

George Noory, the nephew of the celebrated parapsychologist Shafica Karagulla and himself a sensitive, advises that you write down your dreams. A dream diary (not dictionary) is a form of self-mastery, the first step towards lucid dreaming, that state where you gain control and find the solutions to the problems in your waking life.

"There is an alternate reality," says Noory, "just as palpable as the three-dimension within we all navigate, but invisible to unless we attune our senses to perceive it."

My quest for spiritual enlightenment has shown me a new path. In my dreams, the ever-present theme is telepathy. I have talked to some of my loved ones who had died. There was no grand revelation in every encounter. Most of the time we were just chilling like ordinary people, as if nothing happened and we're still on the same dimension.

I know now what I've always felt: that I'm not alone. I have returned to the land of the living, taking with me a sense of indestructible hope that, whatever happens, there is a better life after this one waiting for us somewhere else.

George Noory On Nightline

See Part 1 and Part 2

Jonathan Aquino's Journals

August 4. 2014

Monday

Text To My Best Friend

I hope you don't think I've forgotten my best friend. I know you understand, that, since getting married, my life has revolved around my partner, like the moon orbiting around the earth, giving it light and affecting it's tides at sunset.

I'm still the same person. I'm still here as a friend. I hope you're still you, and I hope you have found what you've been looking for.

My wish for you is that one thing not even friends nor corporate success can give: that blessed sense of intimate bliss that will make your life complete.

You've Got a Friend

James Taylor and Carole King

See Huggybear's Favorite Songs From James Taylor

"You just call out my name,

and you know where ever I am,

I'll come running to see you again..."

Lagi-Lagi (Always)

Huggybear's Favorite Songs From Jeffrey Hidalgo 

November 19 Midweek Musical

Lagi-Lagi

Flames

Theme from Flames

See Flames with Rico Yan and Claudine Barreto

See My Favorite Smokey Mountain Songs

Photo courtesy of songhits.ph

Touching Wisdom Inside Your Mind (Part 2)

Saturday Evening Posts

November 15-21 Edition

Touching Wisdom Inside Your Mind

Part 2

By coincidence, "Jose Mari Chan Loud and Clear On The Huggybear Show," my one-act play, part of  my first fiction anthology, is also about an occult radio program.

Huggybear, my nickname-sake hero and host, interviews a ghost, a neurotic and an angel. He plays original Filipino music with the opening theme from VST & Co. Huggybear is like Edu Manzano meets Martin Nievera meets Rex Navarette. 

My play is inspired by parapsychologist Jaime Licauco and his Inner Mind On Radio which was my Sunday night ritual for years until I lost signal when I left Luzon early last year.

Just recently, I was tuned into another Sunday night supernatural radio show, Kasindak Sindak hosted by Benjamin "Tsongkibenj" Felipe, while reading about how the U.S. and the USSR have sent out psychics for espionage during the Cold War.

The study of the paranormal is one of my major interests since my teen years. It's now a part of my life, like the more wholesome influence of my idols Aga Muhlach and Gary Valenciano, not even including James Dean and Bruce Lee.

Worker is like a reunion with some figures from my youth like Edgar Cayce. There's also Ingo Swann and Uri Geller, both of whom, by coincidence, I have written about in one of my magazine articles last December - months before Worker called out to me from the bottom of a pile in BookSale in Elizabeth Mall in Cebu last February.

One of the most prominent characters in the book is Don Juan Matus, the Yacqui Indian sorcerer who's also one of the stars of "My Most Unforgettable Literary Characters," one of my earliest published works which appeared in January 2005 here in Philippine Panorama, the Sunday magazine of The Manila Bulletin. I first knew Don Juan from Carlos Castañeda's Journey To Ixtlan, which "is the first to open my eyes about the infinite mysteries beyond the everyday world and made me see Death in an entirely different way," as I said during my author profile interview for my eBook publisher SmashWords.com.

I'm learning a great deal from Noory. One is a technique while meditating, supremely priceless, that took me to a higher (and deeper) level. I now get rid of intrusive thoughts by enfolding them in my white light of protection then gently breathing them away. I inhale the creative and healing energy of God, and I exhale all that is negative in my mind, body and spirit. Every deep breath becomes an act of purification. Meditation becomes a way of life.

To Be Continued Next Saturday

See Part 1

A Warrior's Perspective

Carlos Castaneda and The Lessons of Don Juan Matus 

Jonathan Aquino's Books

My poem "I Believe" in Shibumi

I believe that love conquers all

I believe that divided we will fall

I believe that truth sets us free

I believe that forever we will be.

I believe spirits rise

I believe in fire and ice

I believe in fire and rain

I believe time heals all pain.

I believe not all angels have wings

I believe the joy love brings

I believe that fairies dance

I believe in that second chance.

I believe that for very child who prays

An angel smiles besides him, always

I believe tomorrow will be a better day

And every lost boy will find his way

Download the Shibumi Ebook version from Smashwords

I Believe 

Gary Valenciano

See Huggybear's Favorite Gary Valenciano Songs

"I believe 

for every drop of rain that falls,

a flower grows..."

Can't Stop Loving

Huggybear's Favorite Songs From Matthew Fisher

November 12 Midweek Musical 

Can't Stop Loving You Now 

She Makes Me Feel

Photo courtesy of procolharum.com

Touching Wisdom Inside Your Mind (Part 1)

Saturday Evening Posts

November 8-4 Edition

Touching Wisdom Inside Your Mind 

Part 1

I hold it as a mark of honor that a lot of people trust me. I'm there for them as they open their lives, even reveal their deepest secrets, just to help ease the burdens of their souls. Sometimes I feel like radio love gurus Joe The Mango or Jun "Doctor Love" Banaag.

I tell them that I find inner peace when I listen to my heart. I've lost count of the many times my instincts have been proven right. I also tell them that my most painful experiences came from the times I stifled that "still, small voice," as the Bible calls it.

I feel a sense of inevitability when I heard about another radio star, one who wrote a book that shows how intuition, not to mention remote viewing and astral projection, can be developed. I knew, even before halfway through George Noory's Worker In The Light, that I'll read it over and over again.

I was right. My last act before falling asleep is to jump from page to page like a teleport, absorbing by osmosis. It's now one of my boon companions in my inner journey. I have my share of the otherworldly just like the author, Noory, the host of Coast To Coast AM, the late-night paranormal call-in radio program aired throughout the United States and Canada.

To Be Continued Next Saturday

George Noory in "Beyond Belief"

with James Van Praagh

Jonathan Aquino's Journals

July 30, 2014,

5:15 p.m., Wednesday

There are different reasons why people maintain a veneer of fiction in their lives. It is easier at times to believe in the illusion because the reality may lead to places you don't want to be in. It's like skating over thin ice.

But the frost may crack when you least expect it, the mask may fall off just when you began to believe it's real.  A relationship carries a baggage of emotions, one on top of the other like layers in a birthday cake.

 There is love, yet there are also the other hues from the entire spectrum of human emotions. They are all there, like graphic scintillations of a spinning kaleidoscope. I've asked myself many times what if people can read each other's minds? What if each and everyone of us can fathom the innermost depths of our fellowmen? If this is a world of telepaths, then I somehow doubt that civilization itself would continue to exist. I see the irony of a person trying to be somebody else in order to be like everybody else.

The Best of Jerry Lewis

I remember an old movie with comedy star Jerry Lewis. There's a scene where he's thinking really nasty things about a certain person. But his thoughts are being heard by everyone like a live broadcast, and the guy he's thinking about is standing right in front of him.

My Favorite Song From Terri Gibbs

November 5 Midweek Musical 

Tell Me That You Love Me

Photo courtesy of toponehitwonders.com

Line To Heaven: Healing From John Edward (2)

Huggybear's Stories

November 1-7 Edition

Line To Heaven 2

I’m sharing stories from one of the most life-changing books I ever had the blessing to come across – One Last Time: A Psychic Medium Speaks To Those Who Have Loved and Lost (Berkley Books, NY) – the spiritual odyssey of John “Johnny” Edward, a devout Catholic, host of TV’s "Crossing Over" and the world’s most acclaimed spirit medium.

This New York Times bestseller gave me assurance in the wisdom of the Higher Power that guides us to our true destiny, the courage to let go and move on, and the inexplicable peace of knowing that my loved ones who have died still love me, still watches over me, because they are still here – because they have never left me.

Complete stranger. In 1994, a woman named June Castonguay had a reading with Johnny, and who came through was a complete stranger that would change the lives of many people that fateful summer. Johnny got the names Tony and Christopher and an image of a car accident. Something clicked,then June remembered there had been an accident in their neighborhood last week. Her sons Tony and Christopher went to the scene, where a teenager who was riding his bike got hit by a car and died.

Now the boy, Andrew, was asking, almost pleading, for June to write his parents, giving signs so they’d know it’s him, to let them know he’s okay and happy in a wonderful place. June wanted to help but felt very awkward.

“I didn’t even know these people,” she protested. “I don’t know what to tell them!”

Johnny strongly urged her to do it, not knowing that Andrew will be playing an even bigger role in his life. June began her letter by telling Andrew’s parents everything, sympathizing with their loss.

“If you feel comforted in any way that it might be true then I know it was worth the risk. Please, please know this is in no way was meant to hurt anyone. But if I did not write this letter I would never know if I did the right or not …”

Andrew Miracolo was handsome and popular among his friends in Long Island and comes from a super close family. On July 15, his parents were devastated by his sudden death. Andrew had just turned 16, how could God take him away?

“My baby, my baby…!” his mother was hysterical.

When Andrew died, she would later tell Johnny, “Nobody could talk, nobody could stand up, nobody could eat.” She felt like “I lost my son, I lost my husband, I lost my other son.”

“He wouldn’t want us to go crazy like this,” she cried to her husband during the funeral. “If we could, he’d write us a letter so we’d know he’s okay.”

Then one day, two weeks after Andrew died, she was thunderstruck as she read June’s letter. “I got my letter!” she screamed. “I got my letter!”

From Your Mother. One sweet day, Johnny was driving when a young voice clearly said, “For my mom and dad and from your mother.”

Johnny was stunned. Who was that? Then he saw a sticker in the truck ahead of him that reads “Andrew”

At that moment, he know he would hear a song about the Other Side, the beautiful place where are there are no more goodbyes. Then Jordan Hill’s ‘Remember Me This Way,’ the theme from Casper, came on. Johnny just sat at the roadside, transfixed by the song, “knowing that it said everything that needed to be said about love between both worlds – knowing that love lasts forever and our loved ones are forever in our hearts.”

Remember Me This Way

Jordan Hill

Theme from Casper

“And I’ll be right behind your shoulders watching you, 

’ll be standing by your side in all you do..."

     

See Line To Heaven 1

My Favorite Scene from Casper

"...and I won’t ever leave, as long as you believe…”  

Jonathan Aquino's Journals

August 8, 2014, Friday

I just heard about the young boy in Bulacan who took a photo of a UFO using his cellphone. He should have called too. Skeptics said: "This is crazy!" The aliens said: "Here's my number!"