Saturday, June 30, 2018

What Happened At Little Rock?

Saturday Stories
June 30, 2018

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One of my close friends when I was a teenager was a Canadian expat. He was a retired university professor with a Ph.D. from an Ivy League school in the United States, yet he treated me as an equal, like how good friends treat each other, and I admire and respect him for that.

Looking back, I see that now as a sign of decency and emotional maturity. On the other hand, insecure people would treat you in a patronizing or condescending manner, as if you are stupid. Frankly, I find that irritating, and, well, stupid.

We talked about a lot of things, mostly sociology, his field. It was because of those conversations that I became interested about what makes an individual and groups of people act like they do. Our culture helps shape our character as much as our genes and childhood.

This naturally led to our many discussions of race. I myself have not personally experienced outright discrimination, yet I know that countless people since the dawn of mankind have been persecuted because of the color of their skin.

And this leads me to my own favorite subject: history. On May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court made a landmark decision that desegregated all schools. In other words, non-white students can now enroll in any private or public school in America.

But this was defied by a man named Orval Faubus, who was then the Governor of Arkansas. He ordered armed troops to Central High School in the town of Little Rock on September 4 to prevent nine African-American students from coming.

The crisis was averted by the swift and decisive actions by then President Dwight Eisonhower. On September 24, the President took command of the state troopers and sent the military to restore order after his cease-and-desist warning to Faubus was ignored. This led to a great national debate about state and federal authority but I won't go into that here. Suffice it to say that it would be dangerous to grant autonomy to cities if there is no moral leadership from the head of state.

The nine students, a.k.a. The Little Rock Nine – Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Patillo, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls – have faced even harsher treatment from the students. They have been cursed, insulted, called names and even physically attacked – because they were not white.

But this story has a happy ending. All nine graduated and led great lives. President Bill Clinton has honored their bravery and moral courage and their role in changing the course of history, by awarding them the Congressional Medal of Honor on November 9, 1999. They have reunited at the Inaugural of President Barack Obama on January 20, 2009, when America finally elected it's first non-white President.

I saw hope for humanity in the most unforgettable episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show," aired in 1996, which I saw on YouTube. The Little Rock Nine, after forty years, came face to face with their tormentors – and they have forgiven them.

I put down on paper what I think about racism in one of my poetry collaborations with international author Elizabeth Castillo. She called it "Beauty In Diversity," and it was published less than two weeks ago, on June 15, 2018, in the anthology Complexion Based Discriminations: Global Insights, featuring writers from all over the world, and now available on Amazon.   

The anthology is the project of Dr. Deen Dayal, a novelist, playwright, co-author of grammar book for secondary schools in India, editor of the English India-based newspaper Education Jagat, and chairman of the Literati Cosmos Society, and author of the plays "Hamari Bhi Suniye" and "Tezab ki Tarpan."

"The book is a harsh whip against the orthodox dogmas that make the lives of dark or black-skinned people hell and is a healing balm to restore their stamina in the fight against people who deprive them of their rights," he writes. "It is an effort to strike at the root of superstitions and prejudice. Worth is to be based on one’s quality, talent, and hard work, not on skin colour."

Photo courtesy of GettyImages


Saturday, June 23, 2018

"Out of Love For Every Living Thing"

Saturday Stories 
June 23, 2018

bettyshine

I

"You like dogs!" a friend remarked some weeks back when he saw me calling out and fondling every stray dog we encountered.

"I like them better than people sometimes," I said half-jokingly. "Dogs are loyal, they don't gossip, they are not after your money, and they are good judges of character."

I have always loved animals. My first dog as a young boy was named Hutch. (My cousins, who would sometimes visit during the weekends, had a dog named Starsky.)

I love horses with an equal passion. There is a place here in Cebu called Papa Kit's where I've gone to ride a couple of times. I remember my very first time – at the Boom Na Boom carnival in Manila when I was teenager. I asked the handler for the biggest: a white stallion like in those White Castle whiskey commercials, and for him to let go of the reins and let me ride on my own.

It felt so natural. But it was an odd feeling, like a combination of being excited and being sad at the same time. It's like missing someone but you can't remember who they are anymore. Weird.

II

I was touched by the story of a horse named Samson when I read A Free Spirit: Gives You The Right To Make Choices, by Betty Shine, the famous healer. Samson was dying for no apparent reason. He was  deteriorating but the vet couldn't find anything wrong.

She began by communicating with the horse. "Animals do not understand our language, and for communication to improve we must learn to improve our telepathic abilities," she writes. "Telepathy is simply an extension of intuition, that gut feeling which every one has experienced." 

What Samson told her all proved to be true. The horse was being mistreated and beaten by the hired hand. The perpetrator confessed and was fired. Samson was transferred to a different stable to be away from the negative energies of that place. And Samson's almost instantaneous recovery amazed them all.

Betty Shine has been born with immense psychic gifts, yet she also made her mark in the "ordinary" physical world. She has gained international renown as a bestselling author and as a newspaper columnist. She was a vitamin and mineral therapist, a licensed hypnotherapist – and a classically trained opera singer.

Yet her greatest gift was her ability to heal and to communicate with the nonphysical and all living things. A lot of people had asked for her help in communicating with their departed loved ones or exorcising negative entities, yet she gravitated towards the healing of animals and of the planet because she has always loved animals and nature since she was a child.

"If you are capable of compassion, then there is no reason why you should not be able to heal," she writes in "Healing is a natural ability, born out of love for every living thing."

III

I've always believed that animals have souls. That's why I cried and laughed and cried when I watched A Dog's Purpose just last week when a friend gave me a BlueRay copy.

It is about a golden retriever named Bailey who died in the sixties. Then he came back as a German Shepherd named Ellie. Then as a Welsh corgi named Tino. Then as a Saint Bernard named Waffles.

But Waffles was dumped by his owner, and he didn't want to go back either. So he walked and walked, anywhere his four feet would take him. 

One day, he found himself in a place where all the scents were tantalizingly familiar.

Some things, even across lifetimes, can never be forgotten.

Photo courtesy of SpiritualScienceMuseum.org

Saturday, June 16, 2018

When We Come Back From The Dead

Saturday Stories
June 16, 2018

Image result for "Transformed By The Light: The Powerful Effect of Near-Death Experiences On People's Lives" by Dr. Melvin Morse

Olaf Sunden was fourteen years old when he died. It was a simple tonsillectomy. But in those days, patients were given a whiff of ether as anesthetic – and his heart stopped.

The boy knew he was dead. He felt so happy and free. There was no pain. He lost interest in the things he was leaving behind. Death is insignificant next to the incomparable beauty that surrounded him.

Then he saw The Light. At that moment, he understood what the greatest scientists in history have been trying to find despite the limits of our finite physical brains.

But he was told to go back – it was not his time yet. The doctors were shocked that he revived after they pronounced him dead, and they even forgot to take his tonsils out.

Olaf became an honors student after that experience, and even after being told by his teachers that he had learning disabilities. His amazing increase of intelligence made him one of the leading engineers in the R&D field, and he now holds over a hundred chemical patents.

This is my first story on near-death experiences since I wrote "What Happens At The Hour of Our Death," which I've designed to be the definitive article about NDEs.

I made a point-by-point analysis why they are not drug-induced hallucinations or otherwise caused by the usual alibis by debunkers. I've also come to accept that there will always be people who'll diminish anything that is beyond what they are capable of being open about.

The first story was published on February 8, 2009 in The Philippine Star, retitled "Experiencing Life After Life," one of the weekly winners of the My Favorite Book contest sponsored by National Bookstore. My featured book was the landmark Life After Life by Dr. Raymond Moody, the pioneer of the modern scientific study of NDEs. It is now part of my first book, The Way To Inner Peace, published by Amazon Kindle.

This new blog story is inspired by Transformed By The Light: The Powerful Effect of Near-Death Experiences On People's Lives by Dr. Melvin Morse and Paul Perry, authors of Closer To The Light: Learning From The Near-Death Experiences of Children which is an integral part of the first story.

A person who comes back from the dead is never the same again. He becomes more compassionate toward his fellowmen. It is interesting to note the contrast with those who almost died without an NDE: nothing changed in their life.

Some of the core elements of a real near-death experience are the sense of unexplainable peace, the knowing of being dead, the reluctance to return, moving through a tunnel and into the light, and meeting a Being of pure radiance. The encounter with this Light is what transforms a person forever.

Dr. Morse and his groundbreaking Seattle Study, the world's most comprehensive ongoing research on NDEs today, has broken more grounds with their new Transformations Study – about what happens to those who had near-death experiences. This new book is so precise, down to the last detail, of the many safeguards they put in place to get the most accurate findings.

The results are incredible and absolutely defies coincidences. People who had NDEs, regardless of age, race, culture, religious beliefs and socio-economic background, have lost all fear of death, they value life even more, they have gotten more intelligent – and they have become psychic.

A young woman named Sandy committed suicide because of family problems she felt she couldn't bear anymore. She got her aunt's prescriptions pills and took them all.

She saw the bright light. "Why are you doing this?" it asked with infinite love and total lack of judgment. "How could you give back the greatest gift I have given you? You should go back and a find a place where you will feel more comfortable so you can learn more about me."

Since then, she began to see or dream what would happen the following day. One night, she dreamed of her uncle's death. He was in perfect health. But the next day, he died from a sudden heart attack.

People who had NDEs all say they cannot find the words to fully describe what they have seen and how they have felt. The most poignant recollections don't even come close to the real thing.

A woman named Jan died when she drowned when she was ten. What happened next was so vivid that she still has crystal-clear memories of it even after thirty-five years:

"I went through a tunnel or something like it that wasn't very long," she says. "There was a beautiful light on the other side, so beautiful that I didn't want to leave. All around was a garden where the plants were all bright. In the light I could see a figure that I know was God. I wanted to stay with him but I didn't. Someone pulled me out of the water and pumped my lungs."

Photo courtesy of Amazon.com

Saturday, June 09, 2018

Finding Your Own Fulfillment

Saturday Stories
June 9, 2018

Image result for the way of the bull leo buscaglia

The song "The One I Love" by Mike McClellan is playing as I write this. It's perfect because it says what I want to say.

"I don't care for parties and I like the quiet life, and I've never felt at ease in a crowd..."

I think the most authentic people in the world are those who have embraced who they are, and they stay true to themselves in a world full of plastic.

These thoughts came to me as I re-read Leo Buscaglia's The Way of The Bull, the story of his own spiritual journey. His title was inspired by "10 Bulls," the classic Zen treatise by the Zen Master Kakuan during the twelfth century.

I'm happy to know that I wasn't the only one who had questioned the things we have been conditioned to believe. And I find it very inspiring that someone far wiser than I had also dared to listen to his own heart.

"I began to believe in my own senses, to trust my own mind," says Leo. "It soon became painfully obvious that much of what I had been taught had served as the greatest deterrent to joy and finding myself, and had led me rather into my greatest  fears, disappointments, confusions and pain."

Our society expects us to have a lot of money and material wealth to be considered successful. I think that dreams of a better life are all fine, but if we identify ourselves purely with external things, then there will always be a sense of something missing even if we gain a lot.

"I began to wonder: If man is his 'things,' what happens to him when he loses them or they are taken away from him?"

We have been taught that we are worthy only if we achieve goals. I think this is also fine by itself, but sometimes we become blind to everything else. Sometimes, when we have hit the mark, we realize too late that we have also lost something in our life that we can never replace.

"Time and experience revealed to me that life was a trip, not a goal," says Leo. "I had to question: If life is a continuing trip, does it matter if one ever 'gets' anywhere?"

Buscaglia shares his travels throughout Asia. I love the story of the bells of the Himalayas, but of course my favorite was when he went to Japan and stayed in a Buddhist temple.

"For Zen, nothing is of greater value that the Moment," the abbot tells him. "Life is now. Yesterday is past and gone and therefore unreal, only real in its effects on the moment. The future is not real, and possibly will never be more simply a dream. This leaves simply the Now, the Moment, as reality. Yet so many people live only under the shadow of the successes or mistakes of the past or the possibilities and hopes of the future. They do not seem to realize that when they deal with these worlds of the unreal, they are missing the moments, the accumulation of which makes a life. Life, then, becomes a series of moments, either lived or lost. Since moments pass, as time, there is soon nothing left and life is over, leaving some poor unfortunate souls having never lived at all."

The One I Love 
Mike McClellan


Photo courtesy of Audible.com


Saturday, June 02, 2018

There Is No Death

Saturday Stories 
June 2, 2018


The man reached into the coffin as I stood beside him. He pried the rosary from the cold, stiff hands of the corpse. It was fascinating to watch.

We were at a funeral in Manila years ago. The deceased was the aunt of a friend. Somebody had asked the morticians to wrap the rosary on her hands.

The elders had protested. They said it was bad luck. It may sound superstitious, but I don't scoff at traditions because I know the power of belief.

But even the relatives were afraid. I wasn't, but I also wasn't related. I just stood beside the only man in that room who could have done it.

I think of that scene as symbolic of people's fear of death. It is human nature to fear the unknown, and death is the ultimate mystery. Everybody wants to go to heaven – but nobody wants to die.

My concept of death has evolved in my current lifetime. I have my own personal reasons why I've lost the fear of death long ago. If we can just be open to the idea than we more than our physical bodies, that would be a big shift in our consciousness.

I've read Talking To Heaven: A Medium's Message of Life After Death by the clairvoyant and spirit medium James Van Praagh twice since I found it (or it found me) two weeks ago. There are just some things you know to be true, and while the intellect may not be able to explain it, your soul knows.

James was still a young boy when he discovered that he can sense things that other people cannot. Even before he could understand these gifts, he told his teacher not to worry that her son had met an accident because he'll be alright. Moments later, the teacher has been summoned by the principal to inform her of the news – which happened at the precise moment James told her it did.

One of my favorite stories is with a man named Larry. As they talked, the spirit of his wife Kay kept validating her presence with things only they knew, like when they went up the Eiffel Tower. She said it was one of the happiest days of her life.

"It was one of the happiest days of my life too," said Larry, beginning to cry. "That was how we spent the first day of our honeymoon."

"Kay says the rest of your life was a honeymoon," said James. "She will always be with you."

Then he relayed another message: "She says that she wants you to go home and play her a love song on the piano."

"Boy, that's Kay, all right," smiled Larry. "She doesn't know when to stop."

And James told him: "She never will."

Photo courtesy of NewAgeWinkel.nl