Powers of Your Inner Mind

Powers of Your Inner Mind

By Jonathan Aquino

Saturday Stories

July 27, 2019

I

My first time to talk to Jaime Licauco was through text. That was many years ago when I was still in Manila and my radio could reach the station. Licauco is a bestselling author and the leading parapsychologist and paranormal researcher in the Philippines. It was on his Sunday night program Inner Mind On Radio with the Superman theme as the intro. His co-anchor during that time, the late hypnotherapist Frances Gloria, read my message.

II

I asked him if it is possible to be vulnerable to witchcraft if you don't believe in it. He said you can dismiss weak spells, but can be very dangerous when you deal with powerful black magic. That was so wise and nice of him. Since then, he and his next cohost Charmaine Cruz have read my texts and answered my questions through the years. I haven't met him in person, but I added him on Facebook and he was nice enough to accept. I just got the notification yesterday that it was his birthday. 

III  

All this came to mind as I recently found a ebook copy and re-read his classic "Exploring The Powers of Your Inner Mind," first published in 1986, and composed mostly of his articles from his first Inner Mind column at the Times Journal. Then in 1987, Inner Mind began to be published at the Philippine Daily Inquirer. His Inner Mind On Radio show first aired on June 1992 at DZMM, the AM station of ABS-CBN.  

IV

His first guest was Lucresia Kasilag, National Artist For Music, who also wrote the book's foreword. Coming full circle, my favorite story about Jimmy Licauco is about witchcraft. He was talking to a friend who said that it's not real. So Jimmy played a psychological game. He said, "Very well, why don't we conduct an experiment? I have a friend who is a good mangkukulam (witch). I'll ask him to get your stomach bloated for one day..." But his friend vehemently protested – "Of course not! Don't let him do anything to me!" 

Photo courtesy of Goodreads

Myth Universe

Myth Universe

By Jonathan Aquino

Saturday Stories

July 20, 2019

I

The Big Bang came about fourteen billion years ago. The first living beings were Gaia the Mother Earth and Ouranos the Father Heaven. Then came the Titans, then the gods. The Titans Cronus and Rhea gave birth to Zeus, who would become the most powerful of all gods. Zeus would later rebel against them, and the wise Titan Prometheus would side with him. When humans were created, Prometheus give them fire. 

II

This made Zeus angry, and he chained Prometheus on the top of a mountain in the Caucasus, the mountain range in what is now Eastern Europe. It was partly punishment, but there is also a secret agenda. There was a prophecy that one of his sons would rise against him, and he wants Prometheus to tell him who is the mother because he had so many children. Prometheus never revealed it despite the extreme torture of his being eaten alive by an eagle everyday because he can't die. Later on, one of Zeus's sons, Hercules, would set him free. 

III

There are so many stories in Edith Hamilton's 1940 classic "Mythology," where she collected many of the stories in Greek, Roman and Norse myth. The greatest demigods are all there – Hercules, Theseus, Achilles, Odysseus, Aeneas, the wonder twins Castor and Pollux and more. A whole chapter is for famous love stories, like about Orpheus and Eurydice where he went to Hades to get her back, but on the way home, he looked back at her though he wasn't supposed to, and she was teleported back to hell. There is also the tragic affair of Pyramus and Thisbe, where Pyramus thought Thisbe was dead so he killed himself, but Thisbe was alive, and when she saw Pyramus dead, she also killed herself.  

IV

And there is Cupid and Psyche, a story from the second century Latin writer Apuleius. Psyche was a beautiful young mortal girl, and the God of Love, Cupid a.k.a Eros, fell in love with her. They married, with the condition that she never look at him. So of course she did, and he left. She looked for him, finally confronting his mother, Venus, a.k.a. Aphrodite. What followed next was a real Filipino soap opera, with the wicked stepmother maltreating the martyred heroine. But it has a happy ending, and they all lived happily ever after on Mount Olympus.     

Photo courtesy of Kobo

Doctor Strange Episode One

Doctor Strange Episode One

By Jonathan Aquino

Saturday Stories

July 13, 2019

I

If I were to become a Sorcerer Supreme like Doctor Strange, it would take me many years of study and practice. Fast forward, I could invoke spells and manipulate energy, but I won't have the Sling Ring so I can't teleport. But that's okay because what I like best about his powers is the ability to project out of the body at will at anytime.

II

The origin story of Doctor Strange is the same in the comics as in the movie. Stephen Strange was a great surgeon, but he was a jerk. One day, he got into an accident which destroyed his hands. He then searched the world for a cure, and ended up in Tibet. There he met the Ancient One, the mysterious monk who taught him the mystic arts.

III

He had spent his last money to get there. It was all or nothing – either he finds a cure or die. Then, in the Himalayan mountains, he got caught in the middle of a snowstorm, and he thought it was the end, when he saw, in the distance, the monastery appeared, as if by magic.

IV

He also met the Ancient One's apprentice, Mordo. In the comics, first published on July 1963 and created by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee, Mordo was his arch enemy from the beginning. In the MCU film, Mordo was first his friend who helped him train, and even shared with him the meaning of Shamballa – the WiFi password. But in the sequel in 2022, Mordo would turn to the Dark Side.

Photo courtesy of Marvel

Meeting A Messiah

Meeting A Messiah
By Jonathan Aquino

Saturday Stories

July 6, 2019

I

Richard Bach once wrote, "Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you're alive, it isn't." The aviator and author Richard Bach is one of my favorite people in history, along with Mitch Albom and Og Mandino and Paulo Coelho, because his uses his talent to share inspiration to the world. In personal ways, his novels "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" and "One" and "The Bridge Across Forever" and "Illusions: The Adventures of A Reluctant Messiah" are all special to me. People like him, those who lift his fellowmen, are one of the many reasons why life is beautiful and worth living.

II

After "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" was published and became a phenomenal bestseller in 1970, everybody was asking Richard what he'll write next, but he had no idea. He was a pilot, and he would often go out to small towns and give rides in his Fleet biplane, an open cockpit plane with a pair of wings one on top of the other. Then he met another pilot, also giving rides and flying a white and gold Travel Air 4000 biplane. His name was Donald Shimoda. He had black hair, but I've read the book many times and I can only see Sean Connery and nobody else as Donald Shimoda – who is also the Messiah.

III

As the Messiah, Donald has godlike powers, but it didn't affect him. He had been an auto mechanic, and people from all walks of life had come and gathered in his shop to seek healing and salvation. Donald was born on Earth, and he learned the things we all learn in life, but he also remember the things he learned from other lives, and people respond to that. He went to the countryside but the crowds followed him, so he began to teach. "Within each of us lies the power of our consent to health and to sickness, to riches and to poverty, to freedom and to slavery," he said. "It is we who control these, and not another."

IV

I think that any message about self-empowerment has to be heard. If I were a teacher of men, I would remind them that we have more control over our lives than we think, and that we alone are responsible for the circumstances of our lives – lessons that I also needed to remind myself from time to time. Donald has given Richard the "Messiah's Handbook: Reminders For The Advanced Soul," where the opening quotes comes from. "The simplest questions are the most profound," it also says. "Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while, and watch your answers change."

Photo courtesy of eBay