Thy Will be Done

Luis has come back to his favorite writing spot: the chair - next to the window which overlooks the big pine tree across the street.  This is day three that Luis has attempted to write but the page continued to be blank.

“Today is the day”.   Luis muttered.

He is experiencing writer’s block.  The first writer’s block that he has suffered since a short story he has written about a boy and his dog was  published in the local paper.

“Now that I am published.  This should be easier,  right?”  He’s trying to convince himself that this statement is true.

Of course - he knows that is a lie.    Being published - does not make writing easier. 

“Maybe I should call on to my muse.”  

He took the brass singing bowl that lies on the desk next to where he sat.  He closed his eyes.  He touched the wooden stick on the metal bowl and began to spin the stick around the bowl.   The bowl began to sing.  

Luis prayed, “Come my muse,  I need inspiration.   What should I write?”

Luis stopped spinning the stick - and the bowl went silent.  He then grabbed the pen and held it next to the paper.   He stared at the pen,  he held his breath.   He is trying to will the words to come out from the ink of his pen.

NOTHING.

Frustrated.  Luis stood up.  Slammed the pen on the white sheet of paper. 

Luis yelled,  “Why - Why - Gods of Writing?   What have I done for you to abandon me?”

“Why did I ever think I will ever be able to write brilliant pieces?”  He muttered to himself.

“I give up.   I’m not a writer.”

And this is the truth.  At this moment - Luis is not a writer.  He is just another guy - experiencing the  pain from being creatively impotent and detached from his divine inspiration.  

Luis stared at the blank page.  Once again,  he picked up the pen and started writing:

I surrender.  Thy will be done.

Then - like magic,  the spark of inspiration came and Luis continued to write.   

Like the many gifts of the divine - inspiration is not a slave that comes when we will it.  No amount of previous success will assure that it will come back.  No rituals and prayers will assure the answer from the gods of creativity.  And when we rage on for being disappointed  for being deprived of the  gifts we think we are entitled to - we may actually have done nothing but scare the gifts from coming our away.

For the divine inspiration comes - not when we call.  It comes when we feel defeated and finally surrender and acknowledge its power over us and say:

“Thy will be done and not mine”

It Isn't About You

Dear Thirty Year Old Me,

We have a big ego.  We attach our success and failure to everything that we do and to the things that we have accomplished and failed in.

This has caused us to drive for more success but this has also caused us to avoid failure - which means risk isn't really something that we like facing head on.

Here's the thing - what if everything that we accomplish and everything that we failed in - really isn't about us?   What if we were not the central character in the stories of our lives?   What if our actions cause the stories to develop but if we succeeded or failed --- it doesn't really make us successful and it also doesn't make it a failure?

I have to pose this question because in the recent months,  I've come to realize that a lot of my heartaches in life is caused by my attachment to the story in my head that everything that happens in my life is something that I caused.  For some events - this may be a healthy mindset ---- being proud of losing ten pounds because of the discipline we exercised in avoiding sugar in our diet.   But largely - this mindset - is not helpful.   It can start from:   My dogs doing a proper sit when I use the command.   It's our dog's ability being displayed here - so we can't take the credit for it.   It can be as ridiculous as thinking that it didn't rain today when we are wearing white pants - because we asked the Universe for it.

This mindset is actually perpetuated by a lot of our friends and family praising us for things that if you think about it really isn't because of our skill.   For example - getting into a scholarship in the Ateneo was not because we were smart.   It really was because the University's Admission and Aid - looked through a checklist of qualifications for our application and noted that we meet the criteria - which included submitting an income document from Papa - which said he earned a really small income for the year we were applying for the scholarship.   Therefore - we fit the criteria for someone who should be considered for financial aid.

Why am I bringing this up?  How does a mindset of not attaching ourselves to the outcome become helpful in our lives?   You see - when we call ourselves successful or we call ourselves a failure based on the outcomes of our actions --- that label of successful or failure gives a lot of pressure on us to always want to be the successful person.   This actually has been part of the reason why we tend not to do awesome things we are not good at doing because we don't want to be the failure.   Here's the thing --- what if we just say that every result we get from an action that we take is just feedback - and that feedback will allow us to think of the next action to take?  That result does not define you.  It just provides you information so you can choose how to live your life after that result.

Note --- It took me more than a month to complete this because - the truth is - I was not ready to hear the advice that I'm writing.   I wanted this article to be awesome - so that I can feel awesome.   But hey - I decided - that instead of wanting this to be awesome --- maybe I just need to have it done --- regardless of the outcome.

With Much Love
The Forty Year Old You

That Thing Called Compassion

Dear Thirty Year Old Me,

It had been a month since I attended the facilitator's training for TeamUp.  With this training,   I have intentions of taking steps closer to living a mindful life and also helping others who choose to live a mindful life.  Note that when I started my mindfulness journey - compassion was not in my mind as a result of what I was doing. but as I went deeper into my mindfulness practice; it just became front and center of some of my practice.  So today - I'd like to talk about it and what I think about compassion.

During the TeamUp training,  I actually had - what Brene Brown called a breakdown/spiritual awakening.  It was the third day of training and I just found myself uncontrollably sobbing.   Finally,  I felt that I just had to share with everyone what I was feeling:

"I'm having a breakdown all by myself here - that I felt I just needed to share what I'm going through.  I am an openly gay man and I have experienced coming out years ago.   They say that someone gay can only come out once in his/her lifetime.  It's like being born - you can only be born once in a lifetime.  I remember that coming out experience and as much as I was afraid of expressing to the world that I was gay for fear of being rejected,  I would say that it was also a beautiful experience because it allowed me to release all of those bottled up feelings and ideas prior to coming out.

"Today - I feel that once again - I'm going through a coming out process.  This time,  it's no longer about my sexuality.   When I asked to speak to my voice of compassion during the Big Mind exercise,  I've come to realize that for so long,  I have tried to fit in to what I thought was how I should be.   The problem is - fitting in meant that I had to bottle up my big personality.   Today - I've realized that this big personality of mine wants to come out and be seen.   It is no longer taking the crap from my ego - and it just wants to proclaim it's bigness to all of you."

After saying that,  I felt so expanded.  It was as if I have emptied myself out and is actually experiencing love from the Universe pouring into the emptied vessel of my soul.

So what does this experience have anything to do with compassion?    

In response to what I have shared,  a woman named Laura gave me feedback and shared some of her own thoughts on the coming out process.

"She said - my Darling - I love you dearly and now I know why.   Having said that - I actually want to share with you what my Mom told me during my coming out process.   She said, 'Coming out is a horrible term to use for what you are going through.  Coming out somehow denotes being found out.   Revealing to the world a secret - or coming out of hiding.   I really think that when someone accepts who they really are in their sexuality,   instead of coming out,  one actually comes into herself/himself.'   So my Darling - my friend - I really think that what I will tell you now will resonate with you because you may find this as the truth.   What you are going through is that you have deeply come into yourself and recognized that part of you that you are ready to share with the whole world.   And this is a beautiful experience that I am so grateful to have experienced."

That feedback blew me away.   She is right - what I have actually been experiencing is this deep connection with that part of myself that until then - I have pushed away and denied.   And when I felt that compassion - I realized that instead of pushing away that part of me - and suffering through it - by being disconnected from it,   what will be most helpful for my growth is to embrace it.

Compassion - when you look it up in the web for it's definition is a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for someone who experiences sorrow.   It is a also a feeling that comes with a strong feeling to alleviate that suffering. Compassion comes with the need to take action - even if that action comes with lending an ear towards someone else when they need to express what they are going through.   It comes from that deep truth that at the end of the day,  we're all one - with our lives.   We are connected to each other and therefore another person's suffering and cares in this life --- we share in that suffering and cares as well.   But one thing that I have come to realize is that compassion - like love - starts with oneself.

At the end of that training for TeamUp,  we had to share what we learned during those three days.   This is what I shared:

"I learned about compassion.  I also learned how we are connected to one another.   I realized that during those moments when I encounter people I don't like,  or I feel contraction towards my interaction with another person or his/her behavior,  more often than not - how I feel is a reflection of how I feel about parts of me that I don't like and have actually disowned."

So my dear friend,  I ask of you.   Start reflecting upon how you feel about yourself - by looking at how you feel about others.   Before you embark on trying to fix the world --- it is best to start looking at yourself and the things that need to be fixed.  Is there some part of you that you have disowned or have buried into oblivion because you didn't like it?   Talk to that part of you and deal with it with love.   Know that the part of you that you have denied is suffering - for acknowledgment.

Only when you have reconciled everything with love - and compassion - about yourself - can you truly start engaging with other people with deep love and compassion.

I am rambling - I am trying to express concepts now that I am struggling to express in the past month.   But alas - I don't feel that I am successful.  So I will stop for now.  But know this --- my promise in my life - and hopefully as you read this - you can start early.  I promise to feel love deep within us.  Love for who we are - so we can be beacons of love for the world around us.

With much Love,

The Forty Year Old you

What Happened?

Dear 30 Year Old Me,

Today - I decided to revisit this blog.  I laughed at the articles I wrote to you - but all in all I was actually impressed with the writing.  It was very personal and I realized that as much as I really wanted to help other people with the blog posts that I wrote,  I actually found that it helped me more than it helped others.  In fact I don't even know if other people read this blog.

So I read the posts from the beginning.  I enjoyed reading them and I don't know why - but I also learned from those ideas - even if I know I wrote them.

Then the blog posts stopped - and the weird thing is that the last blog post was written on December 22, 2015.   Today is December 22, 2016 - so it's exactly a year from the last time that I wrote anything for this blog.

Here's the thing - when I read the last letter - I realized that there was a lot of excitement and hope in that letter.  I was talking about my intention to publish a self-help blog which comes from conversations that I have with myself.   Those were really powerful pieces - and after reading the last letter that I had for you - I dug through my archives and wanted to see why I never really published those conversations.

Then - as I read the unpublished articles - I realized why I stopped writing them.   Those articles were scary.   They remind me of the Gremlins that I just read about from the books "The Gift of Imperfection"  and "Daring Greatly"  by my favorite author at the moment: Brene Brown.   When I wrote those articles - I have not even read any of Brene's work --- and the transcript of those conversations with the Gremlins were buried in my subconscious - and I think it's fortuitous for me to find them now that I just finished reading "Daring Greatly".

You see - there's a lot of shame that I bared in those transcripts.   I guess - you can say that frightened myself too much - that's why I never published them.   They were the manifestations of the "You're not Good Enough" and the "Who Do you think You are?" gremlins that Brene referred to.

But today - I have resolved - I will publish them and it may not be the best thing to do.   But I do know that I want to publish them because it helps me get through the fears that I have buried wiht regards to the topics I actually talked about.  To be honest - I won't call it bravery that I'm publishing it because I know that nobody reads these blogs --- at least nobody that I know.

So my dear young self --- I hope you're still there reading my letters.   I hope that you didn't grow tired of waiting.  I'm back and I do hope to correspond with you a lot more regularly from now on.

With much Love,

Your Forty Year Old Self