TAKE IT OFF!

My beef about the internet is the anonymity people hide behind. You can be nameless and faceless.  Many have abused that. They are arrogant, angry, rude. I'm pretty sure that people who stand behind what they say will come from a totally different space--and it won't be negative. I choose not to publish anonymous comments on this blog because I believe we have to put our names behind our words. We need to be able to stand behind our thoughts. On the internet, revealing our identities by way of publishing our names, honors this practice of ownership. If you have something to say, be sure you can put your name on it. 

Wounded

During the last PAGASA workshop in Baguio, I was struck by an insight. First chance I got to sit alone, I pulled out my notebook and quietly sat to record the flow. The insight had to do with personal trauma. I realized that we all have to work hard so that our greatest personal wounds do not become our identity--that we recognize the trauma is not who we are. It becomes a part of us, yes, but we are so much more; the wound is but a portal into our highest possibilities. My own experiences tell me that life's most difficult challenges bring us to our next level of humanity if we are able to put the experiences in the larger context. What does the experience mean? What did it bring out of us that was never there before? I have experienced people who have turned their challenges into their identity. They are often bitter, clinging to their wounds for dear life, and unable to accept their trauma as part of their humanity.  I have come to know that the worst kind of pain can be the deepest grace in the larger scheme of things. Most people are able to achieve things they wouldn't have normally been able to after a death of someone dearest to them, because the question of their own life's purpose came to the fore. From that darkness was born their brightest purpose. I think our personal wounds are just that--vehicles that need to take us where we need to go towards our spiritual/human task. I know that it all leads to a kind of service for humanity and the world, no matter where we are. Crisis, pain, trauma--these are the things that prompt us to become active in the world from our most personal spaces, but only if we have worked through the experience and not allowed it to define us. You are not a battered wife or an ex-wife, a victim of rape or abuse--those were things that happened to you to shape you to become so much more.  To become fully human, we are plunged into the very depths of human experience so that, out of our own striving and consciousness, we can rise above it towards transformation because every authentic human transformation serves the world, especially when it is made conscious. The Christ, in his own human experience, had to plunge to the very depths, to awaken the transformative consciousness in man--to help us become what we are all meant to be. Life is not meant to be easy. It is a journey of sorrow and death, but also the triumph of resurrection and transformation. Pain is necessary for the development of compassion and love. To view our own experiences in a new light, we must stop defining ourselves by our pain and letting that be the fulcrum of our identity.  Instead, let us ask how our pain can lead us to integration towards the greater task of serving humanity.

Problem Solving

My older boy was involved in an incident with a rough classmate. He was pushed and kicked, even though that may not have been the intention. In the process of sorting out the situation, I was told that I should teach my son to fight back. One mother told me that she taught her own child to hit first before she gets hurt, with the assurance that she would sort things out for her later.  This made me very uncomfortable, though I could see where she was coming from. Of course no mother wants their child to be hurt, but I also could not bring myself to teach my son to hurt others. I told him he could defend himself by not hurting. In the PAGASA workshops, we are reminded that we cannot solve a problem with the same tools--actions, plans, mindsets--that created it. That's a big AHA moment. If your approach to life is simply on the level of your own children, it would be easy to tell them to hurt first to protect themselves. But if you're thinking beyond that and asking questions about what kind of values you want to instill in your children so that they can grow up behaving responsibly and with love towards others, fully aware that their thoughts and deeds shape the world, teaching them it's okay to hurt is not an option. Make no mistake, my child was hurt but he was also angry. I let him be angry. He expressed it many times at home, so I'm confident that this sort of bullying won't happen to him again because he will find a way through it next time, and hopefully not through hurting. On the one hand others keep telling him to fight back, on the other I've told him that he can find his own way of defense. I am hoping this tension will help him see that there are options and he can exercise them. You cannot solve problems with the same tools that created them. If we become bearers of change in the world--towards integration, peace, spiritual evolution--our options shift radically. I hope that I have armed my son with true grit and love and I trust that he will find his way without being an instrument of pain, violence and further separation.

zzzzzzzzzz.........

I woke up at 9am this morning (that hasn't happened to me in decades! I'm usually up before 7am) feeling very tired but good. We had a fantastic PAGASA workshop last Saturday and Sunday at the Regalia Tower Suites. We ended at about 10:30pm, got into the car and drove up to Baguio. We began the Baguio workshop the following day at 10am. It was another incredible workshop! After the workshop ended last night, we packed up, had a goodbye cup of coffee with the participants at the Atenara House, got back into the car and drove home. I am dazed, confused, puyat, and starving but also strangely enthusiastic. When you are doing work that resonates on so many levels--self, community, country--you know that your efforts are going towards something greater that will benefit every Filipino for generations to come, so you can put the fatigue in context and shore up energy for more work ahead. I've neglected this blog so the entries aren't exactly fresh, but I got a lot out of the workshop which I hope to be able to share in the next few days.  I need only one night more of good sleep! zzzzzzzzzzzzz......