CHANGE

So many of us were touched by the sight of Barack Obama addressing a crowd of 84,000.  He was accepting the Democratic nomination for the presidency.  It was an awesome sight: 84,000 people passionate for CHANGE.  Wouldn’t that be something to see here?

For once I was envious of the American people—to have the possibility of a leader who was inspiring them to tears—aaahhhh, I want that so badly I can taste it!!  And then, for Obama as a candidate, to have 84,000 people who care enough to show up and listen to him, show their support and desire for true change.  That must be something. 

It made me green with envy to hear him tackling issues and outlining his solutions and to realize how far behind we are because we’re not even at a point where we can talk about these things.  We’re in the space of possibility and clawing our way forward, trying to awaken people still from their cynicism and apathy.  In America, people care and they stand up to be heard and they fight for what they think is right.

In our country the terrain is quite different. I still stumble across people who wear their apathy with pride. “I am apathetic,” they announce, as if that were a badge of intellect or breeding, and then in the same breath say that they are Christian. Am I the only one who sees the glaring dissonance in that picture?  Christ, himself, cared and brought change. He died for it.  It pains me daily to see how people can live so contentedly in that dissonance.

Since I began this journey towards truth and integrity, I have seriously started falling away from friends, not because we’ve fought but perhaps because they feel I am not who I used to be.  I can almost feel them flinch when they open their mailboxes and see a message from me, afraid of what I may be asking them to do.  And they are right. I care.  It is in my blood. And I am doing my best to make a difference. Though I wish we could all take that road together, we haven’t. But I cannot turn back.  I cannot put the eye mask on and feign darkness when the light outside is glaringly bright.  Once you are awake, you simply cannot go back to sleep and I have had my heart broken thinking that people I know and love will naturally see how important it is for all of us to live the truth—and all that means.  Living the truth isn’t just about truth-telling but moving consciously towards oneness with Divine Will in everything we do.

No, it is not an easy path and I don’t claim to be the expert.  Like everyone else, I am a student on this path. In my zeal to be the change I want to see in the world, I have risked and lost friendships, because I could not be the same person.  But I have come to that point in my biography where I make a stand everyday and so I see these changes as necessary deaths.  I can no longer sit and let things be.  When I see dissonance and see how it can potentially hurt everyone around it, I speak up.  At least I say my piece and then leave people free to act upon it or ignore me. But my days of standing nowhere are over.

During our PAGASA workshops, this sentiment always comes up: “I want to see change in this country, maybe not in my lifetime but….” And I cannot but counter it with my own burning desire to see it in my lifetime.  I insist on it.  In the course of several exchanges another phrase comes up: “In my own little way….” And it grates.  We all need to stand in confidence as human beings that we are made in the image and likeness of God and fly with that.  No, this is not Messianic, not if we understand it fully.  In our very nature is our capacity to birth great things – things that transform the world.  But if we limit ourselves already in our thinking that our ways are little, then that is what they will be.  Our thoughts do create our realities.  You cannot say you are Christian and then in the same breath make yourself so small and powerless in your own eyes, for I am sure that is not how you were created.  That is not in His image or likeness. 

CHANGE, the kind the American people are birthing, is in our hands. All we need to do is accept the challenge in full consciousness and commitment, despite the hardship it will bring because change necessitates death—of our old beliefs, friendships, relationships, habits.  Only through death can new life enter and that is what our country needs—Filipinos who are willing to die – not physically anymore –but inside them and in the most difficult and hard to reach places, so that new impulses of true change can emerge. 

The days of deluding ourselves into believing that there are necessary evils toward the place of ultimate good are long gone.  No, you are not doing a good deed if you decide to have a fixer process your papers because you figure she’s probably a mother and could use the money.  No, you are not providing livelihood at least, even if you know that your business is illegal or detrimental to the health of humanity and the world.  You are not being a paragon of integrity if you know that what you are bringing into society is not good for it!  It is time to act on the things you know deep in your very being are true. The beginning of authentic change starts right at the point where you say, “No more excuses” and take the road that has long been waiting for the blessing of your determined footprints.  It is not the high road.  It is simply the one that will bring you to your highest space—the space you were born to claim. It is time.

Change does not happen automatically.  Humanity moves to create it.  America is at a turning point in its history—checkered, imperfect, materialistic, dissonant as it is—because its people have an opinion and take a stand despite their differences.  They demand things of their leaders. They insist on being heard.  They will not be made weak and they refuse to be unheard. 

We can get there, too, once we realize that it is in our hands.  A person is not more powerful because he has more money or holds office in government.  True power lies in an authentic ability to be the change we want to see, no matter our station in life.  We hold that change in us, but now we have to buckle down and get to work, clean out the cobwebs of our minds and activate our sleeping limbs towards action.  Every act we put out there towards change is vital.  No one is little.  We will see it in our lifetime if we want to, if we choose to.  We can stand before an inspiring leader of moral integrity if we make space in our hearts and in society for one to step up. We can only do that if we become the change.  We need to become it and live it, then we can demand it and create a strong support base for effective, moral leaders to take their place at last.

In our lifetime we are constantly and repeatedly called to act on something that we know in our hearts to be vital, not just for us, but towards something greater than us, but we often ignore that call because it means giving up so much and entering a largely unknown terrain.  It is terrifying.  But not going there time after time also creates a world of darkness and we must realize that each time we ignore that call, we are laying one more dense brick on that muddy structure, thereby allowing more fear and horror to blossom in the world.

Change will come wholesale if individuals stand up and take their rightful place in it. There are workshops about inner change, self-help books galore, therapies, life coaches, all kinds of modalities you can imagine, but none of that will do anything if the individual has not made the stand to take up everything he has learned and move from the realm of ideas to the realm of vision in action.  We lament that this or that workshop didn’t work or wasn’t effective enough, but we hardly ask ourselves if we even made an effort to use what we learned in the world and made it our own—something relevant, living, vibrant and transformative.  No one can create change for you.  Only you can do it.  Only you will have the strength to make it work.  Only you can wake up from the inner laziness and fear that keeps you from marching forward and claiming the country you want and deserve.

CHANGE is in your hands.  Imagine the possibilities.  The time for lamenting what could be is gone.  The time for living so comfortably in constant defeat is done. Our time is the time of CREATING change.  Are we going to rise to that call at last or continue shedding tears at the sight of Obama and the awesome show of commitment to change the American people are showing the world?

The days of wearing your apathy with pride are over.  We don’t have to agree on everything and unite on one generic image of nationhood.  But we can agree to birth a Philippines of moral integrity and be that very change we will see in our lifetime.  If we enliven the power that is already in us and stop saying, “in my own little way” or “probably not in this lifetime”, we can.

Change is ours to create.  It is ours.

KNOWLEDGE

I pledge never to turn my back on it.  There are many people I've come to admire through my PAGASA work because they are no longer young, are quite accomplished, but who come to us not just impart wisdom, but truly listen to what everyone has to say with openness, respect, even awe and gratitude. We've met PhDs who come because they want to learn more, not because they think they are the sole bearers of knowledge.  What a contrast to people who've spent so many years in school but can't seem to hold their lives together because their education, instead of setting them freer in the world, has trapped them in outdated concepts and ideas of what it means to be human--if they even took that up.

I want to grow old always seeking--and never thinking that I don't need to know more or worse, that I know it all.Horrors. I want to grow more open in my old age and more willing to listen to others and still be excited about learning something new, no matter what I've been through, seen and heard in my lifetime.

It's healthy to strive to keep learning, the older we get.There is nothing more admirable than seeing someone age so beautifully and so well, not fighting time with bad behavior and terrible fashion choices, but riding its passage with grace and an ever-widening openness to what the changing world has to offer. I would hate to grow old and so set in my ways that nothing new could move me. I want to be able to excitedly shout, HEY!, to a great new idea fluttering into my still changing brain from someone young and still coming into being.  I want to be constantly excited about what the next generations bring without ever feeling regret or envy or the need to look like that again. I don't want to be irrelevant, please God, not that.  I want to have the energy to know more each day and the mental agility to move into something new with grace and confidence.

Learning requires openness, humility, grace, determination, discipline,  an ability to awaken oneself, receptivity and a nose that isn't sniffing invisible competition somewhere in the ether. May we all take that hunger into our twilight years, constantly challenging ourselves to take in and give, take in and give, until at last, our time is up.

PURE SEX

The phrase came to me in the context of sex without love. Pure sex. I actually think the opposite--that sex with love is pure sex.  Not even pure in the sense of "clean"which Pinoys always love to throw into the equation, but whole and unsullied; as it should be.

The question was: is it possible to have "pure sex" without love? Given my definition, no.  But in the context in which it was asked (sex without love)I would have to say, yes, it is more than possible. But the question begs: WHY?

Everyone who has had sex with someone who was not fully engaged in heart, mind and body, or who wasn't fully there himself, knows that it leads to greater hunger and desperation. But what is the quality of that hunger and what will truly satisfy it?  We search for it constantly in the realm of the physical, but it isn't there at all.  (A better lover won't do it, either.)  If only physical satisfaction is met, the hunger to experience the true essence of sex grows because what we end up feeling is what was not there that should have been. But if there is a working towards integration of one's highest self and the sexual self, then a space is created for an authentic convergence within, which to me is a necessary ingredient towards a truly full relationship with another.  Then the experience is whole and finally, truly satisfying.

Every person goes through his own battle in the often muddy and misunderstood realm of sexuality. It is a minefield we all must traverse.  But if we paid attention to our feelings, reactions, questions--in mind, body and soul--before, during and after our sexual encounters (with loved or not-so-loved partners)and we are honest with ourselves about it, so much would be revealed.  Really, I feel that the physical coming together ought to come when everything else has come together.  It is the ideal, at least, and worth striving for. 

If we truly paid attention to our authentic feelings, we would realize that the ideal path to a healthy and vibrant sexuality is often already lit but because something in us senses that it is going to be difficult, we choose to close our eyes and go back to sleep instead, afraid of what the journey demands. But what we don't realize is that at the end of all the thrashing, tripping, falling and peeling of painful layers, is that person who is able to integrate his sexuality and spirituality and have fantastic sex in the context of love at last. Pure sex. And after that, the turmoil subsides and new, deeper questions arise that encompass the greater world at last.  But to get there means swimming in the uncharted waters of our soul and spiritual life and stepping up, with full courage, to what that means.

Sex is not just physical. I believe that the physical body is only the portal, so the work of understanding sex is elsewhere in and around us: in our thoughts, soul and spiritual lives, in the world and in the same elements in our partners.

It is a lifetime of work, of that I am convinced, but being conscious of our spirtuality and sexuality, first as individuals, and then in the context of true partnerships, I am hopeful we will come to experience pure sex as the physical expression of love between two (striving to be)integrated human beings who have finally learned that sexuality is a fine and divine expression of their spirituality.