32nd Heartbeat

RANDOM THOUGHTS part two

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” (Quoted from Albert Einstein,German born American Physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921. 1879-1955)

ON SANITY

August 24, 2005. 2nd week of our Clinical Pastoral Education Program. I was assigned at the Psychiatric Ward of Philippine General Hospital. I met a lot of individuals suffering from schizophrenia (of various sorts), manic depression, grandiose delusion, borderline personality disorder, and the likes. I happened to attend their group therapy this morning and the nurse in charge was asking them what were the lessons they’ve learned from the session…most of their answers were far from reality until somebody raised his hand and blurted out: “Hindi po ako naniniwala na may taong sira ang ulo…pero naniniwala po ako na may mga taong nasira ang kanilang pagkatao” I was dumbfounded. The statement had a huge impact on me for it was rather profound. I never expected it from a person with mental retardation. There was a parcel of truth in what he said. In my own understanding of sanity, he has urged me to go beyond and perhaps, get in touch with my own madness as well. In a world of delusion and crazy making pleasures, who is considered sane and who is considered insane?

ON PRAYER AND SOLITUDE

An excerpt from the life of Siddharta Gautama: in the town of Bodh Gaya, Siddhartha decided that he would sit under a certain fig tree as long as it would take for the answers to the problem of suffering to come. He sat there for many days, first in deep concentration to clear his mind of all distractions, then in mindfulness meditation, opening himself up to the truth. He began, they say, to recall all his previous lives, and to see everything that was going on in the entire universe. On the full moon of May, with the rising of the morning star, Siddhartha finally understood the answer to the question of suffering and became the Buddha, which means “he who is awake…”

Detaching one’s self from the world does not necessarily mean isolation or lethargy. It is actually an attempt to rediscover the things that were lost in the journey because of being too naive or worldly wise. It is more of an opportunity to relive those moments that were left unnoticed because of the endless searching for that seemingly off the beaten path even if the passionate desire for meaning and significance is just “right there” behind one’s back. A juncture where a person realizes that despite his seclusion, he is not actually alone in the universe, but he is joined by a God who does not only speak through uttered words or written revelations, but can also be felt in prayer, in the silence and solitude of one’s heart. The hidden truths of life are gradually unfolded when an individual has the capacity to find his own sacred time and sacred nook.

ON LOVING AND LOSING

Somebody texted me this bittersweet thought about love:

“Many of us believe that love is forever…that love never dies…only to be disillusioned in the end when we find our hands empty and our hearts longing…we mistakenly have looked at love as a need to be fulfilled…but LOVE is only a GIFT given to us…we should not hold it in our hands for we may never find the strength to let it go when it decides to leave…we should only embrace its warmth and glow while it lasts and then freely open our arms when it is time to say goodbye…”

Why do people fall out of love?

Some people think that love is an emotional calisthenics, an endless duel between lovers particularly on the predilection of who could give more or less affection that will eventually decide the fate of their relationship. Thus, it becomes a competition, a battlefield where the heart is chained in egocentricity because of one’s impulsive desire to make his significant other love him more than what he possibly can, and perhaps later on, inch his way radically to be at par with that capacity for loving, or worse, to surpass it, ending in a recurring manner of questioning one’s worth whenever love is measured in terms of its bulk or girth as if it is something that is being placed inside a weighing scale. To say that “I love him or her more than he or she loves me” is a baloney because it only caters the person’s self-interest, not on how love should reveal itself in all its purity and truthfulness. Real love is always understood in the perspective of freedom and altruism.

Love does not inhibit. It liberates…

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