Saturday, February 28, 2009

Spark me

"We shape the clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want."
- Tao Te Ching

It happened today.

After lying wrapped in a shiny yellow cloth high on a shelf in my apartment for more than a year, Atintya has now moved to adorn the wall of my bedroom, mounted on a slab of Philippine narra hard wood, courtesy of Noli, the owner of one of Manila's more famous art houses, Renaissance Gallery.

Everything has its time, but for Atintya to come out took much longer than I expected. I celebrated today, for this and other reasons. Who needs a reason, anyway? Life awaits my decision to celebrate any day.

Decorating my living place is important to me. I like to be surrounded by images that inspire me. What an opportunity it is to choose items to adorn my home! To see things that resonate with me and my dreams.

I read that relationships between life partners are bound to fare better if their home is adorned with their pictures. I have come to believe that this is true. Precious relationships need treasuring, and having visual reminders inspires me to do so daily.

It is no different in places of worship, I believe. Temples and churches present visual reminders of the invisible power of the universe, the keys to life. Asia is full of images of deities, so rich, somewhat like the catholic church with its plentiful images of saints. These all remind me of the magic of life, and inspire me to share this with others.


I have selected or consciously welcomed all pieces of art and decoration in my home to inspire me. All carry meaning to me. I try to celebrate them everyday, and to open myself to draw inspiration from them.

Atintya is special to me. Pictured in meditation and surrounded by flames on key parts of the body, the image is a representation of Sang Hyang Widhi Wasa, the “one supreme unknowable God.” Atintya is said to have gained importance in Bali because he falls in line with religious beliefs that revolve around a single god, of whom all other gods are manifestations.

Atintya inspires me to be totally alive, from top to toe, to connect with the almighty universe. And to spark others around me to be similarly alive.

No less, and can't be more.

Photograph: Atintya.


Sunday, February 22, 2009

We are social














Isn't it obvious? Everyone in the world is connecting with others. Yet to do it consciously, with awareness, is another story.

Inspired by Jim Paredes some years ago I started reading Ken Wilber, and have done so more often of late. Wilber helps people to increase there awareness to live in four realities at the same time. He maps them as quadrants, the interior "I" and "it", and the exterior "we" and "its."

Doing a quick "quad scan" several times a day helps to expand consciousness, to gain new perspectives on a situation, and live mindfully and "awake". I found that, at any time, I tend to live in one of the quadrants more than the others. When that awareness arises, it comes with a realization that I am missing out on quality experience in the other three, and on the synergies that a more integral awareness brings.

Quad scans are easy to do, I found. It just takes me a minute or much less. In terms of relating with other people, it helps me review a situation quickly when I am with someone. Whether it is at home, work, with friends, traveling, in a shop, or other situations, there are questions to ask myself.

Why am I meeting this person? How do I feel about meeting this person, right now? And how does he/she seem to be feeling about meeting me? What could be the purpose of the meeting, beyond the obvious reasons? What does the other person want to get out of the meeting? Can his/her views broaden my perspective? Is there an opportunity to make a win-win move with the other person, on the spot? What options do I have, and what action can I decide to take?

Such a scan of the "we" quadrant can be quick, very quick, like thinking and feeling on my feet, at the same time, with heightened senses and awareness, because I have decided to be awake to the relationship in the moment, on the spot.

In his Tapping the Creative Universe workshop, Jim told us to pay attention to "connections" when we show up to be present in each moment. Scanning my quads now starts to fascinate me, and I do it more often. I always believed in synchronicity and serendipity, and I realized that it takes me to switch on my antenna to get the benefits, and hopefully bring some benefits to others on my path.

I am flying from Ho Chi Minh City to Manila as I write this, and reading the English daily in Viet Nam often inspires me with some interesting life stories, most of which with a positive view.

Today I read about Nguyen Son, once a poor boy pushing a cart to sell coal on the streets of Hanoi, now a well-known architect and director of his own bureau. The story recounts how he lately realized that his passion lies with music, supplemented with painting and poetry. His songs are now favorites with young Vietnamese.

I read how Laurent Habrard, a vigneron in the Rhone valley of France is coloring his business green, conserving water use, insulating the farm buildings, using alternative sources of energy. Cutting out middlemen, he has taken to direct online marketing of his wines. He sends samples of his produce in vacuum glass tubes through regular mail (the mailman goes anyway, no extra CO2 produced) to anyone who wants to taste them.

Another article describes how the city of Paris is drilling holes to tap geothermal hot water to help provide hot water to homes and reduce energy costs.

For all the shocks that we are experiencing in the global economy today, the world is still full of stories of people moving forward with a positive attitude, with creativity and courage. I expect that stories like these in Viet Nam News can inspire people anywhere into action to write the next chapter of their life story on the blank pages that are waiting.

It certainly works for me, and I will start writing my 53rd chapter on the blank pages from tomorrow, enjoying to live in the now, practicing to scan my quads, and letting myself be inspired socially by people around me, close and far.


Photograph: Social at the village temple in Cham island, Viet Nam.

Sunday, February 01, 2009

Daily nerve

"Last good nerve of the day."
- my daughter

There is no other way.
Life restarts every morning around the world. In nature and over the vast bodies of water that make up our blue planet. In rural and urban homes, from hovels to apartments and palaces.

In company offices, healthy, financially troubled, or simply unsure of what 2009 will bring. In stock exchanges and regulatory offices. On the work floors of factories, still thriving or getting eerily quiet.

For those who are focused on restoring financial security, and for those who press for using the opportunity of the financial crisis to halt climate change and create a sustainable world with new paradigms.

Life starts anew every day, and for every one. Grand visions of a better life and a better world are still achieved through journeys of daily steps, each of them involving personal choices and smart work to overcome the odds.

To make ends meet for loved ones in challenging times continues to require a daily journey of perseverance, seeing and using opportunities, and making smart personal choices in many moments throughout the day.


In sum, these daily journeys are about taking personal responsibility for life, and for consistently doing the small things that add up to big results which in turn build, or rebuild, our life dreams. Blaming others can feel great, but doesn't help at all.

This early in the year, getting organized to turn my resolutions for 2009 into results is important to me. I need to feel confident that I keep making progress on my journey, that I walk on the right path, and avoid getting stuck in dead-end side roads.

So I have been focusing these past weeks on how to make small steps consistently, which continues to challenge me daily. I need to keep creating and sticking with good habits. Having done well yesterday amounts to little when the new day arrives. I need to nurture and reinforce positive habits on a daily basis to get the results I want!

This year, several of my new year's resolutions have made it into a nifty little application called
Joe's goals that I discovered "accidentally" on the internet. It allows people to jot down their intentions, positive ones to reinforce, and negative ones to get rid off. Daily achievement is tracked by simply clicking on the ones that were "done." A simple click is all it takes for a nice green tick to record the good result.

I read years ago that when people manage to keep doing something new for 30 days, there is a high chance that they will continue doing it out of habit. It is human nature to do so. I will test this hypothesis in this 1st quarter of 2009!

Yet for all the planning I can do and improvements I can make, life continues to surprise me with unexpected turns and messy situations, and I have decided to welcome that too.

Last week, I dropped my notebook computer on the floor, and the screen's backlight stopped working. Not something to make into a habit, for sure.
Thankfully, I found that I could get the hard disk swapped easily into another unit by the ever helpful IT colleagues in my office, even during the weekend. What a relief!

It made me think that I need to get better organized with my computering this year, especially for my personal stuff, which is now stored on the same computer I use for work after my old Pentium IV home PC broke down a year ago.

I decided that I want to graduate to a Mac for my personal use. I realized that I prefer a simple computing environment with programs that look after my needs with minimum fuss. Mac works that way, and I will keep my notebook PC for office. I'm now waiting for Life 09 to be bundled with Mac, which will hopefully happen this month.

In another area of life, after almost of two years of study in my free time, I graduated from my life coaching course just before the new year. It marks a big milestone for achieving one of my life dreams, which is to help people around me live better "now."

At the end of the day, I now enjoy tabulating the results of my good intentions in Joe's Goals. They are all personal, and they matter to me, like my daughter savors what she calls her "last good nerve of the day."


Photograph: An observing bird in Bali zoo.