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Words of Wisdom

Awareness and Wisdom

AWARENESS AND WISDOM

One of the first essential steps to wisdom is awareness. Awareness of yourself, of your strengths and gifts, of your weaknesses, of your past, of your perceived future.

And what does this awareness do?

  1. Awareness brings healing.

  2. Awareness brings acceptance.

  3. Awareness brings gratitude.

  4. Awareness brings love.

Through awareness, you discover the meaning of life, of what you’ve done, and of what you could still do.

What will you do?

After realizing how much you are loved, and how safe you really are. After realizing your powers and how everything is really just within your reach, what will you reach for?

We can be too overwhelmed and easily spring back to the comfort of unbelief. We can start allowing our fears to grapple us and make us believe we’re not worthy of it all.

But we can also fight to claim what we have found. We can rest assured we’re in the right path, guided by a Hand that will never let us down. We can start our journey towards courage and protect the priceless treasure we have found.

Categories
Words of Wisdom

Why It Feels Good to Feel Hungry

Have you ever imagined how it would be like NOT to feel hungry ever again? Would you like that? And I don’t refer to that situation where you have lots of food so you won’t starve, no, not like that. I refer to that situation when your body won’t need anymore food at all, when you’ll never feel the pangs of hunger again, never! Would you like that?

For my own preference, I’d rather not. At first glance, what’s being offered is like magic, a pill that would eradicate that “evil” of hunger, that “dependence” on regular food supply in order to survive. It would be cost-beneficial, too, since a big percentage of the money we earn goes only to our food supply.

But then I thought of all the mouth-watering foods I’ve ever tasted. I’ve thought of fried chicken and ice cream and newly baked cookies and brewed coffee and I gave in. How could I ever manage missing all that? Rather, how could I deprive myself of all such blessings?

Some might argue that I might still be given the power to taste food and even to eat eventhough I won’t be needing it anymore. Some way of saying I could have my cake and eat it too!

Yet would it be the same? That same kind of satisfaction when you’re as hungry as a bear and then a feast is suddenly presented before you? No, not at all!

Without the hunger, without that desire, there cannot be satisfaction as well, no pleasure that can ever be complete.

I guess that makes up most of our lives here as mortals. Having a desire, working towards it, and then feeling the joy of its fulfillment.

Sometimes, with all our difficulties, we feel that maybe, it would have been better had we no need for anything at all. We wished to be exempt from hunger, from threat, from pain, from longings, from having dreams.

But aren’t these the things that make us humans after all? Aren’t these the things that tell us we’re still alive, and that we can dream and make those dreams manifest before our very eyes?

In the end, it isn’t the absence of hunger that we’d want, but its satisfaction It isn’t the absence of life and all its hardships that we pray for, but a fullness that would continuously enrich our souls.

Categories
Christmas

The True Christmas Message Behind “A Christmas Carol”

The True Christmas Message Behind A Christmas Carol

The Real Quest of Saving Scrooge

I would like to write about one of my favorite stories: Charles Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL. This of course includes the most remarkable character in the story, Scrooge.

The jocund travellers came on; and as they came, Scrooge knew and named them every one. Why was he rejoiced beyond all bounds to see them! Why did his cold eye glisten, and his heart leap up as they went past! Why was he filled with gladness when he heard them give each other Merry Christmas, as they parted at cross-roads and bye-ways, for their several homes! What was merry Christmas to Scrooge? Out upon merry Christmas! What good had it ever done to him?

Scrooge was the fellow who didn’t believe in Christmas, who considers it a “humbug!” and a waste of his hard-earned money. There wasn’t much to be liked about him, being the old grouch and all. And because of that, he was visited by the ghosts of Christmas for him to change his ways.

He did change his ways in the end, and became this generous and happy person everybody really liked. Happy ending and quite predictable, wasn’t it?

But what struck me most was this. The ghosts of Christmas did not visit him only for the sake of making him a pleasant guy, or for the sake of the other people who were annoyed with him. The ghosts of Christmas visited him because they saw through him, they saw the person behind the mask, behind the pretense of being strong.

The ghosts of Christmas saw a lonely person, one who was burdened by his past and cannot enjoy his present Christmas, nor his future ones.

There are many times when we tend to judge an unpleasant person. We scoff at him and treat him as an outcast and think of ourselves as righteous and better people. We think that people would prefer to be evil rather than be good if they can help it.

But the truth is that people often can’t help themselves. People put up all these defense mechanisms so that others won’t see how afraid and sad they really are. They cannot reach out to other people. And people don’t reach out to them.

Is this the meaning of Christmas? Christmas is that sacred and most blessed hour when God came down to live among men, to become human and frail as we are, so that He can reach out to us and save us. God knew all along that no matter how hard we try, we can’t help ourselves, we can’t save our souls.

Saving souls is much like saving Scrooge. It is putting Christmas back into our hearts. It is being a child again, believing in our dreams again and knowing that with God’s help, our dreams could still come true.

Categories
relationships

Allowing Love…

As I proceed with my 21 days of consciously improving my relationship to myself, of loving myself so I could later on love others more, I became aware of one reason that causes many of our heartaches.

I’ve realized that we are not allowing love in our lives, and for that reason, we are so often lacking in love.  This is however not a conscious choice, but a subconscious response that we do, and unaware of what we do, we are in truth blocking the inward flow of love into our lives.  How so?

By virtue of expectations. By experience or lessons taught us by other people, we have developed certain expectations on how we should be loved.  And if these expectations are not met, we immediately conclude that we are not loved.

But the truth is that we may be loved.  Maybe not in ways we wanted to.  Not in ways we’ve learned or were taught us, but in ways that person knew best how to love.

The same is true as regards allowing God’s love into our lives.  We have certain expectations.  A lot of expectations!  God should do this.  God should be that.  He is All-Powerful and All-Knowing isn’t He?  So He should do this if He loves me.

But what if He doesn’t do exactly what we want Him to do?  Does it mean He doesn’t love us?  But how can we measure His love in the first place?  Are we All-Knowing as He is?

Because of our expectations, we block so much love that should have flowed into our lives.  If we desire to love ourselves more, let us be kinder to ourselves.  Let us allow more love to flow in our hearts.

And if a person expresses love differently, say he is able to show more in deeds than in words, let us extend our understanding and our appreciation.  We are loved! And that’s what really counts  🙂

Categories
relationships

Simple Stress Relievers

SIMPLE STRESS RELIEVERS

I felt stressed since yesterday. Ideas for my website and for topics of articles I could write about seemed to race in my mind and couldn’t stop them. There were two things though, that I did today that helped me relieve that stress.

1.  SING YOUR HEART OUT BABY!

It was good that my friend invited me after office hours to sing at a nearby Videoke bar. Being able to sing out loud and breathe really deeply, not to mention being a bit “senti” (sentimental), a lot of that stress have really been brushed off. Definitely recommended as a good stress reliever.

2.  PLAY LIKE CRAZY

Arriving at home, I saw my sister playing an interesting computer game called “Everest”. It’s a kind of game where you have to look for many objects amidst a bunch of mess. Nice ha! What happened was that I helped at first, glad to identify some hidden objects in that mess. Then I got to the point when I got hooked and so engrossed myself that I forgot all about my stress!

Being engrossed. PLAYING. Such things help relieve our stress. Such things help us LOVE OURSELVES MORE.