LSD-3-Turning-On-Inner-Lights-for-Christmas

Turning On
the Inner Lights
for Christmas

By Mila Reyes-Garcia

Board Member and Human Resources Development committee chair, SanibLakas ng Taongbayan Foundation. An accomplished writer of poems and articles.

This article was written for and published in the writer’s column for a December issue of Parents Magazine.

POINSETTIAS are in bloom, vibrant in crimson red. The cool breeze dances playfully around, whispering “Christmas! Christmas!” The tree looks jovial and lovely, bursting with gleaming balls, floating angels, red-and-white candy canes, and multi-colored little lights winking gaily. The belen stands serenely in its usual place, and wreaths of green and gold with silver and red welcome all who enter our doors.

Here we are, all ready for Christmas.

But, are we, really? Are our hearts and minds ready?

.....We have dusted the tree and the balls and candy canes. Have we dusted off our cobwebs of negative thoughts and feelings? Have we checked out the little bulbs in our minds, the lights in our hearts?

Maybe we’ve been too busy to notice that they have dimmed, clouded over by layers and layers of our day-to-day worries, fears, and anxieties. And, oh yes, anger. Anger can cause a short-circuit and burn out the fuses of our inner lights.

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His greatest concern is the beauty

and light of

His home within us.

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How can we truly celebrate the birthday of the baby Jesus with darkened hearts and thoughts of anger or resentment tucked under our mental carpets? Jesus is all love! That is why LOVE is the essence of Christmas. He may appreciate the beauty and glitter of our homes, but His greatest concern is the beauty and light of His home within us.

Let’s take a break from our frenzied shopping and spend some time to peek within ourselves. If it looks bleak and musty in there, we must do a general cleaning with our mental brooms and mops.

The nice thing about this kind of cleaning is that we do it sitting down, and with eyes closed. Shall we?

First, we choose a quiet spot where we won’t be bothered and where we can sit in peace for a while. Next, we kick off our shoes, sit comfortably, close our eyes, and relax.

We relax our eyes (to make sure they’re not tightly, tensely shut), our eyelids, our neck, our shoulders, all our joints. We just relax, relax, relax.

Then we surround ourselves with the color pink. Every color has its own specific wave-length and the frequency of pink is Universal Love. We need to arm ourselves with love vibrations to help us get rid of our yukky thoughts and feelings.

So, with eyes still closed in a very relaxed way, we think of the most beautiful shade of pink and imagine ourselves completely surrounded by it. We visualize the very air around us as pink, soft and sweet, enveloping us. And we’re breathing it in!

We mentally declare with authority: As I inhale, I am breathing in the pink air of love; as I exhale, I am letting out all tension, anger, frustration and fatigue. Then, slowly, we take several deep breaths. As we inhale slowly and deeply, we visualize the pink air penetrating our being; as we slowly exhale, we visualize the words tension, anger, frustration, fatigue going out of our system.

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We have dusted the tree and the balls

and candy canes.

Have we dusted off our cobwebs

of negative thoughts and feelings?

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It helps to imagine each word floating out of our body. We do this as many times as we feel we need to.

Now we go deep into our selves. We take a long, hard look at the debris of thoughts and feelings scattered in there. We separate the trash from the treasure, the burned-out bulbs from the brightly-lit ones.

How do we do this? We visualize a big trashcan beside us. Each time we stumble on an unpleasant or un-loving thought or feeling, we picture this particular thought or feeling written on a piece of paper and we’re reading it very clearly. In our mind, we crumple it and throw it out, watching it go out of our body and into the trashcan.

We go on, searching in every nook and corner for anything unpleasant, selfish or depressing; picking up, reading out, crumpling, and throwing out. Sometimes, when we peek under our mental carpets, we find feelings of resentment we thought we had long ago gotten over but are actually still hiding there, rotting. We sweep them out with our mental broom, pick them up, read them out one by one, crumple them, and toss them into the trashcan.

We do this until we feel that we’ve done enough cleaning for the day. Never mind if we still see some dirt stubbornly clinging here and there, we can work on them next time (next day if possible).

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Now we go deep into our selves.

We take a long, hard look at the

thoughts and feelings in there.

We separate the trash from the treasure...

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We look around and happily see that it has gotten so much brighter in there. Now we’ll make it even brighter. We say a prayer: “Lord, fill me with Your light.

Let Your light heal me mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. Lord, fill me with Your love that I may pass it on to others.”

And then we visualize a dazzling white light from above penetrating the top of our head and continuously pouring in. We watch it streaming in, filling our whole being, bathing every cell, every tissue, every organ until our whole body glows with this light inside out.

As we watch the light continue to pour in, we feel the love of God filling our whole being. The light continues to stream in, and we feel the love within us getting stronger and stronger.

Joyfully, we say “Thank You, Lord! Please let me radiate Your light and Your love wherever I go.”

We continue to watch the light streaming in, continue to feel the love within us getting stronger and stronger until we feel we are bursting with love.

We sit there, just enjoying this wonderful, exhilarating feeling, and then we open our eyes Now we can go through our chores glowing from within, emitting love to all who come our way.

And we can truly say “It’s Christmas!”

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LSD-2-Who-Should-be-Natl-hero

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Who Should Really Be

Our National Hero?

By Kamalaysayan Features

WHO SHOULD really be our National Hero? We have often heard this question, or have even joined in raising it. Anyone who really has a deep sense of history would be careful not to simplistically, much less emotionally, choose between Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio to answer this question. The question is not a valid one to ask; it has been divisive since its inception.

The Americans, who told us in the early 1900s that we needed to have a national hero, do not have one up to now. And therefore they see no need to quarrel over the comparative merits of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Lincoln, whom they call and venerate as, collectively, their “Founding Fathers.”

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But the U.S. government with its colonial intentions saw value in keep­ing the Filipino people divided among ourselves over a lot of things. On this specific quest­ion they really succeeded and To answer the question is to perpetuate this useless divis­iveness. It falls within the in­tellectual tendency, strong am­ong westerners, to dissect things and overproject particles and individuals, as opposed to the oriental and more spi­ritual predisposition to focus more on the integration of things.

......Rizal and Bonifacio both led and shone in different pe­riods of our history. Each one of them responded to a specific set of socio-political circums­tances that differed from that addressed by the other. And the response of one in his own time and cir­cumstance cannot be fairly compared to the response of the other to the latter's own challenging circumstances.

And there isn’t even any real need to compare them. Bonifacio really learned a lot from the writings of Rizal, Plaridel and the oth­ers, but integrated them ap­propriately and creatively with his own studies of in­digenous pre-Spanish philo­sophies and the great trad­ition of Hermano Pule's Co­fra­dia.

Bonifacio was responding well to challenges that had to be faced in his own time in our history, quite different from the challenges that had to be faced by Rizal. So why compare them?

Or why compare only them? We have Apolinario Mabini, Emilio Jacinto, Mar­ce­lo del Pilar, Graciano Lopez Jaena, Tandang Sora, Gregoria de Jesus, Antonio Luna, to name only a few more, and they are all national heroes and heroines in their own right, whose heroism was giv­en the opportunity to be ful­filled and made known to us due to the heroic efforts of countless other Filipinos now unknown to us.

Lapu-Lapu did not single-handedly repulse the Spanish invasion force the way the bib­lical David faced Goliath alone in combat. It was a collective victory won by our ancestors steeped in the synergetic spirit of bayanihan. It was only the history book writers, like the sensational mass media, that plucked out certain names to be projected as bida, leaving the rest to be forgotten as a “cast of a thousand extras.”

We should avoid putting our national heroes on top of un­reachable pedestals, sepa­rat­ed from their overlapping res­pective teams. Plucking out names to be projected as super­stars has had a divisive effect all these decades and centuries! We have thus downgraded mil­lions of real heroes and heroin­es, including our own ancestors and even ourselves, just be­cause their names have not been mentioned in history books! Really, we have long been, and still are, a whole na­tion of heroes!

“Who is really our na­tion­al hero, Rizal or Boni­facio?” Both, and a whole lot more!

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LSD-2-Art-From-The-Heart

Art From the Heart

by Marz Zafe
Former Board Member, SanibLakas Foundation
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[This article was carried in full in 2000 by the now defunct Earthlite Sparks & Reflections. Zafe is a professional painter.]

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THE PHRASE "Art From the Heart" emerged in my mind during the New Moon of September 2001, I was then designing the logo for our newly-formed Sanibkulay Visual Arts Group, and I started by making doodles from the letter “S,” the first letter of our name. At that time, I had no mental picture of what that logo would turn out to be, but the freehand round movements of my pen “chanced” upon the shape of the painter’s palette. And then I sensed a different feeling. I felt energized. I felt happy that my hand was actually being guided.

I showed the “S”-palette sketch to mem­bers of the group and asked for their com­ments and suggestions. One suggested that I extend the upper curve of the letter “S” to make the figure also represent a bird, a known symbol for free­dom. Another suggested that I draw the letter “S” as a paintbrush with a curving brushstroke to go with the palette. So I made new sketches putting in their suggestions.

Days later, I was staring at that evolving symbol and some­thing else appeared before my eyes – the entire figure looked like a heart, the anatomical one! Aside both palette and bird, it was also a heart, the universal symbol for feeling. A new flash of energy came to me, along with an insight—art works are created with the help of our eyes and hands, but most of all, they come from the heart. This is the part of art that cannot be taught.

It just has to be awaken­ed in the heart of each indi­vidual.

This made me appreciate more these words from the Credo of the SanibKulay Visual Arts Group: “Art is the expression of the innermost human feelings and insights, the physical expression of one’s own emotional and spiritual breath, throb and pulse.”

So, you are a practicing artist because you express your feelings from the heart in a way that has form and beauty.

This definition of art may be as old as the figures of ani­mals painted and/or carved on cave walls such as those at Las­caux,France, which date from 15,000 to 10,000 B.C.

Cave paintings in Lascaux, France "may be as old as the definition of art itself." Zafe, co-founder of Sanib-Sining, says one is a practicing artist "if he or she expresses his or her feelings from the heart in a way that has form and beauty."

There were also carvings of gods and goddesses, fertility symbols, and other figures which, in the mind of those artists, were relevant to their lives and mass survival.

There were also the masks for rituals and spirit dances, an art form that was common among important types of ancient and indigenous visual art expressions.

All of them were art­ists, they projected what they felt and expressed this in dif­ferent forms. There were no “intellectual trimmings” in their art works. There was freedom in express­ing one’s beliefs and feelings. Their concentration was on how to har­monize their lives with the streams of Mother Nature.

Then, this flowed across different periods, from the eme­rgence of civilizations in Me­sop­otamia and Egypt, thru the Renaissance, up to the pres­ent-day New Age.

Art became complicated with the rapid succession of styles that have continued to interplay. Critiques, debates, increased intellectualization, mo­nopoly by the elite, the em­ergence of the “art industry.” Many artists thought they could only be artists in the real sense if they obeyed the intel­lectuals and engaged in com­petition in the market being operated by businessmen ref­lecting and promoting the lat­ter’s own interests.

But as our Credo says, never comprehend it fully.” Too much in­tellectual­ization can only diminish free expression and ex­hi­laration.” We of Sa­nibKulay “would rath­er create and appreciate than cri­ti­cize and debate.”

I feel the urge to do art and to do much of it.

Human life is short, but art can be one aspect of every per­son’s immortality. Long af­ter the artist shall have gone back to earth as ash and dust, his or her artworks can re­main al­ive forever in the memory, in the heart and in the spirit, of the Humankind that lives on.

MARZ leads Sanib-Pinta activity during "Rise
in Bataan" in Balanga City in April, 2001...........

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LSD-2-CREDO-HOLISTIC-HEALTH

Fourth of the “7 Flames of HolisticSynergies”:

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CREDO FOR HOLISTIC HEALTH:
'LIVING THE WAY
OF THE ELEGANT SPIRIT'

by Maraya Chebat and Esperanza Dowling

[This was contributed for the SanibLakas CHOSEN Sites project by the team of Maraya Chebat and Esper Dowling, who were both running the Ginhawa Well­ness Center at what used to be Earthlite in Cubao, Quezon City. Ms. Chebat is the author of the book Core Energy, about which she has also been giving semi­nars. And Ms. Dowling, who used to be Ginhawa's "volunteer manager," heads the Philippine Federation for Natural Family Planning (PFNFP) and is a member of the SanibLakas Foundation, specifically its program committee for the promo­tion of holistic health, as part of Sanib-Sigla.]

I BELIEVE personal values must be based upon the truth of my origin. I am a spirit.

The Universal Principles serve as guidelines for creation, cause and effect, what is in one is in the whole, manifestation is the result of intention. Each person who enters my life is a re­flection of some aspect of my being. Likewise, I am also a reflection of each person. All artificial barriers that separate the Essential Oneness of Life should be disregarded. Boundaries now present in all the other kingdoms of life -- animal, mineral and plant -- are also artificial barriers, and they prevent respect, interspecies communi­cation and emotional bonding. All life has consciousness.

What is in one is in the whole. I believe that I should apply this learning to my life and all that I create, realizing that every positive and negative action I put into motion affects the whole of Life.

I BELIEVE time and space are non-existent in the dimension of thought and thoughts have power.

Thoughts travel in an instant. Because thoughts are powerful, I need to develop a quality-control check-up on myself on a regular basis. When I feel that too much negativity is present in my system, I will do something to heal myself immediately. I will pay attention to the law of cause and effect, and study the consequences of my actions, words and thoughts, realizing at all times that I am the creator behind that which I am studying.

I BELIEVE in healing my own healing myself of any addictions to violence in any and every form, actions and attitudes, words, habits and thoughts. The violent side of my nature creates my violent politics, weapons, and all violent human actions and interactions. I therefore need and seek to study my desires in my life that control me, and strive to release myself from anything artificial that can exert power over me, like drugs, alcohol, negative habits, fears -- anything that causes me to lose power.

At all times I am healing. My body is reacting every second to my thoughts and feelings, emotions and experiences. Health is not a permanent condition unless I create it so each day.

I must take time to heal, and I will do it gently. Healing through forced will alone, through compulsion without self-compassion, is a form of self-inflicted violence. I shall not resent my body or any of its systems or organs for breaking down. I will learn from the experience so that it does not have to be repeated. I will trust the process of healing; it has an intelligence of its own. I will learn health and my well-being as my first priority. I will honor myself.

I resolve to set time aside each day for my spiritual practice. Meditation and prayer are essential . I will learn to be still and hear the inner voice of my soul.

UPON THIS BELIEF, I will be a loving person. Unconditional love requires the ultimate of efforts and it reaps the ultimate of rewards. The decision to be spiritually elegant is worth all the efforts it requires. One reaps the rewards of health, wisdom and compassion, and becomes an instrument of peace within one's own healthy person and well beyond.

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